- The speaker had a successful career in traditional companies but decided to leave because of her interest in consumer psychology.
- She realized the importance of understanding consumer problems through in-home observations rather than just surveys.
- She worked in pharmaceuticals, consulting, and then at Adidas before deciding to start her own business.
- She moved to China with her husband for his job but still managed to find interesting work for herself.
- The speaker emphasizes the importance of making choices that align with personal values and owning those choices.
- She discusses the challenges of managing two careers and having children, and the need for honest conversations and prioritizing ideas over rationality.
- Financial security is a concern for the speaker in starting her own startup.

- The speaker discusses the challenges of starting a startup without financial security.
- They emphasize the importance of having open and honest communication in relationships and addressing discomfort.
- They mention that there is no perfect time to start a startup or have kids, but it's important to figure it out and make it work.
- The speaker talks about their experience living and working in China, noting the fast-paced environment and the drive to be a part of exciting changes.
- They mention starting a separate startup focused on raising culturally curious kids but eventually realizing it wasn't scalable.
- The speaker emphasizes the importance of validation through actual financial support rather than just positive feedback from friends.
- They discuss the challenges of shutting down their startup and feeling like they had failed, but also the importance of learning from the experience.
- The speaker highlights the problem of childcare as a recurring issue for parents and the motivation to address this problem.

- The speaker realized that people needed more than just a sitter or nanny, they needed a village to help raise their children.
- Neighborhoods are no longer as close-knit as they used to be, making it difficult to find trusted caregivers.
- The speaker came up with the idea of using technology to create a vetting mechanism, matching algorithm, and scheduler for caregivers.
- Despite having no experience in childcare or the tech industry, the speaker saw potential in their idea and decided to pursue it.
- They started Poppy as a four-week test using basic tools like Typeform, Excel, Google Calendar, and SMS.
- The test was successful, with consistent growth and positive feedback from users.
- The speaker advises others to consider a four-week test to determine if their idea has potential, even if they have limited time or resources.
- They emphasize the importance of commitment and being sure that starting a startup is something you truly want to dedicate years of your life to.

- The speaker emphasizes the importance of having diverse experiences and knowledge before starting a startup.
- They discuss the need for persistence and faith in oneself and one's vision in the face of rejection.
- The speaker shares their experience with fundraising and how growth and proving the value of their product helped attract investors.
- Product-market fit is measured by retention and solving customers' problems effectively.
- The speaker believes in communal parenting and multi-generational living as a more natural and supportive approach to parenting.

- Resilience in children is correlated with the number of positive connections they have with others.
- The speaker emphasizes the importance of positive relationships and role models in children's lives.
- When it comes to parenting as a founder, setting clear boundaries and routines is crucial.
- The speaker and her husband have specific days designated for parenting and work responsibilities.
- They also prioritize time for themselves as a couple and for family traditions like Sunday dinner.
- The speaker encourages female founders to overcome obstacles and start their ventures, even if things may be messy or complicated.
- She emphasizes the importance of taking big swings and aiming for disruptive technology in the startup world.
- The goal should be to solve a problem on a large scale and have a significant impact.

- The speaker left a successful career in traditional companies to pursue her interest in consumer psychology and understanding consumer problems through in-home observations.
- She discusses the challenges of managing two careers and having children, emphasizing the importance of honest conversations and prioritizing ideas over rationality.
- Financial security is a concern in starting her own startup, and she emphasizes the importance of validation through actual financial support.
- The speaker started a startup focused on addressing the problem of childcare, using technology to create a vetting mechanism and matching algorithm for caregivers.
- They advise others to consider a four-week test to determine if their idea has potential and emphasize the importance of commitment and diverse experiences before starting a startup.
- The speaker shares their experience with fundraising and the importance of growth and proving the value of their product.
- They believe in communal parenting and resilience in children through positive connections and relationships.
- Setting clear boundaries and routines is crucial when parenting as a founder.
- The speaker encourages female founders to overcome obstacles and aim for disruptive technology to have a significant impact.

Avni Patel Thompson - https://twitter.com/APatelThompson - is the founder and CEO of Poppy (YC W16) - https://www.meetpoppy.com/. Poppy lets parents book the best caregivers with just a text.

We recorded this episode at our Female Founders Conference - http://www.femalefoundersconference.org - in Seattle. We’re also hosting female founder events in New York and SF this year. You can sign up to our newsletter to get updates about those events - http://ycombinator.us7.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=6507bf4e4c2df3fdbae6ef738&id=547725049b

The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon - https://twitter.com/craigcannon

So Avni, 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?

No, so the way I 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 & Gamble in brand management.

And that 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, when I got to Procter and Gamble, they make things like Tide and Pampers and Crest, lots of different consumer things.

And 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 and they taught me how to really see consumers problems.

And so not as they say them, but as they actually experienced them.

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.

So, as a brand manager, your job is for a different… the product that I worked on was actually in pharmaceuticals, so it was drugs.

And I was working on, for example, a packaging project.

And you can have people come in to do kind of focus groups and stuff like that, but when you have them come in and even bring their like little pill packs and stuff like that, they'll say, and you'll just ask them, Hey, how's the packaging working for you?

And you'll try to ask it in non-leading ways, but inevitably they're like, Oh no, it's, you know, it's fine.

You know, I don't have any issues with it.

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.

And I saw the pill pack on the kitchen table and there was a pair of scissors next to it.

And 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 counter things.

So pill pack is like the blister pack, right?

Yeah, the tin foil situation in some kind of cardboard packaging.

And so she takes a scissor, cuts them out, puts it in like Sunday, Monday, Tuesday.

And I think the thing is that, 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, and 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, 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.

And so that, you know, I started in pharmaceuticals.

So very, very standard kind of background.

But the thing that was consistent was they were all consumer companies.

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.

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 was asked to move to China.

So we actually moved to China And he worked there and I continued to work for Adidas in China, from China and did strategy there.

And that was just a phenomenal experience.

It's, it's, 1 of my favorite quotes is the Steve Jobs quote that says you can only connect the dots looking backwards.

And I think even though, Even though the arc appears very traditional, I think the choices that I've made with my career have been a little bit unorthodox, but I think that's fine because now as I'm in startup 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 embark on that journey.

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 for them and love all that.

But 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.

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.

So most people wouldn't think that once you have a kid is when you're like going to go 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.

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.

Just 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.

I mean, obviously, like a female founder, that's an even like, it's probably a classic example on whether or not that's good or bad.

I think For me and my relationship specifically, my husband and I have always looked at ourselves as sort of equals in that way.

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 when 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 the both of us?

Seattle is an example where we managed to both end up moving at the same time and find really interesting jobs for both of ourselves.

So I think where 1 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 1 for me because I had just started, like maybe 7 months prior

So if you think about it from a resume standpoint or anything, like sort of rational, 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 and when you focus on doing the work, you buy yourself options.

So in that instance, in 7 months, I was able to prove myself still.

I was able to prove that I was someone that you should give a chance to, to do something very different in a different role.

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 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.

It is hard and, but you have a choice every single day to do it or not to do it.

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 regret or what ifs, but you're thinking through, no, this is my choice.

But I think Managing careers with dual working spouses, I think A, is not a topic that's really talked about a ton.

And I think 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 2 careers and kids?

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 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 assured thing.

I think that drives us to go and I know it drives me 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 startup 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.

And that is something that needs to be talked about because it isn't, it's a reality.

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 need to just, you know, talk about it.

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 was like, and you know, the same way that there's no good time to start a startup, there's no good time to have kids.

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, an incredible nanny, and a dance.

And everyone needs to have, like know their spots, and like all their roles, and as long as all that's working, it's working.

1 person's 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.

Okay, and so now is your husband still working in a traditional like big company job?

No, so now he's also made the leap to tech and to startups as well.

And I think again, that's the same thing.

It's like, you could say that, nope, 1 person has to hold the fort down.

And it sounds very rational and it sounds very reasonable.

I think the thing is, 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.

And so for both of us, we're get so excited about the way that tech is touching everything.

And so for him, yeah, he's just equally as excited.

So before we get into the full poppy story, what was it like working in China?

Oh, so this is in 2011 and we're in Shanghai.

It's, it's, it's, It is 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, fascinating country.

Its history is really obviously informs a lot of its current.

But everything from language to, you know, because Mandarin is a 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.

And to live in Shanghai at the time still felt like the wild, wild west.

And 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 US where 1 to 2% is like, cool, We're growing.

And so it's, everything is moving so fast.

And I think to tell you the truth, having lived in Shanghai for that year and then coming back to the US, 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.

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 was 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, big art, like a lot of, you know, celebrities in LA, 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 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 grow companies and just like, you know, disrupt archaic industries.

And so that commonality gives us the common language to talk, but we come from like fascinating different backgrounds.

Oh, we're at the female founders conference in Seattle.

So Gustav, a partner at YC asked you, why did you start Poppy?

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 conversant 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.

funny how there are like chapters within the past 5 years.

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 1 a month, China, Japan, and instead of doing what we call saris and samosas or like, you know, sushi and samurais, very like stereotypical stuff.

Let's talk to you about language and food, the things that really inform people and how they think.

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, it was very, you know, very conventional, I guess, but we had built a business plan, we pulled market numbers.

Because you can find any numbers you want.

And we focused more on product of what we wanted to have in the box, less what we thought was going to solve the problem.

And so we built this and we thought we were being scrappy and did it in about 6 months and launched and started to get going.

The long-term value or LTV is not necessarily there.

This is a very niche market, even though people...

When people tell me, oh, I've been talking about my idea and everyone loves it.

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 anyone's thought about it.

We use that as validation and that was sort of wrong because the only real validation is their money.

I know it's kind of trite to say like your friends are going to yes you, but most of your friends won't just give you money straight up.

So you can actually ask your friends 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 him for free right because that won't give you the right signal for where 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 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 my-

Well, we had been talking about it on the side for about a year.

The funny thing is, maybe not so funny, 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.

I don't believe in wasting another day if you don't think that that's going to serve you.

I felt like I had taken my shot at startups and failed miserably.

If not like, Holy, I learned so much, but you know, it still feels like failure.

And so used up all my money used up basically all the time that I had said, Hey, you know, we, can we swing it, you know, with savings and stuff to not for me to not make any money.

And, but you know, as you're, as you're failing or closing something else down, for me, what was really important is I needed to learn from this 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 childcare.

And I mean, I knew that because I live the same thing, Like both my husband and I work, we had, we didn't have family that lived in town.

And, there was all these kinds 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.

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.

And so everyone says it takes a village to raise a child, but all of us are moving around for our careers, for education.

Neighborhoods aren't what they used to be.

How many people know their neighbors in such that you would leave your children with them?

And 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.

I quickly saw how, or at least hypothesized how you might, you know, solve that.

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 a 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.

So again, it was this whole thing of, like, let's just break it down continually.

And then I figured, OK, well, how would we test that?

And I could see an app, but I can't build an app.

And so for a little while, I was 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.

You literally can't get it out of your head.

You're sleeping, you're talking about it, it's just in your head all of 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.

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