The Number One Goal is Getting Started - Avni Patel Thompson of Poppy

So I've named you by traditional standards. Were incredibly successful in the traditional world. Like, you get an MBA at Harvard; you start working at these big companies. What made you decide that you wanted to leave that world when you're clearly on a trajectory to just be successful that way?

It's a great question. It's one I sometimes ask my students at 3M. No, so the way to think about my career—so I actually have an undergrad in chemistry, which is a little bit kind of random maybe—but I started my career at Procter and Gamble in brand management. A lot of it was just because, you know, as a young person, when you don't really know what you're wanting to do, you sort of take the opportunities that are kind of put in front of you and see what that leads to. And that has really served me well.

When I got to Procter and Gamble, they make things like Tide and Pampers and Crest. There are lots of different consumer things. What I ended up— I didn't even realize this until I got into it—but what I ended up falling in love with is like consumer psychology. They taught me how to really see consumers' problems and so not as they say them but as they actually experience them. Okay? And so that actually means like going into people's homes and not just like listening to what they're saying but how they're actually— their behaviors and things like that.

That's not your job. Yeah, so as a brand manager, your job is for different products. For the product that I worked on was actually in pharmaceuticals, so drugs. And I was working on, for example, a packaging project. You know, you can have people come in to do kind of focus groups and stuff, I thought. But when you have them come in and even bring their like little pill packs and stuff, I thought they'll say and you'll just ask them, "Hey, how's the packaging working for you? Any issues or things like that?" You'll try to ask it in non-leading ways; but inevitably they're like, "Oh no, it's you know, it's fine. I don't have any issues with that."

Then we'd go to in homes, and there'd be fewer— like maybe just a couple of them. But you'd now see them kind of in the wild, and you'd see their homes and then just all these different things. I just still remember this one time I walked into a home and I saw the pill pack on the kitchen table, and there was a pair of scissors next to it. The woman had just completely cut the damn thing up and had set each of the individual pill pack things into, like, you know those daily kind of pill counters? So, a pill pack is like the blister pack, yeah. The tinfoil situation in some kind of cardboard. Scissor cut some out, puts it right Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and I'm trying to approximate that.

And I think the thing is that like, obviously, like child-resistant and all these types of things. But sometimes those can be challenging on the other end if you're older and got arthritis and things like that. So, the insight there was here we're spending all this money on this beautiful pill pack with all this kind of stuff and people are just ripping into it. There's no delight there; there's friction, all that kind of stuff. And so that was really powerful for me because I realized the importance already of talking to your users. Yeah.

But then also like seeing their problems in real life and not just taking them at face value. So that's where I think also like surveys and things like that can be limiting; because people sometimes a—can't articulate what their problem is in the way that they want to. But sometimes there's other emotions at war—like shame or embarrassment or things like that— insecurity, huh. And so that, you know, I started in pharmaceuticals. I then went and got my MBA. I then went to consulting, so very, very standard kind of background. But the thing that was consistent was they were all consumer companies.

Um, so even the consulting worked on like grocery brands and drugstore brands. And then after that, you know, good stint in consulting, but then went to Adidas and did footwear and apparel for a little while. Okay. So again, the thread in my life has never been necessarily the what but it's just a really compelling human kind of problem or like a really interesting brand problem to kind of solve.

And so I went to Adidas. And it's kind of funny; it started there in Boston, and then my husband is asked to move to China. So we actually moved to China, and he worked there, and I continued to work for Adidas in China and did strategy there, and that was just a phenomenal experience. Yeah, it's one of my favorite quotes is the Steve Jobs quote that says you can only connect the dots looking backwards. And I think even though the arc appears very traditional, I think the choices that I've made with my career have been a little unorthodox. But I think that's fine because now as I'm in the start-up world, I'm connecting these dots that I've kind of come to me from the past.

But we lived in China for a while, and that's also where I was pregnant with our first daughter. And so we decided to come back to Boston to have her and embark on that journey. Yeah. And I think when we did, we realized this whole thing of like, you know, both my husband and I are these people that have loved our careers, have moved around, and you know loved all that. When you have a kid, man, that is a life change. And they tell you, but you really don't understand it until you have a kid.

And so we decided we needed to get closer to family. My family lives up in Vancouver, Canada, and so we made it as close as Seattle. Um, at the time my husband went to Amazon, and I went to Starbucks. Still a very neat and tidy kind of corporate story. But I think at that time to sort of circle back to your question is I've always had this sort of entrepreneurial kind of, you know, inkling that I wanted to start something. My parents were small business owners, and so I've always been around business and entrepreneurship, and I always figured at some point I'd take my shot.

Okay, so most people wouldn't think that once you have a kid is when you're like going to take that shot. But for me, it also is an interesting thing because when you become a parent—and I can only obviously speak as a mother—but your calculus on your time kind of changes. Yeah. And so for me, what I wanted to do with my time, I knew I wasn't a stay-at-home mom. But if I was going to be away from my kids, I knew I wanted it to be something that I personally felt a little bit more was worthwhile of my time.

Hmm. Just that I want to continue with the story, but I have a question related to your story. What's your advice to people for moving for their partner for a job? Like, you're both career-minded people, and you moved all the way to China. Like what do you tell other people? I mean, obviously, like a female founder, that's an EVE it—like it's probably a classic example—and whether or not that's good or bad. Like, yeah. So what do you say to people?

Yeah, I think it's a great question. I think it's a really relevant question. I think for me and my relationship specifically, my husband and I have always looked at ourselves as sort of equal that way. Yeah. And so even in this instance, though I was the trailing spouse, if that's how it's called, there have been other instances that my husband moved—for example, to Boston. You know, I was doing school there, and so it's always been this idea of we have a conversation and we say what is the net good for both of us, and it isn't always perfect. Seattle is an example where we managed to both end up moving at the same time and find really interesting jobs for both of our songs. But I think there are trade-offs, right?

So I think where one of us could have probably accelerated faster or further in either of our careers, what we have always said in the arc of our lives are we making the choices, are we doing the things that is really true to us? And I think China, that was actually a particularly difficult one for me because I just started like maybe seven months prior to that job. So if you think about it from a resume standpoint or anything like sort of rationale, that's not a good move to make for your career. But it's crazy that you could even stay in the same company.

Yeah, so I think that's also a testament to when you work hard, when you focus on doing the work, you buy yourself options. Yeah. So in that instance, in seven months, I was able to prove myself still. I was able to prove that I was someone that you should give a chance to do something very different in a different role. Sure, not part of the plan.

But also, I was prepared that if that didn't work out, I was prepared to not perhaps be working while we were in China. And those are conversations that you need to have and be prepared to do, and there can't be lingering resentment. Like you have to own your choices. And so I think whether it was me or my husband or for whatever the reason is, I think that's really important. I think it's also really important as founders. Now you have to own your choices. It is hard. Yeah.

And but you have a choice every single day to do it or not to do it, right? And so as long as you own your choice, I think that's an empowering thing. And so you're not thinking about it through the lens of regrets or what-ifs but you're thinking through, "No, this is my choice. I made it, now I'm making the best of." And that opens up really cool doors. But I think managing careers with dual working spouses I think A is not a topic that's really talked about a ton. But B I think there are ways, and I think, you know, it doesn't necessarily always have to be in the context of trade-off, but there is this like—you do have to have the honest conversation about it.

Yeah. And so what are your pro tips for managing two careers and kids? Yeah, yeah. That's a lot of layers when it comes to careers. I think, you know, the conversation for both of us has always been we are people that get engaged by ideas and we are not people that can sort of do a job just because it's rational and right and necessarily pays well.

And I could— you know, there are days that I wish I could be that person, you know. Even leaving my consulting job; I mean, if I had stayed there and was a partner in consulting, like you know it affords you really nice things. And I'll say this super honestly; for those of us that come from really somewhat more humble backgrounds where money isn't always a sure thing, I think that drives us to go in. And I know what drives me, yeah, to never be in the position to have to question money. And so I will say, very honestly, like that is something that I struggle with now today in starting a start-up because I've now put myself in a position where I am not financially sort of sound and where all my previous choices have been at least, you know, around like if not going all for financial security but at least, you know, in a comfortable place. Right? That is something that one needs to be talked about because it isn't—it's a reality. Yeah.

You need to address it. So from a pro tip standpoint, I mean it sounds sort of silly, but it is communication, right? So I think people don't have hard conversations often enough and deeply enough. And so it is saying, "Hey, this makes me uncomfortable but we need to talk about it." And anytime you start feeling something shifting into just like a little bit of fester, you know, you know, talk about it.

Mm-hmm. And when it comes to kids, I think it's the same kind of thing. I've had founders kind of ask me when's a good time to have kids or it's like—and you know, the same way that there's no good time to start a start, there's no good time to have kids. You'll figure it out. I think that's—it's sort of like, like, you know, cop-out answer but for me, it is having a combination of family and incredible nanny and a dance like every single week. It's a dance, and everyone needs to have like know their spots and like all their roles, and as long as all that's working, yeah, it's working.

Okay, one person sick; somebody has a business trip; something else happens, and that throws it off, and you have to work to bring it back to neutral, but that's the constant fight. And so now is your husband still working in a traditional, like, big company job? No, so now he's also married to tech and to startups as well. And I think again, that's the same thing. It's like you could say that, "Nope, one person has to, you know, hold the fork." Dancer is thinking, and it sounds very rational and it sounds very reasonable.

I think the thing is that there's so many things happening and to say tech is a silo or tech is a vertical is sort of an incomplete kind of statement. Tech is everywhere now. Yeah. And so for both of us, we were so excited about the way that tech is touching everything. And so for him, yeah, he's just equally as excited, and so he's doing his own thing. I'm also working on startups.

Interesting. So before we get into the full poppy story, yeah, what was it like working in China? Oh, so this is in 2011, and we're in Shanghai. I don't know; it's wild. It's hard in the sense of we have moved around. We're both Canadian; we've lived in the States for a number of years, over a decade, and our work has taken us all over the world. But nothing really prepared us for China. I think it's a fascinating culture, a fascinating country. Its history is really, obviously, informs a lot of its government. But everything from language to, you know, because management is very difficult. And, you know, going to Hong Kong, we're like, you know, we've been to Hong Kong, maybe it's, you know, somewhat similar. It is—mainland China is a thing of its own. And to live in Shanghai at the time still felt like the Wild Wild West; there weren't a lot of expats.

And you know, to get around, you still need to learn a base amount of Mandarin. So we picked up Mandarin while we were there, and the most—it's like a drug, I will tell you. You start working there, and 40% growth rates feel like sandbagging. And if you can imagine something like that— and we're coming from the U.S. where 1 to 2% is like, "Cool, we're growing." 40% of sandbagging. And so it's everything is moving so fast; you're hiring people, you're trying to do all these things. The world is changing. They're building buildings so quickly. There's an energy and a buzz in the air.

Yeah. And I think to tell you the truth, having lived in Shanghai for that year and then coming back to the U.S., having our kid, and then coming back, that truly was also an impetus to want to get into startups because it has this drive of things are happening in the world. Yeah. Things are changing; people are doing exciting things, and I need to be a part of that. And so coming off of living in China, working in footwear apparel, which is a really hot category at the time, just sort of showed both of us how we could just get out there and take big swings.

Well, it's not a coincidence that big companies—you know, a lot of you know, celebrities in L.A. or whatever—they come from certain places because it's not only do the people that want to work in that industry move there, but then you're surrounded by people that are your peers, and they're all doing this stuff, and you're like I got to keep up at the very least. And then—but what the beautiful thing is because you come from other places, it becomes this amazing mosaic of different ideas.

But we're speaking the same language because we're trying to do the same thing. And that's all often what I love about YC is because we come from very different backgrounds. We're doing very different things, solving very different problems, but we speak a common language. We're trying to do—you know, we're trying to all talk to users; we're all trying to build products; we're all trying to grow companies and just like, you know, disrupt archaic industries. And so that commonality gives us the common language to talk.

We come from like fascinating different backgrounds, right? Like today, yeah. Oh, we're at the female founders conference. Yeah, so Gustaf, partner YC, asks you, "Why did you start poppy?"

Yeah, so maybe I can fill in the blank. Also, in the intervening time of working at my traditional background and companies to starting poppy, I actually started a separate startup. And so I have always been passionate about raising culturally curious kids. So the idea of, you know, we've moved around a lot, and if we can't live and move around and live in all these different countries, then how do you bring that to your kids and have them grow up to be sort of globally savvy? I think it's just super important for the next generation to understand differences in backgrounds and be converse and not make it feel very threatening, and things like that.

So anyways, a friend and I had this idea and said, "Why couldn't this be?" This is also the era of subscription boxes, you know, in 2012 or so. And so we thought, "Oh, honey, how they're like chapters within the past five years ago?" And there definitely are. And so that was when you’re seeing other folks doing it, you're like, "No, no, I could do this for this vertical." And so very similarly, we thought, you know, let's build subscription boxes that have each month a different culture. So, you know, India one month, China, Japan; and instead of doing what we call sarees and samosas or like, you know, sushi and samurais—very like stereotypical stuff—yeah, let's take you into a market, let's talk to you about language and food, the things that really inform people and how they think.

Yeah, and so we were really still am super passionate about the topic, but I think the way that I approached it, or we approached it, you know, was very, you know, very conventional I guess. But we had built a business plan; we pulled market numbers; we had a story, right? Because you can find any numbers you want. Yeah. And we focused more on product of what we wanted to have in the box less what we thought was gonna solve the problem. And so we built this, and we thought we were being scrappy and did it in about six months and launched and started to get going. And as you know, e-commerce is hard; customer acquisition cost can be crazy; the long-term value or LTV is not necessarily there.

And so we learned that the hard way. This is a very niche market, even though people—so this is where I—when people tell me, "Oh, I've been talking about my idea and everyone loves that," I say, "Be careful, because everyone loves you or you can sell an idea, and there's nothing, no skin off their back to say, 'No, that's a really great idea. I can't believe that no one's thought about it.'" We use that as validation, and that was sort of wrong, because the only real validation is their money.

Even with your friends, like, "Oh, absolutely." I know that it's kind of trite to say like your friends are gonna yes you, but most of your friends won't just give you money straight up. So you can actually ask your friends, even though even if they want to make you happy, this is also why I don't believe in friends and family discounts. Yeah. And it's not to say that you don't maybe give them discounts or things like that, but just don't give it to them for free, right? Because that won't give you the right signal for whether they're actually valuing it.

So anyways, the long story short was that we spent about a year and truthfully about $20,000 of personal money bootstrapping, and ultimately came to the, you know, realization that this was not a fundable, scalable company. And instead of running it as a small business and sort of like a lifestyle business, we were gonna shut it down, and that was a really hard thing. I think because I figured this was my go at startups; I had bought myself like a year of time of not taking a salary, which was a hardship for me.

You had already quit? Yes; I put my job because I said, "I think, you know, if we're gonna believe." Yeah, well, we had been talking about it on the side for about a year, right? And we both had kids. The funny thing is maybe not so bad is that the day that I gave notice that I was going to quit my job, I found out I was pregnant with my second daughter. So, you know, life choices in me know. And I think it is motivating. I don't believe in wasting another day if you don't think that that's gonna serve you.

And so for me, though, we now had two kids, okay? I felt like I'd taken my shot at startups and failed miserably—if not like wholly. I learned so much, but you know it still feels like failure. And so use up all my money; you stopped basically all the time that I had said, "Hey, you know, we can we swing it, you know, with savings and stuff?" Not for me to not make any money.

Yeah, and but you know, as you're failing or closing something else down, for me what was really important is I needed to learn from a nice experience. And so I started talking to parents and saying, "Hey, if this thing isn't really necessary in your life and isn't really important, then what are some of the big problems in your life that you face like on a daily/weekly standpoint?" And the topic kept on coming back to child care. And I mean I knew that because I lived the same thing; like both my husband and I work, we had—we didn't have family that lived in town.

And there were all these kind of random things that would pop up, you know, nanny's sick or, you know, meetings running late and just little things like that can just throw off your complete week and add stress in a marriage, add stress in the family—all the things like having kids is hard enough; that is just like a slap in the face. And so as I started to hear that, I realized that what people weren't talking about was just needing a sitter or nanny; what they were missing was this idea of their village. Hmm.

And so everyone says it takes a village to raise a child, but you know all of us are moving around for our careers, for education; neighborhoods aren't that what they used to be. How many people know their neighbors and such that you would, you know, leave your children with them? With all of that happening, we don't have any safety net as parents. And so that realization started to, you know, kind of pop into my head. And so even though I don't have any childcare experience—like in that industry—I have no marketplace, you know, background or anything like that, certainly no tech industry background—yeah, I quickly saw how or at least hypothesized how you might, you know, solve that.

Okay. And so for me, this is where my chem degree kind of comes back, and I broke it down into like a nice, like tidy equation. And so for me, it was that if a village is a function of, you know, someone that you trust, is a fit for your family from a, like, values standpoint, and is there when you need them to be, could you break it down from technology from a vetting mechanism, a matching algorithm, and a scheduler? Uh-huh. So again, it was this whole thing of like let's just break it down continually.

And then I figured, okay, well, how would we test that? I could see an app, yeah, but I can't build. And so for a little while, I was, you know, stressed out about that. But then finally, I was like if I was gonna— you know, when for a lot of founders I hear this, you get obsessed with an idea. Yeah, you literally can't get around it; it's—you're sleeping; you're talking about it; it's just in your head all the time, and you're just super distracted. And finally, I remember my husband saying, "You just have to try the damn thing out."

Because it's like either do it or don't do it; my friends who've been talking about ideas for like five years do it or don't do it. Yeah. But you know, you ought to figure it out. Yeah. And so finally I was like, "Well, I don't know how I'm gonna do this because I have no money left; I have no time." Well, we should talk about that, right? Like so you try the box startup; it doesn't work. Like did you honestly consider just finding a job? Like what was the moment that made you decide to like double down?

Yeah, so truth be told, I was pursuing three and a good risk-averse kind of way. I had three options. Option A was just return to my corporate career. Yeah, I knew I could do that. He was good at it; it didn't excite me, but I was like, "Yeah, you know, I can make some money and figure the next thing out, regroup." The second thing was, you know what? Now I'm into startups. I don't have to start another startup; I could work in another startup. That's another way to go and do that.

And actually for some time, I did actually go—there was a local travel startup with nothing but engineers, and I was the first non-technical hire. And even though it was for, you know, only a couple of months, what that taught me was like I now start—like I met engineers for the first time in like a really compelling way. Started to see how software was built, and that was really cool. But that was my second path, because I just figured that’s what I'm gonna do for some period of time.

And so I'm just gonna go work in another startup, lend my passion and experience to another startup, which I think is a compelling opportunity for a lot of different people. And then the third was just go at it again. And so I think the problem was that even as I was thinking about the more, I guess, rational or responsible opportunities, the idea just kept on gaining steam. And as I kept on thinking about it, I was like, "It doesn't matter. I don't have an—I can't build an app; I could use SMS. I could approximate it."

I could just go and find and vet, you know, a couple of caregivers, and I can go find these parents, and just my neighborhood doesn't have to be a big fancy thing. And honestly, there are like kind of vanity emotions that stuff by that. Like people didn't even realize that I had shut up—shut down my first startup, so I didn't want to like make a big hoopla about like, you know, starting another one. And so that was kind of good because that gave me no expectations.

So I literally—this is where this whole idea of the four-week test was, I figured, and you know, my husband's head—like just go try it out, go figure it out. I figured if I gave myself the space of four weeks—and the whole point was by then I had started reading some of PJ’s essays. I had never been in like, you know, Hacker News and all that kind of stuff—not my background—but I started reading this stuff, and I was like just so interested about ideas. Yeah, and so I started reading this and started watching how to start a startup and this whole idea of can you just get consistent weekly growth, and can you talk to users and build product.

And that resonated back to my P&G days of like doing that, and that spoke to me. So I said— I thought if I could find myself for weeks, I had like 200 bucks left in my business. Okay, great. So I was like, you know what? Type forms paid. Like Squarespace I can do a four-week trial type form. Do signups and things like that; I can use Excel as a database; I can use Google Calendar as a scheduler and SMS.

Triana connected all your personal cell phone? Yep, yeah. People—my personal cell phone number! And for the longest time, even to this day, I will have like old school parents still text my phone; it's wild. Oh no. So I set it up as a four-week test, and I still remember the day I was like, "Am I gonna actually do this?" Because it feels janky and it feels scary again. But I said, I have to know. Okay?

So literally sent an email to 15 parents and just said, "Hey, I've got these three amazing people. If you need them, just text this phone number." And I gave them a phone number as my phone number. And that day got our first booking, and that week I got four. So that week was okay, that's my base, if I've got, for the next week, 10% I need to get five. Okay, ended up getting six in the week after, even more, and week after even more.

And so I think more than the actual numbers, it was this idea of consistent growth. And then it feels different when you're not pushing people to try your product but people are—people are pulling you to give them more. That felt very different. And so anyways, that was the genesis of poppy—very almost accidental in some ways but very driven by a specific need. I had a problem; I needed to solve it. I figured I had a different hypothesis than the other very crowded people in like this very crowded—in.

Yeah, so someone from Twitter asked a question, 494 asked, they heard about your four-week tests. What are your suggestions for someone who doesn’t have four weeks or works full-time job or say as a college student, gym, whatever—generic busy person? What are your tips?

Yes, so the reason I love the—and this is just in retrospect—the reason I like the construct of a four-week test is that for a lot of people, and especially underrepresented founders and things like that, we face disproportionate number of hurdles—whether it's you have kids or you have to care for aging parents or you come from communities that aren't—don't have startup things—the point is you have to get to growth. And you're gonna have to double down to prove that you deserve funding, to be around or whatever else—just pressure from your family. Like I know a lot of my friends who like—you know, they have a big fancy job somewhere and their friends like, "Why would you ever leave that? I've never had a 401k or whatever stock options." Exactly it, and so if you use the construct of a four-week test, inside of four weeks, you can know whether you have something or if you don't.

And that way, at least you know if you do have something—like I ended up having—that gives you the confidence, it gives you the rationale to be able to go tell your family or whoever you tell yourself, "No, no, I can do this. There's something here." And if there isn't, then there isn't. At least you can kind of either like regroup and learn or whatever, and you can decide your commitment. But you have to be focused, right? So, say the question this person seemingly is asking is like, you don’t have four weeks of, you know, 40 hours a week or whatever. So how do you kind of like figure out the problem, figure out what to spend your time on?

If yeah, I'm just gonna—yeah, do it. So I would challenge people that you probably have more time than you think. And again, I don't mean to be flippant, but you know, at the time, I think my second daughter was maybe three or four months old; my older daughter was three years old; I was still in the process of wrapping up my other startup. So that's just—just to say there was a lot of noise. Yeah. But when you're—when something takes ahold of you, you can't—you have to do right by the idea. And I think about it; I actually love that I started startups as I started because a startup for me, there’s a lot of parenthood parallels.

You would do anything for your kids. You become a mama bear, and you don't care if you're afraid; you would do anything for your kids. It gives you a courage that you don't know where it comes from in the same way for my startup, for my second startup, because I knew it had to exist—not for me and for any vanity reason—but because I know my users need it. I know it does something amazing in the world; my job is to make sure it doesn't die. And so for that, I will do anything. I will talk to anyone; I will hire—like, you know, I will, you know, I will do any work that it takes to make sure my startup doesn't die because it has to survive in the world.

And so I think my point is that if it is the right idea—if it is the idea that you're going to commit—and I think here's an important point too is that it isn't about the starting because if you're lucky and you actually have something, you're about to spend the next five to ten years of your life. This is a big misconception. It's like, "All right, I should, poppy should be one!" It's like, "Congrats, you just started!" You just signed up for the next five to ten years of your life devoted to this mission.

So again, yeah, be very sure you want to do that. But if— that's my point is that if this is something that you're meant to do, that you are committed to doing, you will find the time. My second point when it relates to college students: that isn’t to say lots of young people don’t or can’t to start really great startups, but don’t feel the pressure to start it. I have loved that I’ve had a very disparate kind of kind of younger phase, if you will. I’ve had the chance to go and do lots of different things, experience the world, all that kind of stuff, and all of that has been fodder for building a more thoughtful, more interesting company.

And so if you're a college student that just feels like you want to start a startup, but don't really necessarily have that specific idea or whatever else it is, I would say go focus on your studies. Like go take really cool courses, philosophy or like whatever else it is; go get interesting experiences that will then serve you down the road when you go meet your co-founder and you actually have an idea and you want to go do it. I think it makes sense, right? Because like to what you were saying before with, you know, the first startup didn’t work out; something that's not talked about is that a lot of the most successful, like you know, monetarily—we'll use that metric—many of those people just have a high batting average.

They didn't shoot the ball one time, and so if they didn't never talk about the dumb stuff they've worked on but like they made all these stupid projects, they weren't precious about them. Yeah. And I was that guy in college. Like I was like, "Alright, I'm gonna come up with this company idea; this is it." Not the average, by any means. So I'm Canadian, so I'm gonna use a hockey analogy, but you miss a hundred percent of the shots that you don't take. Right? Wayne Gretzky, Michael Scott—there you go! And so I love that because it's absolutely true.

Yeah, I—I applied to YC three times. And so I think that's also something that is misunderstood or kind of glossed over: persistence. Right? If you think of the match applies twice or more, holy! And um, I think what people misunderstand is that I think somewhere in the glossiness of startups and all that kind of stuff, and no founder, I bet, will tell you this, but most of us have had to persist through tons of stuff—tons of investor rejection, tons of consumer rejection, tons of just like rejection.

Yeah, the point is you have to have enough faith in self and faith and vision to be able to see you through. And if the thing is the thing—like for me, YC was the thing that I thought very specifically was what I needed and wanted to help me and so even when I was rejected the first time, I worked very hard to make it be something that would make it like increase my chances of getting into YC the next time.

But I guess the point by that time also was even if I hadn't gone into YC by that time, I had a thriving company and I had customers and I had all and so then I was like, "Screw YC if they don't like what we like, you know, if they don't find me just really gonna do this anyways." Yeah. But I think that was the right thing. I was not there with my first startup—I said, "I'm gonna need to get—I want to get into YC because of the vanity badge, and then I've made it, or I want to get funded by this VC because blah."

But with Poppy again, it puts everything into the right context because I wanted to get into YC because I wanted to accelerate my company and make it into something bigger and work with the best minds in tech to help improve and improve my probability of success. Same thing with investors; I have now realized there are amazing people that see our vision, and their capital is helping to fuel our growth.

And there are other people that don't see it, and in fact, if you offer me money, I wouldn't want it because I need the people that see our vision and are partners and aren't just checks. There certainly will be times when you just need the money, but I think especially for a mission-driven company like mine, you have to have people that see why you're doing this and believe in it, and therefore—and then also write checks. So, if you're—I mean a lot of the people that listen to the podcasts are interested in pursuing the VC route; so we can just kind of assume that, right?

So say you're gonna build like a mission-back company like similar to yours—what do you think about fundraising? Like how do you go about that process? Because it's true—like your numbers aren't, you know, WhatsApp numbers, right? So how do you—how do you find those investors? How do you convince them? What do you do?

Yeah, so I think—I think definitely it's hard for me to say what factors kind of play into it, but I definitely know that in the early days of me raising, it was certainly hard—harder because on the surface it appears a very crowded market. It is hard for anyone to understand why a person that's coming off of a failed startup, who doesn't have a technical background, you know, all the things—like if I was fidgety, I would say no too, right? Like there's no data to suggest that I'm the one who's gonna make this thing go.

Yeah, but the beautiful thing—that's also where YC kind of came in was especially what YC says is go prove it from your users, right? If you go prove that you're making something that people want and that's why I was like, "You know what? I can do that." And so I went and I let the growth do the talking, and so there's one thing that like, you know, around YC, though, we say that growth solves all problems. And I love that one because if there's nothing else I can do, I go and try to figure out growth. Growth helped me find my eventual CTO and co-founder. Growth helped me go and raise money if not everyone saying yes; the right people started to say, "Oh, there must be something here like what are those people?"

And then those people went and talked to parents or the caregivers. And so the people who are in interested in your mission as well, you will find them; you just have to again—so Wayne Gretzky—got to take more shots on goal, and it's a numbers game. But the point is is that again because I refuse to let my company die, I doubled down on talking to even more people and making connections.

So every person, even if you say no, introduced me to three others, and that's sort of like this little kind of breadcrumb trail that leads you to all the craziest kind of places, but eventually, you will find your people, and a couple will tip, and that's the momentum you need. Yeah, absolutely.

So let's do one more question from Twitter. Yeah, so Deepak Chughani asked, "How are you measuring if your company has reached product market fit?" I think that's like what the billion-dollar question. I think it's a tricky one. So as best as I can tell, I look at it a couple of different ways. Okay? One, I think is from a retention point of view, right?

So if you've got product-market fit, you have built something that is working for people and they're coming back to it; they're using it; they're coming back to it; they're not churning it like some massive amount. And so for me, product-market fit has to do with that stripping it down. For me again, I think about it from a consumer standpoint. Product-market fit has to do with the fact that you're solving their problem; you're solving their problem—the friction that they experienced in their lives so well—so completely that they have no choice but to come to you.

Right? And so I think a lot of those things from like a Lyft or an Uber and Airbnb—people who've completely in, what, five years completely changed how people think about a category—like the people can't even fathom going back in time. Yeah? That's what we're doing with childcare and in parenthood. And so my thought on product-market fit is how do we make poppy something that parents just can't even fathom being a parent without? And we're getting there, and like we have that here in Seattle because people will talk about it.

We even had just a parent yesterday, and we have a text interface, so we talk to our user literally every day, and, you know, someone talking about moving outside of our service areas and making like just talking about how that's—that would make their lives just so much worse to not have access to poppy. And so that is like goosebump stuff, but that is also product-market fit when you have people that can't get enough of what you're making and you're scrambling to just keep up with that demand.

I think in a lot of those types of terms. Okay, got you. I have a very random question then just about parenting in general. I saw this interesting video about three parents and one child. They really—it was like this interesting relationship. Yeah, I'm just curious— like, do you have thoughts on the future of parenting and how it may be different than, you know, the traditional model that we used to?

I have—I guess my most of my thoughts are kind of almost come back to the past where I love this idea of, I don't know if it's like communal living but like multi-generational living. Yeah. My parents are Indian, and when we would go back to India, my grandparents' farmhouse just literally had in the same farmhouse my three uncles, their families, my grandparents; and you would go there, and literally, like we wouldn't see my parents for like weeks, right? Because they'd be somewhere like, you know, it is communal parenting, right?

Yeah. My parents would watch out for their kids; my aunts and uncles would be watching out for us, and I—that struck me at a very early age because I didn't have that for the rest of my life when we heard living at Canada. And just the ease, the naturalness where parenthood isn't in crisis, right? It doesn't feel like a crazy thing that you're like, "What am I supposed to do with this kid?" Yeah.

So how people do it in the future—whether it's, you know, multiple parents or whatever—it's more fluid. For me, there worries that it works is that my nanny and her husband live in our house, right? So like, you know, vineyards? Yeah, so they—yes, it's like a no-parish kind of situation. You have like a separate kind of an in-law apartment. Instead of renting it out to somebody else, we rent it out to my nanny and her husband. That's great!

And the incredible thing is—and then when my parents come over and if they're staying over, they stay in our attic kind of thing—no, but it feels wild because this is what I feel like it's meant to be. The burden isn't supposed to be all on my husband and I, right? It allows us to have much-needed breaks. It allows my kids to get to know their grandparents in a really compelling, like natural way.

It allows me to have mine, who feels like, you know, family be a part of the family, and for my kids, for it to be just very interchangeable. And I think that's really important. I've read a lot of research on—I like the idea of resilience in kids. Yeah, I think that's a really important quality that we don't necessarily talk about a ton. But there's studies that say resilience is correlated by or correlated with the number of positive connections a child has with people, related or not.

And so that's also what I think about when I think of poppy because we hear we have these incredible caregivers that go into the lives of, you know, these families and kids, and they can be these positive role models. And we can build, you know, lots of families have lots of different, you know, situations going on, stresses or whatever else it is—know what you can never tell from the outside. But what I think about is that the more you can put positive relationships, positive kind of role models in the lives of children, you give them a better chance at being these resilient kind of grown-ups.

So kind of following that line, what are your thoughts and probably advice around like parenting while being a founder? Well, like two founders now, like, yeah, what are your thoughts? Which what do you tell other parents? So I think there's sort of two pieces for me. One is you have to be very specific about boundaries, and what that means for me is there's certain days that I'm on, and I have to be a hundred percent founder. I can't think about, you know, it sounds sort of harsh, but I can't think about my kids and like all the other things that are on there will be days that my husband's just like primary parent.

So if a teacher has to reach out, or if there's PTA meetings or any of those things, or her nanny needs anything, my husband's on tap. And there are other days that I am. And so that is just very clear. Yeah. I'm the evenings. Whose night is it? Right? To work late? And there's certain nights that'll be my night; certain nights will be my husband's night. And there are nights that my mom will come over and stay over.

Yeah, and that kind of gives up or nanny works kind of late. And so the point of that is, again, it is very scripted. There are nights that we have— one of us is traveling, or somebody else has a meeting or something that has to shift, but we're very specific about what those are, and the more that you make it routine, the less disruptive it is for our kids.

Yeah, yeah. And do you guys operate on the normal weekend schedule? Do you have any like habits or traditions where you're like, "Alright, Sunday dinner," or whatever it might be? We're like, "Alright, checking out, like turning off the phone."

So a couple of them. First of all, I think, you know, talking about the kids, it's really important because I want my kids to feel that I am present and both of us are and all that kind of stuff. But at the same time, they're—so there will be times that I'm working from my home office and they're like very welcome in and out of the house. But because my parents, we actually dropped them off for like sleepovers that my parents have some weekends, and that gives my husband and I important time for us to be ourselves, connect.

We try to do this tradition of like Saturday morning dates instead of like evening nightlife. Okay, so we'll go do yoga and have a coffee or like a spin class and coffee, and that is something that we did when we dated or went before we had kids. The importance of that is we remember ourselves before we became parents. And that I think is really important for parents in general because I think I've heard this idea of—and I felt it too when I became a parent of like you lose yourself; you lose your identity.

And that is almost more harmful than anything else. And so for us that's really important that we square away time for just him and I or just ourselves to take care of ourselves. And then the last thing is, we do have Sunday dinner.

Okay. Hey, you know, I—I like I'm a big believer of eating together and that just like the whole cultural aspect of that. And so at the very least, we have Sunday dinner where we cook and like my parents will come over and all that kind of stuff, and I think that's also important for my kids to kind of see.

Yeah, that's great! Alright, last question. So we're at the female founders conference. I should probably ask you, what's your advice for a female founder just getting started?

You said it right there! So I think— I think there are so many people out there, and it can be female founders; it can be other underrepresented kind of founders or people with just like different situations. I think too often, we have really interesting ideas in our heads, and we just think about all the obstacles that follow or in our way, yeah, the reasons why we can't. And that stops us from starting and just having a shot at it. It's why I'm a big fan of this whole like—I made it up—but like it was just like a construct to fool my mind about like before we test. Just give yourself something small to get 200 paying users, right?

Because I love the idea of like having a hundred is a tangible target. It isn't so far off, but it's pretty stretch—paying users to our previous point about know they—people vote with their dollars. And so breaking that toss down, I find gives people tangible reasons and a way to get for them to get started. But—and especially when it comes to women, I find that we are perfectionists. This whole idea of we don't want to mess up or if we are going to start something, it should be perfect.

And so we like plan ourselves to perfection, which means we also don't start. And we have to get really comfortable with it being messy and complicated. But the number one thing is we have to start, and we have to take big swings. They can't be—you know, I have no idea, I don't have a tech co-founder, I'm not technical, how could I possibly—I had the exact same thoughts. And if I had those thoughts and I let them stop me, I wouldn't have started Poppy.

So, big swings mean like not doing something like too easy, really. I think so, this is a controversial—it can be a controversial comment because if your vision and if your mission is to do something big then have it be as big as possible. Yeah, if you want to build a nice smaller retail service business or whatever else that is, that's great, but let's not confuse that with startups.

Yeah. Let's not confuse that with high growth venture-backed ventures. Basically startups. I am a biggest supporter of small businesses. Having been the Donnelly daughter of two small business owners, but if we're talking about startups and big swings that are going to get angel and venture funded, then we have to talk about big disruptive technology. And if that's the case, then we have to talk about all the ways that that can be possible. And if we're not talking about that, then we're not, we're like, you know, dead in the water before we even start.

Totally, yeah. I heard—I think it was on Tim Ferriss' podcast with Chris Sacca, and he was talking about his investment strategy, and one of them was give yourself an opportunity to get rich. And like all these people make these left $10,000 bets, and like you can never really win that way in the same way. Like, if you have an idea, like maybe it's a small business, that's all you can crush it, but like if you're gonna take venture money, and the max you can do is ten million year or something, then like you're kind of—you picked the wrong game.

And I think in my motivation in this, certainly, you know, down the road maybe there's the financial aspect, but for me it really is if we're gonna do this, certainly there's the 10 million version of what I could do, Richard! Yeah, but if we're gonna do this, do it for the whole damn thing, right? Like if we're gonna do this and solve this for parents everywhere, let's solve it for parents everywhere.

Yeah, and that makes it the billion-dollar idea, right? I have no idea how we're gonna do it yet, but I definitely know how we're doing it here in Seattle and how we're about to do it in more cities across the country. But so solve the problem that's in front of you, worry about that first. Yeah, and just live to fight another day, and I think that's the biggest thing is that you have to get started and just going, because if we don't, then we're just talking about it.

I think that's great advice! Alright, thanks for coming in. Thank you!