Episode 04: Ana Leyva

Ana Leyva is the Founder and CEO of Lelu, a radical new approach to bilingual education. In this episode, she talks about discovering her life’s work, building a business while being a mother, and rallying a tribe of collaborators to support her along through the start-up journey. She shares how she turns challenges into opportunities, and inspires us with a fresh vision of collaborating transparently with early customers, employees, and even children!

Spreading the Beauty of Bilingualism with Ana Leyva

Episode 4: Show Notes (TRANSCRIPT BELOW)

Ana Leyva found her calling as an entrepreneur when, after having children, she became aware that there was a gap in the market for a bilingual language learning platform. From this realization, Lelu was born. As a female, Latina founder of a company, Ana is part of a very underrepresented demographic, and the courage she exudes, along with the support she offers to others who are on a similar journey, is inspiring. In today’s episode, you’ll hear about lessons that Ana has learned through the founding of Lelu, the approach that she and her team of three use to generate ideas for the business, and how she cultivates entrepreneurial qualities in her children; her son is only six years old and he is already eager to get his own ideas off the ground! Although Lelu is still in its beginning stages, it is already clear that the platform holds immense value for those who make use of it.

Key Points From This Episode:

●      What inspired us to bring today’s guest, Ana Leyva, onto the show.

●      How having children altered Ana’s career trajectory.

●      The asset that Ana’s children are to her work.

●      Ways that Ana’s upbringing shaped her career decisions.

●      Challenges which Ana experienced because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

●      A lesson which gave Ana the courage to pursue her passion.

●      Things that Ana does and doesn’t doubt about the path she has chosen with Lelu.

●      How Ana cultivates entrepreneurial qualities in her children.

●      Benefits that Ana experiences from explaining business related things to her children.

●      Support that Ana receives from her tribe and how she gives support in return.

●      Important lessons that Ana has learned from her customer base along her journey with Lelu.

●      A story which highlights the value that people are finding in Lelu’s offerings.

●      Situations when being a female founder feels hard for Ana.

●      The importance of sharing anecdotal stories and hard numbers when it comes to pitching Lelu to potential customers.

●      Ana’s approach to coming up with, and choosing, ideas for Lelu.

Tweetables:

“It's because of my kids that I'm an entrepreneur, like they're the reason that I saw this need.” — Ana Leyva [0:02:55]

“Being a mother has only enriched my life, my point of view, my perspectives, my drive.” — Ana Leyva [0:05:22]

“I'm grateful that I can be an example, but also to get to learn and be on this journey with other pioneers.” — Ana Leyva [0:23:01]

“It almost feels that we don't have a lack of ideas, because we try to, we always try to have an excess of ideas before we decide, “Okay, let's do these three and execute on those.” — Ana Leyva [0:45:49]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Lelu Website

Lelu on Instagram

Lelu on Facebook

[TRANSCRIPT] 

[00:00:00] J: Basically, Mar and I have been talking about how there's a lack of – I, I'll speak for myself. I lacked female founder role models in terms of my own mental model and worldview. Not that I don't know many of them, but I would say I don't do a great job of following up and understanding, even in general, the founder experience more after the Launchpad experience. I want to understand it better and as Mar and I were talking, we thought, wow, what an amazing opportunity to get to interact with some spectacular founders we know, in this day and age and just hear what's it like to be launching a business as a female founder? What advice would you give to others who are curious about setting out on that journey?

For myself, I'll speak as a father of four daughters who wants to see them reach all the potential that they were made to reach. I'm very curious to learn from other spectacular women like yourself and say, “Hey, how do you think about it? How do you stay inspired? How do you stay invigorated and find the courage and the willpower to persist in the face of resistance and obstacles, etc., etc.? What does your daily practice look like? I'm sure we'll get into a lot of your journey, but for both me and Mar, you were someone who came to the top of our list in terms of people that we'd want to speak to learn from about your journey.

So that's the preamble so to speak. I don't know if Mar, if you thought of a good first question, if you want to launch the conversation, you're welcome to.

[00:01:40] M: You're not just a female founder slash CEO. You're like a mom with young children. I think that makes you so special. I think for everybody. I think a lot of founders start their companies in their late 20s, early 30s. There’s little children running around. How do you do that?

[00:02:02] AL: Oh, my gosh. I think about this all the time, because in different ways, folks will ask like, “How did you decide to become an entrepreneur?” I get that question all the time. “How did you decide to become an entrepreneur?” And I really feel like this business, this concept really chose me. It's weird, it was the experience of becoming a mom that totally made me shift careers. I was super settled into a career path, I thought that I would – I saw myself going all the way up on that, in sales, I was working in tech at two unicorns and really happy. When we decided to have kids, we did it because I felt like, “Oh, I found a career path. It's a great time to have kids.” It was the experience of having them that showed me there was this huge gap and absence of resources.

So it's funny, when people ask me what it's like to be an entrepreneur as a mom. It's because of my kids that I'm an entrepreneur, like they're the reason that I saw this need. My kids are so – my kids are an asset, based on my – because of the type of business I'm running and doing, anytime I say that I have kids it’s a plus, it's a good thing. I think a lot about what if I wasn't running a business that had anything to do with kids? I think that would be a lot more challenging, right? Because my kids only enrich and they're part of it, they help me, they're like my tests, my lab, and so they're this huge asset.

I want to say that they would be an asset regardless. Obviously, the experience of becoming a mom and just all the ways that changes you. I think being a mom has made me so much more empathetic. I understand the world, I think of the world differently, because of the experience of being a mom. So it's only enriched my life. I do, I wonder a lot about if I wasn't starting a business that was so directly connected to them,if that would be, if that I would feel more like a dissonance.

I think one last thing that I'll say is, I'm really grateful to get to model this for my kids. My son actually over December, December was a crazy month, we were getting ready to launch this subscription version of Lelu. So just working a ton and he asked me, he goes, “Mommy, why did you do this? Why are you doing this business?” Just point blank, he's like, “Why are you putting yourself through this? I had a really candid conversation. Like, “Well, I can't just expect somebody to be the change I want to see, right. Nobody else is doing this. I want to put this into the world.” I'm really grateful to get to model that for my kids.

I see, I don't know, inklings or startings of entrepreneurship in them, like my son's like, “I want to start a business,” and I love that. I'm grateful to get to model that. I hope that they will, that they're getting a crash course in entrepreneurship, through this. Then sorry, one very last thing, I'll say it to answer the question is, my daughter, I think COVID has also made it very unique, my daughter was homeschooling up until a few weeks ago. That was really challenging to have to have her around all the time and just really eager for my attention. Finding ways, I had to get really creative about ways that I could make her part of my work and my time, even with things that weren't. I had to get really creative, so that was a true challenge, but overall I am grateful. I think my kids have only ever been an asset. Being a mother has only enriched my life, my point of view, my perspectives, my drive.

[00:05:28] J: Can you say a little bit about how you shifted from – because it's one thing to become aware of a need. You mentioned having children made you aware of this hole in the world, something you wanted to see in the world that didn't exist. That's like an existential observation. What shifted you from seeing the need to, “I must meet that need”? And how did you rally the courage, especially now you're a mom, you weren't before, you were settled in your career. How did you practically make the decision to go from seeing the need to deciding to shape your life towards meeting the need?

[00:06:08] AL: I think another big piece of my identity that really shaped my journey around entrepreneurship is the fact that I grew up low income, and had parents that were relying on us on the kids to help them out financially. That had always been a dream of mine to buy my parents a house and to see them, move them away from worrying and living paycheck to paycheck. That really shaped the initial part of my career. I think that maybe, had I not had that commitment, or the sense of obligation, I think I may have moved into entrepreneurship earlier, but both feeling the commitment to my kids and also to my parents was huge and I think really did make me question this journey a lot.

So for example, even the decision to go back and get an MBA, that was the safest way that I could explore an idea like Lelu, because I was in a really comfortable, very well paying job. I knew that coming out of Stanford, I could go back to something very – just like that the opportunity cost was – it wasn't giving up too much. I wasn't directly saying, “I'm going to start a business,” and just walking away from a lot of, yeah, I don't know, the security of the job and the path that I was on.

So it really did take a lot of courage and one challenge that I didn't foresee going into Stanford was that I would have a lot of options and that the sense of like getting to Stanford and saying, “I had this idea, I saw this need,” but now I can do all these like other amazing things, that added another challenge. When I found the courage to actually pursue it was really when I found conviction that I was – I have this conviction now, I think I'm the best suited person to solve this. All of my life experiences have led me to the point where I see this need,I have a huge passion around it and I have the tools necessary to bring this into life, to bring this to life and lead a team that can be this difference.

So getting to that place of conviction, I would say was the biggest, what finally made me take the plunge and my husband always jokes, he's like “You're just doing this so that it exists for our kids.” It's true, right? If I stopped doing Lelu, it wouldn't exist for our kids. That has also kept me very committed to the problem is just, yeah, seeing how much my kids are getting from it, knowing that there's something really special that again if I step back, nobody else would do.

I think it was really finding that conviction that allowed me to take the plunge and frankly, having already gotten to a place where, in my early part of my career, we could, we did get my parents a house and all the things that were on my wish list, and just being confident that my kids would be okay.

[00:09:02] M: Actually, I heard, I think, your Princeton speech that you gave to the incoming class, and it was so inspiring. I just remember you talking about your mom during the 2008 crisis and how you turned to entrepreneurship to actually pull her out of stuff. I thought that was – I feel like your whole family, your mom, your kids, it's a big part of who you are as a person.

[00:09:33] AL: Absolutely. Yeah. I am so touched that you remember that Marin, all the details from that. Thank you for mentioning it.

[00:09:39] M: Those are very inspiring. I thought it was, I was very, very inspired. That should feel you're lucky to have such a great family.

[00:09:48] AL: I feel so grateful every day for my parents. Yeah, they're amazing.

 [00:09:53] J: Ana, you said that you realized conviction – you came into a conviction that you were the best person in the world, I'm paraphrasing you, you didn't say that, but you basically said, “There was a point at which I had conviction I was the person to do this.” Will you tell us about that point? What led you to that conviction? How did you realize it? What was the process that led up to it? What was maybe the moment that you go, “It's gotta be me or, if not me, then who?” How did that happen?

[00:10:21] AL: Yeah. Okay. So, Graham Weaver, who maybe you both know, he's a professor. I don’t know if he's officially a professor, but he teaches MGE at the GSB. That's Managing Growing Enterprises. So it's basically a class that leads you through different things that you may encounter when growing a company or building a company. He famously begins the class by telling us about a genie, “If you found this magical Genie, and the genie could grant you success in whatever career field you chose, or whatever line of work you committed to, what would you ask for? What field would you ask to be successful in?”

So he asked us that question at the beginning of the quarter, we go through the quarter, lots of great lessons all throughout. At the end of the class, he finishes up saying, “You're the Genie, you're at the GSB. Most people graduating from the GSB, whatever they pursue afterwards, they're successful in, they find success in whatever they devote their time and talents and efforts to. You're the genie, like you can make this you can make your dream come true.” I think it was, I don't know, finding that realizing the sense of agency in that, like, oh, one, this is my dream. This is truly what I would ask for. If I could have success in any career, this is what I would want this to be successful. That was a huge turning point for me and saying this is something that I'm committed to pursuing.

Yeah, maybe getting – success isn't guaranteed, I would maybe push back a bit that I don't have guaranteed success in Lelu, but I do know that coming out of this, I will have learned a lot. I will have – even up to now, if everything fails and implodes, it was totally worth it. I know it for a fact, this journey has been worth it. It's been so much more fulfilling. Another thing that they say a lot at the GSB is like, “What journey is going to help you learn the most?” This is absolutely that journey for me. As much as it can be tempting to say like, “It could be so good, I could work so much less if I took a normal job and have all the security of the of a salary,” I'm grateful every day for what I'm learning. I see the value in it. Yeah, but it was really that MGE, that class that really helped me find that conviction in that sense of like, and just seeing I don't know, it was like this moment of like the stars are aligning, really, truly like everything.

Then throughout, since I graduated, just seeing how well aligned my story is with what I'm working on, right? This truly is. I feel like everything in my life has brought me to this point, to this moment. I think looking back, I'm like, “Oh, my gosh, my dad always really emphasized bilingualism.” He cared so much about it. He encouraged me in my Spanish growing up. He then wanted me to learn French. Then I studied Arabic. All of that encouragement around bilingualism that I didn't even I wasn't even aware of until I had kids. Looking back and saying like, “Wow, this is really the perfect thing that the thing that I need to be doing.”

[00:13:22] M: I think with all this conviction, sometimes there's moments of doubt in your journey. I don’t know if you want to talk about that.

[00:13:32] AL: All the time Mar. It's funny, my poor husband hears about this all the time, “Should I stop this? Is this going to work? What am I doing?” Adding to the fact that for my husband too, his career journey has been bumpy and has been a bit uncertain. So that's challenging, too, right? Should I just go out and get something that's like secure, sure? We were confident and he and I think I'm grateful for his encouragement, because yes, Mar, I have all kinds of doubts all the time and yet, I think I don't ever doubt though that I'm suited for this company or for this job for the problem we're solving. I don't doubt that. So I have strong conviction around that.

I do doubt like, “Is this the right timing? Should I go do something secure and then come back to this in a decade?” Or, “My kids are young, am I missing out on things with them? Because I'm super busy now. When do I want to be more available to them?” I do think about that and their timelines. Recently, I was actually reflecting on the fact that my son just turned six. Oh my gosh, Mar, you'll think this is so funny. He told me, he's in kindergarten at New Eva and he told me the other day, “Mommy, I'm ready for first grade.” I'm like, “You're not.” I'm not ready for you to be in first grade.

[00:14:53] J: That’s awesome.

[00:14:53] AL: I was reflecting on the fact that – he's a third of the way to 18 and if the next 12 years have gone as fast as the first six years went –

[00:15:04] M: They go faster.

[00:15:06] AL: Stop. I'm like, I see it like flying by. So I think sometimes, those are the things that make me wonder like, is this really the right thing? And I'm working harder than I've ever worked in my life. Yet, my husband’s like, “But you’re home,” but I don't feel like I'm home. It doesn't feel like I'm available to them and able to – I think that's where I see, I do feel –

[00:15:30] M: [Inaudible] myself with my kids all the time. One of the silver linings, I would say, is that they are very independent. They figure things out by themselves really quickly. Humans are capable of a lot. We just don't know.

[00:15:48] AL: Absolutely, that's one of the things – Laurel recently, my daughter recently started at a preschool and one of the things her teacher has noted to us, she’s like “Your daughter is so independent, she'll just go and find her own fun, and she'll lead people into things.” I'm like, “Oh my, I think she learned that  because of COVID, because, I’m like, ‘go play,’” and – yeah I'm grateful for that. It was a moment where I was like, “Oh, good. Hopefully it's serving her in some way that I’m busy.”

[00:16:19] M: Yes, you're good. You're good. Don't worry. My kids have not turned out to be criminals yet.

[00:16:28] J: While we're on the subject of kids, and one thing you mentioned that I just wanted to circle back to, you mentioned that your son wants to start a company or that entrepreneurship is a part of the family, the dinnertime conversation. How do you think about steering those little ambitions, or are there practices, behaviors, ways of interacting that you employ to cultivate that attitude in your children based on your own experience?

[00:16:58] AL: Yeah, I didn't as I mentioned, my parents were immigrants to this country. So they were low income, I didn't have models of like talking about work or something during dinner time, because my parents didn't have the work subjects that they wanted to be discussing. It's interesting to get to sit down at dinner and say like, “Oh, well, what did you do today?” Or, “What business problem am I solving?” I think one practice that we've leaned in to a lot is, when my son asked, because he does, he asks a lot of questions, like “What are you deciding?” Or he overhears conversations, for example, that I have with my employees. “What was that about?” Instead of just dismissing him, I engage it. 

I try to explain whatever problem it is I'm solving or dealing with him. How do I boil this down to explain it to you in a way that you understand it? It's been really helpful, or I ask him his opinion. We’re trying to figure out which of these two fonts to use or whatever, any sort of thing that we're facing, “What do you think is best? What do you think will resonate more with our audience?” He'll ask, “What's an audience?” All of those types of questions just engaging in them, I think isn't something I didn't grow up with, I think that I'm very committed to working through with him.

He also has, any idea that he has, we just like say, “Okay, go do it.” If you had – for example, he was like, “I'm going to design a new type of Lego, and I want to sell them. I want to sell this new type of Lego.” I was like, “Well, what's going to distinguish your Legos from the existing Legos? Why would anybody buy your Legos and not buy the Legos that exist?” Make a prototype, so he got busy into making a prototype and just, I think encouraging him and, yeah, early signs of entrepreneurship has been important to us.

 [00:18:51] M: It’s so great.

[00:18:53] J: That's really cool. I love – one of the things that I would imagine, I don't know, if I had to infer from that conversation, it requires greater mastery to simplify conversations and things like that. I can imagine that you probably have breakthroughs in how you think about different challenges you're facing, in breaking them down to a level that a six year old can understand. When it gets to the irreducible elements, it may enable you actually to see or to gain a perspective that you didn't have when you're thinking in complex adult terms.

[00:19:29] AL: 100%. Every time. Every time I'm like, I think the temptation is to feel like, “I don't have time to have to explain this to you,” but every time I do and I take the time to try to boil it down, it's helpful. It's always – Yeah, there's this clarity that opens up, it’s like, “Oh, that's, really what’s at the core of this instead of this, instead of this other thing that I was like masquerading as the true issue.”

[00:19:54] M: Awesome.

[00:19:54] J: Yeah, it's really – it's cool. I mean, to me, that’s an amazing, in a way it's a structural, I don't know what else to call it an environmental requirement, right? I feel when it comes to creative practice, setting aside or regardless of entrepreneurship or not, creative practice, take wondering, for example. I believe wondering is deeply and profoundly important that and that's a truth that I hold dear. Yet, if I'm on a walk with my kids, anything they wonder about is annoying, because I want to be back home within five minutes, and your wondering is not convenient right now. So I feel oftentimes this hypocrisy, or at least that, like I often noticed in myself, I say I value wondering, but right now wondering is not convenient.

I love that instead of forcing the adult perspective, by almost surrendering yourself to the environmental factors there it enables you, in a sense, to do what needs to be done. It's probably a very effective management tactic to break something down to its fundamental elements. But if you got told in a management class, “Whenever you're dealing with an employee issue, break it down to its fundamentals,” guaranteed you'd never take the time to do it. But you got a six year old saying, “What's that about?” Basically serving the purpose that a management guru, my advise you to do, right? It's just really – it's cool to think about how some of those things are actually gifts if you don't fight it.

[00:21:24] AL: 100%.

[00:21:26] M: I also think it's, I mean, like I said, you have so many facets, Ana, because you're a special female I would say, a special founder. You're also a Hispanic founder, and I believe an inspiration to many and I believe your – if not your your co-founder, your first employee was also a woman. Correct me if I'm wrong. I haven't caught up with you in a few months.

[00:21:48] AL: Oh, yeah. Grace was a woman and you had the opportunity to meet her. She's since left Lelu, we realized that she wasn't the best fit. Yeah, absolutely we definitely identified a lot in that in being women, being she was Taiwanese and immigrated to the US because of her spouse, who is Taiwanese-American. There are very few Latina founders. There are a number of different reasons why that's the case.

[00:22:15] M: But you must be an inspiration, I think the responsibility of being a Latina founder.

[00:22:22] AL: Yeah. Again, that identity is really well represented in the work that we're doing, right? It's like, we are literally building this for this Latino audience in the US. So there's so much of that. For example, even today, it was like on Instagram, this page that is all about empowering Latinas, was like, “Shop Latina owned,” and, “Latina’s supporting Latinas.” It's been really wonderful to get to lean into that and yeah, find a tribe of other Latina entrepreneurs where we can support one another. It's been phenomenal, both to be an example, I'm grateful that I can be an example, but also to get to learn and be on this journey with other pioneers, right? And walk alongside them, because –

[00:23:10] M: I like the word tribe, I feel like, as a founder you need that support layer. If you don't have it, it's really, really hard. They should have Funder Anonymous, I think sometimes, because it's only a few people can understand those problems.

[00:23:28] AL: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:23:30] J: When you talk about that tribe, I'd be curious to know just specific examples of what would you say is the biggest thing you've gotten from that tribe? Could be a lesson, it could be a tactic or principle or whatever? Then what do you feel like you've been, separately but related, what do you feel like you've been uniquely equipped to give to that tribe?

[00:23:53] AL: That's such a good question. What I've gotten is just honestly, I think what's been most helpful is voices, like really just support of the idea, support of the business, like, “This is great, I want this for my own kids,” and that support that over resounding like encouragement has been invaluable. Also, really practical help, like, “This is what we use to build an app before we had our first engineer,” and just them pointing us to resources that have helped them on their journey. So those two things, I think, are what I've gotten.

And what I've uniquely given. Honestly, this is, it's interesting to reflect on this, but I had children younger than most people have children on this path. I was working and again, very settled in my career. So my kids are older than most other, if other Latina founders have kids, they're like really young so I think, being able to contribute like experience, and again, my son is six, it's not like I've had all this experience of being a mom, but among the group of this tribe. I'm the mom with the oldest kids, even though I'm not the oldest. So I think that is a unique contribution.

Yeah, it's just a unique path that I married my college sweetheart, and then the journey that we've been on, I think, I would say that that's the thing that really, I don't know, would distinguish me among the group.

[00:25:30] M: We interviewed another founder a couple weeks ago, and they were talking about, I forget their name, they’ve got a great name, I think Jeremy will remember, but it was the idea of a  tribe but for their customers, there was this, it was called the Design Council or something like that.

[00:25:46] J:  Design Council. Yeah.

[00:25:47] M: Which I thought was a great idea. I don't know if you guys have the equivalent for your users? How do you bring in your users' voices? I still feel that your moms will have so much to say.

[00:26:02] AL: So much to say. Yeah, it's funny, we had a mom reach out, I think last after our call pilot, and she was like, “Do you have a parent ambassador program?” I'm like, “Well, now we do. You're the first.” Building as we go. We do have a team of like, a set of moms who are very vocal and want to help and want to contribute and that's been so phenomenal. There isn't any formal, I don't like gather them, I don't know if this Design Council, if they gather them –

[00:26:32] M: You should connect with them or you should talk to them.

[00:26:34] J: Yeah, they actually invite, what's cool is they invite a small select group of target users into their team Slack. Inside of their Slack, and they share early product ideas with them, they get feedback on it before they launch to the broader network, etc.

[00:26:51] AL: That's phenomenal.

[00:26:54] J: One of the things, I'll just share a hack, because who knows, whenever this will be shared more broadly, I mean, these conversations, we're hoping maybe to package them in some way and share them, but we may not, it may be a year, I don't know. But one of the things that they said that I thought was cool and useful is, not over programming the interactions, that there's a temptation to want to send a survey and you gotta answer – you got to do these four things, and then answer the five questions.

They noticed that that introduced a lot of friction into the relationship. So instead, they started biasing much more towards really quick questions and interestingly, I found – Mar, I'd be curious to hear what you think too. One of the things that struck me was, they had to learn when in the user journey it's appropriate to engage someone, and for them, it was right after they use the product, and they have a visual design tool that enables folks to create something, and right after they use it, they're particularly primed to give feedback to interact with new ideas, etc. So they've, over time they've dialed in the calibration on, not only who to engage, but at what time in their journey to engage them which I thought was pretty cool.

[00:28:04] M: I think you would be so good at it on as well. I actually feel all female led companies are the best, most appropriate people to do this.

[00:28:15] AL: No, that's such a great idea. Yeah, because we interact with our parent ambassadors, is what we call them, regularly, but not we, yeah, we ask them for feedback basically, within the whatever monthly experience we're providing for them. I love the idea of inviting. I hadn't even thought about inviting them into our slack instance. We had one Mom, it's so funny, she's on their short list of companies that I would go back to work for, and you're one of them. She's like, “So if you could, if you are hiring, please think of me.” Yeah, we're like, how do we engage that – her obvious interest without – we can't hire her right now, but leading up to that it's – so I love this idea.

[00:28:55] J: Well, one of the things that they said that I thought was pretty cool. I don’t know if you remember this Mar, but they were mentioning how the folks who are in that category are kind of entrepreneurial themselves. They actually love seeing behind the scenes in the founder journey. So not just talking about the product, but almost being a little bit transparent about the trials and tribulations of being a founder, they found that that created more engagement among the design council, because they’re not only interested in the product, but they're interested in the founder lifestyle as well.

Which to me was a pretty cool tactic, almost of opening up, “What’s content I could be putting out to this group of people?’ It's not only product iterations, it may just be, “Man this is a crazy process.” They may be really interested in the process of getting something new out the door or a team dynamic, right.

[00:29:47] AL: Did they give any indication about how large their Design Council is? Is it a small group of people or larger?

[00:29:56] J: It started, I think it's when I spoke with them probably four months ago, I think they were 10, but they've mentioned to us that it's ballooned to closer to 40. I think they've gotten one of the things that they really dialed in is what kind of user is the right kind of user to include? It's not just anybody. It's not just power users necessarily. There's a particular psychographic that, I don't know what it is right here, but that's the one of the things that they feel they got right, is they figured out the right person to have involved in the council.

[00:30:28] M: Transparency, I sort of picked that up from them, to being a little more transparent and showing how the sausage is made, made the folks much more committed to actually helping make the sausage.

[00:30:42] AL: Yeah.

[00:30:41] M: It was not all perfect, “I got my ambassador and everything is working,” it’s like “Actually, five things are not working, or we're trying to figure it out.”

[00:30:52] AL: That's phenomenal. Yeah, the vulnerability there, it's like –  that engages people more, there's something really magical that happens when you become human, or show them your humanity in a way, “We're figuring this out.” I tell parents that all the time, we have monthly parent orientations, where we, which was actually a parent idea. They were like, “It'd be great if before we received our Lelu pack, we had an opportunity to connect with you.” So we started doing this, and I tell parents all the time that we do not have a monopoly on the good ideas, like we need you. We need you to help us improve and change.

We're on a journey. We're just getting started. Yeah, I think at first, there was a lot of hesitation around admitting that we were new, admitting that we were figuring things out, because I didn't want parents to feel they were our guinea pigs, right? Or like, that they were a trial, which it all still feels like. And one of, I had a recent an opportunity to share this with one of my employees. He was asking, he said, “This is too early for us to charge for it.” We're piloting a new all-digital option. He's like, “It's too early for us to charge for them.” I'm like, “No, we have to charge for it.” We could have said that about Lelu this whole time. We could have said, “This is too early for us to charge for it,” and basically went through this whole, like the Launchpad [inaudible 00:32:13], like, “If we don't charge we're not going to get accurate feedback.

It's important. I just realized that so much in the early days of what held me back from trying things from piloting, from getting customer feedback was this fear of, I don't know, that they would be upset, right? That it was not finished. What I've realized over time is that they don't mind. They're just, they're grateful that we're trying. I think letting the guard down has really been, I have to remind myself all the time. It's okay that they see that you're on a journey. It's totally okay.

One thing that I remember, this was a total turning point for me that Perry actually shared with me, Jeremy, was that he I think he probably saw my hesitation or this my fear of putting something out in the world and he said, “What you're doing today is going to be embarrassing to you a year from now, you're going to be embarrassed. You should be completely embarrassed about it.” I still to this day, think about that all the time. This is where we're at today, but a year from now we'll look back and laugh. Just there's so much freedom in that, that I didn't I didn't have that freedom before that moment. It's been so helpful to realize that, it's okay that we're on a journey, it's okay to let customers into that journey.

[00:33:30] J: Can you tell a story or give an example of a recent time where you feel like you pushed through the hesitation to invite people in on the journey, or to be kind of, you said a second ago, “They're grateful we're trying,” and that phrase just stood out to me. I just wrote it down. Can you think of a time recently where that where you had that sense? We're not getting it, we're not perfect yet, but the people that we're interacting with are grateful we're even trying?

[00:33:59] AL: Yeah, it was actually an interaction I had recently with a mom. A mom, who just joined Lelu last month, was having issues with her getting her billing information updated on our website, our website is like a disaster. It's so bad, because the widget we had to –

[00:34:17] M: No, it’s pretty, I just went  

[00:34:18] AL: No, Mar. It's like, I tell everybody, they’re in shock, anybody who ever signs up, because 90% of our visitors visit us on mobile, and on mobile the widget that we had to use to get the subscription service going is horrible. You can't you can't see it on your mobile device. Anyways, she's having issues with updating her billing information. We're like going back and forth on chat. She reached out for support. I just said, “Can I call you and I'll put it all in, input your billing information securely, I can see the back end and I can put it in.” She's like, “Yeah, sure, call me.” I call her and she's like, “We love Lelu and we want to sign up for the full year. This has been a phenomenal experience.” I’m like, “Oh, great.” I'm so glad that this billing issue allowed us to connect.

I said, “We're figuring out our website, we're hiring our first engineer, she's starting later this month, we're going to get this all together.” She's like, “Honestly, I love this, you’re saving me so much time, I would have to translate all these things, or all these materials for my kids if you weren't doing this. I totally love that you're just getting started. I love that we’re some of your first users.” She was like, “I love that we're first to this.” So it was really amazing, amazing to get to connect. She's like, “Oh, you're the founder.” She's like, “I didn't expect the founder to be calling me. I didn't expect you to be the one answering the support question.” I'm like, “I'm still the one.”

Yeah, it was incredible. It was so, honestly, I can tell you guys, it meant a lot to me a lot to me to get to talk to her, to hear her perspective. I asked her, “What do you like about it? What are you enjoying? What's been your favorite part?” And that billing issue that I could have been embarrassed about, which I am a little bit, but we can figure that out, ended up being this great opportunity to connect with her to be transparent with her and for her to feel even more – she ended the conversation by saying, “I'm so grateful to be part of this community.” So, I’m like, “Oh, you are, you're part of this community.”

[00:36:18] J: It's awesome.

[00:36:19] M: Some very successful companies that we know, make it so that their employees have to be in customer support at least one day a month or certain hours per week or something. It makes a huge difference for everybody, because they know who they're working for at the end of the day.

[00:36:37] AL: Absolutely.

[00:36:38] M: So that's awesome.

[00:36:41] J: Is there – one of the things I'd be curious about, Ana, is, is there any time at which, I mean, if you think about your founder journey, or the span of activities that you undertake from customer service, to pitching for capital, to shipping boxes, to hiring designers, right? So pretty huge span, when you think about the phrase “female founder,” is there a particular time where you're mindful of that designation, or that reality, that you're particularly mindful, either positively or negatively? How do you interact with that? I feel like we've heard, by the way, about some of the ways in which female founder is a super heroic, right? Are there times, maybe to put a fine point on the question, are there times where you feel like it's a setback or it's a hindrance and what do you do in those moments?

[00:37:37] AL: Yeah, I think it's moments when I feel like, “Ah this is hard,” is when I'm pitching to, yeah, the opposite of me, right? I'm like, most of the people who purchase our product are moms. So when I'm pitching, for example, to men who don't have kids, for example, that's hard. I'm like, “How do I translate this for you?” Or how do I help you understand this, the thing that we're solving? I think that's where I feels hardest, I would say.

Otherwise, in everything else it doesn't – I don't know, I don't think of – I am not aware, I'm not thinking, it's not top of mind that I am a female founder, packing the boxes or doing customer support. I don't think about it that way. Most of our customers, most of the people that do reach out are moms, women, I just identify a lot with them, but I don't think I'm aware of the fact that, because my audience is so similar to me that I don't know, I don't think of the fact that I'm a female founder.

[00:38:41] J: So what do you do? So you're pitching a man who doesn't have kids. You're like maximum awareness of your female founderness. What do you do, one, to prepare for that, or to get yourself in the right headspace? Then, two, how do you conduct yourself in that moment for maximum effectiveness and impact?

[00:39:05] AL: I use a lot of storytelling or like I asked them to imagine, for example, one person I remember pitching, and he was a white man, but he was dating a Latina and I forget where she was from, but I was like, “Imagine that relationship works out, you guys get married, and your wife or then wife wants to teach your children Spanish, how do you guys, how do you engage that? How do you do that at home?” That was like, it unlocked it for that particular person. I do a lot of just personal, I try to bring as many stories as possible of like, and just sharing explaining that this experience that I've had, a lot of families are having, and try to back that up with stories and the numbers. Like my story, this very particular story that I shared with you can be replicated and this type of story is increasingly popping up all over.

That's the market. So just, I don't know, arming myself I think with those stories and then inviting them to imagine, I've done that. I don't know if that's a bold move, but I'm like yeah, it's weird talking about their relationship, like, “Imagine that relationship that you're in, but like no pressure. I'm not asking you to propose to your girlfriend, but if that ended up working out –”

[00:40:29] J: They get there in cold sweats. “Oh, what?” Mar, you know, it reminds me of one thing you did launch about a few years ago, I think with maybe one of the nail manicure teams. When you did your masterful session where you –

[00:40:45] M: I got my channel when I did, but  

[00:40:46] J: Well, you have a team pitch you and then you pitch them back, basically. One of the things I remember you did is, it was right after Dollar Shave Club had been an enormous success. You said, “Remember Dollar Shave Club,” because every man in the room is investing and appreciates that opportunity. This is like that, except three times bigger. It's just to me, it's just leveraging that analogy of – “Oh, you mean something that you use every day that's going to show up in the mail, and I'm going to pay a subscription for, now that I have a mental model for it and the markets bigger? Oh, okay. Now I know what we're talking about.” Because I think they were struggling with how to convey that feeling of getting a manicure or the feeling of getting a new set of nails and you just connected it to something that the investor understands.

[00:41:35] M: Yeah, I think that's really important. I also think you said that you have all these numbers and data to back you up. Do you feel like that was more important with the folks that did not maybe not identify with the story?

[00:41:50] AL: Well, yeah. Because the fear, when I'm saying a personal story, like, “This is the journey I've been on,” they're like, “Great, well, that's nice for you,” like, that’s meaningless to me if I don't really truly believe and have conviction that your story is actually representative of this like bigger population and so the numbers helped to draw – my story, I think, gives it color. I've also started using other customer stories, right? Like, “Take this mom, she's fourth generation, Mexican American, and really committed to transferring language to her kids. How does she do it?” Bringing in those other stories is really important, but yeah, without the numbers, it's like, “Okay, you just told me three stories.”

[00:42:35] M: Get it. Yes, I actually think you're right about that, that you need both, both sides, almost you need to top down and bottoms up, you know, in pitches.

[00:42:44] AL: It's funny, every investor is like, “I don't like it that way,” I'm like, “Oh, my gosh, okay, well last the last investor he's talking to you told me to put,” so it's funny that, yeah, the different preferences in that.

[00:42:59] M: I think you're right, that, well, that's what's beautiful about investing and fundraising. Everybody's different. I think the masterful people that pitch are aware of their audience, so asking questions ahead of time.

[00:43:13] AL: Yes, yeah.

[00:43:13] M: So they can adapt the deck to whatever, on the fly.  So yes, you're right. We're a pain in the butt.

[00:43:21] AL: You aren't Mar, you’re joy. I’ve loved any interaction I've had with you.

[00:43:27] M: Thank you.

[00:43:28] J: One question I've enjoyed asking, I didn't realize I would, but it's been cool just hearing folks think about it. How do you know, and this a little bit obscure but hopefully you can just dive in or take it as you will, how do when you have an idea problem? Meaning there are some times where it's, “I've got the answer, I just got to implement it, I got to execute etc.” and then there's other times we go, “We need options. We need to brainstorm, we need to generate.” Is there a point at which you become aware that you need to click into another mindset? How do you do that? What are your go to ways of not solving execution problems but solving idea problems?

[00:44:09] AL: That's such a good question. How do I know when I have an idea problem?

[00:44:15] J: Just while you're thinking, I'll just say, we talked to another founder and she said, I was expecting a very, like a polished answer, and she was like, “Jeremy, I have like five that I didn’t realize till you said that, are actually idea problems.” She's like, “Yeah, I don't know what it takes to raise the head above water and realize actually, I need a different mindset right now.” So that's something I've become more curious about.

[00:44:42] AL: Yeah. I think, I don't know, as a team we're constantly asking ourselves, “Is this the right way to solve any sort of thing that we're trying to decide on, like make a decision about it?” So, I don't know, I don't know that I have like a good answer for that.

[00:45:06] J: Well tell us about the last decision, or what's a recent decision, just walk us through it?

[00:45:11] AL: Yeah, I think one thing that we do a really good job of is giving ourselves a lot of options for when deciding how to execute something. One example is, we're doing this event for a school. We were tasked with creating a different experience for different grade levels. So it was like, “What experience are we going to send Kinder? What experience we're going to send firsts etc?” We had initial ideas that we thought, “Oh, this would work really well,” but we also, I think we have just, this is part of our practice, we make this a much longer list that we can then whittle down. So yeah, I don't know, I guess it almost feels that we don't have a lack of ideas, because we try to, we always try to have like an excess of ideas before we decide, “Okay, let's do these three and execute on those.”

[00:45:59] J: What does that – that is actually an amazing principle, or a guiding foundational touchdown, where does that come from? Do you have a rule that says, “We need 10 options before we pick,” or like how does that get encoded into the DNA?

[00:46:15] AL: I think we do have that rule. I don't know where it got encoded, but there are a lot of things we decide on a regular basis, for example our themes, every month we decide on a theme, when we're several months ahead now at this point, but what theme do we choose? In all of that process, from the very beginning, we've loved starting with a very, really long list and then whittling down and, yeah. I don't know where it got encoded, or where it came from, but just the belief that there's security almost in having a longer list rather than starting with a shortlist and that having more data points or more options will lead us to the best options and that, I don't know that conviction has just been with us from the very beginning.

[00:46:59] J: How do you choose? You got a long list. I would say I'm often the advocate for volume in any room I'm in. Almost, it's not always, but often our responses, “Well, we can't have too many ideas, because if we do we can't do them all.” It's like someone's afraid of a wall full of post-it notes, because it's too much possibility. I don't know. I can't totally relate to that. How do you – say you, I mean, you said, “We have a long list, and then we whittle it down,” on what basis? What are the selection criteria you use to make those decisions?

[00:47:40] AL: Yeah, usually we gather as a team, we're still, again, three full time employees, another one joining, and the three of us just hash it out. We have different criteria based on whatever it is that we're deciding on. So for example, a theme, we like it to be relevant, something related to whatever month it’s going to be sent in, and something that will automatically engage kids, something that they'll be excited about, something that allows us to have and include cultural elements.

So, we have criteria that we're filtering all of the ideas through and then we vote on it. We have a rating system, 1 to 3. Each of us gets to allocate our ones in ones, twos and threes. Then we see which one received the highest rating, and then we go off of like all the nines and and decide and determine that way. We do these regularly. I would say at least twice a month. We have these meetings where we're deciding and going through ideas. Everybody is tasked with populating ideas on the sheet before the meeting, too. So you have to have thought about it ahead of time.

Then occasionally, when we're having a hard time deciding, we'll ask our parent ambassadors and say, “We're deciding between these two, do you have a favorite?” And get the, yeah, the customer voice in but we haven't had any issues and sometimes we have a lot of great ideas that we're like, “That's a great idea, but not for this month,” or, “That's great,” so we have this bucket now of all these awesome things that we're excited about, and that just didn't fit into that particular month. So we keep those. We like options. We have this list, place we can go back and that can be a great launch point for other execution moments or moments where we're trying to decide.

[00:49:41] J: That’s incredible.

[00:49:42] M: I'll say something about these ideas that I think might be helpful to you. I think there's so many – that's what I love about startups, like the typical employee doesn't generate a lot of ideas, but if you're like the first 10 employees in a company, you have a lot of ideas.

[00:49:58] AL: Yes.

[00:50:00] M: There are so many ideas. I think part of this very early stage where you are, I say to my companies, “One of your metrics for success is how many ideas can you get through in a given amount of time and test?” I think it allows them to experiment, which I think at the beginning, really nobody knows. We just tried to figure out what works and doesn't work. If the mentality is, “It's okay, we tried, didn't work, move on.” But empower the employees too, which is like –

[00:50:34] AL: Yeah, I invite everyone to disagree with me, because I think it's hard to since I'm the only founder on the team, and that they'll defer to me like, but I say, “No. I want to have a healthy disagreement, disagree with me, push back,” and I'm grateful that both of them have felt, I think it started as a bit more reserved, and then have totally leaned into that and said “Oh,” and frankly, I think I've also I've told them very clearly, “We're all responsible for our metrics, like you are responsible, I don't care that you're not a head of marketing, but you're responsible for us to get to this metric.” Yeah, I think giving them that ownership and saying, like, “If we don't get to that, I'm going to come back to you. We're all responsible. What say do you have? How do we do this?” Has been really good. Yeah.

[00:51:26] J: Mar, I've got to ask, how do you – so when you say and by the way, I am like 110,000%, on board with you there, which we can talk about another time. That's like a subject for a full conversation itself, but very quickly, in the last one minute, you said, “How many ideas can you get through?” What defines getting an idea through getting through an idea? How do you know if you've got this too? –

[00:51:49] M: [Inaudible] validation, and I think the degree of validation of an idea is, as you know, it can take a long time to fully validate something, but sometimes fairly quickly you can get 80% of the way. So think learning to do that as a company is a great tool, right? Tony at DoorDash, has a math background and he said, “I run a company like that. Like a mathematician would. I have a hypothesis, and I go to find a test, then I go do it.” I think you can find that in a textbook as well. I think good companies have that muscle. It starts really early when you see people, you know how to have the permission to let something fail, and move on. You don’t get it always right. I think you probably get most of it right.

[00:52:43] J: Ana if folks listen to this conversation and they want to find you, where do they go?

[00:53:14] AL: They go to www.leluusa.com, it’s right here.