Building Agents at Home: Parenting, Work, and Benevolent Neglect
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How did Jesse Genet transition from a tech founder to a homeschooling AI‑powered parent?
I was resigned to not challenging myself to build technical or hard things for like the next five years or so. I really want to be present with my kids. I need to take this break, basically. That is no longer true. A weird superpower of mine is just how incredibly motivated I am for agents to do work for me. I got my agents to learn how to build other agents on their own. So I could be like, we need another agent US, and they actually can spin. them up without me touching the machine, which is a little crazy, but the first few weeks were very rough. It would be a level of pain that I wouldn't want an average person to go through. But the thing is
In the 1950s, labor-saving appliances were supposed to give mothers more free time. Instead, standards rose to fill the gap. Laundry went from weekly to daily. Meals became more elaborate. The hours stayed the same. Seven decades later, a former YC founder, homeschooling for children under six, decided to test whether AI agents could actually break that cycle. She built eleven agents, each with a distinct role, from lesson planning to grocery ordering to logging her children's progress via voice notes. Her agents now build other agents without her touching the machine. The result is not a frictionless home. It is a home where a parent can spend two uninterrupted hours ignoring her children on purpose, because she believes boredom is a skill worth teaching.
Catherine Boyle and Sarah Wang speak with Jesse Janay, startup builder, turned family builder.
Jesse, it is so fantastic to have you here. I think you've been what I would call a viral sensation on X, posting videos of how you're homeschooling your family for children under the age of five, which all I can say is God bless you. You're amazing. God bless. But we also want your secrets, we want your tips. Sarah and I are both moms of young children, and we talk a lot about how AI is impacting education, how AI is impacting. Impacting the future of the family. And you've become just such an incredible force with your videos on X of how you're using it in a bunch of different tasks around the house and a bunch of different tasks around supporting your family as a homeschool mom. Yeah. So we want to start with who you are and how you got so interested in using AI for homeschool.
But tell us about your previous career too as a Silicon Valley founder.
Yeah. So I started a company many years ago. Now time flies, but I was a YC founder, did a venture-backed company kind of full cycle, ended up selling it a few years ago. And so I do on the one hand, I'd say I have a technical background. On the other hand, I would admit openly that my co-founder was the technical co-founder. So I wanna be like I want people to understand, yes, I've been swimming in these waters. I've sat in many an engineering meeting where I Was sort of following along and sort of lost. I've sat in many product cycles and reviews. So it gives me a vocabulary, but I hadn't opened terminal to try to build something myself until maybe six months ago. So I think we're living through a really fascinating time where only recently, after running a company myself, did I feel like now the tools are so good that I can really use natural language.
To build things. And so the last six months have been like a Cambrian like explosion for me of building. And of course, the last few months where we have the open claw, then I went to completely obsessed. So I'm happy to discuss that. I'm But I went down a complete obsession. It can only be described as an obsession because I've just been building almost nonstop. But when I say that on a day-to-day basis, I'm actually spending a lot of time with my kids. And so I was trying to find Like, how can I build things that are relevant to my life? So I know we're gonna dig into that, but that's a little bit of how I got to now.
Yeah. And maybe talk about that six month like what was the thing that happened six months ago? Or what do you remember what the moment was where you're like, I need to start building to fix this problem?
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How did Jesse Genet transition from a tech founder to a homeschooling AI‑powered parent?
0:00–6:04
2
What sparked the breakthrough that let Jesse build AI agents while caring for four kids?
6:04–11:40
3
How does Jesse design and manage a fleet of 11 specialized AI agents for daily life?
11:40–18:02
4
What is “benevolent neglect” and how does it enable more productive AI‑assisted parenting?
18:02–24:09
5
How does Jesse handle logging, voice notes, and photo capture to keep agents in sync with homeschooling?
24:09–31:18
6
What does Jesse’s tech stack look like – from Open‑Claw to Obsidian and hardware choices?
31:18–37:39
7
How are the kids interacting with AI agents, and what safety measures are in place?
37:39–44:55
8
What future impact does Jesse foresee for AI‑driven parenting, work, and fertility trends?
44:55–54:26
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from The a16z Show
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