Natalie Gordon (Babylist) - How she combined content and commerce to better serve expecting parents, her approach to raising capital and creative product partnerships

Our guest today is Natalie Gordon, founder and CEO of Babylist. Babylist is a baby registry and ecommerce platform, combining content, commerce and data to serve millions of expecting and new parents. We focus on why Natalie decided to start Babylist when she just became a new mother, how reading The Lean Startup impacted her decision making to solving the chicken and the egg problem of marketplaces, finding product-market fit and a unique approach to partnerships. Here are some of the questions I ask Natalie: 1. What was the insight that led to the founding of Babylist? 11 years ago - creating your own baby registry There must be a better way!!!! Worked on another startup in the language learning space If you can work on it for Small aspirations day by day Lean startup Inflection point on PinterestDid you always want to become an entrepreneur? What were some lessons learned during your time at Amazon that were helpful in your journey? What were some of the first steps that you had to take to validate your idea? How do you think about using content to lead to curation to purchase? What are the requirements to sell on Babylist? When you have a marketplace, you have a chicken and the egg problem. What were the first steps you took to solve for it? Was it tougher getting supply going vs. demand or vise versa? Did you keep inventory?How did you approach demand / customer acquititon channels in the early days? How did you approach raising capital? What were some of the moments that as you look back were actually huge unlocks for your business? How did you make the business more sustainable for you You’ve now started selling your own products and aren’t just a marketplace. How do you think about what products to launch? What has been the reaction? How do you think about trying and testing out products for parents online and in brick and mortar? What has been the result during the pandemic when it comes to purchase behavior? What’s one thing you would change about venture capital? What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally? Professionally: No rules rules by Reid Hastings Personally: Dear Sugar - online advice columnWhat’s one piece of advice that you have for founders? Long game Relationships are long

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The Consumer VC takes a look into early-stage consumer investing and venture capital. If you are interested in learning about consumer trends, have a b2c business and interested in learning about the fundraising process at the early stage, you have come to the right place. Mike interviews some of the top venture capitalists in the world that focus on B2C and consumer type companies or have a deep track record investing in these categories such as marketplaces, SaaS, social, CPG and non-tech subscription. Mike also interviews founders that are building some of the most disruptive consumer facing companies in the world. The conversation usually includes the insight the founder discovered, fundraising strategy, and the pitch. This podcast also includes bonus episodes. Each bonus episode dives into a particular subject that might not have to due with the fundraise or venture capital, but still would be helpful to founders. For example, a bonus episode on brand strategy or how to construct a board of directors. All bonus episodes will be clearly labeled. For all episodes, please visit www.theconsumervc.com. For updates, you can follow @mikegelb on Twitter.