How I Built This with Guy Raz
Babylist: Natalie Gordon. How a new mom used nap time to build a $500M business.
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Show notes
In 2010, software engineer Natalie Gordon was pregnant– and fed up with the overwhelming baby aisles in big box stores. So she quit her computer job to code the registry she wished existed. No pink-and-blue giraffes. No allegiance to a single store. Just a universal list that let friends give the real help that new parents need—from strollers to diaper services to dog-walking.
Natalie coded the first lines of Babylist during her son’s nap time. She managed customer support, pitched bloggers from coffee shops, and learned growth the hard way—first through affiliates, then with a pivotal Pinterest bet, and finally by taking on her own inventory (and all the headaches that come with it). Along the way she wrestled with hiring, firing, fundraising, and the identity shift from founder to CEO. Today, Babylist is one of the most trusted parenting platforms in the U.S., with a retail arm, editorial content, and a program for providing breast pumps.
This is a masterclass in living a problem–and building a solution.
You’ll learn:
How to spot a customer pain point and design an MVP around it
The power of slow virality
How to use a small seed round without losing control
The painful path from affiliate revenue to first-party e-commerce
Stumbles with hiring – and firing– as a first-time CEO
How paid growth works on visual platforms like Pinterest
How “controlling your destiny” justifies a hard shift in business model
How coaching and feedback helps you evolve from founder to leader
Timestamps:
03:07 - Learning to solve hard problems at Amazon -
06:03 - Sabbatical in Latin America: Natalie’s first (failed) business and what it taught her
15:25 - A meltdown in a superstore → the Babylist “aha” moment
17:15 - Designing a universal registry, dog-walking included
22:17 - Blitzing the mommy blogs, a “pregnant hacker” post on Hacker News
27:36 - Why $140/month revenue felt like a victory
34:38 - Going solo at an Accelerator, and the agony of early hiring and firing
44:49 - From “slowly viral” to real scale, and how Pinterest helped
51:59 - Affiliate links to in-house inventory → piles of bassinets in the office
55:47 - COVID’s unexpected windfall, the health wedge (breast pumps & beyond)
This episode was produced by Kerry Thompson with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant. Our audio engineers were Patrick Murray and Jimmy Keeley.
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