Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth - How to build a cult-like brand | Laura Modi (Bobbie)

Episode Date: April 13, 2023

Brought to you by Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security | LMNT—Zero-sugar hydration | AssemblyAI—Production-ready AI models to transcribe and understand speech—Laura Modi is the CEO and co-founder of Bobbie, the first woman-owned, organic infant formula in the U.S. Previously, Laura spent over five years at Airbnb, where she served as Director of Hospitality. Before that, she spent over four years at Google in finance and operations. In today’s podcast, we discuss:• Biggest lessons from five years at Airbnb• Lessons about building great culture• The power of naivete• From growth to “slowth”: Why Bobbie prioritized existing customers over growth during the height of the formula shortage• The importance of momentum above all else• Finding work-life balance with the right infrastructure, support, and frameworks• The importance of brand, and how to build a brand• What it takes to win in DTC—Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/from-growth-to-slowth-the-making—Where to find Laura Modi:• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurahughes6/• Email: [e-mail]—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—Note: Lenny is a small angel investor in Bobbie.—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Laura’s background(04:20) What Laura worked on at Airbnb(06:22) The director of hospitality role(07:08) How supporting hosts led to growth at Airbnb(08:28) Lessons from Airbnb around culture and storytelling that impact how Laura runs Bobbie(09:44) How Laura builds a strong culture at Bobbie (11:45) The risk she took in starting her own company(13:41) Advice on taking risks(15:10) What is Bobbie(17:15) The scale of Bobbie(17:55) The infant formula shortage crisis (19:49) How the growth team pivoted to being the “slowth” team(23:23) Lessons from the crisis(25:16) Building a brand(31:12) Branding internally(33:58) The time the FDA shut Bobbie down over labeling(36:45) How Laura balances her busy mom life with being a founder(40:17) The power of naivete (44:03) Why Laura hires optimistic doers(45:56) Growing a DTC company(47:14) How Bobbie leverages content, community, and commerce(49:42) Bobbie’s pie chart of growth(50:43) Emily Oster’s influence (52:40) The importance of momentum and how to create it(54:15) Lightning round—Referenced:• Bobbie: https://www.hibobbie.com/• Davos: https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2023• MrBeast’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA• Josh Miller on Lenny’s Podcast: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/competing-with-giants-an-inside-look-at-how-the-browser-company-builds-product-josh-miller-ceo/• Milk Drunk podcast: https://milk-drunk.com/• Emily Oster on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ProfEmilyOster• Cribsheet: https://www.amazon.com/Cribsheet/dp/1788164490• Great by Choice: https://www.amazon.com/Great-Choice-Uncertainty-Thrive-Despite/dp/1847940889• Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine: https://www.amazon.com/Metabolical-Processed-Nutrition-Modern-Medicine/dp/0063027712/• Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable: https://www.amazon.com/Purple-Cow-Transform-Business-Remarkable/dp/014101640X• Expecting Better: https://www.amazon.com/Expecting-Better-Conventional-Pregnancy-Wrong/dp/0143125702• Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity: https://www.amazon.com/Outlive-Longevity-Peter-Attia-MD/dp/0593236599• Bad Sisters on AppleTV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/bad-sisters• NoseFrida the Snotsucker: https://frida.com/products/nosefrida• Careers at Bobbie: https://www.hibobbie.com/pages/careers—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [e-mail]. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

So our head of growth, who, I mean, this girl is just fabulous. She was watching our inventory levels very carefully and also watching how quickly we were growing. And I'll never forget that moment. I can like visualize it, sitting in a meeting. And she pulls up her screen, she goes, here's the dilemma. We are depleting inventory far quicker than our ability to replenish and the customers keep coming. You know, you sit there in your first reaction. this is, I mean, this is great. We're growing. She's like, it's not that great, actually.

Because here's what's going to happen. We are going to run out a product for the babies that are on Bobby today. We have about six days before we get to a place where we won't be able to serve those who've already made a commitment to Bobby. So we need to turn off our site and stop growing the business. Welcome to Lenny's podcast where I interview world class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experience is building and growing today's most successful products. Today, my guest is Laura Modi. Laura and I actually worked together at Airbnb for many years, where she was director of hospitality, leading all of the work around strengthening the host community and also

improving marketplace quality. After leaving Airbnb, she went on to found a company called Bobby, the only female-founded and mom-led organic infant formula company in the U.S., which basically every mom I know uses. I rarely have CEOs or founders on this podcast, and when I do, it's because I'm confident that product leaders and growth teams and other founders can learn a lot from this person. Laura is a great example of this, and I've been incredibly impressed with watching Laura execute and build this company. In our conversation, we talk about how to build and maintain momentum within your organization, how sometimes slowing growth down is the best way to grow long term,

why the most innovative ideas often come from people with no experience in the problem space, how to lead through tough times, why manufacturing fake deadlines is so powerful and effective, and so much more, Laura is such a great leader and such a great human, and I'm really excited for you to learn from her. With that, I bring you Laura Modi after a short word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Vanta, helping you streamline your security compliance to accelerate your growth. Thousands of fast-growing companies like Gusto, Com, Quora, and modern treasury trust Vanta to help build, scale, manage, and demonstrate their security and compliance programs and get ready for audits in weeks. not months. By offering the most in-demand security and privacy frameworks such as SOC2, ISO-271, GDPR, HIPAA, and many more,

VANTA helps companies obtain the reports they need to accelerate growth, build efficient compliance processes, mitigate risks to their businesses, and build trust with external stakeholders. Over 5,000 fast-growing companies use VANTA to automate up to 90% of the work involved with SOC2 and these other frameworks. For a limited time, Lenny's podcast listeners get $1,000 off VANTHA. Go to vanta.com slash Lenny. That's v-a-n-t-a-com slash Lenny to learn more and to claim your discounts. Get started today. Today's episode is brought to you by Element. I just recently discovered the stuff actually from another podcast, and it is such sweet, salty goodness. Element is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with a science-backed electrolyte ratio, and unlike most electrolyte drinks, there's no sugar, coloring, artificial ingredients, gluten, or any other BS. Getting enough electrolytes helps prevent and eliminate headaches, muscle cramps, fatigue,

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My favorite is watermelon salt. You won't find this offer publicly available, so you have to head to DrinkLMNT.com slash Lenny to take advantage of this offer. Stay salty. Laura, welcome to the podcast. I'm so happy to be here. It's a Friday, Lenny. This is amazing. Oh, my God. Already starting strong. I was looking forward to this chat for, a few weeks already. I knew that we booked it a couple weeks ago. Just as context, we worked together at Airbnb for a while. And not something I expected, but you went on to now become a magnate in the baby formula industry, which I'm excited to dig into. And so thank you again for being here.

Thank you. This is going to be exciting. Hope you don't mind. I'm going to have a little bit of wine as we go through this. It's highly encouraged. Maybe I need to start drinking more on the show. Highly approved. We'll see. We'll see how it ends up. It'll be good retrospective. good. So I thought it'd be fun to start with just your time at Airbnb where we got to work together. You spent five and a half years there. Everyone that spends that amount of time at Airbnb, and let me know if you agree, always ends up being this transformative time in their life and their career. Yeah. Okay. You're nodding. I can't imagine world where I would be without Airbnb. Yeah. I feel the same way. And so I want to spend a little time on what you learned from that

experience and what you took away there. But just to start, can just share briefly what you worked on while you at Airbnb? I mean, what didn't we work on? I just like I reflect back and it's one of those experiences where it probably was transformative because you do get an opportunity to work on so many different things. So I remember joining and I was just put in charge of leading and growing parts of customer service, vendor management. I mean, we were scaling the team so fast on that side. It quickly shifted into taking me to Europe where I led our consolidation of our European offices. in Dublin. It was so funny. I remember the time being asked to go do it and thinking,

am I being asked truly because I'm just the only Irish person in the company right now? But it was one of the biggest operational changes that we went through there. And then for the last few years, I was the director of hospitality, leading global host community and host operations. I think you're underselling that last part. Can you just share a little bit more of what that actually means? Our product really wasn't our technology. It wasn't, you know, the physical, or wasn't the technology that we were building. Although for a few years, we all thought it was. And then it got to a place where we realized, Airbnb is nothing without its hosts. Nothing. If anything, Airbnb's product was its hosts. So there was a moment, and I can't

remember, it was like two or three years in, where that narrative was building up more and more, and we realized that there was a need to have a central team, which we called hospitality, dedicated to equipping and recognizing and holding this product of our hosts accountable to their job. Yeah, I think that's a really, like we could go down that. Maybe let me ask one question there because I think that's really interesting. For a company where the product, as you said, in marketplaces in general, the product you're selling is the supply, in our case, Airbnb hosts. Is there something maybe you learned from that experience? I don't know, working at a software company about how to think about the,

supply as the product and how that may be informs, I don't know, what you're building today or just something in general. I mean, I think it maybe just starts internally where you have to be able to, like, create a culture first who all understand that. Because otherwise you're going to be in a position where you're focused on optimizing the technology, efficiency, growth, looking at tools for tool's sake versus tools for users' sake. And I mean, I remember a very pivotal shift when we started realizing that we really needed to understand our hosts far more than we had leading up to that. And I think growth just follows.

I mean, we certainly saw that at Airbnb, if we put the hosts first and we thought about building tools for them versus what do we need just to drive more bookings, it, you know, growth, I mean, users begets users. And that's exactly what we saw. What are some lasting lessons from your time at Airbnb that you bring to what you're working on now? The most obvious kind of cliched one is culture. It is bread and butter to everything you do from the people you hire to how you build the right mindset to just keeping the energy. I mean, like energy at Airbnb was the currency. You know, it was like unless you didn't have that energy, nothing was happening. And I think about that every day.

how do you keep energy going? And my God, they did that for a decade. Just keeping it going. I think the other big takeaway is if you can get people excited behind a vision and storytelling, it again kind of carries through that cross-functional work. I now reflect back on just how powerful our storytelling was at Airbnb to get people pumped up.

I mean, even for some of the smallest features that we would build, Lenny, they would kick off with like the most powerful storytelling. I mean, we're changing lives. And again, it makes you wake up every day going, fuck yeah, like I want to work on this. And you're not just going in to fix something. You actually feel like you're having very large impact. And that has to be felt the whole way down the org.

I love that you're already getting into like the specifics of what culture actually, how it manifests and how to build a culture. And so I want to maybe ask another question there. So you talked about keeping the energy up as a big part of creating a the culture you want to create strong storytelling, either in one of those buckets or another example, what do you do at Bobby, which we're going to talk about, to build a strong culture? What else do you do to actually do that? Because, you know, people hear about building a strong culture and they're like, what do I do? How do I do? So I'd look to hear anything you've actually done there.

I think one of the biggest ones, I would say, is that you need to get to know people personally as much as you do professionally. And that was maybe something I also maybe took a little bit for granted at Airbnb. be, we had built a culture where people really personally loved each other. They loved working together. Now, fast forward to today and you're building a company that's completely remote, how do you build a personal relationship? So, you know, for example, we make sure that we take time to have personal and professional check-ins and like cross-functional people in the org who maybe have no idea someone else as a kid or what they're doing in their lives. Because those personal connections, I mean, again, like it's your second family. You're waking up every day to the

spend time with them. I think those personal connections are some of the biggest. It's interesting because there's also this movement away from your workmates or your family. Airbnb, I think is very, like everyone called themselves AirFam, but that becomes challenging when you have to let people go and there's challenging times. So is that, is your perspective stick like that's where you find value to kind of stay close to that? I think you need a hybrid. I do. I think looking at work for transactions sake, you know, are your colleagues purely as the people who are just there to get the job done with you? And that's not inspiring.

No. Do I think that there's a balance and maybe some of the things that get introduced in a culture probably don't need to go that far? Yeah. But no matter what, I do believe building personal connections and actually caring about the people you work for is imperative for building a lasting business. What's the story of going from Airbnb to building a baby formula? Oh, my God. You mean like leaving one of the first. fastest growing companies to start powdered milk. It was so funny. I don't know if I ever share

this, I remember telling my dad. And he was like, hold on a second, Laura. I don't understand. He's like, you're lactose intolerant. What, why are you starting a milk company? He just couldn't fathom why I would, I mean, in many ways, leave and established business that had established, you know, parental leave, benefits, everything that in many ways as you grow through your career become more and more what you need and you need the stability. So that shift, I suppose, just socializing it is probably one of the hardest. And it's a big thing to take a risk because you're taking 10 steps backwards in hopes of making major leaps forward. And I think that's just always kind of being a narrative mostly in my career, which is, I don't believe there's

such a thing is taking a big leap without first taking a major risk. And that was, I mean, it was a very big risk, obviously. But then also, keep in mind, even before I joined Airbnb, I had a good job at Google. And Airbnb at the time, I think, just had one of its most major crises. You know, 2011. C.J or EJ? EJ.J. EJ.

It was all kind of over the papers. It was a small company. I wasn't really given a title. and I'll never forget as well exactly the same narrative my parents going, hold on a second, you're leaving Google to go start a B&B.

Like, no, I'm never starting a B&B. I really believe this company is going somewhere. So anyway, the moral of the story is like the move into starting my own business. It was a big risk and it was one that I felt so confident on that was needed.

It was worth it. Some people do what you did there where you take a big risk and kind of maybe stick backwards and it doesn't work out. And in your case, it's worked out many times. Is there a thread across the decisions you've made that you think people maybe should look for or you think is important in taking that big risk?

Or do you think it was a lot of super luck? I mean, I have a folder of businesses and product ideas that prior to Bobby, I had dreamt of. And we can always get into that again in the future. Some of them I still dream of doing one day. But a big reason for not taking the risk is because I didn't feel the conviction. So, yes, while I think it's luck, you know, I think I put a lot of the intention into researching the marketplace, understanding the business, determining how much of a risk I'm really able to take, even financially, sitting with my husband and determining like how long I may need to be in this position before raising capital.

and is it possible. It certainly isn't what sometimes it can appear on the surface, which is, oh, she had an idea and she left. There's a lot of work that goes into determining, is this actually going to be something that's viable? I like that lesson. Like it's like it may seem like Laura went to hear it to Airbnb and it was just like, oh, how lucky she picked Airbnb of all the companies.

But what you're saying is you spent the time researching, same with the company started. Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about Bobby just broadly. Can you just talk about what is Bobby? And then what is the scale, Bobby, these days? What stats can you share to give people a sense of how large this has gotten? So Bobby is a powdered milk company.

We are at Infant Formula. And prior to infant formula, you know, the formula gate of 2022, which everyone is now familiar with, the short of it is that this is an industry that is owned by a duopoly. It's one of the last remaining industries in the CPG space that has seen any disruption or change in probably 40 years. and my desire was to create a formula the parents could feel proud of, an infant formula that felt modern and met where science is today, because frankly, none of the infant formulas in the market really had caught up to where science was evolved to.

Now, obviously, I only experienced this as becoming a mother myself. I knew nothing about this at all. And then I pick up a can of formula, and I read the back of the can, and there's ingredients in there, I would never feed myself. And I think the thing that really hit me, and this was more of the, like, business investor side of me, I just hated the product. And I couldn't understand why, as something that is used by so many, 83% of parents, why is it that I'm embarrassed about it? I feel guilty feeding my child this. And it's also ugly. Like, it's hitting on my counter every day. And this isn't what I want to see. I feel like I'm giving her.

I remember saying to my husband, I was like, I feel like we have failed to breastfeed. And the alternative is that I need to give her a medical solution to survive, which it's milk. I mean, I should feel like I'm giving her food. But for whatever reason, society has set this up to make formula feel like you have failed. And that was, I mean, that was the impetus. I know you asked me, what is Bobby? So we are better for you, infant formula, without the guilt. I like that. Okay, that was a good

summary at the end. How about about the scale, Bobby? Like, what kind of numbers can you share? Just give people a sense of how large this has been. Yeah. Oh, my God. So I remember launching in, it was 100% direct to consumer. It was at the top of 2021. And the moment you're about to launch, the first in question

all investors ask is, you know, what do you believe your growth is going to be? First question. You know, it's the same question you get after you're married. You know, when are you going to have a baby? I'm like, I have no clue what my is going to be. I've been on the market for a hot minute. And I remember thinking, hopefully like $4 million, $5 million in our first year. So the growth has been fabulous and beyond our wildest dreams in what we had expected. Amazing. There's a bunch of

questions I'm going to ask about how you grew, Bobby. But you mentioned the COVID kind of a baby shortage crisis. And there's a couple of stories I wanted to get into that was one of them. Can you just talk about what you went through in that period? Because I imagine it was both a blessing Anna curse. Also, it reminds me, I have a friend who uses Bobby, and she just told me a story about how someone, she couldn't find any Bobby during COVID and supply chain issues and all that. And an employee of Bobby came to her house and brought her formula just to make sure she had enough. And obviously, they created forever brand loyalty. And we'll talk a little bit about brand, but I'd love to hear about just that period of the journey and what you learned from it.

There is nothing like a crisis that gives you more of like an appreciation, for what opportunity lies ahead. And I would thank my blessings every day that the only way to look at this positively was to be in a position of gratitude that I have an opportunity that most startups would wait a lifetime for. So what happened was I woke up one day

and the president of the United States was talking about there being an infant formula shortage. And again, like it's just being in the right place at the right time. Like a topic that never has really been brought up. And unfortunately, one of the large companies, one of the duopolys, had a recall. And that recall basically left the nation without product. And we were not able to feed babies in the U.S.

Being one of the smallest companies here, we ended up seeing our customer count double the first week that that shortage happened. All of that would seem great, almost like a dream. for any startup to be in that you're going to see your product grow now because they're moving from one customer to another or from one product to another. But here's what happens. Infant Formula is one of those products

that you can't run out of. It's not cool to be out of infant formula. It's not like a piece of furniture and you're at capacity for a certain amount of time. So our head of growth, who, I mean, this girl is just fabulous. she was watching our inventory levels very carefully and also watching how quickly we were growing. And I'll never forget that moment.

I can visualize it sitting in a meeting. And she pulls up her screen. She goes, here's the dilemma. We are depleting inventory far quicker than our ability to replenish and the customers keep coming. You know, you sit there in your first reaction is, this is great, we're growing. She's like, it's not that great, actually, because here's what's going to happen. We are going to run out a product for the babies that are on Bobby today. That's a problem.

So in my kind of absorption of everything that's happening, and again, being a company that had only been on the market 14 months, saying to her, well, Shereen, what do we do next? And she's like, we have about six days before we get to a place where we won't be able to serve those who've already. made a commitment to Bobby. She's like, so we need to turn off our site and stop growing the business. That's a big decision to make when you're like, okay, so I'm going to turn to all of our investors and say we're turning off our site. We're closing down to ensure that we keep enough product. But honestly, in hindsight, it was a no-brainer. We were not going to run out a product on our current subscribers, and we had no idea how long the crisis is going to last. So even though we didn't know how long we'd be off, I get it.

gave the thumbs up, Sally fourth, turn it off, and we went into hibernation mode. And in many ways, we switched immediately into our customers come first. We now have 70,000 subscribers who are in a place of panic because they hear the news every day that there's formula running out. And our job is to give them confidence and clarity that we have the product for them and we're never going to run out. And we did for six months. Six months we kept our website off and we didn't grow the business last year. And we continued to serve our current subscribers. And in the end, we became the only formula company that was able to reliably serve its current customers, never run out.

That's an amazing story. I haven't heard that before. You threw out this term at some point when we were emailing earlier of sloat. You called the sloat. Oh, yes. Slow growth, I think. Yeah. Is that how you thought about this?

That was part of, like, also, how do you change the culture internally, right? I had 60 people on the team who were all in a position of driving growth, and many of them were probably only hired weeks before the shortage with the position of growth, you know, email growth, paid acquisition. And all of a sudden, you're telling someone who just left a cushy job to join a startup that were no longer growing. And in fact, your job now is to completely full. flip what you thought you were going to do on its head.

So we named the entire growth team, the sloth team. That's awesome. And I mean, they got creative. At some point, we were emailing subscribers to nudge them to cancel. We were looking for a way to ensure that we could keep product. My God, it was a mind-boggling moment. What else did you learn from that period that has either stuck with you in this time and or is there something maybe you think you would have done differently if it could go back?

Well, I have a personal belief of never looking back and regretting or changing things, but there were definitely some learnings. And I would say on like the positive end, some of the biggest learnings were just the power of storytelling and bringing the impact of what we were doing back into the company. I'm in a fortunate position as the CEO where whether I'm speaking to advisors or on panels or engaging the outside. world a lot more. I was able to truly feel, I mean, viscerally feel the impact that we were having by doing this. I'll never forget, I was speaking at Davos on this topic, and I had a customer. Oh my God, Lenny, this moment. I was standing outside of this events area, and this woman comes running up to me, she's bawling, crying. And this is at like a global leaders' conference. And she's crying and she goes, she just held my hands. And she's like, oh my God, you saved my life over the last year. So you have no idea the impact that Bobby played in our lives by making the decision and giving me confidence that you weren't going to run out of product on us. And that like emotional connection of just, wow. Yes, we may have grown the business faster. We may have gotten product back. But at the end of the day,

these 70,000 voices that are out there and the stories that they have and bringing those back to the company. And it's undeniable the impact by making that decision we've had. And I think the rest of the company fielded too. This connects with something we've brought up a couple of times now, which is just brand and brand building. Clearly it's something that you've spent a lot of energy on and something you've done incredibly well. I think every mom I know knows of Bobby. By the way, let me just throw this out there. I don't know if I've told you this, but I'm having a kid. And We're going to get some Bobby. Whoops.

Yep. Oh my God. Lenny's going to do it. That's so exciting. Oh, man. Let's go in the whole new direction. I've got your milk if you need it, of course. If Michelle's in a position and she wants it, we're here for you.

Okay. I appreciate that. We're going to get a deal. Oh, my God. I'm so excited for you. Thank you, Laura. I feel like we need some formula just in case, right? Doesn't that the...

We do. We do. And the rule is you have to try it as well. Oh. Okay. Yeah. Maybe we've got to try it. You need to give it a shot. Okay. Okay. I'll get ready for that.

I like that rule. I like that rule. Okay. So many things that you're used to. We'll talk again. Okay. So going back to my question about brand, basically I just want to understand what have you learned about building a brand and when do you think it is important to invest there? I mean, it all depends on what your product is. But the first thing I've learned about it is you have to build a brand that connects with what your customers are going through and the experience.

I once had someone say to me, think about who your customer is. And that one customer, the exact person, is going to wake up tomorrow morning, and there's going to be three things that are just playing on them in the back of their mind, the things that keep them up at night. And if you're not solving for one of those, then you're going to be finding a way to, like, build a brand and to get in the the way of that, get in the way of their mindset, have them remember who you are or what you're about. And it was very clear to us that everything from who our brand was, what it stood for,

the positioning needed to be something that parents were really finding as a struggle in that first year, in feeding. So you see it in our messaging, you see it in our creative. I have no desire to bombard people with something that isn't part of those top three things that they're experiencing. Otherwise, we will have companies out there and brands out there being loud for no reason. And I think that's also, that's continued to help us in every time we have to reframe or relaunch something to keep remembering, what do they care about? Let's build a brand for them. I really like that. That is such a good reminder of just you're not going to convince someone they have a problem unless you're just like spending endless money hammering to their head.

There's a new problem you have. if you connect to something they already know is a problem and just make it clear this is a solution to a problem, life gets a lot easier. That's right. Although I know that you also have to kind of fight this like breastfeeding, you know, just like breastfeeding is best kind of thing. So in a sense, you also have to convince people this isn't what do you think it is. Yeah. And then I, you know, what's the saying, like if you're explaining you're losing. And I think there's a part of this where there's going to be a large group. of people that are always going to be in the mindset that breast is the only way to do it

and anyone who does otherwise is doing second best. And I'm not there to try and convince them. I think a part of this is amplifying those that are in need of our products, that are the 83% using formula, make sure that they feel heard. But that has been a learning. I mean, that's been a huge brand learning. Like, how do you not lean into or amplify the voices that should couldn't be heard and in many ways just get distracted by it. That's really interesting and I don't know how much you want to talk about this, but I know initially like the brand strategy was basically like breast is not best, formula is just as good.

And what I'm hearing is you kind of realize you're not going to convince people of that and it's more lean into people that already understand. Yeah. And I think another like major belief I have is no brand and I do fundamentally believe this, no brand should ever be in a position of pointing fingers to something that's better or worse. Our only job, I wish politics would also do this, our only job is to talk about what we do and why we exist and why we believe our product is good. And I would say the flip is the same in formula. If a mother out there has access to another brand of formula that is more accessible,

maybe more affordable, and it suits their baby, then good for them. And I should never be a company in a position pointing to a competitor or another way of feeding, saying that it's worse off ever. Today's episode is brought to you by Assembly AI. If you're looking to build AI powered features in your audio and video products, then you need to know about Assembly AI, which makes it easy to transcribe and understand speech at scale. What I love about Assembly AI is you can use their simple API to access the latest AI breakthroughs from top-tier research labs.

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Lenny. Something else I heard about the way you operate as you, speaking of brand, is you brand internal things? Can you just talk about what that's all about? Oh my God, this is like, I feel like a secret sauce of just like how to like get it done half the time. And I do. This is, I really, really do believe the power of branding the mundane is so successful. I mean, we brand. To be fair, I actually feel like this was a page out of the Airbnb book. Do you remember going back early days when we were doing like customer service deep dives? Like what were the issues that customers were having? And we branded a program called air dives.

Remember air dives? Yeah. And this program just became this thing where everyone wanted to know on a Friday, what was the latest air dive? And really what an air dive was, was an analysis of customer service tickets and customer service pain points. But how much better is air dive than a customer service analysis? So much.

So I think a lot of learnings on just the power of branding and storytelling your workflows and your frameworks and what it means to do your job often keeps people motivated too. And it creates memory, you know, recall a lot better too. So now when you look at our Slack channels, they're all like, you know,

I don't even want to name them because I'm going to give you a... No, I was going to ask. No, I'd love some examples. And I know they're going to sound ridiculous to an outsider, but what are some examples of things you've been? And do you say, like, Bobby Blink? Like, what's your naming convention? Oh, my God. But Project Shamrock, I'm not going to tell you what that's about, Project Lumberjack,

ooh, Gottbee, 2022. It's what? I can give you so much insight into what these are. And, you know, I'll give you, you know, an example of it. It's we have like legal approvals that need to get made. And these legal approvals on content claims have to happen. And I was like, okay, well, how do we make sure everyone, sticks to the quality SOP that legal once set for all of the claims we have to have in place.

So we created a program called the Secret Shopping Program. And our regulatory and legal team go out and they do their own secret shopping once a month. And then they report back on any misleading claims or ones that aren't fully understood that Bobby needs to go back and update. But having a secret shopping meeting is very different to potentially. coming in and listening to legal report out in your claims mishaps. Speaking of legal mishaps and copy nuances, one of my favorite memories of you is I was in

in San Francisco and Divisadero outside, I think, the mill, and you were just like running by, heading somewhere, and we started chatting. You were heading, I believe, to the warehouse that you're manufacturing, been early versions of Bobby. And apparently the FDA showed up and shut you down because of some misleading communication in the news, as you were launching said.

I'd love to hear that story because I love it. How you just transitioned from one example I just gave to that was absolutely exceptional. Speaking of content, content misups. I appreciate that. This is why you're such a good podcast host, Lenny. She's so great. Thank you. Oh my God, that moment, I do remember bumping into you.

I was in an identity crisis. Yeah. early days. I think the one big learning I've had is that when you're in an industry where you are disrupting, I mean, truly disrupting the status quo, you're going to be met with some reactions, people are in our case, government agencies who aren't happy about what you're doing. It was early days we just launched a pilot and the FDA showed up at our warehouse and they didn't like the way that we were labeling the product.

we had to pull all of our products from the market. We had to relabel everything, and we had to work with the agency for another year before we could bring our products back. For startup world, that was a huge, I wouldn't even say it was a pivot. It was a patient pause, thinking sure that we could get back on track and build intentions with the FDA again. Another example of sloth, maybe. Another example of sloth, yes. How did you personally stay motivated and keep morale up within the company during that period? Well, I found out I was pregnant with my third child right after.

Super. But it's not, there's something about also growing your personal life while professionally is happening. There's a little bit of give and take as well, right? So sometimes in moments of professional sloth, you might find that there's personal growth. That's exactly what I found. So, I mean, yeah, during this journey, I went to. on from being inspired by my first kid, where I wasn't able to breastfeed, and then had two more along the journey. And I don't know. I've actually never spoken about this, but I do think there's a

beautiful marriage in that personal and professional growth that you can have. And you kind of need to find moments where you lean into one and maybe the other. And then there's moments like I kind of feel like I'm going through right now where both of them are just on fire and you can't slow them down. might be a good time to chat about that. So you have this fast-going business. You have three kids. Your partner is also a founder, also very busy. How do you manage all of these things?

You know, that question is actually probably the most common question I get from new founders, those that are aspiring entrepreneurs on just like, how do you do it all? I mean, a lot of it's your infrastructure. It's your support. Actually, hold on a second. I'm going to do something that I don't think you've done a podcast before. Hold on. This is my EA. I'm going to pull this woman in. Everyone just needs to say hi to Kendra. This woman. Hi, Kendra. Oh. I'm introducing her because the power of a support system to be able to do what you do. I mean, you are an extension, my leverage, my everything, and never leave. I'm going anywhere. I'd be so screwed. Well. And everyone should, like, not only know the power and leverage of their person, but, like, the level of appreciation and celebration you need to have for them is just huge.

Yeah. I always feel celebrated. So thank you. I appreciate it. How do people find a Kendra of their own? That's, that's going to be a million-dollar question. Okay. You don't have been run.

I'm like, the poach-free podcast. Her name is Lauren. Yes. That's right. We should have codenames. Yeah. There's no last names here. How do you find your Kendra?

I will say, I mean, it took multiple interviews, and it's all about chemistry. Yeah, right? I think it's about chemistry and finding somebody that you genuinely care about. Like, I genuinely care about you, your heart, your kids, your family, and I think, like, finding that connection is really important. Yeah. You know what's also funny, too. I think, like, there's this feeling, and I would hear this from folks, you know, how do you do it all? I think we also just need to be very transparent.

It takes a lot of work to do it all. I, as an operator, I'm very proud of the infrastructure I have built. I mean, we have calendars on our walls. We have calendars for our kids. We have, you know, back and forth birthday planning. It's additional help in the house. My nanny is the other extension in our house. I mean, I don't know what we would do without Clifford.

He is everything for us. And I also have to see him as an extension to our parenting. But that is, I think, the only way to get through the chaos and the only way to embrace the all is you actually need to put in the work to build the infrastructure, the systems, the frameworks. And then every month or sometimes in our case on a weekly basis, I have me and my husband, we have a meeting every Sunday. It's walking through the agendas, you know, who's going to.

what Taekwondo classes this week or who's trading off on birthday parties or parent teacher meetings because you're right, a dual CEO found your household in three kids it will age you fast if you don't have it.

It also makes me think a little bit about what you talked about earlier where when things slow down a little bit in the business, there's an opportunity to lean into that part of the life and then kind of get ahead on some stuff in theory. Totally, totally. in terms of the business.

I imagine you never started a D to C business before this. Also, you mentioned you've never formulated a baby formula prior to this. Clearly it's working out. What's a lesson there of just like doing something you've never done? Is that something you imagined is a good idea? Maybe looking back like maybe it doesn't matter. What have you learned about just this idea of doing something totally new and different? I think one of the biggest beliefs is that an ounce of naivity will be your biggest

like secret to success. And I think the word even naivity sometimes gets like a bad rap. But naivety is the definition of creativity and innovation and canvas and white space and opportunity. And I definitely went into starting this company with a level of naivety to how regulated it was,

to the stigma associated with it, to how hard it would be. But that has allowed me to continue to look at the status quo differently. I don't because I don't fully understand it. And I have applied those same principles, even into how I hire people, because I do think,

I'm now wondering who's going to watch this on my team, because obviously we have some specialists. But this is like generalists who make the world go around. I think sometimes putting the most unlikely people who have an ounce of naivity to what it takes to win and succeed, are the ones that are going to drive the biggest impact. I love that. And it makes me think of a couple things

that I'll just share real quick. One is, I was listening to an interview with Mr. Beast, who is like the number one, you know, YouTube creator on TikTok. I think he's got the biggest TikTok. Wow.

And he talked about how he's got this business he's building, which is like a new way of creating content. And anytime he hires someone from a traditional Hollywood movie making, established kind of background, he's like, oh, they know what they're doing. They're going to help me legitimize this thing. make it scale.

He's like every time they never work out. They just don't see what we're doing here. They don't understand how this is different. Yeah. And they just slow everything down. And he finds just finding really young, hungry, hardworking people that can learn and understand what he's done end up working a lot better. Always.

The other interesting insight is I'm doing a series right now on B2B businesses and how the biggest B2B companies started. And so far I'm finding 70% of the founders had no specific background or skill in the area. They went into, say, it's security or sales or something like that. So there's a lot of examples of this. I'll give you one example of someone who's in seat, who's just an absolute rock star. Our girl who leads marketing is an Emmy Award news anchor. She's not your traditional marketer.

She came in asking me to, you know, she was like, what does KAC mean? and you know do we need to look at this LTV number and the reason I wanted her in seat was because she was the complete antithesis to what we would normally define as a good performance marketer I wanted someone in seat who got media who got brand and storytelling and she operates like a news anchor and in many ways I would look to the team that she's built and think that we'd maybe have more of a media company than we do a marketing team. And that has been the fuel for the brand that you see today, 100%. And then you hire unlikely people in those positions and especially senior positions,

they're going to do exactly the same throughout the business as well. That is really interesting. It makes me think of Airbnb a bit. Also, the browser company, we had the founder of that company on here, and they have a storytelling team within their company. Their job is, yeah, I love that. So you talked about how you're hiring people that aren't necessarily, deep in a specific skill that you need them to do.

What is it that you look for instead that you think is important for them to figure out what they need to be doing? Curiosity. A lot of curiosity and just like openness to what's out there. I definitely look for people who have the ability to make decisions and move fast and not get worried about the outcome. That is like the biggest learning in a startup. The secret is momentum and just keep. being momentum. And if we try and perfect everything, like, you just miss the boat. And I believe that,

yeah, I mean, it's what's the common saying, perfect is the enemy of good or something. And I think that's the one. It really is. So I look for people who just want to do it, just get it done. And again, part of that is just like rolling up your sleeves and not questioning your job. But when I find in interviews and people are really questioning the lanes they're going to be in and the job they're going to do or I don't do that, that's saying I don't do that. Huge flag. You do do it. If you're joining this company, if you're within a certain work stream or a certain department and you're behind what the company's working on in many ways, we need people who do do that. So I look for just optimistic doers.

I love that. That's such a cool phrase of how to simplify what you want to hire. Just do our optimistic doers. There's so many people that have big ideas, right? And pontificate strategy. And you just need people doing the thing. A hundred percent. I call it intellectual ejaculation. Which if that's not allowed on the podcast, you are a half. Totally why. That's allowed. I'll allow it. Thank you. Okay. So you're talking about momentum.

Yeah. I want to talk about growth. A lot of this podcast. is about growth strategy, how companies grow. You're building a D to C company. D to C is really hard. There's been so many attempts. Most fail. Most people can't figure out how to do it scalably.

So many challenges. What have you learned about growing a DTC company? What's worked well for you? This narrative of like D to C isn't working or D to C is over. D to C is dead kills me because we're being way too reductionist in that like message. D to C isn't dead. Just the approach for how people did D to C is a bit dated. We should not be paying for every customer.

And we should be very careful that people aren't getting hooked on the drug that is paid marketing and performance marketing. And that, I think that drug, and then obviously as we start to see changes on the way certain performance works, it just becomes more expensive. and people are resetting how they do performance marketing. The short of it is, D2C is not dead. How you drive people to DTC, how you acquire customers, how you build sustainable businesses, that needs to change. And what is it that you've done that allows you to do that?

I imagine a lot of it is word of mouth, which, you know, everyone always wants, we need, how do we do more about it? Yeah, so what's worked? How do you do that? And well, I mean, the three major pieces of it is that, the focus on kind of commerce content and community. Commerce content and community, okay.

So commerce, content, and community, but most DTC businesses have put commerce at the top of their list. We flipped it. It's now content, community, and commerce. And building good content that is really smart SEO, that has, you know, the ability to drive people back to your site to be able to build you as a thought leader, that's really hard and it takes a lot of work.

As an example, five years ago, we started a platform called Milk Drunk. Separate to Bobby, milk drunk, blog. And the reason why we started it is because we realized that there was a dearth of education in the world of formula out there. And what people were really looking for was good recommendations, usability charts, how to make formula. How long does formula last? So we wanted to become the content leaders in that. With the hypothesis, and it's holding true, five years later with the hypothesis that if we win on content and as a thought leader, that will drive back to Bobby. And today, I'm going to give you a totally random example.

If you do like a cursory Google search for something like, how long does formula last? Milk drunk is showing up between the CDC and the bump on the first page of Google. that SEO work and that content building and thought leadership and credibility does take a lot of work. And in the meantime, I've had to like squat away requests to put another $100,000, another $300,000 every month into paid marketing. Because the moment that drug starts, it's very easy to keep it going. I think Airbnb is a great example that during COVID, they shut down paid growth. And I think they've turned it on, but it's a tiny component. it, which is really unusual and really rare where you have paid growth, you're sending tons

of money to Facebook and then you stop. It's so hard to stop because growth slows and no one ever wants to do that. And it's interesting coming back to using a crisis as an opportunity, Airbnb, use that as an opportunity to get off that drug. That's right. Yeah. If you think about the pie chart of what helps Bobby grow, how much of it would you say is just like make an awesome product that people talk about with other moms and it spreads like

that versus SEO. and content and paid. 60% of it is your product and the package around the product, which is your brand, right? So even if you did nothing to market your brand, your product and brand is 60% of it. And then the last 40% is how do you get the word out there? How do you ensure kind of the word of mouth, mom begets mom? That has to happen. That flywheel will only happen if they're able to look at a product that they fully believe in and a brand that speaks to them. And without that, you're going to be a fast fashion company, which is also my worst nightmare.

The fear that people get distracted by the 40% and the 60% actually is just mediocre. Something I wasn't planning to ask, but I thought it'd be interesting and we can cut this if it's not interesting is Emily Oster. She is one of the, I think, pioneers of breastfeeding is not as great as people say necessarily. Has that been really important to Bobby in this industry? What do you think of Emily Oster? I'm a huge fan. I hope you're all so big fan. We are massive fans of Emily, and Emily is a massive fan of Bobby.

She is my idol. She's the one who got me through my first year of pregnancy and then beyond. And she has been a really, really important voice. and actually she has set kind of set the stage for the power of data to bust myths. I mean, just like you said, like she's come out and said, like, there is no study, no study at all out there that you can point to that can qualify why breastfeeding is better. And to have an economist, a professor, come out and to be able to underscore that and point to where that is the case and why it is the case, I mean, it's so much better than a company to be

companies, our brands coming out trying to say that. So I am acutely aware that as a business and as a brand, sometimes we need to bring in other credible voices. My God, Emily is one of those. I love it. Okay, great. I'm glad you love her. I've been reading all our books.

I think I just read that section. I love it. You're not a dad yet. You're like all of them. Family firm. Okay, the first two, the first two. Her sheet, I'll stop there, I think. And I was actually just reading the breastfeeding section.

And it's funny, one of the only remaining benefits of breastfeeding is less cow farts and creating methane. Unrelated to your child, your child, it's a, there's a cow component. We do want to cut down on the, the far. Yeah, we do. We do. Not what I thought of when I thought of, why should I go with formula or not? Oh, good.

Maybe just zooming out a little bit and to kind of close. Are there any of their lessons that you've learned along this journey about building a company, hiring, team building, anything along those lines, creating urgency, creating momentum. I mean, momentum, momentum really is it. We did this a good bit at Airbnb too. I think as a founder and as a CEO or for any leader out there, your job is not just to keep people going on momentum. Your job is to make momentum.

and sometimes that momentum has to be manufactured. And that has been one of my biggest lessons on just like how as leaders and people starting companies, how do you force yourself? And sometimes when it's early on, you're actually just doing it to yourself creating manufactured deadlines and launch dates. The amount of times people say to me, why are we launching this May 1st? And I'm like, just because we said it, we don't do it now. We may never do it. it was something we were talking about the last day on just how important it is to look at the fuel that keeps you going and how you have to kind of force those milestones to get you there. So yeah, I would say manufacture yourself some momentum.

I so agree with that. One of my favorite things and one of our former colleagues, Vanessa, taught me this, which is just like, let's all set an arbitrary deadline right now. And just make it clear. This is just arbitrary, but it's useful. It's so true. Well, with that, Laura, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. I don't know if I told you this was coming, but it is. We've got six questions for you.

Are you ready for exciting lighting? I think I am. Let's do it. Okay. Okay, let's do it. What are two or three books that you've recommended most to other people? One recently, Great by Choice, the author of From Good to Great, amazing. Some really, really good frameworks.

Yes, that's right. Really good frameworks in there. Metabolical, very specific into the world of health, health care. Actually, very specifically, the takeaway metabolic is we don't have a health care crisis in this country. We have a health crisis. And it really makes you think about the source, food, and how we live our lives. It's amazing. And then I think you're a really good traditional one going back to just like brand.

And for people who are really just looking for a good foundation, I love Purple Cow. Love that. I think I have it in my back ground here. You do? There it is. Tiny little book. So cute. That is so good. Yeah. Also, we could mention Emily Oster's book while read it, expecting better. I mean, we should. Expecting better is a good classic. Your list reminding me of a new book by Peter Artia that I don't know if you've seen called Outlive.

I think it's called It's About Longevity and How to Live Longer in All the latest science and How to Live Well, Longer Life. But anyway, that's my answer, and I'm asking you a question. So let's move on to the next question. favorite recent movie or TV show? Bad sisters. Do you know bad sisters? No. About a group of Irish sisters getting up to trouble, highly recommend it. Amazing.

What's a favorite interview question that you like to ask when you're hiring people? Teach me something. Actually, we just talked about that today. Teach me something. Yeah, I love getting someone to not related to work, not related to their job, something in your life, something you find interesting. Just teach me about it. What is it that you look for in their answer that gives you a sense that they're someone that you want to hire?

Creative, but also just their ability to explain something. And it is a huge indicator. I mean, I'll never forget one guy teaching me how to cook the perfect steak. And now every time I cook a steak, I go back to the crap you described it, to someone being able to teach me the foundation of Latin. But if someone's unable to take one thing that they find is core to who they are, what they've done, or what they understand, and their inability to explain that to you, they may struggle. I want to learn how to cook a perfect steak. I'm going to have to interview at some point and ask you about that. What's a favorite product you recently discovered that you love, especially if it's a baby product, that'll be a bonus. I mean, yeah, I think Frida baby's amazing.

the nose sucker. Okay, great. Actually, no, sorry, the no sucker. That's terrible. It's the snot sucker. Okay, great. You really, at the new parent, you really, really need this, Lenny. Your poor little boy is going to get blocked up,

and you're going to want to get out that sucker and suck on it and get it out. I can see you quickly looking for the next question. You need to move away from the snot sucker. So I'll leave you with that. Perfect. We'll call the episode that's not sucker. So many options. Okay, next question. What's something relatively minor that you've changed in the way that you build ship product

that was minor but had a tremendous impact on your team's ability to execute and ship? More recently, async work. Moving away from meeting culture and being able to be at a position where we can work async, whether it's one hour sprint over Slack, make decisions and go back and forth, 20 people. And then everyone's made a decision by the end of the hour and we're moving forward. Is there a tool that helps you do that? Or is it just in Slack? Here's the question we're trying to answer. You know what? Every so often we try and introduce tools. And then it's like we've overprocessed this entire thing. What we really just need to do is all just like get our head into the moment we're in

and brand it and get it done. So even though, even though I think we've introduced some tools. I know we use some video ones as well. I'm a little bit removed sometimes from everyone working through these tools, but I'm in the Slack world for the most. Final question. What is your best advice for a soon-to-be parent, aka. Hire a sitter who you love that you want to have on board every Thursday night and keep your date night with Michelle. Whatever your date night is. And just don't worry about the price because the date is worth it, but just lock it in and do it. We actually have a date night currently with another couple who has two kids, and so we could

just maintain that. How early do you hire Sitter to do that in their age? Second week. Second week. Okay. Great. The first week. Okay, maybe second month.

Totally depends on how you guys are. No, that early. It depends on how she's feeling. But I would say sometimes you just need to rip the bandaid. You need to go for it. if it means the two, you're just going out for a quick meal and you're coming back, keep your date night. Laura, this was as fun and insightful as I expected.

I'm going to go try some Bobby. I'm going to go by Snotsuckers. Thank you so much for spending time here. Two final questions. Where can folks find you online if they want to reach out, learn more, learn more by Bobby potentially, and how can listeners be useful to you? Okay. Well, the first thing I'm going to say how listeners can be useful.

I am hiring a growth product manager right now. And we are really focused on optimization. So now I'm moving away from everything I just said. And I want a specialist who's really good at growth optimization. And how folks can find us our website is hi-Bobby-H-I-B-B-O-B-B-B-B-E.com. And if folks just want to reach out to me, I would highly recommend to sending me an email, Laura at highbobby.com. And for the hiring position, how do they go apply for that and learn more about it?

Great question. I'm assuming it's on our careers page on the website. We'll make sure it's there before this. all goes out. Laura, this is amazing. Thank you so much for being here. Such a pleasure, Lenny. This is so fun.

It's my pleasure. And goodbye, everyone. Bye. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review,

as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny'spodcast.com. See you in the next episode.