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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hi. My name is Cecilia and I'm the founder and CEO of Babypalooza. Babypalooza is a digital
00:08platform equipping first-time moms for motherhood through community, virtual and live events,
00:14personalized monthly content, and a curated product marketplace. My mission is to be the
00:20number one resource moms use when they find out they're expecting, as well as the number
00:24one resource brands use when they have a product or service that these moms need. When a mom
00:29finds out she's expecting, she's so excited. She tells her husband, she calls her family,
00:33it is party time, but soon the party turns into panic, especially for the first-time mom. She
00:39has tons of questions about what to do and expect, and it quickly becomes overwhelming. Babypalooza
00:44was created to make the motherhood journey easier. We hosted live events seeing over 20,000 moms a
00:50year, and when COVID hit, we quickly pivoted into virtual events. We've been creating great baby
00:55expos for 16 years, and we used this knowledge to build a digital platform to give moms a personalized
01:01virtual experience that will match her to exactly what she needs when she needs it.
01:06Adding technology and making this digital pivot has solved a problem for moms and for brands.
01:11Big brands like Huggies and Graco were not coming to Birmingham, Alabama for a baby expo, but they are
01:17looking for digital solutions like what we are able to provide now. The traction we've seen in just nine
01:22months is amazing. We went from seeing our moms once a year at a half-day event to now being able
01:28to engage with them daily as they log onto the app to interact with other moms and their pregnancy and
01:34baby workbooks that we've created. The revenue value of each mom went from zero, where she was attending
01:39our live events for free, to now at least $1,000 per mom, and that's through ticket sales to the virtual
01:45events, commission as she purchases products through the platform, and it attracted brands who are willing
01:51to pay on average $15 to $25 per lead. So you take that 20,000 moms we used to see in person,
01:59multiply that by 1,000, that gives us an addressable market of $20 million. But that was just for the
02:05live audience. Having a vehicle that now reaches moms nationwide allows us to 10x that market. There
02:12are 9,000 babies born every single day. By becoming her personal and trusted guide for at least the next 36
02:18months, our 20,000 live audience will grow to 2 million plus digital, creating a total addressable
02:24market of $2.4 billion. We went from having local photographers paying us $350 for a booth, to large
02:32brands spending 20 to $50,000 to showcase their products to our moms through our platform. In the last 90 days,
02:40some of the biggest brands in the baby space have partnered with us, including Kiko, Boppy, Medelia, Happy Family, and
02:46Thule. The baby tech business is booming, and Babypalooza is not canceled. We are seeking to be part
02:53of the New Voices portfolio to have financial and human capital to accelerate and bridge the gap in the
02:59baby market and become the number one resource for moms and brands across the nation.
03:04Hi, Cecilia. How are you? Hi. Hi, Robbie. Congratulations on a great pitch. Congratulations on all your success to
03:17date. Thank you. So I will kick off the Q&A, and then Kina will go and Eda will go. And one or all of us may have more than one
03:30question, but we'll just do it like that. And now we're looking forward to this conversation.
03:35Okay. So there are a lot of moms, and there's always going to be more and more moms. So you got sort of a
03:42recurring customer base, which is exciting. But how would you describe your core mom? Who is the woman
03:49that when she starts looking for information, and she can go a variety of places? Why does she come to
03:59you first? And why does she stay with you? Yeah. So our core mom is going to be that first time
04:05expecting mom, because we want to solve the problem of the confusion, you know, the not knowing what you
04:13don't know. And, you know, when it's baby two and three, you know that. And so it's women between the
04:19ages of 25, 35, first time expecting. So that's our core market. And she's going to come to us through
04:28a variety of ways. One, through our partners. And so Babypalooza is unique in that we partner with
04:34health systems, insurance companies, as well as brands. And so, for instance, you know, when she goes
04:40to our OBGYN office, that partnership should hopefully let her know about the resource that
04:45is Babypalooza. So in the markets that we've been in, our hospital partners make sure that the moms
04:51know, hey, now that you found out you're expecting, make sure you connect to Babypalooza. And also the
04:56brands that have come on with us. If you go to Boppy's website or Medilla, they are actually redoing
05:03our content. So they're including our content in their newsletters. They're posting it on social media.
05:08Most of them have millions and millions of followers. And so we now have channel partners
05:13that are making sure moms know about us. Gotcha. And so when you talk about sort of a curated
05:21experience based on topics of interest or questions or concerns, how is that, what is that curation
05:29process like? Is that done via sort of an algorithm that you've built into the app? Or is it on a one-to-one
05:37basis, more personalized? Yeah, it's just, it's really very simple. When, when the moms come to us
05:43and they, you know, get onto the platform, they're giving us a couple of, you know, pieces of information
05:48that stay in the database. The key one is their due date. And so that's the trigger for all of the
05:54personalized information that they're going to get. So that due date puts them in a sequence that will follow
06:00them probably for the next 60 months. Oh, and then it's just automated based on that. You sort of work
06:05backwards. Yeah. Wherever they start and it goes from there. Gotcha. Okay. Thank you. I'll turn it
06:12over to Keena. All right. Thank you, Robbie. Hey, Cecilia. The question I have for you today
06:19was really around staffing. I actually have two around staffing. And so I'll allow you like
06:25an opportunity to answer the first one, which is how many people are currently on your team?
06:33Yeah. So we have a team of 10 people right now, and that is primarily content producers, because
06:40that's, you know, that's the beast. We have to constantly answer the questions that the moms
06:44are having. My primary responsibility is marketing. I actually also am a, you know, tech person. I developed
06:53the MVP of the app myself. And what we hope to do as we're raising money is add more C-level team
07:01members, because we have everything in place to be successful and to scale. We just now need that
07:08super team to be able to execute. Okay. I think that was like the second portion of my question. So
07:16as you double click a little bit, no, that's perfect. I love it. Actually, it's great. So as
07:21you double click a little bit more on those additional team members that you'd like to add
07:25as a part of your staffing model, what are some of the day-to-day operations are you looking for them
07:31to do? I know you said execute, but what does that actually mean in this format? So I'm looking for
07:36digital marketing specialists because, you know, what the product that we offer, the brands is digital
07:42marketing. So as these brands come on, the ability to fulfill what they need, needs a digital marketing
07:47specialist, because our job is to make sure moms know about the product. So this is a person that
07:53can learn about the product, can disseminate the information in a way that moms can consume it.
07:59So digital marketing specialists, but also we have to take care of the community. So we're looking for
08:04community managers that can make sure the moms are being connected to. So for both the B2B and the B2C
08:10side, I need team members that can take care of the brands and the moms.
08:16Thank you very much. I really appreciate you answering those. So we will pass on to Ida.
08:23Okay. Great to meet you, Cecilia. And great job. This is really impressive.
08:29That you built the MVP yourself is really impressive.
08:34My question is around the partnership. So you've mentioned you've got a number of partnerships
08:40going. You've got the brand partnerships, but then you've also got the health systems
08:45partnership. So perhaps you can just speak to what is cost and what has it entailed to form
08:53those partnerships, the two separate ones and what has it cost you?
08:58Okay. So my, my customer acquisition on both sides is kind of low because we're unique. Babypalooza
09:04has been around for 16 years. And so the brand was established 16 years ago. We have a trademark
09:10to it. And so, you know, even you can think when you say Babypalooza, you kind of know what it is.
09:15And so when people go on and they search for ways to connect to moms, you know, we own that space.
09:22So if you look for Baby Expo, if you look for a lot of the content, because we've been doing it for
09:28so long, Babypalooza is going to come up. So our inbound marketing actually has a low customer
09:34acquisition cost. And then this is also kind of unique is Babypalooza is two companies. We also have
09:41a nonprofit because we want to support underserved communities. And as part of that, we get the
09:47Google ads grant of $10,000 a month, which also drives people to the platform. So those are, you know,
09:53we, we find people through inbound marketing and then from the health systems, a lot of them are owned
09:59by the same people. And so if one hospital wants to partner, then the rest of their portfolio wants
10:06to partner. And so we've, we've also gotten acquisitions through that.
10:11Okay. One follow up to that. Is it like any sort of like RFP process? How do you, when they, if they
10:21decide that they want to work with you, how does that typically work? Like a health system, for example?
10:26Yeah. So we have, for the inbound marketing, we do a demonstration because I think what I'm doing is
10:32totally different than anybody else out there in the market. And the fact that we're, we're not just
10:37doing events. We're actually offering a way for these brands to stay connected with moms through the
10:45first five years of the mom's life. And so I have to kind of onboard them and educate them to, you know,
10:51how we're doing that, um, you know, through the platform. So we, we do demonstrations and I'm not sure if I'm
10:57answering your question. So, um, maybe ask me that again.
11:00No, the question was specifically around, let's say like the health system. So maybe it'd be helpful
11:06if you talk about the split between like, let's say your health systems versus your, um, product,
11:12um, uh, companies. But my question was specifically around the health systems. Do you have to go through
11:17any sort of formal procurement process in order for them to partner with you? Yeah. So not, so both with
11:24brands and hospitals, my, uh, contact, um, is usually the marketing department. Um, and so, um,
11:31for the marketing department, um, and the way this happened is it was very organic. A lot of these
11:36hospitals were trying to have baby expos on their own and they were putting in a lot of effort, but
11:43people weren't showing up. And so when you came, when baby Palooza came to town, you had people lined up
11:48around the block, we would have three to 5,000 people at our events. And so that helped them,
11:54you know, kind of solve that problem of we, you know, uh, they have the, the, the need to be able
12:00to educate people about the products and services they have, but they couldn't actually connect to
12:05them. And so we became the connector, you know, we just became turnkey. I told people it's like the
12:10circus, you know, baby Palooza just kind of, you know, drives into town. We pop everything up and then,
12:16you know, moms come and we made it fun and exciting. That's why I created the name like
12:20baby Palooza, because if you said, Hey, you're going to come to a health fair and you know,
12:24you're going to learn how to, you know, save your baby's life and things like that. And so just
12:28come spend a Saturday with me. Everybody's go like, yeah, I want to do that. But when you say,
12:32Hey, we got fashion shows and diaper derbies and all of that, um, it made it fun. But when we did our
12:38exit interviews, they never talked about, uh, what they got for free. They talked about what they
12:43learned. They said, Oh, I learned that my baby needs to sleep on their back. I learned not to
12:47buckle them up with a coat. And so, you know, that's, that's how it really started.
12:54So that's great to see. We have to wrap it up, but I have one last question. Um,
12:58have you thought about, um, have you thought about a product strategy beyond just sort of
13:04content and experiences? And have you also thought about sort of a licensing play with the Baby Palooza brand?
13:09Yes. And so we actually have licensed it before, um, because we've had television
13:15stations and other hospitals and, and that really is where the technology came into play because
13:20when we were just doing live events, we were limited to weekends and certain locations. But
13:25now that we have an app and a technical component, it's unlimited. And so we're just taking that same
13:30energy and fun and putting it in a format where a mom anywhere, especially moms in rural areas that are
13:37isolated, they can have the same experience that a mom would have live, but they have it digital.
13:43And so that was the whole point. It was to give them community resources and information that can
13:48happen anywhere at any time. Gotcha. Thank you so much. I don't want the producers to get mad at us. So
13:56we're going to have to say goodbye, but congrats on all your success today. Thank you.
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