Every job has gotten easier, but our most important one. Announcing Maple.

Maple
3 min readSep 16, 2020

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For the last 40 years, we have blazed into a new era of human efficiency and multi-tasking like we’ve never seen in the workforce. Almost every job and industry on this planet has gotten easier due to the advancement of technology. All but one, parenting.

New parents! (My mother, father, and I circa. 1986)

“It’s my most important job, and it’s my hardest one”, is one of the most common phrases said by parents for decades, and as a parent, no other statement has ever felt more true. Being a parent is hard, and exhausting as hell. In America, it’s only getting harder. According to a recent Forbes article, America is the second worst nation in the world to raise children in. Sadly, it’s even harder for some parents than others.

Parenting is the world’s most important job and it is harder today than it was 40 years ago when the first word processor came out in 1978.

That’s why we’re building Maple. We believe that parents have been forgotten in our great technology revolution. We believe that we are long overdue to advance parenting the same way we’ve used technology to advance every other profession and industry on this planet.

It is time for us to collectively answer: “Why is parenting so hard?” We believe with the right technology that it doesn’t have to be.

All parents want to give their children the best, regardless of economic class, race, gender, or family make up. I’ve felt the sacrifice and effort as a child from my own parents desire to give me a better life than they ever had. I watched my mother sell jewlery to put me through school while my father went to work with holes in the soles of his shoes so I could play on the basketball team. I can still hear the coins hitting my piggy bank that my mother deposited every night at the end of her shift from waiting tables (that I eventually used on my first car). As a father now I fully understand why they sacrificed the way they did for my sister and I, but I sadly question “did it have to be that hard? Did they have to struggle so much?”. At Maple, we are determined to ensure this doesn’t have to be a question worth asking in the future.

We need a world where all parents can go to sleep at night knowing their kids are well taken care of. But that starts with supporting parents and providing them with the help they need. In doing so, we believe we can restore balance in the life of every household.

My co-founder and I left our dream jobs, because we saw an urgent need to build a better world for parents. While technology advancements have simplified our 9–5 job, improvement of our most fundamental job as humankind has been ignored. We’re here to level the playing field, and create more opportunity for more people- not just the 1%. This is our mission. We’re here to make all parents’ lives easier.

If you’re a parent, exhausted by the grind of the day, and doing all you can to take care of your kids: we are building Maple for you.

Sign up for early access here.

Michael Perry

Founder, Maple.

Showing my son, Leander, early wireframes of Maple.

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Maple

Parenting is hard. Maple’s free app makes parenting easier with tools to work together, manage your household, and get help. Download at growmaple.com/install