How I Built This with Guy Raz

Babylist: Natalie Gordon. How a new mom used nap time to build a $500M business.

November 3, 2025

Key Takeaways Copied to clipboard!

  • Natalie Gordon's first business, Lenguajero, failed due to a lack of a viable business model, providing crucial lessons that informed the successful launch of Babylist. 
  • The overwhelming and restrictive experience of traditional baby registries served as the direct 'aha' moment for Natalie Gordon to build the universal, modern registry that became Babylist. 
  • Early traction for Babylist was achieved through grassroots efforts, including personalized outreach to mommy bloggers and a strategic post on Hacker News titled "I'm a pregnant hacker." 
  • Natalie Gordon strategically used high revenue figures (even if initially questioned as GMV) as the opening slide in pitches to immediately capture investor attention and force deeper engagement. 
  • The choice of investors, like Norwest Venture Partners, who aligned on growth expectations, was crucial for forcing Babylist to mature financially and execute on stated goals. 
  • Natalie Gordon attributes the initial idea and timing of Babylist's founding to luck, but credits the difficult transition from founder to CEO as requiring significant, non-lucky hard work and grit. 
  • Babylist's long-term vision extends beyond product registries into a broader health platform, exemplified by the addition of services like helping families obtain breast pumps through insurance (Babylist Health). 

Segments

Early Amazon Career
Copied to clipboard!
(00:05:56)
  • Key Takeaway: Amazon in the mid-2000s was still considered an upstart compared to competitors like Microsoft in the Seattle tech scene.
  • Summary: Natalie Gordon was part of the founding team for Amazon Fresh, which presented complex logistical problems due to handling groceries instead of just books. At that time (2004-2008), Amazon was not as mainstream as it is today, and securing a job there held less prestige than at Microsoft. This early experience provided valuable lessons in solving hard problems.
First Failed Startup: Lenguajero
Copied to clipboard!
(00:08:28)
  • Key Takeaway: Lenguajero, a peer-to-peer Spanish/English language exchange platform, failed because it was never set up with a sustainable business model, earning a maximum of $40 in its best month.
  • Summary: During a sabbatical in Latin America, Natalie Gordon built Lenguajero to address her own need for language practice, connecting users for 20-minute exchanges. The project had thousands of users but lacked monetization strategy, operating primarily on her savings. This experience was later framed by reading ‘The Lean Startup’ as a blueprint for what she did wrong.
Babylist’s ‘Aha’ Moment
Copied to clipboard!
(00:17:50)
  • Key Takeaway: The visceral frustration of using an overwhelming, single-store baby registry scanner gun led directly to the Babylist concept, which aimed for universality and modern aesthetics.
  • Summary: Natalie experienced extreme overwhelm and frustration while trying to create a registry at a big box baby store, leading her to walk out in tears without adding a single item. She envisioned a universal registry that allowed mixing and matching products from any store, looked modern, and included requests for practical help like dog walking or cloth diaper service funding.
MVP Development and Launch
Copied to clipboard!
(00:23:38)
  • Key Takeaway: The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for Babylist was launched in one month, requiring Natalie to partner with a design student in the Philippines for the user interface.
  • Summary: Natalie quit her consulting job to build the registry, taking the MVP development seriously by launching within a month. The initial business model relied on affiliate links, where Babylist referred traffic to retailers like Target, earning a percentage commission on sales. The launch was promoted by emailing 10 bloggers and posting on Hacker News as “I’m a pregnant hacker.”
Early Traction and Structure
Copied to clipboard!
(00:30:00)
  • Key Takeaway: Earning $140 in the second month of Babylist felt like a significant victory compared to the $40 maximum of her previous venture, confirming the viability of the new affiliate-based model.
  • Summary: While caring for her newborn son, Natalie limited her work to 45 minutes a day initially, finding structure and fun in solving customer support issues and making small product updates. The $140 revenue proved that the core problem—getting people to create registries—was solved, suggesting growth was dependent on increasing the number of registries.
Accelerator and First Hires
Copied to clipboard!
(00:42:11)
  • Key Takeaway: Participating in the 500 Startups accelerator provided the first significant funding ($600,000) and forced Natalie to transition from a solo founder to hiring and managing a team, which she found agonizing.
  • Summary: The accelerator experience was challenging as a solo founder among teams, highlighting the immediate need to hire to build the required iPhone app and hire a marketer. Natalie struggled with defining roles, interviewing, and the emotional difficulty of giving quick feedback or firing employees, leading her to hire an executive coach for management skills.
Growth Strategy: Pinterest Bet
Copied to clipboard!
(00:52:48)
  • Key Takeaway: Babylist achieved hockey stick growth after 2015 by strategically investing in Pinterest’s newly opened advertising platform, leveraging the platform’s alignment with their core female demographic.
  • Summary: The initial growth was ‘slowly viral’ through word-of-mouth among new parents, but this changed when Pinterest began offering promoted pins. Babylist invested heavily on day one of the advertising platform opening, which drove significant user sign-ups, even though revenue realization lagged behind sign-ups.
Shift to First-Party E-commerce
Copied to clipboard!
(01:01:06)
  • Key Takeaway: The painful transition from affiliate revenue to holding inventory was driven by the need to control Babylist’s destiny as retailer relationships became unstable.
  • Summary: The initial affiliate model felt risky because revenue depended on a few retailer relationships. Natalie naively decided Babylist should become a retailer, leading to years of logistical pain managing sales tax, returns, and inventory storage (piling bassinets in the office). This shift ultimately became the core part of their business model, offering better margins and user experience control.
Investor Pitching Strategy
Copied to clipboard!
(01:07:30)
  • Key Takeaway: Leading pitches with high revenue figures forces investors to take the company’s scale seriously.
  • Summary: Initial investor responses were often soft rejections, but Natalie Gordon countered this by leading her pitch with the projected $250 million revenue for the year. When investors questioned if this was Gross Merchandise Value (GMV), confirming it was actual revenue prompted them to lean in and involve partners. This strategy successfully navigated initial skepticism by immediately presenting compelling financial data.
Selecting Aligned Investors
Copied to clipboard!
(01:08:21)
  • Key Takeaway: Choosing investors like Norwest Venture Partners who align on growth expectations prevents issues arising from raising too much capital prematurely.
  • Summary: Natalie Gordon observed that some companies raise too much money, leading to wishful thinking about future growth. Partnering with Norwest ensured mutual alignment on growth expectations, which consequently forced Babylist to grow up and become serious about financial discipline. This alignment emphasized the necessity of saying what they would do and then delivering on those commitments.
Babylist’s Future Verticals
Copied to clipboard!
(01:09:06)
  • Key Takeaway: Babylist is expanding its mission to support families by integrating health services like providing insurance-covered breast pumps.
  • Summary: The vision for Babylist is to help families stay more connected and become better families overall. In 2022, the company launched Babylist Health, which assists new parents in obtaining breast pumps covered by insurance or Medicaid. This move positions Babylist to become a health platform, recognizing that health and wellness are paramount concerns during the period surrounding childbirth.
Luck Versus Hard Work
Copied to clipboard!
(01:10:39)
  • Key Takeaway: The initial concept and timing of Babylist were products of luck, while the evolution into a major company required significant, deliberate hard work.
  • Summary: The convergence of the initial idea, learned lessons, and Natalie Gordon’s personal timing (having a baby) is attributed to total luck. However, the difficult transition from founder to CEO required substantial, dedicated hard work that is distinct from luck. This sustained effort and grit were necessary to achieve the company’s current scale as one of the largest baby registry sites in the U.S.
Small Business Spotlight: Aransi
Copied to clipboard!
(01:12:46)
  • Key Takeaway: Peter Mann founded Aransi after his son’s severe asthma attacks were linked to airborne allergens, leading to a pivot toward motor technology for data centers.
  • Summary: Peter Mann, a former Dell engineer, created Aransi air purifiers after being underwhelmed by existing products when treating his infant son’s asthma. After initial success, COVID-19 caused market saturation, prompting a pivot to focus on the electric motor technology inside the device. Mann later discovered he was autistic at age 55, which provided context for his hyper-focus and system-building abilities, leading him to focus on workplace success for autistic adults.