Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / How to create a 5,000 person waitlist for your DTC startup with pet care brand FABLE Co-Founder Sophie Bakalar

Transcript

How to create a 5,000 person waitlist for your DTC startup with pet care brand FABLE Co-Founder Sophie Bakalar · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Sophie Bacalar for Female Startup Club. Hey everyone, it's Dune here, your host and hype girl. Joining me on the show today is Sophie Bacalar, the co-founder of Fable.
• 0:21
  Fable is a direct-to-consumer product innovation studio that solves real problems for pets and their humans through thoughtful, functional designs. The brand leverages the latest research in pet wellness, designing the most convenient, versatile, secure, and durable gear to help you appreciate every moment with your pet inside and outside the home.
• 0:45
  In this episode, we're chatting through the lessons learned after spending time working in VC, what to do and what not to do when you're pitching your startup idea, how she built a 5,000 person waiting list through thoughtful design, and why you shouldn't keep your idea a secret before launching.
• 1:03
  If you're listening to this, firstly, thanks. And secondly, I am just so excited. We've got some really exciting things in the works. And what I can say is that we're about to launch our new brand, Look & Feel. It's been a few months in the making right now, and I am just on the edge of my seat to share it with you all. So please keep your eyes peeled. And if you're not already on our mailing list, pop over and drop your email in to be the first to see the new look when it comes out. I can't wait to share it with you.
• 1:33
  Ah, okay. Let's get stuck into this episode. This is Sophie for Female Startup Club. Sophie, hi and welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. Hi, thank you so much for having me. It's so great to be here. I'm really excited to dig in. Me too. I'm so excited to dig in. I always love to start by getting you to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what your business actually is.
• 2:00
  Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Sophie. I'm the co-founder and co-CEO of Fable. It's an e-commerce business focused in the pet space. And we think of ourselves kind of as an innovation lab for pets. So we like to really focus on design and problem solving around the specific pain points that pets and people have, particularly, you know,
• 2:23
  young pet parents in cities, that's sort of what we are. And so that tends to be our focus, but very broadly, pets and people across the board. And yeah, we really orient around what are specific pain points that this customer has and how can we solve them through being more thoughtful about product design. So creating leashes, collars, harnesses, beds, bowls, crates, all of the products that pets and their humans use every single day, but really rethinking the
• 2:51
  very fundamental core design process and making products that just don't exist anywhere else in the market. Yeah. A lot of the things I saw on your website were so unique to me. And I was like, I don't even know what that is, but it looks really cool. That's what we like to hear. Don't know what it is. Let me tell you about it. Really important question first. Do you have dogs in the office? Is your office one of those offices with lots of pets? Yeah.
• 3:21
  Once upon a time, it sure was. We do not have an office right now because everyone is remote and everybody has dogs at their home offices, of course. But once upon a time, yeah, pre-COVID, pre-pandemic, we had a very, very pet-friendly office, which I highly recommend for a number of reasons. There's a lot of evidence that having pets in an office can be really good for morale and work ethic and just keeping everybody emotionally and productivity.
• 3:50
  productivity, I don't know, on track. I know what you mean. I know what you mean. Gosh, I just love offices with dogs. They are just the best. So the best. Yeah. But let's go back to when this all started. I want to kind of rewind and go back to the time where you actually thought about starting this brand and where the entrepreneurial pathway kind of kicked off for you. Yeah. I mean, to really talk about
• 4:19
  the entrepreneurial pathway, you kind of have to go to the previous business that we started, which my co-founder and I had started an enterprise SaaS business back in 2015. And that was data visualization software for management consultants. So very, very different space, really could not be farther from pet products. And I only mentioned that because I at least started that for all the wrong reasons. I wanted to
• 4:48
  quit the job that I was in, which is a trader at a hedge fund. I wanted to be my own boss. I just, yeah, basically didn't want to have a manager anymore. That was kind of the driving force. And this opportunity kind of fell in our laps for a number of reasons, which, you know, might be a whole separate discussion. But I only bring that up because I do think that I often hear that as from people.
• 5:12
  newer entrepreneurs that one of the reasons they want to start a business is because they don't want to work for anybody. And it's such a common misconception about starting a business that you don't work for anybody. And in fact, you work for so many people as a startup founder and as a CEO, you work for
• 5:29
  customers, you work for your employees, you work for your co-founders, you might work for your investors. There are a lot of parties that you have to consider. And in fact, way more than if you work in sort of a traditional office environment where you're typically beholden maybe to one manager, maybe a couple people above you. But for the most part, there's a hierarchy and the buck doesn't stop with you the way that it does at a startup. And so that was a really
• 5:56
  quick learning for me that the independence of starting a business is not quite what you might envision and that that's not a reason to start a business. However, it was a wonderful experience. I loved what we built. It was just full of challenges that you cannot access doing anything else because there's such breadth of problems that you have to solve on the fly. And it's really great if you have sort of a puzzle solving experience.
• 6:22
  personality, which I think I do. So I loved it. It just really fed my appetite for operating and entrepreneurship. And that company was actually acquired in 2016. So it was a very quick pathway where we started the business, we ran the business, and we sold the business in a little less than a year and a half, actually, it was very, very quick. And then I moved into VC, into venture capital, where I started investing in startups. And that actually just
• 6:50
  continued to feed my passion for starting my own business, which ultimately led to Fable, just sort of a culmination of a bunch of things where my business partner and I are huge, crazy pet people. We love, love, love animals, all animals. I'm especially a crazy dog person. So there's that. And then just seeing this really big opportunity in the market
• 7:12
  from sort of this macro perspective that I was getting an opportunity to have at this venture capital fund where I was seeing a lot of businesses in similar spaces and seeing where the opportunities were. So that was more the that's the second origin story, which is much more authentic and positive because, you know,
• 7:30
  Startups are hard. You have to absolutely love the thing that you're building or it's going to get very tiresome very quickly. And you have to go into it knowing that you're beholden to a lot of different parties and, you know, their benefits to being, you know, the boss and not having anybody to report to. But then there are definitely a lot of challenges to that, too, which is nobody to blame when things go wrong.
• 7:55
  Absolutely. With your background coming from the venture capital side, did you decide to fundraise for the brand from the get-go or did you have a plan to bootstrap and then raise? What was the business model, I guess you would say? Yeah. We bootstrapped the first business completely and I'm happy to talk numbers there in terms of exactly how much it costs and all of that kind of stuff. But with this second business,
• 8:24
  Because of my venture capital background, I had such a good network of angel investors and VCs who I knew and who it happened so quick, to be frank, that we didn't really even have a plan for what the fundraising was. It's just I started talking about this idea to a few friends that I had in this space, and they were very interested in coming in. And, you know, it's a very different thing to take capital from people that you know really well and that you've worked with before. And so it just felt very natural.
• 8:54
  Although I'm a big fan of that, especially after the first experience we had with our startup, because there are a lot of advantages to that. And that is one way that you get to retain a lot of control and independence over your own business, obviously. Yeah, absolutely. Again, going back to this experience that you had in VC, what is the biggest pitfall that you see new entrepreneurs coming into the space and like pitching for money that they kind of like suffer from? Or maybe a better question is,
• 9:24
  What are the things that people do really well? And then what are the things that people don't do really well? Like what should people look out for? Yeah, it's funny because I see sort of a bifurcated mistake. It's on two broad ends of the spectrum. One is people coming way too early and just not being prepared at all, which is
• 9:43
  you we'd like to say that you get a lot of shots and like there's a learning curve with vc but it is hard vcc so many companies they talk to so many entrepreneurs it's very easy to make a bad first impression and then not get another chance and that's not to say that you shouldn't go in and pitch if you're not like fully you know dialed up and everything's perfect and it's really you know
• 10:06
  at 100% because it's never going to be there. But just making sure that you are prepared for that and that you, you know, have some validation of your concept and you have it fleshed out and you have a deck. And, you know, I'm a big proponent of having some sort of website, even if it's just a landing page with like a opt-in for a mailing list. Having something I think is really important.
• 10:28
  But then on the other end of the spectrum, just waiting too long and just waiting for everything to be perfect before you start chatting with people. Because again, it's never going to be perfect. And I think there's a lot of fear about talking to VCs from entrepreneurs, especially if it's your first time. And I mean, I saw so many companies as a VC. I can't even tell you. It was, you know, sometimes a dozen meetings a day.
• 10:53
  And if you're the type of person who gets really nervous and like your voice shakes in a meeting or you're worried you won't have exactly the right answer, it just feels very intimidating. Don't worry. We've seen that a million times and that doesn't predict success at all. You know, there's so many startup founders who came in and their voices were shaking or they were super nervous. And I'm like, firstly, don't be nervous. It's just a conversation. But secondly, you know...
• 11:21
  There are plenty of founders who are wonderful at managing a business who just aren't really great at that part of it. And it's fine. So just, yeah, don't be afraid of not being perfect in the meeting, but come prepared, I think is crucial. Yeah, that's so interesting and such a great insight. Thank you for sharing. Okay, so you make the decision you're going to fundraise. Are we talking 2018 here? Because you launched in 2019, right?
• 11:52
  Yeah, it was end of 2018 when we started chatting with people about the concept and that's when we ended up taking in some capital. Yeah. Are you able to share like how much capital you raised to essentially get the brand launched into, you know, your D2C store, that kind of thing, the inventory, finding the manufacturer, et cetera? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We raised about two million, but that, you know, we didn't need all of that for the launch necessarily. That's
• 12:19
  you generally want to raise for a 12 to 18 month runway. So I think one, there's a scenario where you can always launch for using much, much less capital than that. And we did, we use very little capital for the actual launch because what you want is to make sure you have enough runway in the bank to iterate. If that launch doesn't go well, if there are some issues that come up that you're not expecting, which always do and definitely did for us when launching Fable in 2019. And,
• 12:48
  yeah, having that capital to support marketing or support other initiatives, depending on how the launch goes. So we raised 2 million, partly just to have that runway. And partly because again, it, it just, it happened very quickly and it was a lot of, uh,
• 13:02
  friends and investors that I knew well. And so it all came together much faster than we were anticipating. So it was more, to be frank, it was more capital than I would have if I had sat down and made a plan for how much money we needed and how much we wanted. We probably would have raised way less. But when you're in that moment and people are offering you money, it's a little harder to say no. Oh, that's so exciting, though. Love that for you.
• 13:28
  You mentioned that you had some hurdles in the beginning. What were the hardest things to overcome that maybe were a bit more unexpected and you didn't see coming?
• 13:38
  Yeah, I mean, there were a few things. In the beginning, one, we had a competitor come into the market right around the same time that we did, a competitor we didn't know about when we first came up with the idea and when we first started working on the design. So that did kind of change our perspective on the space and what our sweet spot was, and ultimately ended up being a really good thing for us, I think. But it did change the dynamics and the timing of a few things. And then, you know, there were so many hiccups that are sort of,
• 14:06
  product market fit is such a big one. I mean, we launched with a very basic set of products and really kind of followed this lean startup approach, which we had used for our first startup. But our first startup was a software business. It's a lot easier to follow the sort of iterative launch, get feedback, iterate, launch, get feedback, iterate cyclical mentality than it is with physical products where the lead times are so long and it's hard to launch a product and then make a change and
• 14:36
  But we ultimately kind of did that where we launched sort of small batches very slowly and got feedback from customers. And so a lot of the initial products that we launched don't exist at all. Our current product set is very, very different from what we originally launched with because...
• 14:55
  I wouldn't call them test products necessarily, but they were products that we were able to get a lot of feedback on. And now our products incorporate so much data, so much feedback from customers. We really, really focus on getting narrowly into like, what are their pain points? What do they need us to incorporate into these products? And we would not have had that data if we hadn't done it that way, where we launched with sort of not a perfect set exactly.
• 15:22
  Absolutely. Yeah. That's so interesting. When you say you were using, well, now you use data to drive your innovation and your design and you really understand the pain points and things like that. How do you actually get to understand what the pain points are at scale? Like how do you actually get that information? We run a lot of surveys, both for our customers and for just
• 15:46
  people and pets across different demographics that we're targeting. But we find surveys are really, really helpful. We also, you just, as you start to get a lot bigger, you do start to gather data through all sorts of things. Like if somebody is making a return or exchange, we try to collect as much data at that point. If somebody is subscribing to or unsubscribing from a mailing list, we try to get data at that point.
• 16:11
  We collect a lot of data from comments on Instagram or comments on Facebook or TikTok. We get an overwhelming amount of UGC user-generated content, which includes comments and feedback. So we do not miss anything. Anything that is related to our brand, if it's out there, we want to get as much data from that touchpoint with the consumer as we possibly can because we're
• 16:37
  you know, I think surveys are a wonderful tool, but it is a different mentality that the customer is. And when they're filling out a survey versus when they're organically speaking about your product, like when they post about it on social media, what do they say in that instance? Is it positive? Is it negative? If it's positive or negative, what is the specific thing that they're asking for? Yeah. So there's a lot that goes into it. We're very, very data driven. And our website also, you know,
• 17:05
  incorporates a lot of what are people asking for? What are they focusing on? And we're doing a big website rehaul right now. And that's something that we're really, really focusing on as well. Wow, that's so cool. Love that.
• 17:20
  I want to shift gears and talk specifically about the launch and the marketing side of things in that beginning piece around 2019. I read that you had a waiting list of around 5,000 people and that's so amazing. There's so many people. I'd love to know how you built that list and kind of what the strategy was there.
• 17:42
  Yeah, actually, the waitlist is a current waitlist for a specific product that we're launching. So we did not have that when we first launched. When we first launched, it was very, very, you know, elbow grease oriented in terms of how to get our first customer. So it was a mix of all sorts of things, including, you know, even just going into Instagram and looking at specific hashtags, like what customers were posting about these specific hashtags.
• 18:12
  messaging them and asking them if they would be interested in trying the product, obviously posting as much as possible and tagging people and just really trying to get a conversation going on social media. We did get lucky. Well, partly lucky and partly as a result of some of that elbow grease was, we got a lot of press early on for the products. Some of that was just
• 18:35
  pure luck. And some of that was us just sending a lot of product to press, you know, really rolling up our sleeves and finding as many editors with pets who we thought would be interested, who had written about the space before, who, you know, we thought might be interested, just sending as much product to them as possible so that they could try it. That's a really scary thing, especially early on when you don't have a ton of validation. You're like, well, what if they hate it? And then what if we get a bad write-up? And what if we never get a shot again? But you do kind of have to
• 19:05
  just shoot your shot to some extent and see if, and just be willing to take feedback. You know, we did get a couple of press people who were like, well, I don't really get this particular product. And ultimately they were right. And that product is rolled off now. And yeah, it's a scary thing, but press editors are people too. And then you can have a conversation with them. They're probably not going to be super, super scary. So yeah, it was a combination of really trying to build a conversation on social media and press.
• 19:34
  And then very slowly, very lightly doing some advertising, some marketing, primarily on social media again, because that was, you know, 2019. So we had some advantages of being able to use digital marketing tools as well. And what were you seeing during that time that was driving the most growth and really getting the wheels kind of turning and building that momentum?
• 19:58
  Definitely since the beginning of the company and now as well, it's user generated content. You know, we are very fortunate to be in a very shareable space. People love to post photos of their pets. They love to talk about their pets. They love to talk about the products that their pets use. And, you know, everyone at the dog park is sharing what's the annoying thing that's going on right now that their dog is sharing.
• 20:22
  chewing up the apartment because they're not used to their human leaving for extended periods of time because of the pandemic. So what are products that you use to help solve that? Oh, I've heard of this product called The Game. That's really great for that.
• 20:35
  So user generated content, sort of that organic conversation that people have is really good. We try to foster that as much as possible, just really encouraging people to post, giving incentives to post, giving incentives to tag your friends, running contests for that, you know, anything we can do to really push and encourage UGC. And then
• 20:57
  when we get really good content from customers. So for instance, a video showing their dog playing with one of our toys, if it's a really, really good video or something, we'll put some marketing dollars behind that and promote it so that we can leverage that content as much as possible. So yeah, that's really been, you know, that's something that we liked about the space before we even launched was that it is a very shareable category. And so there are really good network effects in it.
• 21:24
  But it's blown us away sort of the magnitude of that because we just could not have imagined how much people were going to be posting and sharing this content, which is really, really nice.
• 21:36
  Yeah. And I think as well, like even if I look at my own behavior with my dog, dog moms, no other dog moms and everyone's chatting, you know, like there's a lot of chat. I'm not even really in the dog park group, like in when I go out to the park, but I'm in the WhatsApp group and I chat like all the time to the other dog parents being like, what is this for? What are you doing for this? It's got that like inherently word of mouth category thing built into it because
• 22:06
  dog parents stick together. Yes. Someone finds something good and they tell everyone about it. Yes. It's 100%.
• 22:18
  I asked my Instagram community if they had any specific questions. And one of the things that came up from my friend Gio is she was wanting to know that when you look back over the past few years, was there a key pivotal moment for the business when things really started to change? Or has it been more of that gradual growth over the years? Yeah, I mean, we're still pretty new, even though we launched in 2019, we actually considered January 2020, our launch date,
• 22:47
  It is a very new business, but I will say there were two moments that spring to mind as being extremely, as driving some pretty big step changes. One is COVID and the pandemic, because that's something that we could not have anticipated. And when, you know, back March of last year, we were only really a few months old at that point and terrified, of course, like everyone else in
• 23:12
  for a number of reasons, but in the specific context of the business, just having no idea what's going to happen. Is everyone going to stop shopping? Is everything just going to be totally shut down? What's going to happen to this space? Should we be, you know, should we be looking at like closing up shop? Who knows that anything can happen over the next few months. And in fact, it was the exact opposite in that there's,
• 23:36
  been, as I'm sure a lot of you have heard about, this pandemic pet boom where people just started adopting pets at unprecedented rates. And it's led to just a crazy boom in the pet space. And then also a lot of the challenges that have come with being quarantined with your pets and working from home have led to a lot of people looking for solutions to specific behavioral issues, which bring them to us on a pretty regular basis.
• 24:02
  And then the rise of e-commerce and people shopping online more because of work from home. So all of these tailwinds sort of happened at the same time and created this absolutely unexpected, crazy amount of growth back in April of 2020, April, May of 2020, that then we were just sort of scrambling to keep up with and scrambling to meet demand for because every projection we had was blown out of the water at that point.
• 24:29
  So that was the first one. And then the second one was in November, December of 2020, around the holiday season, when we launched our product called The Game, which, you know, did super, super well. It's a product that's specifically targeted towards coping with separation anxiety and boredom and pets, which we started developing before the pandemic, obviously, but is extremely useful to people right now who are dealing with this.
• 24:57
  increased amount of separation anxiety as they start to go back to work or start to leave their homes a little bit more and pets aren't used to it. So I think it's a product that would do well regardless, but we ended up just sort of going viral on TikTok. There was a video that was posted about a dog using the product.
• 25:14
  And that's the sort of thing you just can't predict. Somebody posts a video that really hits well and resonates on a platform that, to be frank, I wasn't super familiar with at that point. Obviously, we're super familiar with TikTok at this point. But yeah, that video racked up, I think, like 2 million views in a couple of days and just continued to skyrocket after that. And yeah.
• 25:35
  again, just led to some issues about keeping up with the demand and making sure that we had enough supply to meet that demand, particularly going into the holidays, because, you know, you want to get everybody their products in time so that they can enjoy them for the holidays or gift them for the holidays. So yeah, those are the two main ones. But again, it still feels like early days to me. Obviously, so much gets packed into one or two years when you're starting a business. So it feels like longer. But yeah, I'm sure there'll be a lot more
• 26:04
  A lot more big moments coming up this year as well. I bet. Two million views. That's crazy. How, what's the impact of that? Like how many orders or how many units are sold if a video goes viral and gets that kind of viewing? Yeah, I can depend. In this case, we were selling one of those products at that point, like every few seconds. Um,
• 26:29
  it was just going absolutely crazy. I think the conversion rate is very high for this sort of price point product. You know, we had a lot of press validation for it. So it can depend. We've had other marketing boosts, you know, I wouldn't say viral content at all, but we've had some ads that have really popped or videos or press articles that have really popped that didn't necessarily have that kind of conversion because it can depend directly.
• 26:56
  on such a wide range of factors. What is the price point of the product? Is it a low risk? There are typically some barriers to purchasing a product. It's like, is it right for my dog? Is it the right size? What is the price point? Do I have to replace another product? So anyway, it really depends. But for this product in particular, because the price point is a little bit more accessible and because it sort of checks all of those boxes, people were just buying them up.
• 27:23
  Very, very quickly. Too quickly for us to keep up with, unfortunately. But it's a better problem to have than the reverse. Absolutely. And does that circle then back into this 5,000-person wait list? Is that the product that the wait list is for? No, no. So the wait list is for...
• 27:40
  We have another sort of hero product, which is our signature crate, which doubles as a side table. It's both a dog crate and a furniture piece. And that product has done incredibly, incredibly well, particularly, again, as people have been locked in their homes and really focused on making their homes as comfortable for them and their pets as possible. It's also highly recommended as sort of an anti-anxiety tool for pets because it creates this very den-like environment and
• 28:08
  It's really good for giving them their own space in a home. So anyway, that product has done super well. But when we launched, we only launched a small version of it, an extra small, small for pets under 25 pounds. And again, that kind of goes back to the lean startup model and also just making sure that there is a market for a product before you launch it.
• 28:28
  It's an expensive product to manufacture. It's a very large, it costs a lot to ship. There's a lot of wood involved. It's for a number of reasons, just not an easy product to make.
• 28:40
  We just didn't have the capital to spend on inventory for a really large version unless we knew that people wanted it. So originally we launched the small, but there was so much demand for the medium. We decided to make that as well. And so that's what the wait list is for is that medium crate, which we're hoping to launch any day now or tomorrow.
• 28:59
  you know, hoping to be able to start shipping any day now. But that waitlist sort of was born organically from people who had seen the smaller version and wanted one for their pets that were larger. So we didn't put any marketing behind that or anything. And in fact, we try really hard not to market it at all because the list is so big that we want to be able to fulfill all those orders before we start pushing it at all.
• 29:23
  So because you didn't kind of market it or anything, does that mean you literally just put it, you know, kind of the word out on social media and the word out to your email database, for example, and that's what generated that list? Not even that. We literally just put it on the website as an extra size and put an email option there to say, if you want this, you know, put your email in and get on the wait list.
• 29:47
  So we did not do anything. We don't post about it on social media. We don't do any of that. But people see the smaller version and want it forth.
• 29:56
  themselves for their situation. So that's how it ends up happening. But I will say we've used wait lists for product launches for previous product launches here and in other businesses as well. And I'm such a big proponent of that. I was actually talking to a friend recently, and she's looking, she's in a very early stages of starting a business. And I was really pushing for her to, I think before you get too far along the business, it feels very intimidating.
• 30:22
  to make a website or to do anything that's too formal. But I was really pushing just get a really cool cover page up and input for people's emails and get people to sign up for the mailing list and start getting them excited about the product that you're launching and start, you know, even if it's a pretty long process before you actually get to launch that, you can start emailing them and getting information. Ask for
• 30:46
  input on problems that you're trying to solve or brand design or whatever. And you might find that that mailing list grows organically just by sending it to your friends and they send to their friends and it can kind of balloon much faster than you would expect. Or you can put a pretty, you know, a pretty modest amount of marketing dollars behind it and just start, you know, posting on social media and getting people to sign up for it. And, you know, it's a
• 31:16
  very high level concept is resonating with people. If it's resonating enough for them to sign up for a mailing list, which is extremely low friction and doesn't ask much of them,
• 31:28
  that's a good validator. But if it's not, that's also a good data point. Because if you can't get people to sign up for a mailing list, getting them to buy your product is going to be a lot more challenging. That's a whole other level of expectation. Yeah, that's so true. That's a great insight. It's like, just as soon as you've kind of got this idea, and you're playing around with it, put up the website, put up that like email holder, so you can gauge interest from the get
• 31:56
  Yeah. And just to give you some numbers, you know, if it costs a few dollars to acquire a customer. So let's say like it totally depends, obviously, on the price point of your product. But let's say it costs five to ten dollars to acquire a customer through social media marketing. The cost to acquire them to sign up for a mailing list, which is a specific product.
• 32:16
  action that you can target for in social media marketing and digital marketing across the board, that should cost less than a dollar. That should only be a few cents per customer. So, you know, if you're doing it right. So it's a much more cost effective way to build an audience before you launch.
• 32:35
  And again, I have all those built in data points and opportunities for surveys and also a really, really good data point to bring into a meeting with an investor. If you have nothing else, if you haven't even launched your product, but you can walk in and say, oh, but we have a mailing, you know, we haven't done anything, but people are so excited about this concept. We have 3000 people on our wait list or 3000 people on our mailing list. That's a good validator. That's something that you can talk to. So I highly recommend it, obviously.
• 33:03
  Obviously. Love that for you. So because you have this wait list, what I'm thinking and what I'm wondering, does that then kind of dictate your design and product development moving forward in terms of you've seen the wildly successful launch of this particular product and now you're like, okay, well –
• 33:24
  that obviously shows us something like what else do we need to innovate and create in that, you know, maybe it is in that furniture category space or whatever, but does that kind of now shape your future plans? Yeah, for sure. I mean, whenever you can kind of get that actual numbers behind how interested are people in this concept beforehand, before you start doing product development, you know,
• 33:49
  That is really, really helpful for sort of long-term product strategy, portfolio strategy. But it's only one data point. You know, there's so much, at least in our category, where we're creating a lot of different products, sort of a broad portfolio of products. There's a lot more than just, will people buy this product? You have to consider your unit economics. You have to consider your margin. Is this product a profit generator? Is it more of a brand builder? Yeah.
• 34:18
  you know, what are the potential variability around freight costs and tariffs and shipping and all of that. And so it is really just one data point. And it's hard to condense it down into anything less complex than that, honestly, because it is a very complex thing, building a portfolio of products. We have to balance a number of things or you just become...
• 34:45
  you know, a one hit wonder, you're just making one product that people want. And then one of the most important considerations, at least in the consumer products category, is LTV lifetime value. That's what we talk about in venture all the time, because it costs more and more to acquire customers over time, it costs more and more to acquire customers in this moment in history as
• 35:08
  customer acquisition costs are going up for a number of reasons. And so once you acquire a customer, you really, really want to be able to extend the value of having acquired that customer as much as possible. So you want to, you know, either it's a very expensive item, obviously, that they're purchasing. And so then you get that lifetime value very quickly, or you want to be able to create new opportunities for them to come back to and interact with your brand so that it's not just a one-off purchase.
• 35:37
  I think that's super important. So that's a long way of saying that we're not just going to create medium-sized crates because we have this large wait list. We know people want that, but there's a lot of other stuff they want that they haven't even thought of yet. That's our job, is to think of the things that they haven't thought of, that they can tell us what's annoying in their life and what their big pain points are around having a pet. But
• 36:04
  We're product developers and designers and it's our job to put something in front of them and say, do you want this? That's so cool. I love that. Where is the business today and what fun things can you shout about besides the medium crate?
• 36:21
  Oh, yeah. MediumCrate's a big one. I mean, we have so many changes coming this summer. I'm very, very excited. I mean, everyone stay tuned for July, August, because there's going to be a lot of new stuff coming. We have a new product launch that is, I think, going to revolutionize the industry. It deals with a problem that everybody has every single day, multiple times a day with their pet. And so I think will really impact your daily experience in a way that we're really, really excited about.
• 36:50
  We have new sizes and colors of all of our existing products, including the crate. We have some really fun partnerships coming, including some retail distribution. That's going to be a new experience for us. We're launching a new website. And the new website has a bunch of really cool features, including some personalization and some just sort of fun interactive opportunities for you and your pets.
• 37:14
  There's a ton that we're doing. It's really, really an exciting time. And yeah, I don't want to give away too much because we're trying to, we like to build up suspense as much as possible, but definitely stay tuned. It's going to be a good second half of the year. Well, I'm excited for myself. That sounds super fun. I'm looking forward to seeing what you bring out. Awesome. What is your key piece of advice or your top piece of advice for women who have a big idea and want to start their own business?
• 37:44
  I mean, start talking to people. I think one of the biggest mistakes that people make is there's this weird fear that somebody's going to steal your idea. People don't, for the most part, steal your idea. It's so much harder to build a business than it is to have an idea. And that's one thing I learned in VC is anybody I ever told that I was a venture capitalist, they had a
• 38:08
  Don't be so afraid of that. It is very hard to just steal someone's idea and make it into a business. It's much more important for you to get as much feedback as possible early on and as many offers to help as possible early on. And that's the second piece of advice I would give, which is just be shameless about taking people up on their offers to help. Worst case, they don't. But
• 38:32
  If somebody says I can help you with this, you have to be willing to just push that as far as possible because you're going to need a lot, a lot of help. And yeah, you should not be shy about that. If you feel shy about taking people up on their offers to help, that it's probably not your big passion project. You should feel like, not that it's a privilege for them to be helping you, but you should be so excited about whatever you're starting that.
• 39:01
  you get why they would be excited to be involved or why they would be excited to help. You have to have that mentality of like, this is going to be a huge thing. This is going to be a revolutionary concept. I'm so excited about it. And I want you involved and not I'm burdening you by asking you for something because there's a lot that goes into starting a business and it takes a lot. It takes a village. It really does. Yeah, that's such great advice. Thank you so much.
• 39:26
  At the end of every episode, I ask a series of six quick questions to everyone that I speak to. Some of the things we might have already covered, but we go through them anyway, all the same. So question number one is, what's your why? Why are you doing what you do? Wow. I mean, solving pain points for pets is a problem.
• 39:47
  huge passion. I mean, that's something that if we can make pets lives easier and humans lives easier through product design, that's such a good reason to wake up every morning. It's also, you know, I geek out on on the design process a lot. It's, it's a really fun thing to get to do. And to get to see a physical product being made and get to use it myself. That's, that's really awesome.
• 40:11
  So true. Question number two is what do you think has been the number one marketing moment that made the business pop? I mean, definitely is that sort of viral TikTok video that we just could not have predicted. That was just an absolute shock. And yeah, you got to leverage those lucky moments as much as possible because you don't know when you're going to get them. But it was it was awesome.
• 40:36
  That's a wild one. Yeah. Question number three is where do you hang out to get smarter? What are you reading or listening to or subscribing to that others could benefit from knowing about? Good question. I, I mean, especially because we don't have an office right now, I kind of, and now I'm fully backed, thankfully. Um, I do like to kind of coffee shop hop. And I find that just being in different environments frequently works really well for me. Um,
• 41:05
  I just love hearing the sort of residual conversations around me. New York City, I think, is just such a great place to be if you want to get smarter, because everyone is smart and hustling. And there's just so much energy here around particularly entrepreneurship that I'm very long New York. Everyone come here. Everyone come hang out in all the... New York is the best.
• 41:32
  Yeah, and there are a lot of really good groups for female founders and female VCs and entrepreneurs. This community is really strong here and much more accessible than I think in some other places like San Francisco, for instance. It's just because it's smaller and still feels a little newer and not as intimidating. I think it's a really good resource.
• 41:56
  That's amazing. Question number four is how do you win the day? What are your AM or PM rituals that keep you feeling happy and successful and motivated?
• 42:07
  My gosh, I don't know if I've ever won a day. That's an aspiration. But yeah, I mean, I do keep to a pretty rigid morning routine in that I wake up long before I have to actually start the day. And that I want to wake up excited to get out of bed. So I make sure that I
• 42:29
  have all these things before I start my work day or even check my email that I'm very excited about. So, you know, my very luxurious like cup of coffee and doing the crossword puzzle and doing my exercise routine. And I fit that all in before I do anything else. Because, again, I don't want to ever feel again like I did in sort of my very first career where I'm like, oh, gosh, please just let me stay in bed.
• 42:57
  But that works because I'm a morning person. I think if not, then just having something to look forward to at the end of the day too, just making sure you have a big chunk of me time to do some of those things that you're looking forward to that I think is huge. Absolutely. Question number five is if you were given a thousand dollar no strings attached grant, where would you spend that money? Ooh, good question. Um, yeah.
• 43:23
  there are specific people who I feel like I wouldn't call out on this podcast, but I think there's always somebody in your life where you're like, oh my gosh, that person is just brilliant and they're going to do something successful. And so I, that's my aspiration is to be able to just give grants to those people and let them use it however they want. I do invest in myself a lot. Obviously that's, you have to do that as an entrepreneur. And so you have to have confidence that you can,
• 43:49
  spend a thousand dollars in a way that is highly leverageable and can lead to success. But yeah, the real answer is that if people just gave me no strings attached money, I would probably invest it in other people that I think are super capable and competent. Do you want to give a shout out to any of these brilliant people that you have in your mind? I'm so mindful of people's privacy. Without getting permission to call them out, I won't. But
• 44:18
  You can tell them offline. I'll tell them offline. I'll be like, listen to this podcast. You were the person I was talking about. You were the person. Yeah, I'd love that. They'll be like, give me money. Totally. And question number six, last question is how do you deal with failure? What's your mindset and approach when stuff doesn't go to plan? Yeah, I mean, I have a very vivid memory. I journal a lot. I
• 44:42
  think back on my failures a decent amount. Actually, I think people who have this mentality of no regrets, never think about the things that went wrong. I'm sure that works for them, but that doesn't work for me. I definitely think about failure a lot. And
• 44:56
  I think it's healthy. I remember that it didn't kill me, that I've gotten through all of those moments. I like to kind of go back and think about the really, really tough moments sometime and how much it felt like in that moment that nothing was ever going to be good again and I was never going to get through it. And it was just soul crushing. And then I did. So, you know, if I could take it then, I can take it now. That's kind of my mentality. And then I do often think about this phrase that worrying is suffering twice.
• 45:26
  That's something that I replay very frequently in my head, which is just, yeah, things are gonna go, whenever you're faced with potential failure, things are gonna go terribly or they're gonna work out. And if they go terribly, then what was the point in worrying about it? You just extended that suffering. And if they go well, then why did you worry in the first place? So I try to be as even keel as I can about it and definitely have had quite a lot of failure in my life. So I have a lot of,
• 45:55
  A lot of anecdotes to look back on, fortunately or unfortunately. That's a good one. I've never heard that. Worrying extends the suffering. That's so true. I'm a natural worrier, so it sucks for me. But I love that. I'm going to keep that in mind now.
• 46:12
  Okay, good. Sophie, thank you so much for taking the time to share your lessons and your learnings and everything that's happening with Fable. I'm just so excited and can't wait to see what happens in July and August. Yes. Yes. Thank you so much for having me. This was so fun. Yeah, I really appreciate it. I had a great time.
• 46:36
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 47:01
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 47:23
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that. Thank you.
• 47:40
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 48:04
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 48:27
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show, and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.