Two cousins, one dinner, and a daily standup.

My cousin Jon and I grew up in a big family in California—the kind with loud parties, lots of kids running around, and cousins you genuinely looked forward to seeing. Jon was a little younger than me, but he was always one of those cousins.

As we got older, our lives took us in different directions. We both went through our own struggles with things like social anxiety and figuring out what came next. Eventually, I moved to Colorado with my family, and Jon moved to the Chicago area. We kept in touch, but hadn’t seen each other in years.

Then, in March 2026, my family took a trip to Chicago for St. Patrick’s Day. Jon and I met up for dinner, and while we were catching up, I started telling him about my own ADHD journey and an idea I had been working on called Steady with ADHD.

Jon looked at me and said,

“I have it too. I just started treating it.”

We both laughed.

Suddenly, a lot of the similarities we’d always seen in each other made a little more sense.

I kept telling him about Steady—what I wanted the program to do and my idea for an app that could help people actually put ADHD strategies into practice.

Then Jon said:

I was blown away.

For one thing, I’d somehow forgotten that my cousin was a software engineer.

More importantly, he wasn’t just interested in the idea. He wanted to build it with me.

I went home to Colorado, and Jon and I started having a daily standup. We brainstormed the app, worked through the program, changed things, scrapped things, and slowly turned an idea into something real.

But those calls became more than meetings about an app.

We talked about our lives. We talked about our family. Jon got to know my kids—especially my son, who developed a habit of sneaking downstairs early in the morning and crashing our standups.

That dinner was six months ago.

Now we’re heading into Steady’s second beta test.

Kevin Barr, LMFTProgram and clinical content

I’m still responsible for the ADHD framework, clinical content, and program behind Steady.

Jon KnackSoftware engineering

Jon is still the software engineer somehow turning my ideas into an actual app.

And we’re still meeting almost every morning.