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Welcome back to she Pivots. I'm Laura Modi.
Welcome back to she Pivots, the podcast where we talk with women who dare to pivot out of one career and into something new and explore how their personal lives impact these decisions. I'm your host Emily Tisch Sussman. Today we're sitting down with Laura Mody, the CEO and co founder of Bobbie, a woman who not only transformed her own struggle into a groundbreaking business, but is actively working to shift an entire conversation, one that so many women have felt deeply, but often in silence.
Laura was just. Like so many new moms, eager, exhausted, and determined to do everything quote right, and for so many, the right way is often presented as one thing breastfeeding. Bobby is a company that's redefining what it means to feed our babies. It is the first FDA approved organic baby formula that is a go to choice for millions of parents. But before Laura built Bobby. Into a household name in infant formula, she had a decade long career in tech, from Google to Airbnb.
Laura left behind her successful career to solve for a problem that she herself experienced, and admittedly I did too. In fact, this conversation was deeply personal for me. As a mother of three, I also struggled with breastfeeding my first child and was met with an overwhelming sense of guilt and self doubt. Society had conditioned me to believe that anything less than exclusively breastfeeding was a failure, and I internalized that pressure. I remember feeling like I had to.
Justify my choice to use formula, as if I was letting my baby down. It took time and. My experience with my other children to fully embrace that feeding my baby in a way that worked for both of us was not only okay, but the best decision for my mental health. That's why Laura's work with Bobby
is so inspiring. She didn't just want to create a better formula, She wanted to create a better conversation, one where moms could make the best choice for their families, without guilt, without judgment, and with full confidence that their babies were getting the nutrition they needed. Laura is considered one of the leaders of our time. In fact, Time
magazine honored her as Woman of the Year. She is a force to be reckoned with, and in this episode, we're going to talk about how she left behind her career at Airbnb and turned her personal struggle into purpose by founding Bobby. Laura's story is the perfect example of how our most personal moments. Lead to monumental pivots that can not only change our lives, but thousands of others. Let's jump right in.
I am Laura Mody, I am the CEO of Bobby and I'm Organic infant formula.
You are from Ireland, I am What was it like to grow up? How many siblings do you have?
Was it city country? It tell us about it. It was deep country from the west of Ireland, a little town called Westport in Mayo. I am the eldest of five, which actually is a relatively small family. My dad is one of thirteen, so even within the area there'd be a lot of kids, a lot of cousins. Grew up with forty eight first cousins around the area. It was a quintessential Ireland upbringing. And are you the oldest of all of the children? Oh so well, out of all
the cousins, I would be higher up. I think I'm like eight of the forty eight, But I am the fifth, I'm the eldest of the five kids at home, and then you also need to be the role model child as well, right, you know it's the eldest you are in many ways. The experiment for is the school going to work? You know, whatever trial and error the parents wanted to have, like it was on you. Yeah, and
if it worked, then the rest followed. So like I was the first to go to boarding school and it worked, so all the other four after me followed.
So your family had a business, your father was an entrepreneur. Were you always involved in it was entrepreneurship kind of in the in the blood of the family, like in the family culture. Yeah, it's funny.
You never grow up thinking this is in the blood ever, you know, like you're just at the dinner table and you're always having conversations whether it's about risk or decision making or to be honest, you're just consuming through osmosis
the ups and downs of what he's going through. So at the time you never know it until you reach a certain age and then you go, that's what that was about, and you know it's just part of your every day and you don't, like I said, you really don't realize the benefits of it until you're in it yourself. Was it truly a family business? Like?
Were his siblings involved? Was your mom involved? The kids get involved?
It was a family business with regards to him and his two brothers, so there was thirteen kids. It was third generation, so it's been passed on and it's obviously evolved through multiple ways through every generation being passed down. And now I want to say there is six of between the cousins and my siblings who are now back in the business involved as well.
Wow, did you have a vision of what it would be like to be a grown up? Like did you think that you would grow up and be in the business or do the opposite, like, did you have a vision of what you thought it would be like?
God, do we ever have a vision of what we're like as a grown up? I know, and no, I don't think I ever had a vision of being in the business. I think there was always just an assumption that one day you will come back, and I never thought otherwise until I left the country and it was a few years after leaving Arland and I thought, I don't know if I'm ever going to return. Wow.
Yeah, what about it made you think that you wouldn't return.
You know. I think it was the first moment of also just realizing I also can choose my own path and forge my own way. And I was making decisions and joining companies and doing things that were probably so distant from the family business. You know. The family business makes construction, clothing, ppe clothing, really sexy stuff, you know, like hard hats and I've vins jackets, but very different from the technology world that I had entered in Silicon Valley.
So I just grew further and further from I think the core job itself, and I just loved the adrenaline of starting new things and trying new things and disrupting, you know, And then obviously evolved to a place where I had children and they were American.
Right, So when you took the first job outside of the family business, was the first job Google, that's like quite a first job. That's a big deal.
The first job was Google, And you're right, it was a big job. I remember applying for it out in California. I felt like such a dream.
But Ireland's a big tech hub, right, Yeah, Ireland's a big tech tech cup and they have a big Google office there in Dublin too, just getting built out at the time.
And yeah, I applied for a job out in America. It felt dreamy and you didn't think twice really about it. You do it, you go through the interview process. I actually decided not to tell my parents I was applying for it, because you know, you just don't know where
it's going to go. Go through the interview process. Anyway, I get the job, and I'll never forget going out for dinner at my parents in Dublin and my dad just putting pressure on me, say I'm like, you know, college is coming to you know, you got to figure out what you're going to be doing. And I remember saying like, okay, how am I going to break the news like I am going to move to America. And I don't know how I said it. I think I casually said, you know, you guys should come out for Christmas,
come visit me out a in America. And he just turned to me and he's like, sorry, what are you saying? And yeah, I got the job out in California and moved out there pretty promptly, And in my mind I kept thinking, I will go for a year, I'll go for a year or two, get. Some experience, and I'll come back. And that was it.
Soon Laura was on a plane all the way to California. I want you to put yourself back in the mid two thousands, while most companies still had their fax number on their business cards and we were just beginning to use tech, Google was making waves. They are in offices, ping pong tables, flexible hours, They were changing the game, and Laura was at the heart of it.
I mean it was electric. It was, you know, landing a dream job. You I mean, they had a rule internally where you get to spend like eighty percent on your core job and then twenty percent really ideating and working in other functions or working on these side projects. They allowed you to be an entrepreneur within the business and obviously a lot of different perks and benefits that were incredible at the time back in Silicon Valley. I mean, the whole thing was really just a dream. It was
phenomen and I was there for four years. I learned a lot. I was with exceptionally brilliant people. I mean truly, and I say this all the time, like I pinched myself every day. It was I am so lucky to be here. How did I get here? You're constantly trying to prove your value, But I never took it for granted. It was an exceptional experience.
So what were some of the entrepreneurial things you did when you were at Google?
I mean there was you know, there was like side projects that would come in from actually universities or even small government type stuff, and it was like ideating on new ways of driving efficiencies or new processes. I mean there wasn't It wasn't like coming up with any like radically new business in the company. It was just being able to work on something different or even campaigns on
how to be able to promote something. But I was still relatively junior, so I was more plugged into other people's areas.
Yeah, but it was great. Yeah, but that's super interesting, and I feel I can give you a little bit of a taste of different fields, like a different field or a different function. Yeah, because what department were you actually working in? So I worked on the Google Finance product so op slash product management, and it was I mean, I don't know how much how many times I've shared this or not, but I would stare at financial information every day essentially the stock.
Market, and over time, after staring at it for so long, I became quite tapped into what was doing well, why things were doing well. I found myself day trading, which also advice for no one to ever do unless you really really get to like focus on this and you
are trained enough on it. But I actually became almost like addicted to the stock market, like in the job, and it was if I felt like entering an old boys club learning about the lingo of the stock market to watch trades, and I found myself like deep in these like subreddits of the world, no like truly, And I also I think gained a major appreciation for just investing as well, and the fact that women overall have
been left out of this world. And like I said, in Old Boys Club, it has become this thing we're just like men in general knew and understood it a lot more. But the closer I got to the nucleus of it, I realized it's actually not that complicated. It just had become this world where men have predominantly spent their time understanding and investing and playing in the stock market and women hadn't. And it's not about understanding it.
It was more about just like your innate ability to understand what you think might do well, how you gain that research and understanding. Anyway, women are amazing.
At We're going to take a short break and when we come back, Laura tells us about her first mini pivot out of the comfort of Google and into the unknown of a very famous startup. When I talk to women who want to make a pivot, there is often a hesitation of leaving a comfortable job. So how did you end up? Were you ready? I mean, you loved the experience of Google so much. Were you ready to move on? How did the next opportunity come up Were you looking?
Oh, this is a fun story. Speaking of the stock market, I a lot of my team was here in New York and I was out in the Berry. So the engineering team was here and I would come out every so often and we would do a lot of plugins with the New York Stock Exchange or the NASDAC, and I was out for some work trip. I don't know what was going on in the city at the time, but it was very hard to book hotels, and you know, for everything that Google offered, you know, there was still
a travel limit to how which you could book? And I'll never forget someone turning to me and they said, well, if you can't find a hotel, why don't you just book an airbed and breakfast. It's like, what the hell is an arabed breakfast? And I looked it up and I was floored. I mean floored. I remember that feeling of being like, who the hell came up with this concept? Are you telling me I can stay in like a real apartment, like someone's home in the middle of New
York City? And I did. I booked a two bed apartment in Soho where I was like working here for the week. I was typically staying at like I don't know, the Hilton, and you're going through a typical work experience, you know, going back to your hotel late at night and then into the office in the morning. Anyway, I called my friends back in Dublin. I was like, guys,
I have an apartment in New York City for a week. Anyway, they were on the first flight out and they met me at the apartment and I did my work thing, going in out of the office every day, and we would come home in the evening and we would like cook food and we would live in New York City
life and at the kid you not. At the end of that trip, I remember being like, I have to work for this company, and that feeling of just knowing you know what you want, or you have that light or trigger inside you that says, this is going to be big. This is going to be huge. I need to be part of whatever this is. Yeah, what was it about it that made you say I have to work with this company? Okay, going back to be Irisha. Just the hospitality of it all. I mean, the fact that you could truly.
Just live in someone else's home and community and removing that like stranger feeling. It's just the idea that you could bring community together in a close way like that and stay in a stranger's bed. That idea just blew my mind. And you know, growing up in a country where hospitality is its currency, be in bees and community and family, people don't like call to say they're showing up. They just show up. They knock on your door. The
US walk in that is. That's how I grew up and I found you know, in many ways, I think Airbnb pushing on this kind of next wave of belonging in community in a texture of in way the whole thing was just phenomenal. And then I also, to be honest, I think the investor in me was also going, hold on, hospitality is a huge business, and they are like truly disrupting it from the ground up in a really unique way.
And remember this was also at a time where on the back of two thousand and seven two thousand and eight crisis, you're looking at this going, actually, people can earn a living on this, like this makes a lot of sense. So the investor in me was quickly doing the calculation to realize this could be massive if done right,
and I want to be part of that. I'll never forget though, going through the interview process and you know, deciding I'm going to leave Google and go join this and I say Airben and Breakfast because it was called Airben and Breakfast at the time, and they were popping up in the news here and there for like, you know, there was a few things going wrong in the company.
And anyway, I'll never forget calling home and telling my dad that I'm going to leave Google join this company, and the response he was like, hold on a second, you're telling me that you were going to leave Google. And you're going to start at B and B. It's like, nope, that's not what I'm doing. It's like it sounds like you are like nope, but I remember having to explain the concept over and over and they just they couldn't
get their head around. It just didn't make sense. And you know, there was a lot of are you sure this is crazy? But ultimately it got to like I trust you if this makes sense, like you know, good luck, good riddance, let's see how it goes, and very irish like yep, sure, not quite sure, but okay, I'm behind you. And it wasn't that long after where all of a sudden, Airbnb was in every country, every town, every village, all
across the world. And then you know, the parents' script flipped from you know, she's lost her mind leaving good Google too she knew, yeah, yeah, she all made sense. And when you had this revelation like this is the company that I want to be involved with, how did you literally take the step. I think that many of us have had the feeling of, oh, I wish I could be involved in this, but we don't often know
how to actually take the step to find them. Did you just like look online for their job openings, Like how did you actually connect with them? That's exactly it found found a job opening. Also, remember thinking there wasn't really an appropriate job that really quite made sense. So I just applied to any and I remember reaching out and they pulled me in for an interview. And even during the interview process, there were people in the interview process who were like, are
you sure you want to leave Google for this? I was like, well, I'm not quite sure. Now didn't make you question it a little bit, but I needed something new, and I think that was always in me. There was that desire or spark for for always wanting to do something new. Yeah, I really wanted to be there. I
really believed in the concept. So no, I just I reached out for some random role and then it just turned into one interview after another, and I think I've reached out to also one of the founders on Twitter. I was like, I applied for a job. I really want this, Yeah, And it was pretty swift.
Actually, I did have a question about the role that you went into because it wasn't like an exact next step from the role that you had at Google.
I mean, Airbnb was a genius at hiring. Now in hindsight, they looked for people who had deep, deep passion to want to be there and people that they knew were smart enough and hungry enough and a depth obviously, you know, I mean early on, I sho'll say like, generalists make the world go around, and for an early small company, they do because there wasn't a month or a quarter where every single person wasn't wearing multiple hats, and you
had to because so fast, you know. So I joined technically in the world of operations, but over the course of maybe the first year, I was leading growing and scaling customer service operations, to growing call centers, to going back to Europe and opening up offices, to trying to reduce our contact rate from you know, bookings versus customer service tickets. You are thrown into whatever the business needs. And besides of some very few specialized roles, most people
were generalists. Again, now running and on my own business, I can see that I can see that need. It's really important, and it is those two things are the most important, which is if you don't have the passion and desire and hunger to be there also with that owner founder mindset, then you're not willing to roll with the punches. You know. You got to be there so like truly with that feeling of like you want to see this succeed just as much as the founders do. And now I see how important that is.
And there was a different a change in the positioning while you were there right that at first it was really thought it was a tech platform, and then you started to change the thinking about what the actual product was. Oh, I love you asked this question. So one of my all time favorite mentors idols, Chip Conley. He is a hospitality guru. He grew the joa devive hotel chain and Chip came into a fireside chat with the company one day and really just speak to the world of hospitality.
And we decided to bring him on board as like a part time reading guru and leader in the business. And I was assigned to work closely with him to really figure out how we were going to scale and operationalize hospitality. And I'll never forget. I actually remember very vividly what room I was sitting in at the office and we were having a conversation about the product, and people in the room they were talking about the product product.
This and we got to change the product, or like there's bugs in the product, and you know, what are the features of the product. And he's sitting there like glazing over on this conversation. Anyway, the meeting ends and he pulls me aside and he's like, they keep talking about the product without the Irish accent. And he's like, what do they mean? And I was like, well, you know the technology. And I pull up you know, airbnb dot com and I look at the homepage. He's like,
isn't the product the host? Isn't the product the person who is giving the experience of hospitality and opening up their home and keeping it clean and providing a memorable experience. Isn't that the product? And it was like a light going off. It's like, oh my god, you were absolutely right. People are not buying or using Airbnb because the button felt amazing to click on, or because it was such an easy purchasing experience, Like that is your path to
great acquisition. Yes, it's your path to great discovery, but that's not why people use it. And that mentality and that triggering and you know, full credit to Chip for really triggering that idea in the company. It then became
our mission to filter this across the whole business. Though, if we could get that mentality to realize that we need to make sure that every single experience across multi million millions of homes all across this world, all have to be able to provide a unique and credible experience that matches expectations. That is the product, and it did,
it changed, and it's It's one piece of advice. I mean to be fair in life, but for a lot of early companies to really know what you stand for, know why people are coming to, know your why, and not to lose it because it's very easy just to wake up and do your day to day and get lost in the day to day operations of the business. But then if you zoom out, you have to remember that at the end of the day, people are coming to you for one very particular reason. Know your why.
After the break, we dive into Laura's personal experience that ultimately led her to start Bobby and how she's fighting on the front lines to change the way we think about formula feeding. Okay, so let's bring in your personal here. You were at Airbnb for many years.
Well, it was at Airbnb when my now husband, then stranger, had joined the company, and it was actually at a company happy hour late on a Friday night, and he was going through the consideration phase of joining and any he was invited to the happy hour and we got talking at the bar, and he we went on a date or two, and I think, deep down I was like, oh, please, don't join the company. But then he did join the company, and we worked and dated together for the next two years. I want to say.
Anyway, the source of it is was getting serious enough. He ultimately ended up leaving, and then just as he left, we got engaged. I stayed and then very quickly because I'm Irish, got pregnant and was having my first kid, and I was still at Airbnb, still loving my career, still in a position where I thought I'm going to go take leave and then I'm going to come back, and everything changed.
It's important to note at the time, not only was Laura working for a fast paced startup, her husband was also a founder.
So yeah, he had started his company on the outside. I was still at Airbnb, and we had our first daughter, and you know, first kidd, it's I mean, it's like a honeymoon. You're enjoying every part of it. It's great you're able to do it fairly easy with one kid. Bosh, what I on think I had been fully prepared for I knew I wasn't fully prepared for was how much reality did not match expectations for a lot of the
really fundamental parts of having a child. And actually, to bring it back to ship Conley, an equation that he used to always use was that disappointment equals expectations minus reality consumer. That can apply on a lot of context, a lot of context. And I went into motherhood and one of those first things that I expected I would do and that I expected would work, that I expected the skies would open up, was going to be around how I
fed my daughter and Irish Catholic woman. I thought, I'm going to walk in here and I'm going to be up to breasted turn It's going to be beautiful. And reality was just not that at all. I mean, I God, I like even have PTSD thinking back to it now, because I mean, if I had gotten the help, if I had lactation support around me, you know, early on, but no, I just the latch wasn't right. It just
wasn't working. It led to mastitis horrible. You know, my my nipples were bleeding and bruised and blistered and I ultimately couldn't get milk out. And this was a few days in and I did. I had a fabulous alactation consultant. She actually came to my house and she's like, you need to turn to formula, like it's you need to give your breasts a few days break. We need to like work on this back up. This one will work,
this one. We went through the whole thing, and I remember just thinking, man, I was completely unprepared for that. And yeah, I found myself then turning to formula. And had you thought specifically did you do actually contemplated breastfeeding, Like I just didn't think about it. I felt like they told me to breastfeeding, so I did, but I didn't. That's a great question. No, Yeah, No, I just felt like people told me I was supposed to do it. No, I just assumed I would. Yeah, and I just assumed
it would work. But I didn't go through any steps to go. Let me make sure I'm prepared for this. Let me make sure that i'm I have the support around me, I have a lactation consultant, I can call I'm mentally prepared for the ups and downs, and I mean, honestly, even the physical the physical pain was something no one had ever talked about, yeah, at all.
So I was very taken back, very And it was one of those first moments because obviously you start feeding in the hospital, and it was one of those moments being like, oh man, this is the first part of motherhood that I feel completely in the dark on and completely unprepared for.
Laura and I are about the same age, and as she was talking through all of this, I couldn't help but feel those old feelings bubble up inside of me. It's like she was speaking directly about my experience. I remember that guilt and the doubt that started to become
about so much more than breastfeeding. It was about my ability to be a mother, to care for my child, that I was somehow doing a bad job, and I think really terrified me that I felt like, I'm definitely doing this very badly, Like it's not going well. Can I keep a child alive? Like can I do any of the parts?
And that's exactly it. If this is meant to be one of the most easy, beautiful pieces of the job, that is you start questioning yourself. Yeah, and that guilt starts to come in where you're going, well, if I can't, am I failing her? Am I failing motherhood? Am I failing?
You know? I'm just failing? And it's that it plays on you and I hear it all the time with mothers, which is, even if they do get their supply up and it ends up working, you go through the early days of questioning like are you able to do this? Not just feeding, but are you able to take on
motherhood at large? Becomes a big question. But I also remember that feeling taking me back where I had gone through all of these moments in my life and my career, where I could stare at the unknown and I could still find myself in a confident position I can do this. I had enough kind of mental strength to be able to push through any unknowns. That was my life. In
many ways, it became my identity. So to be in a position where I was now the most vulnerable mom woman I had ever been in my life, that emotion took me back.
It's like who am I?
That identity crisis of questioning yourself and feeling guilty to the point where you're making up a bottle. You're on your way to the park to meet with your mom. Friends you know are successfully breastfeeding and it's beautiful and it's going great for them, and you're looking at the formula in your bossy and you're like, will this pass his breast moment because you don't want to have the conversation.
You don't want to get the sigh, you don't want to get the I'm sorry, and yeah, the emotions are real.
Often our guests cry on this show, but this is the first time that I've cried on the show, Emily, because that was exactly what I felt that my whole identity was being really good in like really good in conflict and really good finding a path forward through something I didn't know and I couldn't find a path forward, and it was so much bigger than just breastfeeding. Was like, I can't figure out how to take care of this baby that it really hits.
It does, and to think about let's get back to the joys of parenting. You have just created the most precious, most beautiful thing that you will ever have in life. Like your heart explodes in ways that you had just never ever, ever experienced, and the fact that you are now not able to fully enjoy that exploding heart and moment enjoy because you're also taking on the conflict of failing her, failing you, failing society, and all these expectations
like that's unfair. This is a very special moment in time. You should be enjoying every aspect of this without having to take on all the guilts that comes with it as well. And obviously, I mean, we co down a rabbit hole on this topic, but you zoom out. And I've spent a lot of time studying where does that guilt come from? Why is there so much pressure, or where does it come from in society? And I don't think it is
and I truly believe this. I don't think it's that your friend or someone who gave that sigh, that person's not judging, they're not They truly want the best for you, they want the best of the baby. They're not going to bed that night going hm, I can't believe she's feeding her baby formula. They're not. They're moving on. But we have just built ourselves in society to believe that there is one way two feet of baby and that's
what's best. That has just been a societal message over and over and because of that, everyone around us and sometimes it's, like I said, they're definitely not judging. It could be a pediatrician, it could be the person who's introducing you back to the office. It's just their natural instinct is just to have a reaction to the fact that you may not be doing what society has put on a pedestal that is it. So now we're all battling with the internal judgment in guilt, but that person
has already moved on. They're not thinking about it, they're certainly not judging. And then the bigger question becomes in, especially for a brand like Bobby, and we're trying to shift that narrative, which is, how do you shift the societal narrative that even though breast might be considered best, that what's best is really whatever that personal situation or dynamic is, and how you change that message.
Laura didn't arrive at that incredibly helpful and encouraging message quite so easily. She first went to the store to find formula for her newborn baby and was mortified at what she found, and slowly between all the diapers and sleepless nights. She started to put the pieces together. We as a society, we are sorely behind the ball when it came to healthy, nutritious formula options. That here's the key point. Parents felt confident buying for their baby.
It's also funny, there's this assumption that I with my first child. I was in the pharmacy and I saw the product, and there's an assumption. Then I was like, Aha, I'm going to go start a formula company. No, no, I was.
I was quite impressed you were thinking about anything.
I don't know. Five days in, I was still like in that emotional guilts and roller coaster. I was forty pounds overweight, I was exhausted. I was like, who the hell am I this is ever gonna work? And No, it was like they were all little like steps towards It's what I call my PhD at the time in this market, industry and product where then I got home when I read the back of the label, and then I went on Google. Then I'm in the middle of the night and I'm in my subreddits and I'm consuming.
I'm consuming and consuming, and that goes on for the next year. Even while I returned back to Airbnb after leave, and that was another moment. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. You were telling me that the same government who says, hey, mom, you should breastfeed for six months is also the same government who's not giving us the paid leave to do so. Everywhere I went, I was having these little epiphanies for what needed to change, from the product to the message,
to policies across the board. And I was two weeks pregnant with my second child, and it was at that point I peed on the stick it said I was pregnant. I turned to my husband, I said, I'm going to start a formula company and there will be a better formula on the market by the time I had this baby.
Went to market immediately making waves.
Well, there's a new style of organic formula called Bobby, and it is changing the industry. Bobby had more than eighteen million dollars in sales in its first year and it is the fastest growing infant formula to enter the American market in decades.
Founder of Bobby, it's the first and only USDA certified organic baby formula manufactured right here in the US. Bobby It's named after her daughter's word for Bottle was founded in twenty eighteen after Modi realized the only baby formulas available in stores contained ingredients that she would not even feed herself.
So you had the initial hurdle of saying, I have the answer to this problem, but you had an additional hurdle of convincing everyone that there should be a solution, right, because we have this societal problem that everyone thinks you're just supposed to recue that you have.
My God, I've PTSD does say that, I know that was exactly right. But let's start with the fact that I was seven and a half months pregnant and I was waddling around Silicon Valley meeting one investor after another. And you know, I also PSA say like, not every investor is made equal, you know, they all look at problems and solutions very differently. But yeah, I was walking into a predominantly male culture who had predominantly been investing in technology, and just even CpG in general wasn't as
it just wasn't as predominant as tech. But here's what really hit me when I went to go pitch the problem. One of the challenges I had was being seven and a half months pregnant. It was very hard for investors not to look at me as a mom that had a problem she wanted to solve for herself, versus an entrepreneur who saw a really big opportunity. And I felt that you got the questions. They're looking at your stomach, they're questioning the why behind this, and you're trying to
get them to focus on the bigger picture. But it's an emotional and extremely personal product. It's an extremely personal problem. So if someone on the other side doesn't see the problem with current formulas or ways of messaging and a narrative that needs to change, it's very hard to break through, very hard. And yes, because of societal problem, there was really only a small percentage of them that the message landed for. Did you find that there was one thing
in particular that broke through. I think when you're looking to change or disrupt an industry, usually when it's predominantly
owned by a few players. So in this situation, the infant formula market for decades was a duoptly and that duoptly, you know, the same formula that you yourself probably consumed as a child was the same one you remind for your and no matter how much you believe in the change or not, or this is the product that you want to back, it was hard to deny that this was a product in industry that hadn't changed in fourty plus years.
Bobby redefined what formula was and not without bumps in the road. Early on in the business, the FDA came knocking and it required Laura to think on her feet.
It's not easy to go about FDA approval for anything. I mean, you didn't just start a company. You started a company that has to go through a lot of regulatory processes.
What was it like to learn those.
We actually got FDA greenrit a year ago, but we spent that last year sourcing ingredients from partners that have the same level of expectations and high quality standards.
That we do.
Then the formula shortage crisis happened and Bobby once again was staring down a huge problem. But in true Laura fashion, she turned what could've been a low point into one of her most savvy business decisions yet, her decision to buy a manufacturing plant.
I'm one year into the market and I woke up to the President of the United States on the news basically saying that America wasn't able to feed babies. We had hit an infant formula crisis in this country. Think about that. For forty plus years, this industry had really never been in the news. No one ever talked about it. In fact, they were looking for the exit any time anyone spoke about infant formula. And now it's all over the news. It was the second most talked about news
item outside of the Ukraine War. And it's true, America wasn't resilient enough because of a lack of manufacturing it had in this country, the lack of choice, the duopoly, the concentration. We were not resilient enough to sustain a crisis. And in that moment, I remember thinking, Wow, on one side, I am sitting here and I'm watching the news, but this is my industry. I am leading and in many ways what I hope to be trailblazing and disrupting this market.
And this is the moment. It's in crisis, and you have a choice in that moment, and I remember thinking it was like, Okay, so we can either take a step back and we can watch this on the sidelines and see how it pans out, or we can actually be part of this change, and you're right, only being like one and a half years into actually being in the market, it wasn't a very natural thing to go
and we should go buy manufacturing. You usually find that a decade or two after a company has been in existence. But it was one of those things I couldn't. I went to bed every night going I know there needs to be more manufacturing, and I strongly believe that Bobby's going to be around in a big legacy company in the future. We need to make this move now and we can be part of the resiliency this country needs.
And I also I think like deep down then as a mother also having American babies and everything in me, I was like, we should get to a place where America is able to make high quality infant formula and feed it to its own American babies. We should be proud of the food that we were able to make for our babies. And it was just a big personal mission. How did you really take those steps? Like did you go out back to your funders and say, I know that you funded us for Xemount, but I need, you know,
ten times more than that, because I'm buying a factory. Yes, great, Yeah, great, I mean that was a bitch. Yes, there was also swallowing a little bit of like there was some humility as well in it, because it was it wasn't that long before it I was like, we don't need to buy manufacturing. No, we don't need to do that. You know, there's enough manufacturing. We'll be fine. And then to get to the place I was like, no, actually there's not.
And I also need to be malleable enough to be able to change or pivot my decision for what I believe is right and what needs to happen. And that has also become a huge entrepreneurial learning on how important it is even in the job to also be able to build a plan and a direction towards a vision, but know that sometimes your plan and direction are going to have to change. And when a market changes like that is your moment to also say, like, how does your plan change to address it?
What is it going to have ten thousand million more questions? What is something that happened? It can be something we talked about is being totally different that at the time you felt like was a real low, but now in hindsight you see it as having really launched you into the position that you are now, I'm going to regulated place, So there's a lot of lows and uncertainties when you are heavily regulated. I mean one of them was, you know,
the FDA. The FDA showed up early on during a pilot of of Bobby and they questioned our product and direction and they really really forced a major shift in the business, Like we had to pull back our existing product, We had to spend time reformulating manufacturing here in the US, adjusting our supply chain. It took me back probably a year or two, and it felt like a low at the time. And yeah, I think you said it perfectly.
Now I look back and I think, no, that was one of the best experiences and also catapulted us to where we are.
Do you think you'll pivot again?
Absolutely absolutely. I think there will be pivots within Bobby as a company. I think there'll be pivots in my own life, my career, I hope. So, I mean, life without pivots is what's it living for? You know? Absolutely?
Thank you so much, Laura, thanks for coming on. It's been such an interesting conversation. I really really enjoyed it.
I've loved it. I mean, we could get into like three seasons of this. Let me just keep going. I know, like, do you want a whole season? Like? We have so much want to talk about. I'm sorry for making you cry. No, no, I felt very scene good.
Laura lives with her beautiful family and is still growing Bobby and working to change the narrative around formula feeding and making huge headway. I might add so that one day the next generation hopefully won't have to feel the same pressures and guilt we felt. To stay up to. Date with Laura, you can follow her on Instagram at Laura Mody. Thanks for listening to this episode of she Pivots. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, leave us
a rating and tell your friends about us. To learn more about our guests, follow us on Instagram at she pivots the Podcast, or sign up for our newsletter where you can get exclusive behind the scenes content on our
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