Three dads started selling hats from a garage with $750—now they’ve sold $35 million worth, partnered with Gary Vee, and grown a community of fathers

Back in 2022, Bart Szaniewski, Grant Eastey, and Ejay O’Donnell were reluctant to admit it, but fatherhood had hit them harder than expected.

There were the sleepless nights and tighter budgets—but also something larger they hadn’t anticipated: how isolating fatherhood could feel. Moms had books, Facebook groups, and communities built around parenting. Dads were more often expected to simply tough it out.

“When you’re sleep deprived and questioning who you are as a dad and you open up Instagram and it’s just telling you, ‘Hey, go have a beer and mow the lawn.’ That’s not what you want to see,” Szaniewski told Fortune. “You want to see some sort of support group…[and see that] nobody’s got it together completely.”

Szaniewski and Eastey first met as classmates at Washington State University. Soon after, Szaniewski met O’Donnell through a business deal, and the three bonded over their shared interest in entrepreneurship—and, eventually, the challenges of becoming new fathers.

But living in different parts of the West Coast, they leaned on a group text to vent, swap parenting stories, and remind each other they weren’t alone. One phrase kept surfacing in the chat: “Dad Gang.”

At first, it was just an inside joke—a nickname for the support system they’d built. But the more they used it, the more it felt like something other fathers might connect with. Since the three had been kicking around business ideas for years, they decided to see whether Dad Gang could become more than just the name of a group chat. 

Szaniewski, who spent more than a decade working in direct-to-consumer marketing, understood branding. O’Donnell had spent years in design, while Eastey gravitated toward storytelling and community building. Together, they decided to turn Dad Gang into a lifestyle brand centered on fatherhood and connection. They scraped together $250 apiece and........

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