How to build a cult-like brand | Laura Modi (Bobbie)
Summary
Laura Modi, co-founder and CEO of Bobbie, discusses her journey from Airbnb to creating the only female-founded, mom-led organic infant formula company in the US. She shares how her experience at Airbnb shaped her approach to culture, storytelling, and viewing supply as the core product.
A central theme is navigating the 2022 infant formula shortage crisis. Faced with inventory depletion outpacing replenishment, Bobbie made the counterintuitive decision to turn off their website and stop acquiring new customers for six months to ensure they could reliably serve their existing 70,000 subscribers. This ‘sloth’ strategy, while halting growth, built immense brand loyalty and trust, demonstrating that sometimes slowing down is the best long-term growth strategy.
Laura delves into her philosophy on brand building, emphasizing the importance of connecting with customers’ core anxieties and solving a problem they already know they have. She outlines Bobbie’s growth framework, which flips the traditional D2C model by prioritizing content and community over commerce (‘content, community, commerce’). This involves building thought leadership through platforms like the Milk Drunk blog to win on SEO and credibility before driving sales.
She also shares insights on hiring ‘optimistic doers’ with curiosity over deep specialization, the power of ‘branding the mundane’ internally to create momentum, and the critical role of manufacturing deadlines to maintain forward progress. The conversation covers personal lessons on balancing a fast-growing business with family life, highlighting the importance of infrastructure and support systems.
Recommendations
Advice
- Hire a trusted sitter early — Laura’s key advice for soon-to-be-parents: hire a sitter you love by the second week or month, lock in a regular date night, and don’t worry about the cost to maintain your relationship.
Books
- Great by Choice — Recommended for its excellent frameworks on building and sustaining a great company.
- Metabolical — A book that argues we have a health crisis, not a healthcare crisis, focusing on food sources and lifestyle.
- Purple Cow — A classic book on branding and marketing, recommended as a good foundation for understanding how to stand out.
- Expecting Better — Emily Oster’s book, which uses data to bust pregnancy myths. Laura calls Oster an idol and credits her with using data to challenge narratives around breastfeeding.
People
- Emily Oster — An economist and author praised for using data to challenge myths, particularly around breastfeeding. Laura sees her as a crucial, credible voice that brands should amplify.
Products
- Frida Baby Snotsucker — A baby product highly recommended for new parents to clear a baby’s blocked nose. Laura insists Lenny will need it.
Topic Timeline
- 00:04:19 — Introduction and Laura Modi’s background at Airbnb — Lenny introduces Laura Modi, former Director of Hospitality at Airbnb and now CEO of Bobbie. They discuss her transformative time at Airbnb, where she learned that the company’s real product was its hosts, not the technology. This shaped her philosophy on building culture, energy, and storytelling as currency within an organization.
- 00:11:48 — The leap from Airbnb to founding Bobbie — Laura explains the risky transition from a stable career at Airbnb to starting an infant formula company, despite being lactose intolerant. She reflects on a pattern in her career of taking major risks for potential leaps forward, emphasizing the importance of deep conviction and research before making such a move, rather than relying on luck.
- 00:15:13 — What is Bobbie and the state of the formula industry — Laura defines Bobbie as a modern, organic infant formula company aiming to remove guilt from formula feeding. She describes an industry dominated by a duopoly that hadn’t seen disruption in 40 years. The impetus was personal: after becoming a mother, she was dismayed by the ingredients and the societal stigma that made formula feel like a failure rather than a valid feeding choice.
- 00:18:07 — Navigating the 2022 formula shortage crisis — Laura recounts the pivotal moment during the national formula shortage. Bobbie’s head of growth presented data showing they would run out of product for existing subscribers in six days if they continued acquiring new customers. The bold decision was made to turn off the website and stop growth for six months to protect current customers. This ‘sloth’ strategy built incredible loyalty and proved the company’s reliability.
- 00:25:19 — Philosophy on building a resonant brand — Laura shares her core brand-building principle: connect with the top three things keeping your customer up at night. For Bobbie, this meant addressing the guilt, stigma, and lack of modern options in formula feeding. She advises against explaining or pointing fingers at alternatives (like breastfeeding), and instead focusing on amplifying the voices of those who need your product and clearly presenting your solution.
- 00:31:14 — Branding internal processes and creating momentum — Laura reveals a ‘secret sauce’: branding internal workflows and projects (e.g., ‘Project Shamrock’, ‘Secret Shopping Program’) to make the mundane memorable and motivating. She connects this to a key leadership lesson: manufacturing momentum through arbitrary deadlines. As a leader, your job is to create and maintain momentum, even if you have to set fake launch dates to keep the team moving forward.
- 00:40:39 — The power of naivety and hiring ‘optimistic doers’ — Laura argues that an ‘ounce of naivety’ is a secret to innovation, allowing you to see white space and challenge the status quo. She applies this to hiring, seeking generalists and ‘optimistic doers’ with curiosity over deep specialists. She gives the example of hiring an Emmy-award winning news anchor to lead marketing, prioritizing storytelling and empathy over traditional marketing metrics.
- 00:46:17 — D2C growth strategy: Content, Community, Commerce — Laura challenges the narrative that D2C is dead, stating the approach is dated. Bobbie’s model flips the script: Content, Community, then Commerce. She details building the Milk Drunk blog as an SEO and thought leadership engine first, hypothesizing that winning on content credibility would ultimately drive sales. She breaks down growth as 60% product/brand and 40% marketing, warning against the ‘drug’ of over-reliance on paid performance marketing.
- 00:52:52 — Final lessons on momentum and manufactured deadlines — Reiterating the critical importance of momentum, Laura concludes that a leader’s job is to ‘make momentum,’ sometimes by manufacturing it. Creating deadlines—even arbitrary ones—forces action and prevents initiatives from stalling. This practice of setting and committing to timelines, regardless of their origin, is essential for driving a startup forward.
Episode Info
- Podcast: Lenny’s Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
- Author: Lenny Rachitsky
- Category: Technology Business Entrepreneurship
- Published: 2023-04-13T12:01:00Z
- Duration: 01:01:05
References
- URL PocketCasts: https://pocketcasts.com/podcast/aff3edd0-c8a4-013a-d954-0acc26574db2/episode/af817c4c-1647-4646-b102-82ce08c9f1dd/
- Episode UUID: af817c4c-1647-4646-b102-82ce08c9f1dd
Podcast Info
- Name: Lenny’s Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
- Type: episodic
- Site: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/podcast
- UUID: aff3edd0-c8a4-013a-d954-0acc26574db2
Transcript
[00:00:00] So our head of growth, who, I mean, this girl is just fabulous.
[00:00:05] She was watching our inventory levels very carefully
[00:00:08] and also watching how quickly we were growing.
[00:00:12] And I’ll never forget that moment.
[00:00:14] I can like visualize it sitting in a meeting.
[00:00:16] And she pulls up her screen.
[00:00:17] She goes, here’s the dilemma.
[00:00:19] We are depleting inventory far quicker than our ability to replenish
[00:00:25] and the customers keep coming.
[00:00:28] You know, you sit there and your first reaction is,
[00:00:30] this is, I mean, this is great.
[00:00:31] We’re growing.
[00:00:32] She’s like, it’s not that great, actually,
[00:00:34] because here’s what’s going to happen.
[00:00:36] We are going to run out of product for the babies that are on Bobby today.
[00:00:41] We have about six days before we get to a place
[00:00:46] where we won’t be able to serve those who’ve already made a commitment to Bobby.
[00:00:50] She’s like, so we need to turn off our site and stop growing the business.
[00:00:56] Welcome to Lenny’s podcast,
[00:00:58] where I interview world-class product,
[00:01:00] leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences,
[00:01:02] building and growing today’s most successful products.
[00:01:05] Today, my guest is Laura Modi.
[00:01:07] Laura and I actually worked together at Airbnb for many years,
[00:01:09] where she was director of hospitality,
[00:01:11] leading all of the work around strengthening the host community
[00:01:13] and also improving marketplace quality.
[00:01:16] After leaving Airbnb, she went on to found a company called Bobby,
[00:01:19] the only female-founded and mom-led organic infant formula company in the US,
[00:01:23] which basically every mom I know uses.
[00:01:25] I rarely have CEOs or founders on this podcast.
[00:01:28] And when I do,
[00:01:29] it’s because I’m confident that product leaders and growth teams
[00:01:32] and other founders can learn a lot from this person.
[00:01:35] Laura is a great example of this,
[00:01:36] and I’ve been incredibly impressed with watching Laura execute and build this company.
[00:01:40] In our conversation, we talk about how to build and maintain momentum within your organization,
[00:01:45] how sometimes slowing growth down is the best way to grow long-term,
[00:01:49] why the most innovative ideas often come from people with no experience in the problem space,
[00:01:53] how to lead through tough times,
[00:01:54] why manufacturing fake deadlines is so powerful and effective,
[00:01:58] and so much more.
[00:02:00] Laura is such a great leader and such a great human,
[00:02:03] and I’m really excited for you to learn from her.
[00:02:05] With that, I bring you Laura Modi after a short word from our sponsors.
[00:02:10] This episode is brought to you by Vanta,
[00:02:13] helping you streamline your security compliance to accelerate your growth.
[00:02:16] Thousands of fast-growing companies like Gusto,
[00:02:19] Calm, Quora, and Modern Treasury trust Vanta to help build, scale, manage,
[00:02:24] and demonstrate their security and compliance programs and get ready for audits in weeks.
[00:02:28] Not months.
[00:02:29] By offering the most in-demand security and privacy frameworks such as SOC 2, ISO 27001,
[00:02:35] GDPR, HIPAA, and many more, Vanta helps companies obtain the reports they need to accelerate
[00:02:41] growth, build efficient compliance processes, mitigate risks to their businesses, and build
[00:02:45] trust with external stakeholders.
[00:02:47] Over 5,000 fast-growing companies use Vanta to automate up to 90% of the work involved
[00:02:52] with SOC 2 and these other frameworks.
[00:02:55] For a limited time, Lenny’s podcast listeners get $1,000 off Vanta.
[00:02:58] Go to vanta.com slash Lenny, that’s V-A-N-T-A dot com slash Lenny, to learn more and to
[00:03:05] claim your discounts.
[00:03:07] Get started today.
[00:03:09] Today’s episode is brought to you by Element.
[00:03:12] I just recently discovered this stuff actually from another podcast, and it is such sweet,
[00:03:16] salty goodness.
[00:03:18] Element is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with a science-backed electrolyte ratio, and unlike
[00:03:23] most electrolyte drinks, there’s no sugar, coloring, artificial ingredients, gluten,
[00:03:27] or any other BS.
[00:03:27] Get started today.
[00:03:28] Enough electrolytes help to prevent and eliminate headaches, muscle cramps, fatigue, sleeplessness,
[00:03:34] and other common symptoms of electrolyte deficiency.
[00:03:37] Element is the exclusive hydration partner to Team USA Weightlifting and many other
[00:03:41] Olympic athletes.
[00:03:42] Also, dozens of NBA and NFL teams and players rely on Element to stay hydrated, along with
[00:03:47] Navy SEAL teams, FBI sniper teams, and the Marines.
[00:03:50] You can try Element totally risk-free.
[00:03:52] If you don’t like it, you can share it with a salty friend, and they’ll give you your
[00:03:56] money back, no questions asked.
[00:03:57] To give it a shot.
[00:03:58] Go to www.drinklmnt.com slash lenny, and you’ll get a free sample pack with any purchase,
[00:04:04] which includes one packet of every flavor.
[00:04:07] My favorite is watermelon salt.
[00:04:08] You won’t find this offer publicly available, so you have to head to www.drinklmnt.com slash
[00:04:13] lenny to take advantage of this offer.
[00:04:16] Stay salty.
[00:04:19] Laura, welcome to the podcast.
[00:04:21] I’m so happy to be here.
[00:04:23] It’s a Friday, Lenny.
[00:04:24] This is amazing.
[00:04:25] Oh, my God.
[00:04:26] Already starting strong.
[00:04:27] I was looking forward to it.
[00:04:28] I’ve been looking forward to this chat for a few weeks already.
[00:04:30] I knew that we booked it a couple weeks ago.
[00:04:32] Just as context, we worked together at Airbnb for a while, and not something I expected,
[00:04:37] but you went on to now become a magnate in the baby formula industry, which I’m excited
[00:04:41] to dig into.
[00:04:42] And so thank you again for being here.
[00:04:45] Thank you.
[00:04:45] This is going to be exciting.
[00:04:46] Hope you don’t mind.
[00:04:47] I’m going to have a little bit of wine as we go through this.
[00:04:50] It’s highly encouraged.
[00:04:51] Maybe I need to start drinking more on the show.
[00:04:54] That might help.
[00:04:54] Highly approved.
[00:04:56] We’ll see.
[00:04:57] We’ll see how it ends up.
[00:04:58] It’ll be good.
[00:04:58] It’ll be retrospective.
[00:04:59] Oh, that’s so good.
[00:05:00] So I thought it’d be fun to start with just your time at Airbnb where we got to work
[00:05:03] together.
[00:05:04] You spent five and a half years there.
[00:05:06] Everyone that spends that amount of time at Airbnb, and let me know if you agree, always
[00:05:10] ends up being this transformative time in their life and their career.
[00:05:13] Yeah.
[00:05:14] Okay, you’re nodding.
[00:05:15] I can’t imagine a world where I would be without Airbnb.
[00:05:18] Yeah, I feel the same way.
[00:05:19] And so I want to spend a little time on what you learned from that experience and what
[00:05:23] you took away there.
[00:05:23] But just to start, can you just share briefly what you worked on while you were at Airbnb?
[00:05:26] I mean, what didn’t we work on?
[00:05:29] It shows like I reflect back and it’s one of those experiences where it probably was
[00:05:36] transformative because you do get an opportunity to work on so many different things.
[00:05:39] So I remember joining and I was just put in charge of leading and growing parts of customer
[00:05:45] service, vendor management.
[00:05:48] I mean, we were scaling the team so fast on that side, it quickly shifted into taking
[00:05:54] me to Europe.
[00:05:56] Where I led our consolidation of our European offices in Dublin.
[00:06:01] It was so funny.
[00:06:01] I remember at the time being asked to go do it and thinking, am I being asked purely
[00:06:05] because I’m just the only Irish person in the company right now?
[00:06:09] But it was one of the biggest operational changes that we went through there.
[00:06:13] And then for the last few years, I was the director of hospitality, leading global host
[00:06:19] community and host operations.
[00:06:22] I think you’re underselling that last part.
[00:06:23] Can you just share a little bit more of what that actually means?
[00:06:25] Our product really wasn’t our technology.
[00:06:28] It wasn’t, you know, the physical product or wasn’t the technology that we were building.
[00:06:32] Although for a few years, we all thought it was.
[00:06:35] And then it got to a place where we realized Airbnb is nothing without its hosts.
[00:06:40] Nothing.
[00:06:41] If anything, Airbnb’s product was its hosts.
[00:06:46] So there was a moment and I can’t remember, it was like two or three years in where that
[00:06:51] narrative was building up more and more.
[00:06:53] And we realized.
[00:06:55] But there was a need to have a central team, which we called hospitality, dedicated to
[00:07:00] equipping and recognizing and holding this product of our hosts accountable to their job.
[00:07:09] Yeah, I think that’s a really like we could go down that.
[00:07:11] Maybe let me ask one question there, because I think that’s really interesting for a company
[00:07:14] where the product, as you said, in marketplaces in general, the product, the product you’re
[00:07:19] selling is the supply.
[00:07:20] In our case, Airbnb hosts.
[00:07:22] Is there something maybe you learned from that experience?
[00:07:24] I don’t know.
[00:07:25] Working at a software company about how to how to think about the supply as the product
[00:07:30] and how that maybe informs, I don’t know, what you’re building today or just something
[00:07:35] in general.
[00:07:36] I mean, I think I think it maybe just starts internally where you have to be able to like
[00:07:42] create a culture first to all understand that, because otherwise you’re going to be
[00:07:47] in a position where you’re focused on optimizing the technology, efficiency, growth, looking
[00:07:53] at tools for tool.
[00:07:54] Sake versus tools for user’s sake.
[00:07:58] And I mean, I remember a very pivotal shift when we started realizing that we really needed
[00:08:06] to understand our hosts far more than we had leading up to that.
[00:08:12] And I think growth just follows.
[00:08:14] I mean, we certainly saw that at Airbnb.
[00:08:16] If we put the hosts first and we we thought about building tools for them versus what
[00:08:20] do we need just to drive more bookings?
[00:08:23] It it, you know.
[00:08:24] I mean, growth, I mean, users begets users, and that’s exactly what we saw.
[00:08:29] What are some lasting lessons from your time at Airbnb that you bring to what you’re working
[00:08:32] on now?
[00:08:33] The most obvious kind of cliched one is culture.
[00:08:37] And it is bread and butter to everything you do from the people you hire to how you build
[00:08:44] the right mindset to just keeping the energy.
[00:08:48] I mean, like energy at Airbnb was the currency, you know, it was like unless you didn’t have
[00:08:52] that energy, nothing was happening.
[00:08:53] And.
[00:08:53] And I, I think about that every day.
[00:08:55] How do you keep energy going?
[00:08:58] And my God, they did that for a decade, just keeping it going.
[00:09:03] I think the other big takeaway is if you can get people excited behind a vision and
[00:09:09] storytelling, it, it again, kind of carries through that cross-functional work.
[00:09:16] I now reflect back on just how powerful our storytelling was at Airbnb to get people pumped
[00:09:21] up.
[00:09:21] I mean, even for some of the smallest features.
[00:09:23] That we would build Lenny, they would kick off with like the most powerful storytelling.
[00:09:28] I mean, we were changing lives and, and again, it makes you wake up every day going, fuck.
[00:09:34] Yeah.
[00:09:34] Like I want to work on this and you’re not just going in to fix something.
[00:09:39] You actually feel like you’re having very large impact and that has to be felt the whole
[00:09:43] way down the org.
[00:09:44] I love that you’re already getting into like the specifics of what culture actually, how
[00:09:48] it manifests and how to build a culture.
[00:09:50] And so I want to maybe ask another question there.
[00:09:51] So you talked about keeping the energy up is a big part.
[00:09:53] Creating the culture.
[00:09:55] You want to create strong storytelling either in one of those buckets or another example.
[00:10:00] What do you do at Bobby, which we’re going to talk about to build a strong culture?
[00:10:04] What else do you do to actually do that?
[00:10:05] Because, you know, people hear about building a strong culture and they’re like, what do
[00:10:07] I do?
[00:10:08] How do I do that?
[00:10:08] So I’d love to hear anything you’ve actually done there.
[00:10:11] I think one of the biggest ones I would say is that you need to get to know people personally
[00:10:16] as much as you do professionally.
[00:10:19] And that was maybe something I also maybe took a little bit for granted at Airbnb.
[00:10:23] We had built a culture where people really personally loved each other.
[00:10:27] They loved working together.
[00:10:29] Now, fast forward to today and you’re building a company that’s completely remote.
[00:10:33] How do you build a personal relationship?
[00:10:35] So, you know, for example, we make sure that we take time to have personal and professional
[00:10:40] check-ins and like cross-functional people in the org who maybe have no idea someone
[00:10:44] else has a kid or what they’re doing in their lives because those personal connections.
[00:10:49] I mean, again, like it’s your second family.
[00:10:52] You’re waking up every day to spend time with.
[00:10:53] I think those personal connections are some of the biggest.
[00:10:56] It’s interesting because there’s also this movement away from your work mates or your
[00:11:01] family.
[00:11:01] Airbnb, I think, is very like everyone called themselves AirFam.
[00:11:05] But that becomes challenging when you have to let people go and there’s challenging
[00:11:08] times.
[00:11:09] So is that is your perspective stick like that’s where you find value to kind of stay
[00:11:13] close to that?
[00:11:14] I think you need a hybrid.
[00:11:15] I do.
[00:11:16] I think I think looking at work for transaction sake, you know, are are your colleagues
[00:11:23] purely as the people who are just there to get the job done with you?
[00:11:26] And that’s not inspiring.
[00:11:28] No.
[00:11:29] Do I think that there’s a balance and maybe some of the things that get introduced in
[00:11:32] a culture probably don’t need to go that far.
[00:11:34] Yeah.
[00:11:35] But no matter what, I do believe building personal connections and actually caring
[00:11:39] about the people you work for is imperative for building a lasting business.
[00:11:45] What’s the story of going from Airbnb to building a baby formula?
[00:11:48] Oh, my God.
[00:11:49] You mean like leaving one of the fastest growing companies to start?
[00:11:53] It was so funny.
[00:11:57] I don’t know if I ever shared this with you, Lenny.
[00:11:58] I remember telling my dad and he was like, hold on a second, Laura.
[00:12:03] I don’t understand.
[00:12:04] He’s like, you’re lactose intolerant.
[00:12:07] What?
[00:12:08] Why are you starting a milk company?
[00:12:10] He just couldn’t fathom why I would.
[00:12:14] I mean, in many ways, leave an established business that had established, you know, parental
[00:12:20] leave benefits.
[00:12:22] It’s everything that in many ways, as you grow through your career, become more and
[00:12:27] more what you need and you need the stability.
[00:12:29] So that shift, I suppose, just socializing it is probably one of the hardest.
[00:12:34] And it’s a big thing to take a risk because you’re taking 10 steps backwards in hopes
[00:12:40] of making major leaps forward.
[00:12:43] And I think that’s just always kind of been a narrative mostly in my career, which is
[00:12:47] I don’t believe there’s such a thing as taking a big leap without first taking a
[00:12:52] major risk.
[00:12:53] And that was, I mean, it was a very big risk, obviously.
[00:12:56] But then also keep in mind, even before I joined Airbnb, I had a good job at Google.
[00:13:02] And Airbnb at the time, I think, just had one of its most major crises.
[00:13:06] In fact, you know, 2011.
[00:13:09] CJ or EJ?
[00:13:10] EJ.
[00:13:11] EJ incident.
[00:13:12] It was all kind of over the papers.
[00:13:14] It was a small company.
[00:13:15] I wasn’t really given a title.
[00:13:17] And I’ll never forget as well, exactly the same narrative.
[00:13:20] My parents going, hold on a second.
[00:13:21] You’re leaving Google.
[00:13:22] You’re leaving Google to go start a B&B.
[00:13:24] Like, no, I’m never starting a B&B.
[00:13:27] I really believe this company is going somewhere.
[00:13:29] So anyway, the moral of the story is like the move into starting my own business.
[00:13:34] It was it was a big risk.
[00:13:36] And it was one that I felt so confident on that was needed.
[00:13:40] It was worth it.
[00:13:42] Some people do what you did there where you take a big risk and kind of maybe stick backwards
[00:13:46] and it doesn’t work out.
[00:13:48] And in your case, it’s worked out many times.
[00:13:51] Is there a thread across the decisions you’ve made that you think people maybe should look
[00:13:57] for or you think is important in taking that big risk?
[00:13:59] Or do you think it was a lot of super luck?
[00:14:02] I mean, I have a folder of businesses and product ideas that prior to Bobby, I had dreamt
[00:14:12] of.
[00:14:14] And we can always get into that again in the future.
[00:14:16] Some of them I still dream of doing one day.
[00:14:18] But a big reason for not taking the risk.
[00:14:21] Because I didn’t feel the conviction.
[00:14:24] So I yes, while I think it’s luck, you know, I think I put a lot of intention into researching
[00:14:31] the marketplace, understanding the business, determining how much of a risk I’m really
[00:14:37] able to take, even financially, sitting with my husband and determining like how long I
[00:14:42] may need to be in this position before raising capital.
[00:14:44] And is it possible?
[00:14:46] It certainly isn’t what sometimes it can appear on the surface, which is, oh, she had an idea
[00:14:51] and she didn’t.
[00:14:51] There’s a lot of work that goes into determining, is this actually going to be something that’s
[00:14:56] viable?
[00:14:57] I like that lesson.
[00:14:58] Like it’s like it may seem like Laura went to here to Airbnb and was just like, oh, how
[00:15:03] lucky she picked Airbnb of all the companies.
[00:15:05] But what you’re saying is you spent the time researching, saying what the company started.
[00:15:09] Yeah.
[00:15:09] Yeah.
[00:15:10] OK, so let’s talk about Bobby just overall broadly.
[00:15:13] Can you just talk about what is Bobby?
[00:15:14] And then what is the scale Bobby these days?
[00:15:16] What stats can you share to give people a sense of how large this has gotten?
[00:15:20] So Bobby is a pattern.
[00:15:21] We’re an infant formula company.
[00:15:22] We are an infant formula.
[00:15:24] And prior to, you know, infant formula, you know, the formula gate of 2022, which everyone
[00:15:30] is now familiar with.
[00:15:31] The short of it is, is that this is an industry that is owned by a duopoly.
[00:15:36] It’s one of the last remaining industries in the CPG space that has seen any disruption
[00:15:40] or change in probably 40 years.
[00:15:44] And my desire was to create a formula the parents could feel proud of an infant formula
[00:15:50] that.
[00:15:51] Felt modern and met where science is today, because, frankly, none of the infant formulas
[00:15:56] in the market really had caught up to where science has evolved to.
[00:16:00] Now, obviously, I only experienced this as becoming a mother myself.
[00:16:04] I knew nothing about this at all.
[00:16:06] And then I pick up a can of formula and I read the back of the can and there’s ingredients
[00:16:10] in there I would never feed myself.
[00:16:14] I think the thing that really hit me, and this was more of the like business investor
[00:16:19] side of me.
[00:16:21] I just hated the product and I couldn’t understand why, as something that is used by so many
[00:16:28] 83% of parents.
[00:16:30] Why is it that I’m embarrassed about it?
[00:16:33] I feel guilty feeding my child this and it’s also ugly.
[00:16:37] Like it’s hitting on my counter every day.
[00:16:39] And this isn’t what I want to see.
[00:16:42] I feel like I’m giving her.
[00:16:43] I remember saying to my husband, I was like, I feel like we have failed to breastfeed.
[00:16:48] And the alternative is that I need to give her.
[00:16:51] Or a medical solution to survive, which it’s milk.
[00:16:55] I mean, it, I should feel like I’m giving her food, but for whatever reason, society
[00:17:01] has set this up to make formula feel like you have failed.
[00:17:05] And that was, I mean, that was the impetus.
[00:17:07] I know you asked me, what is Bobby?
[00:17:08] So we are a better for you infant formula without the guilt.
[00:17:12] Ooh, I like that.
[00:17:13] Okay.
[00:17:13] That was a good, good summary at the end.
[00:17:15] How about about the scale, Bobby?
[00:17:17] Like what kind of numbers can you share?
[00:17:18] Just give people a sense of how large this has been.
[00:17:21] Oh my God.
[00:17:21] So I remember launching in, it was a hundred percent direct to consumers at the top of
[00:17:25] 2021.
[00:17:27] And the moment you’re about to launch the first in question, all investors ask is, you
[00:17:31] know, what do you believe your growth is going to be?
[00:17:34] First question.
[00:17:35] You know, it’s the same question you get after you’re married.
[00:17:36] You know, when are you going to have a baby?
[00:17:38] I’m like, I have no clue what my growth is going to be.
[00:17:40] I’ve been on the market for a hot minute.
[00:17:42] And I remember thinking, hopefully like 4 million, 5 million in our first year.
[00:17:48] So the growth has been fabulous.
[00:17:50] And.
[00:17:51] Beyond our wildest dreams in what we had expected.
[00:17:54] Amazing.
[00:17:55] There’s a bunch of questions I’m going to ask about how you grew Bobby, but you mentioned
[00:17:59] the COVID kind of a baby shortage crisis.
[00:18:02] And there’s a couple of stories I wanted to get into.
[00:18:04] That was one of them.
[00:18:05] Can you just talk about what you went through in that period?
[00:18:07] Because I imagine it was both a blessing and a curse.
[00:18:11] Also, it reminds me, I have a friend who uses Bobby and she just told me a story about how
[00:18:16] someone, she couldn’t find any Bobby during COVID and supply chain issues and all that.
[00:18:20] And.
[00:18:21] An employee of Bobby came to her house and brought her formula just to make sure she
[00:18:24] had enough.
[00:18:25] And obviously it created forever brand loyalty.
[00:18:28] And we’ll talk a little bit about brand, but I’d love to hear about just that period
[00:18:31] of the journey and what you learned from it.
[00:18:34] There is nothing like a crisis that gives you more of like an appreciation for what
[00:18:40] opportunity lies ahead.
[00:18:42] And I would thank my blessings every day that the only way to look at this positively was
[00:18:49] to be in a position of gratitude.
[00:18:50] That like I have an opportunity that most startups would wait a lifetime for.
[00:18:57] So what happened was I woke up one day and the president of the United States was talking
[00:19:02] about there being an infant formula shortage.
[00:19:05] And I mean, again, like it’s just being in the right place at the right time, like a
[00:19:10] topic that never has really been brought up.
[00:19:12] And unfortunately, one of the large companies, one of the duopolies had a recall and that
[00:19:19] recall.
[00:19:19] Basically left the the nation without product and we were not able to feed babies in the
[00:19:27] U.S.
[00:19:28] Being one of the smallest companies here, we ended up seeing our customer count double
[00:19:33] the first week that that shortage happened.
[00:19:37] All of that would seem great, almost like a dream for any startup to be in that you’re
[00:19:42] going to see your product grow now because they’re moving from one customer to another
[00:19:46] or from one product to another.
[00:19:49] But here’s what happens.
[00:19:52] Infant formula is one of those products you can’t run out of.
[00:19:55] It’s not cool to be out of infant formula.
[00:19:57] It’s not like a piece of furniture and you’re, you know, at capacity for a certain amount
[00:20:01] of time.
[00:20:03] So our head of growth who.
[00:20:05] I mean, this girl is just fabulous.
[00:20:09] She was watching our inventory levels very carefully and also watching how quickly we
[00:20:14] were growing.
[00:20:15] And I’ll never forget that moment.
[00:20:17] I can like visualize the city.
[00:20:19] We’re in a meeting and she pulls up her screen.
[00:20:21] She goes, here’s the dilemma.
[00:20:23] We are depleting inventory.
[00:20:26] Far quicker than our ability to replenish and the customers keep coming.
[00:20:32] You know, you sit there and your first reaction is this is I mean, this is great.
[00:20:35] We’re growing.
[00:20:36] She’s like, it’s not that great, actually, because here’s what’s going to happen.
[00:20:40] We are going to run out of product for the babies that are on Bobby today.
[00:20:46] That’s a problem.
[00:20:47] So in my kind of absorption of everything that’s happening and again, being a company
[00:20:54] that had only been on the market 14 months saying to her, well, Shireen, what do we do
[00:20:58] next?
[00:20:59] And she’s like, we have about six days before we get to a place where we won’t be able to
[00:21:05] serve those who’ve already made a commitment to Bobby.
[00:21:08] She’s like, so we need to turn off our site and stop growing the business.
[00:21:13] That’s a big decision to make when you’re like, okay.
[00:21:16] So I’m going to turn off the site.
[00:21:17] I’m going to turn to all of our investors and say, we’re turning off our site.
[00:21:20] We’re closing down to ensure that we keep enough product.
[00:21:23] But honestly, in hindsight, it was a no brainer.
[00:21:26] We were not going to run out of product on our current subscribers.
[00:21:29] And we had no idea how long the crisis is going to last.
[00:21:32] So even though we didn’t know how long we’d be off, I gave the thumbs up, Sally Forth,
[00:21:39] turn it off.
[00:21:40] And we went into hibernation mode.
[00:21:43] And in many ways, we switched immediately into our customers.
[00:21:47] We now have 70,000 subscribers who are in a place of panic because they hear the news
[00:21:55] every day that there’s formula running out.
[00:21:57] And our job is to give them confidence and clarity that we have the products for them
[00:22:02] and we’re never going to run out.
[00:22:04] And we did for six months, six months, we kept our website off and we didn’t grow the
[00:22:10] business last year.
[00:22:11] And we continue to serve our current subscribers.
[00:22:14] And in the end, we became the only formula company.
[00:22:17] That was able to reliably serve its current customers and never run out.
[00:22:21] That’s an amazing story.
[00:22:23] I haven’t heard that before.
[00:22:24] You threw out this term at some point when we were emailing earlier of a sloth.
[00:22:28] You call the sloth.
[00:22:29] Oh, yes.
[00:22:29] Slow growth, I think.
[00:22:31] Yeah.
[00:22:32] Is that how you thought about this?
[00:22:33] That was part of like, also, how do you change the culture internally, right?
[00:22:37] I had 60 people on the team who were all in a position of driving growth.
[00:22:43] Many of them were probably only hired weeks before the short.
[00:22:47] I would be hired at the end of the day and have a job…
[00:22:49] Ah, good.
[00:22:50] …and then they would be in a position of wealth.
[00:22:51] And then I was all in.
[00:22:51] And then I was in a position of knowledge with the position of growth, you know, email
[00:22:53] growth, paid acquisition.
[00:22:54] And all of a sudden, you’re telling someone who just left a cushy job to join a startup
[00:22:58] that we’re no longer growing.
[00:22:59] And in fact, your job now is to completely flip what you thought you were going to do
[00:23:04] on its head.
[00:23:05] So we named the entire growth team, the sloth team.
[00:23:09] That’s awesome.
[00:23:10] And I mean, they got creative at some point, we were emailing subscribers to nudge them
[00:23:14] to cancel.
[00:23:15] .
[00:23:15] We will go back.
[00:23:16] I’m going to do the show at 5.
[00:23:16] Okay.
[00:23:16] I’m going to go back.
[00:23:17] Okay.
[00:23:17] were looking for a way to ensure that we could keep product and my god it was a mind-boggling
[00:23:22] moment what else did you learn from that period that has either stuck with you in this time
[00:23:29] and or is there something maybe you think you would have done differently if you could go back
[00:23:33] well i have a personal belief of of never looking back and and regretting or changing
[00:23:38] things but there were definitely some learnings and i would say on like the positive end
[00:23:42] some of the biggest learnings were just the power of storytelling and bringing the impact
[00:23:51] of what we were doing back into the company i’m in a fortunate position as the ceo where
[00:23:57] whether i’m speaking to advisors or on panels or engaging the outside world a lot more
[00:24:04] i was able to truly feel i mean viscerally feel the impact that we were having by doing this
[00:24:11] you know i was able to truly feel the impact that we were having by doing this
[00:24:12] i’ll never forget i was i was speaking at davos on this topic and i had a customer
[00:24:18] oh my god lenny this moment i was standing outside of this events area and this woman
[00:24:26] comes running up to me she’s bawling crying and this is at like a global leaders conference
[00:24:33] and she’s crying and she goes she just held my hands and she’s like oh my god you saved my life
[00:24:40] over the last year she’s like you have
[00:24:42] no idea the impact that bobby played in our lives by making the decision and giving me
[00:24:49] confidence that you weren’t going to run out of product on us and that like emotional connection
[00:24:54] of just wow yes we may have grown the business faster we may have gotten product back but at the
[00:25:02] end of the day these 70 000 voices that are out there and the stories that they have
[00:25:06] and bringing those back to the company and it’s undeniable the impact
[00:25:12] by making that decision we’ve had and i think the rest of the company feels it too
[00:25:15] this connects with the something we’ve brought up a couple times now which is just brand
[00:25:19] and brand building clearly it’s something that you’ve spent a lot of energy on and something
[00:25:24] you’ve done incredibly well i think every mom i know uh knows of bobby by the way let me just
[00:25:29] throw this out there i don’t know if i’ve told you this but i’m having a kid and we’re gonna
[00:25:33] get some bobby whoops yep oh my god lenny’s gonna be with dad this is so exciting oh man
[00:25:42] let’s go in a whole new direction i’ve got i’ve got your milk if you need it of course
[00:25:46] if michelle’s in a position and she wants it we’re here for you okay i appreciate that we’re
[00:25:51] gonna get a deal oh my god i’m so excited for you thank you flora i feel like i feel like we
[00:25:56] need some formula just in case right doesn’t that we do we do and the rule is you have to try it as
[00:26:01] well oh okay yeah baby’s gonna try it you need to give it a shot okay okay i’ll get ready for
[00:26:09] that i like that rule i like that
[00:26:12] okay so many things that you’re used to we’ll talk again okay so going back to my question about
[00:26:16] brand basically i just want to understand what have you learned about building a brand and when
[00:26:21] do you think it is important to invest there i mean it all depends on what your product is
[00:26:26] but the first thing i’ve learned about about it is you have to build a brand that connects with
[00:26:33] what your customers are going through and the experience i once had someone say to me think
[00:26:40] about who your customer is
[00:26:42] and that one customer the exact person is going to wake up tomorrow morning and there’s going to be
[00:26:48] three things that are just playing on them in the back of their mind the things that keep them up at
[00:26:52] night and if you’re not solving for one of those then you’re going to be finding a way to like
[00:26:59] build a brand and to get in the way of that get in the way of their mindset have them remember who
[00:27:04] you are what you’re about and it was very clear to us that everything from who our brand was what
[00:27:11] it stood for the position that we were in and what we were doing and what we were doing and what we
[00:27:12] needed to be something that parents were really finding as a struggle in that first year in
[00:27:20] feeding so you see it in our messaging you see it in our creative i have no desire to bombard people
[00:27:26] with something that isn’t part of those top three things that they’re experiencing and otherwise we
[00:27:32] will have companies out there and brands out there being loud for no reason and i think that’s also
[00:27:37] that’s continued to help us in every time we have to reframe our way of thinking and our way of
[00:27:42] thinking and our way of thinking and our way of thinking and our way of thinking and our way of
[00:27:44] thinking and our way of thinking and our way of thinking and our way of thinking and our way of
[00:27:45] thinking and our way of thinking and our way of thinking and our way of thinking and our way of
[00:27:46] thinking and our way of thinking and our way of thinking and our way of thinking and our way of
[00:27:47] thinking and our way of thinking and our way of thinking and our way of thinking and our way of
[00:27:48] thinking and our way of thinking and our way of thinking and our way of thinking and our way of
[00:27:49] thinking and our way of thinking and our way of thinking and our way of thinking and our way of
[00:27:50] thinking and our way of thinking and our way of thinking and our way of thinking and our way of
[00:27:51] thinking and our way of thinking and our way of thinking and our way of thinking and our way of thinking
[00:27:52] and our way of thinking and our way of thinking and our way of thinking and our way of thinking
[00:27:53] they have a problem unless you’re just like spending endless money hammering into their
[00:27:58] head there’s a new problem you have if you connect to something they already know is a problem and
[00:28:01] just make it clear this is a solution to a problem life gets a lot easier that’s right
[00:28:06] although i know that you also have to kind of fight this like breastfeeding uh you know just
[00:28:11] like breastfeeding is best kind of thing so yeah in a sense you also have to convince people this
[00:28:15] isn’t what do you think it is yeah and then i you know what’s the the saying like if you’re
[00:28:22] explaining you’re losing and i think there’s a part of this where there’s going to be a large
[00:28:29] group of people that are always going to be in the mindset that breast is the only way to do it
[00:28:33] and anyone who does otherwise is doing second best and i’m not there to try and convince them
[00:28:40] i think a part of this is amplifying those that are in need of our products that are the 83%
[00:28:47] using formula make sure that they feel heard but that has been a learning i mean that’s been a huge
[00:28:52] brand learning like
[00:28:52] how do you not uh lean into or amplify the voices that shouldn’t be heard and in many ways just get
[00:29:01] distracted by it that’s really interesting and i don’t know how much you want to talk about this
[00:29:05] but i know initially like the brand strategy was basically like breast is not best formula is just
[00:29:12] as good and what i’m hearing is you kind of realize you’re not going to convince people that
[00:29:16] and it’s more lean into people that already understand yeah and i think another like major
[00:29:22] no brand and i i do fundamentally believe there’s no brand should ever be in a position of pointing
[00:29:27] fingers to something that’s better or worse our only job i wish politics would also do this
[00:29:33] our only job is to talk about what we do and why we exist and why we believe our product is good
[00:29:40] and i would say the flip is the same in formula if a mother out there has access
[00:29:46] to another brand of formula that is more accessible maybe more affordable
[00:29:51] and it suits them better and i think that’s a really good point and i think that’s a really good point
[00:29:52] their baby then good for them and i i should never be a company in a position pointing to a
[00:29:58] competitor or another way of feeding saying that it’s worse off ever today’s episode is brought to
[00:30:05] you by assembly ai if you’re looking to build ai powered features in your audio and video products
[00:30:11] then you need to know about assembly ai which makes it easy to transcribe and understand speech
[00:30:15] at scale what i love about assembly ai is you can use their simple api to access the latest ai
[00:30:21] breakthroughs from top tier
[00:30:22] research labs product teams at startups and enterprises are using assembly ai to automatically
[00:30:28] transcribe and summarize phone calls and virtual meetings detect topics in podcasts pinpoint when
[00:30:34] sensitive content is spoken and lots more all of assembly ai’s models which are accessed through
[00:30:39] their api are production ready so many pms i know are considering or already building with ai
[00:30:45] and assembly ai is the fastest way to build with ai for audio use cases now is the time to check
[00:30:51] out assembly ai which makes it easy to build and understand speech at scale with assembly ai which
[00:30:52] makes it easy to build and understand speech at scale with assembly ai which makes it easy to build and
[00:30:52] understand speech at scale with assembly ai which makes it easy to bring the highest accuracy
[00:30:54] transcription plus valuable insights to your customers just like spotify call rail and writer
[00:31:00] do for theirs visit assemblyai.com lenny to try their api for free and start testing their models
[00:31:07] with their no code playground that’s assemblyai.com lenny something else i heard about the way you
[00:31:14] operate is you speaking of brand is you brand internal things can you just talk about what
[00:31:20] that’s all about oh my god this is like oh my god this is like oh my god this is like oh my god this is like
[00:31:22] i feel like a secret sauce of just like how to like get it done half the time and i do this is i
[00:31:28] really really do believe the power of branding the mundane is so successful i mean we brand it
[00:31:37] to be fair i actually feel like this was a page out of the airbnb book
[00:31:42] do you remember going back early days when we were doing like
[00:31:45] uh customer service deep dives like what were the issues that customers were having and we branded a
[00:31:52] program called air dives remember air dives yeah and this program just became this thing where
[00:31:59] everyone wanted to know on a friday what was the latest air dive and really what an air dive
[00:32:04] was was an analysis of customer service tickets and customer service pain points but how much
[00:32:09] better is air dive than a customer service analysis so much so i think a lot of learnings
[00:32:17] on just the power of branding and storytelling
[00:32:22] your workflows and your frameworks and what it means to do your job often keeps people motivated
[00:32:31] too and it it creates memory you know recall a lot better too so now when you look for slack channels
[00:32:38] they’re all like you know i don’t even want to name them because i’m going to give you no i was
[00:32:43] going to ask no i’d love some examples and i know they’re going to sound ridiculous to an outsider
[00:32:46] but what are some examples of things you’ve been and do you say like bobby blink or like what’s
[00:32:51] your naming convention
[00:32:52] oh my god project shamrock i’m not going to tell you what that’s about project lumberjack
[00:32:59] ooh got b 2022 what i can give you so much insight into what these are
[00:33:08] and you know i’ll give you you know an example of it it’s
[00:33:13] we have like legal approvals that need to get made and these legal approvals on content claims
[00:33:20] have to happen
[00:33:22] i was like okay well how do we make sure everyone sticks to the quality sop that legal once set for
[00:33:30] all of the claims we have to have in place so we created a program called the secret shopping
[00:33:35] program and our regulatory and legal team go out and they do their own secret shopping once a month
[00:33:41] and then they report back on any misleading claims or ones that aren’t fully understood
[00:33:47] that bobby needs to go back and update but having a secret shopping meeting
[00:33:52] is very different to potentially coming in and listening to legal report on your claims mishaps
[00:33:59] speaking of legal mishaps and copy nuances one of my favorite memories of you is i was in uh in
[00:34:05] san francisco on divisadero outside i think the mill and you were just like running by heading
[00:34:10] somewhere and we started chatting you were heading i believe to the warehouse that you’re manufacturing
[00:34:16] the early versions of bobby and apparently the fda showed up and shut you down because of some
[00:34:21] misleading communication
[00:34:22] in the news as you’re launching said i’d love to hear that story because i by the way
[00:34:26] how you just transitioned from one example i just gave to that was absolutely exceptional
[00:34:37] speaking of content content mishaps i appreciate that um this is why you’re such a good podcast
[00:34:43] host lemmy she’s so great thank you uh oh my god that moment i do remember bumping into you
[00:34:49] i was in an identity crisis uh yeah early days i think the one big learning i’ve had is that when
[00:34:58] you’re in an industry where you are disrupting i mean truly disrupting the status quo you’re
[00:35:04] going to be met with some reactions people are in our case government agencies who aren’t happy
[00:35:11] about what you’re doing it was early days we just launched a pilot and the fda showed up at our
[00:35:16] warehouse and they didn’t like the way that we were labeling the
[00:35:19] product we had to pull all of our products from the market we had to relabel everything and we
[00:35:26] had to work with the agency for another year before we could bring our product back for startup world
[00:35:32] that was a huge i wouldn’t even say it was a pivot it was a patient pause thinking sure
[00:35:40] that we could get back on track and build intentions with the fda again
[00:35:44] another example of sloth maybe another example of sloth yes
[00:35:48] how did you
[00:35:49] personally stay motivated and keep morale up within the company during that period
[00:35:54] well i found out i was pregnant with my third child right after
[00:35:58] but it’s not there’s something about also growing your personal life while professionally it’s
[00:36:06] happening there’s a little bit of give and take as well right so sometimes in moments of professional
[00:36:11] sloth you might find that there’s personal growth that’s exactly what i found so i mean
[00:36:17] during this journey i went on from being
[00:36:19] inspired by my first kid where i wasn’t able to breastfeed and then had two more
[00:36:23] along the journey and i don’t know i’ve actually never spoken about this but i do think there’s a
[00:36:29] beautiful marriage in that personal and professional growth that you can have and
[00:36:32] you kind of need to find moments where you lean into one and maybe the other and and then there’s
[00:36:37] moments like i kind of feel like i’m going through right now where both of them are just
[00:36:40] on fire and you can’t slow them down might be a good time to chat about that so you have
[00:36:48] uh this fast-growing
[00:36:49] business you have three kids your partner is also a founder also very busy how do you manage
[00:36:56] all of these things you know that question is actually probably the most common question i get
[00:37:02] from new founders those that are aspiring entrepreneurs on just like how do you do it all
[00:37:11] i mean a lot of it’s your infrastructure it’s your support actually hold on a second i’m going
[00:37:16] to do something i don’t think you’ve done in a podcast before hold on this is
[00:37:19] my ea i’m going to pull this woman in everyone just needs to say hi to kendra this woman
[00:37:25] oh i’m introducing her because the power of a support system to be able to do what you do
[00:37:35] i mean you are an extension my leverage my everything and never leave i’m going anywhere
[00:37:42] i’d be so screwed well and everyone should like not only know the power of the support system but
[00:37:49] the power and leverage of their person but like the level of appreciation and celebration you need
[00:37:53] to have for them is just huge yeah i always feel celebrated so thank you i appreciate it how do
[00:37:59] people find a kendra of their own that’s that’s they’ll get a million dollar question
[00:38:03] the poach free podcast her name is lauren yes that’s right we should have codenames no there’s
[00:38:12] no last names here um how do you find your kendra i will say i mean it took multiple interviews and
[00:38:19] it’s all about
[00:38:19] chemistry yeah right i think it’s about chemistry and finding somebody that you genuinely care
[00:38:27] about like i genuinely care about you your heart your kids your family and i think like finding
[00:38:34] that connection is really important yeah yeah you know it’s also funny too i think like there’s
[00:38:40] this feeling and i would hear this from folks you know how do you do it all and i think we also just
[00:38:44] need to be very transparent it takes a lot of work to do it all
[00:38:49] i as an operator i’m very proud of the infrastructure i have built i mean we have
[00:38:56] calendars on our walls we have calendars for our kids we have you know back and forth birthday
[00:39:03] planning it’s additional help in the house my nanny is the other extension in our house i mean
[00:39:10] i don’t know what we would do without clifford he gives everything for us and i also have to
[00:39:16] see him as an extension to our parenting but that’s what i’m trying to do i’m trying to do
[00:39:19] that is i think the only way to get through the chaos and the only way to embrace the all
[00:39:25] is you actually need to put in the work to build the infrastructure the systems the frameworks
[00:39:29] and then every month or sometimes in our case on a weekly basis i have me and my husband we
[00:39:36] have a meeting every sunday it’s walking through the agendas you know who’s going to what taekwondo
[00:39:44] classes this week or who’s trading off on birthday parties or parent teacher meetings
[00:39:49] because you’re right a dual ceo founder household and three kids it will aid you fast if you don’t
[00:39:57] have it it also makes me think a little bit about what you were talking about earlier where
[00:40:01] when things slow down a little bit in the business there’s an opportunity to lean into
[00:40:05] that part of life and then kind of get ahead on some stuff in theory totally totally in terms of
[00:40:12] the business yeah i imagine you never started a d2c business before this also you mentioned
[00:40:18] you’ve never like formulated
[00:40:19] you’ve never like formulated
[00:40:19] you’ve never like formulated
[00:40:19] a baby formula prior to this clearly it’s working out what’s a lesson there just like doing
[00:40:25] something you’ve never done is that something you imagined is a good idea maybe looking back
[00:40:29] like maybe it doesn’t matter what have you learned about just this idea of doing something totally
[00:40:32] new and different i think one of the biggest beliefs is that an ounce of naivety will be your
[00:40:39] biggest like secret to success and i think the word even naivety sometimes gets like a bad rap
[00:40:47] but naivety is the definition of creativity and innovation and canvas and white space and
[00:40:57] opportunity and i definitely went into starting this company with a level of naivety to how
[00:41:04] regulated it was to the stigma associated with it to how hard it would be but that has allowed me to
[00:41:12] continue to look at the status quo differently i don’t because i don’t fully understand it
[00:41:17] and i have applied those same principles even into how i hire people because i do think
[00:41:23] i’m now wondering who’s going to like watch this on my team because obviously we have some
[00:41:28] specialists but this is like generalists who make the world go around i think sometimes putting the
[00:41:36] most unlikely people who have an ounce of naivety to what it takes to win and succeed are the ones
[00:41:42] that are going to drive the biggest impact i love that and it makes me think of a couple things that
[00:41:46] i’ll just share real quick
[00:41:47] i love that and it makes me think of a couple things that i’ll just share real quick
[00:41:47] one is i was listening to an interview with mr beast who is like the number one you know
[00:41:52] youtube creator on tiktok i think he’s got the biggest tiktok wow and he talked about how he’s
[00:41:58] got this business he’s building which is like a new way of creating content and anytime he hires
[00:42:03] someone from a traditional hollywood movie making established kind of background he’s like oh they
[00:42:09] like they know what they’re doing they’re gonna help me legitimize this thing make it scale he’s
[00:42:13] like every time they never work out they just don’t see what we’re doing here they don’t understand
[00:42:17] how this is different yeah and they just slow everything down and he finds just finding really
[00:42:22] young hungry hard-working people that can learn and understand what he’s done end up working a
[00:42:27] lot better always the other interesting insight is i’m doing a series right now on b2b businesses
[00:42:31] and how the biggest b2b companies started and so far i’m finding 70 of the founders had no specific
[00:42:39] background or skill in the area they went into say it’s security or sales or something like that so
[00:42:44] there’s a lot of a lot of examples of this
[00:42:47] i’ll give you one example of someone who’s in seat who’s just an absolute rock star our girl
[00:42:53] who leads marketing is an emmy award news anchor she’s not your traditional marketer
[00:43:01] she came in asking me to you know she was like what does cac mean um you know do we need to look
[00:43:09] at this ltv number and the reason i i wanted her in seat was because she was
[00:43:17] complete empathicist to what we would normally define as a good performance marketer i wanted
[00:43:24] someone in seat who got media who got brand and storytelling and she operates like a news anchor
[00:43:32] and in many ways i would look to the team that she’s built and think that we maybe have more of
[00:43:37] a media company than we do a marketing team and that has been the fuel for the brand that you see
[00:43:43] today a hundred percent and then you hire unlike
[00:43:47] people in those positions and especially senior positions they’re going to do exactly the same
[00:43:51] throughout the business as well that is really interesting it makes me think of airbnb a bit
[00:43:55] also the browser company we had the founder of that company on here and they have a storytelling
[00:43:59] team at the end within their company their job is yeah i love that so you talked about how you’re
[00:44:04] hiring people that aren’t necessarily deep in a specific skill that you need them to do what is
[00:44:09] it that you look for instead that you think is important for them to figure out what they need
[00:44:14] to be doing curiosity
[00:44:17] a lot of curiosity and just like openness to what’s out there i definitely look for people
[00:44:22] who have the ability to make decisions and move fast and not get worried about the outcome
[00:44:29] that is like the biggest learning in a startup the secret is momentum and just keeping momentum
[00:44:37] and if we try and perfect everything like you you just miss the boat and i believe that yeah i mean
[00:44:46] it’s
[00:44:47] what’s the common saying perfect is the enemy of good or something and i think it’s the one
[00:44:53] it really is so i look for people who just want to do it just get it done
[00:44:58] again part of that is just like rolling up your sleeves and not questioning your job when i find
[00:45:04] like in interviews and people are really questioning the lanes they’re going to be in
[00:45:08] and the job they’re going to do or i don’t do that that’s saying i don’t do that a huge flag
[00:45:14] you do do it if you’re joining a startup you’re going to do it you’re going to do it you’re going
[00:45:17] to do it if you’re joining this company if you’re within a certain work stream or a certain
[00:45:21] department and you’re behind what the company’s working on in many ways we need people who do do
[00:45:25] that so i look for just optimistic doers i love that that’s such a cool uh phrase of how to
[00:45:34] simplify what you want to hire uh just do optimistic doers there’s so many people that
[00:45:38] just want that have big ideas right and pontificate strategy and you just need people
[00:45:43] doing the thing a hundred percent i call it intellectual ejaculation
[00:45:47] if that’s not allowed on the podcast you’re a half totally why it’s allowed i’ll allow it
[00:45:54] thank you okay so you’re talking about momentum yeah i want to talk about growth a lot of this
[00:46:00] podcast is about growth strategy how companies grow yep you’re building a d2c company um d2c is
[00:46:06] really hard there’s been so many attempts most fail most people can’t figure out how to do it
[00:46:10] scalably so many challenges what have you learned about growing a d2c company what’s worked well for
[00:46:16] you
[00:46:17] this narrative of like d2c isn’t working or d2c is over d2c is dead kills me because
[00:46:26] we’re being way too reductionist in that like message d2c isn’t dead just the approach for
[00:46:34] how people did d2c is a bit dated we should not be paying for every customer and we should be very
[00:46:42] careful that people aren’t getting hooked on the drug that is paid marketing and performance marketing
[00:46:47] and that i think that drug and then obviously as we start to see changes on the way certain
[00:46:55] performance works it just becomes more expensive and people are resetting how they do performance
[00:47:00] marketing the short of it is d2c is not dead how you drive people to d2c how you acquire customers
[00:47:09] how you build sustainable businesses that needs to change and what is it that you’ve done that
[00:47:15] allows you to do that i imagine a lot of it is what i’m talking about right now i’m talking about
[00:47:17] which you know everyone always wants we need how do we do more yeah so what is what’s worked how do
[00:47:22] you do that and well i mean the three major pieces of it is that the focus on kind of commerce
[00:47:29] content and community commerce content and community okay so commerce content and community
[00:47:34] but most d2c businesses have put commerce at the top of their list we flipped it it’s now content
[00:47:40] community and commerce and building good content that is really smart seo that has
[00:47:47] you know the ability to drive people back to your site to be able to build you as a thought leader
[00:47:53] that’s really hard and it takes a lot of work as an example five years ago we started a platform
[00:48:00] called milk drunk separate to bobby milk drunk blog and the reason why we started it is because
[00:48:09] we realized that there was a dearth of education in the world of formula out there and what people
[00:48:16] were really looking for was the ability to drive people back to their site to be able to build you
[00:48:17] looking for was good recommendations usability charts how to make formula how long does formula
[00:48:24] last so we wanted to become the content leaders in that with the hypothesis and it’s holding true
[00:48:32] five years later with the hypothesis that if we win on content and as a thought leader that will
[00:48:37] drive back to bobby and today i’m going to give you a totally random example if you do like a
[00:48:45] Google search for something like
[00:48:46] how long does formula last milk drunk is showing up between the cdc and the bump on the first page
[00:48:53] of google that seo work in that content building and thought leadership and credibility does take
[00:49:00] a lot of work and in the meantime i’ve had to like squat away requests to put another hundred
[00:49:05] thousand another three hundred thousand every month into paid marketing because the moment
[00:49:11] that drug starts it’s very easy to keep it going yeah i think airbnb is a great great example
[00:49:16] of that during covid they shut down paid growth and i think they’ve turned it on but it’s a tiny
[00:49:22] component yeah which is really unusual and really rare way where you have paid growth you’re sending
[00:49:28] tons of money to facebook and then you stop like it’s so hard to stop because growth slows and no
[00:49:32] one ever wants to do that and it’s interesting coming back to using a crisis as an opportunity
[00:49:37] airbnb use that as an opportunity to get off that drug that’s right yeah if you think about
[00:49:42] the pie chart of what helps bobby grow how much money does it take to get off that drug
[00:49:46] which of it would you say is just like make an awesome product that people talk about with
[00:49:49] other moms and it spreads like that versus seo and content and paid 60 of it is your is your
[00:49:58] product and the package around the product which is your brand right so even if you did nothing to
[00:50:08] market your brand your product and brand is 60 of it and then the last 40 is how do you get the
[00:50:16] word out there
[00:50:16] how do you ensure kind of the word of mouth mom begets mom that has to happen that flywheel will
[00:50:24] only happen if they’re able to look at a product that they fully believe in and a brand that speaks
[00:50:30] to them and without those you’re going to be a fast fashion company which is also my worst
[00:50:35] nightmare the fear that people get distracted by the 40 and the 60 actually is just mediocre
[00:50:43] something i wasn’t planning to ask but i thought it’d be interesting and we can cut
[00:50:46] this if it’s not interesting is uh emily oster she is one of the i think pioneers of uh breastfeeding
[00:50:53] is not as great as people say necessarily has that been really important to bobby in this
[00:50:57] industry what do you think of emily oster i’m a huge fan so i hope you’re all so big fan
[00:51:00] we are massive fans of emily and emily is a massive fan of bobby and she is my idol she is
[00:51:10] she’s the one who got me through my first year of pregnancy and then beyond and
[00:51:16] she has been a really really important voice and actually she has set kind of set the stage for the
[00:51:21] power of data to bust myths i mean just like you said like she’s come out and said like there is
[00:51:27] no study no study at all out there that you can point to that can qualify why breastfeeding is
[00:51:35] better and to have an economist a professor come out and to be able to underscore that and point to
[00:51:42] where that is the case and why it is the case i mean
[00:51:46] it’s so much better than a company to be fair companies are brands coming out trying to say
[00:51:53] that so i am acutely aware that as a business and as a brand sometimes we need to bring in
[00:52:00] other credible voices my god emily is one of those i love it okay great i’m glad i’m glad
[00:52:06] you love her uh i’ve been reading all her books i think i just read that section i love it you’re
[00:52:12] not a dad yet you’re like all of them family for okay the first the first two the first two
[00:52:16] i’ll stop there i think and i was actually just reading the breastfeeding section and
[00:52:20] it’s funny one of the only remaining benefits of breastfeeding is less cow farts and creating
[00:52:25] methane and unlike unrelated to your your child your child it’s a there’s a cow cow component
[00:52:31] we do want to cut down on on the yeah we do we do we do not what i thought of when i thought of
[00:52:37] why should i go with formula or not oh good maybe just zooming out a little bit and to kind of close
[00:52:43] are there any other lessons that you’ve learned along this journey
[00:52:46] about building a company hiring team building anything along those lines creating urgency
[00:52:52] creating momentum yeah i mean momentum momentum really is it you know we we did this a good bit
[00:53:01] at airbnb too i think as a founder and as a ceo or for any leader out there your job is not just
[00:53:09] to like keep people going on momentum your job is to make momentum and some of the things that
[00:53:16] sometimes that momentum has to be manufactured and that has been one of my biggest lessons on just
[00:53:23] like how as leaders and people starting companies how do you force yourself and sometimes when it’s
[00:53:29] early on you’re actually just doing it to yourself creating manufactured deadlines and launch dates
[00:53:35] the amount of times people say to me why are we launching this may 1st and i’m like just because
[00:53:40] we said it we don’t do it now we may never do it it was it was something we were talking about
[00:53:46] the last day on just how important it is to look at like the fuel that keeps you going and how you
[00:53:53] have to kind of force those milestones to get you there so yeah i would say manufacture yourself
[00:53:59] some momentum i so agree with that one of my favorite things and uh one of our former colleagues
[00:54:04] vanessa taught me this uh which is just like let’s all set an arbitrary deadline right now
[00:54:09] and just make it clear this is just arbitrary but it’s useful it’s so true well with that
[00:54:16] laura
[00:54:16] we’ve reached our very exciting lightning round i don’t know if i told you this was coming but it is
[00:54:21] we’ve got i’ve got six questions for you are you ready for exciting lightning i think i am let’s do
[00:54:27] it okay let’s do it what are two or three books that you’ve recommended most to other people
[00:54:33] one recently great by choice the author of from good to great amazing some really really good
[00:54:41] frameworks yes that’s right really good frameworks in there metabolical
[00:54:46] very specific into the world of health health care actually very specifically the
[00:54:51] takeaway metabolical is we don’t have a health care crisis in this country we have a health
[00:54:57] crisis and it really makes you think about the source food and how we live our lives it’s amazing
[00:55:04] and then i think a really good traditional one going back to just like brand
[00:55:08] and for people who are really just looking for a good foundation i love purple cow
[00:55:11] i think i have it in my background you do there it is
[00:55:16] little book so cute that is so good yeah also we could mention emily oster’s book while we’re at
[00:55:22] it expecting better i mean we should expecting better is is a good classic your list uh reminding
[00:55:28] me of a new book by peter attia that uh i don’t know if you’ve seen called outlive i think it’s
[00:55:32] called it’s about longevity and how to live longer in all the latest science and have a longer life
[00:55:37] but anyway that’s my answer and i’m asking you a question so let’s move on to the next question
[00:55:41] favorite recent movie or tv show bad sisters do you know bad sisters no about a group of irish
[00:55:49] sisters getting up to trouble highly recommend it amazing what’s a favorite interview question
[00:55:55] that you like to ask when you’re hiring people teach me something actually we just talked about
[00:56:00] that today um teach me something yeah i love getting someone to not related to work not
[00:56:06] related to their job something in your life something you find interesting just teach me
[00:56:11] about it
[00:56:11] what is it that you look for in their answer that gives you a sense that they’re someone that you
[00:56:15] want to hire creative but also just their ability to explain something and it is a huge indicator
[00:56:22] i mean i’ll never forget one guy teaching me how to cook the perfect steak and now every time i
[00:56:29] cook a steak i go back to the crap you described it um to someone being able to teach me the
[00:56:35] foundation of latin but if someone’s unable to take one thing that they find
[00:56:41] is that they’re not able to teach me the foundation of latin
[00:56:41] is core to who they are what they’ve done or what they understand and their inability to
[00:56:46] explain that to you they may struggle i want to learn how to cook a perfect steak i’m gonna have
[00:56:51] to interview at some point and ask you about that what’s a favorite product you recently
[00:56:57] discovered that you love especially if it’s a baby product that’ll be a bonus i mean yeah i
[00:57:01] think frida baby’s amazing oh the nose sucker okay great and actually no sorry the nose sucker
[00:57:09] that’s terrible it’s the snuff sucker and i think it’s the nose sucker that’s terrible so I’m gonna say
[00:57:11] what’s your favorite baby product that you really like and they’re able to explain that to you in a couple minutes so
[00:57:11] sucker okay you really as a new parent you really really need this lenny your poor little boy is
[00:57:17] going to get blocked up and you’re going to want to get out that sucker and suck on it and get it
[00:57:24] out i can see you quickly looking for the next question you need to move away from the snot
[00:57:30] sucker so i’ll leave you with that perfect we’ll just say we’ll call the episode that snot sucker
[00:57:36] so many options okay next question what’s something relatively minor that you’ve changed
[00:57:43] in the way that you build ship product that was minor but had a tremendous impact on your team’s
[00:57:49] ability to execute and ship more recently async work moving away from meeting culture and being
[00:57:56] able to be at a position where we can like work async whether it’s one hour sprint over slack
[00:58:04] make decisions and go back and forth
[00:58:06] 20 people and then everyone’s made a decision by the end of the hour and we’re moving forward
[00:58:11] is there a tool that helps you do that or is it just in slack here’s the question we’re trying to
[00:58:14] answer you know what every so often we try and introduce tools and then it’s like we’ve
[00:58:18] over processed this entire thing what we really just need to do is all just like get our head
[00:58:23] into the moment we’re in and brand it and get it done so even though i think we’ve introduced
[00:58:29] some tools i know we use um some video ones as well and i’m a little bit removed sometimes from
[00:58:35] everything
[00:58:36] working through these tools, but I’m in the Slack world the most.
[00:58:41] Final question. What is your best advice for a soon-to-be parent, aka me?
[00:58:45] Hire a sitter who you love, that you want to have on board every Thursday night and keep
[00:58:51] your date night with Michelle. Whatever your date night is, and just don’t worry about the
[00:58:58] price because the date is worth it, but just lock it in and do it.
[00:59:03] We actually have a date night currently with another couple who has two kids,
[00:59:07] and so we could just maintain that. How early do you hire a sitter to do that in their age?
[00:59:13] Second week.
[00:59:15] Second week. Okay, great. Not first week.
[00:59:20] Okay, maybe second month. Totally depends on how you guys are.
[00:59:23] No, it depends on how she’s feeling. But I would say sometimes you just need to rip the band-aid,
[00:59:27] you need to go for it. Even if it means the two of you are just going out for a quick meal and
[00:59:31] you’re coming back, keep your date night.
[00:59:33] Laura, this was as fun and insightful as I expected. I’m going to go try some Bobby. I’m
[00:59:39] going to go buy snot suckers. Thank you so much for spending time here. Two final questions.
[00:59:45] Where can folks find you online if they want to reach out, learn more,
[00:59:47] learn more about Bobby potentially, and how can listeners be useful to you?
[00:59:50] Okay, well, the first thing I’m going to say, how listeners can be useful.
[00:59:53] I am hiring a growth product manager right now, and we are really focused on optimization. So now
[01:00:02] I’m moving away from everything.
[01:00:03] I just said, and I want a specialist who’s really good at growth optimization.
[01:00:08] And how folks can find us, our website is high Bobby, H-I Bobby, B-O-B-B-I-E.com.
[01:00:14] And if folks just want to reach out to me, I would highly recommend just sending me an email,
[01:00:18] Laura at high Bobby.com.
[01:00:20] And for the hiring position, how do they go apply for that and learn more about it?
[01:00:24] Great question. I’m assuming it’s on our careers page on the website.
[01:00:27] We’ll make sure it’s there before this all goes out. Laura, that’s amazing. Thank you so much
[01:00:32] for being here.
[01:00:33] Such a pleasure, Lenny. This is so fun.
[01:00:35] It’s my pleasure. And goodbye, everyone.
[01:00:38] Bye.
[01:00:40] Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show
[01:00:44] on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us
[01:00:50] a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can
[01:00:55] find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny’s podcast.com. See you in the next
[01:01:01] episode.
[01:01:03] Bye.
[01:01:05] Bye.
[01:01:05] Bye.