Hi, I’m Nate.

I’m a dad and a builder. I started Arbor to take the hard parts of homeschooling off parents’ plates, so more families can raise their kids together.

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hi, that’s me

What I’m up to

The big one

Arbor

A whole homeschool year, planned around your kid. My wife Shelby and I built it together, so more families can teach at home without drowning in the work that isn’t the kids.

See Arbor

Buffer

I also help build Buffer: tools for sharing your work on social media.

Faith Lab

Conversations about the evidence for Christianity.

FaithPods

An agency that grows Christian voices by landing them interviews on podcasts and in publications.

The short story

I think the best thing a family can have is time together: a close home, and a childhood that isn’t swallowed by school. Homeschooling gives families that time. The planning, the lessons, and the records are the wall.

That’s why we built Arbor. It carries those hard parts so parents can stay at the table with their kids. That’s the work that matters most to me right now: helping families raise their children well, build a strong home, and actually have the hours to spend with each other.

— Nate

Along the way

Before Arbor, a few other chapters.

Radio
Producer in Los Angeles and Portland.
Crazy Love
I worked with Francis Chan and helped build Crazy Love Ministries.
Church
I was a pastor and church planter in inner-city San Francisco.
Nonprofit
Inner-city nonprofit work in San Francisco.
AppleInsider
Staff writer and podcast host.
Sumry
A story-based resume. We built it, grew it, and sold it.
Work Different
A job board for companies that took care of their people. We built that, then sold it too.
Podcasts
I started a show years ago and have been making podcasts ever since.

On X

This is pretty much the only place I post. Recent notes from @natemhanson.

Sep 13Open on X
Cursor Projects changed things for me. I've kept @claudeai and @cursor_ai both for like 3 weeks on purpose. Not forcing it. Just watching where I actually go when I want to ship. Last couple days... it's Cursor. Something about Projects just clicks. Feels more usable. I'm getting the production I want. We'll see if it sticks. But right now I'm letting usage pick the winner instead of picking with my ego.
Sep 13Open on X
Wow @cursor_ai Projects is really good! I wonder if we could just merge this with Grok @bot and make a super tool. 🤔
Sep 13Open on X
Imagine basically one chat about your entire project. Like I run Arbor (a homeschooling tool for families) and now instead of a ton of different sessions, I just have one chat with my Arbor project and it does whatever it needs to do behind the scenes. Spins up agents, builds visuals for me to understand things, plans things out and shows me, builds stuff, adds reminders to do things at later times or on a schedule, all from things we chatted about. Pretty cool!
Sep 13Open on X
Arbor is about to pass $500 MRR. Wild. Also... a lot of rebuilding on the fly. Every user email is another fork in the road. Build this? Skip that? When you're small, one person's take is a huge chunk of your user base. So do you ship the toggle they want? How many little switches before the product stops having a spine? Still figuring out how to listen without building a Frankenstein. Card required on trials now. Testing that on the next ad run. Grateful. Exhausted. Anyone else shipping through that?
Sep 13Open on X
How are solo founders using Grok @bot to market and find users? That’s the hardest piece of building these days!

On X

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Say hi.

Want to talk about Arbor, family, or anything else? Write me here, or find me on X.

Questions about the show go to faithlabshow.com/contact.