Pod Insights How I Built This with Guy Raz Meet The HIBT Fellows: Kaitlin McGreyes & Nicole Argüelles About this episode As a part of the 2021 How I Built This Summit (At Home) we have selected 10 Fellows, and we'd like to introduce you to each of them. In this episode: Kaitlin McGreyes founded Be Her Village to be a gift registry for expectant families that provides more than just...stuff. And Nicole Argüelles founded Alli to address period poverty and provide easy access to personal care and hygiene products in public spaces.
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0:00 Guy Raz? We get support from US Bank. A question I love asking founders. What's the one decision you almost didn't make? The one that changed everything? Because it's never the obvious stuff. It's never, I decided to start a company. It's the small, boring, Tuesday afternoon decision you barely remember making until you realize it's the reason everything after it either worked or didn't. Say you're 18 months in. Business is growing. You've got expenses coming from six directions. Gas for the van, office supplies, your phone bill, team lunches that are actually client meetings, and you're putting it all on whatever card you grabbed in year one. You're not thinking about it. Why would you? You've got bigger problems.
0:45 Guy Raz? But here's the thing. Path A, you keep going like that. End of the year, you're sorting through statements, trying to figure out what went where. You've left hundreds, maybe thousands, on the table in rewards you never earned. Money that could have gone back into the business. Path B, you pause and get the US Bank Triple Cash Rewards Visa Business Card. Now, you're earning 3% cash back on gas and EV charging, office supply stores, cellphone service, and restaurants. You pick up an extra $750 cash back as a bonus. And you've got a low APR on purchases and balance transfers for 12 months while you're scaling. Same business, same expenses, two completely different outcomes
1:30 Guy Raz? based on one small decision. Visit usbank.com/business to learn more. The creditor and issuer of this card is US Bank National Association, pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. Some restrictions apply. Our presenting sponsor today is Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Every founder on this show started with a hard question. Not the marketing plan, the 2:00 AM kind. Is this idea any good? Am I the one to build it? Should I quit my job? Anthropic got built the same way. A public benefit corporation founded on one Hard question. How do we make sure AI goes well for people?
2:14 Guy Raz? So they asked over 100,000 people their hopes and their fears and are publishing what they find, even the uncomfortable parts. Me? I've got my own hard question about AI. Here it is. If everyone has access to something that can help them write the business plan, build the prototype, analyze the market, maybe even come up with the idea. What separates the people who actually build something from everyone else? I don't have a clean answer yet, so I've been sitting with it with Claude. There's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/hibt. If you travel often, you'll want to hear about this unprecedented offer.
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5:23 Guy Raz? Hello, everyone, and welcome to How I Built This Fellows edition. So as a lot of you know, in normal years, we have a How I Built This conference and summit. And in recent years, we've been doing it in San Francisco. Well, this year, we're going virtual. But one thing that hasn't changed is our How I Built This Fellows program. Every year, we invite a group of entrepreneurs to become How I Built This Fellows. And this year, we selected 10 fellows to participate in a pitch competition, where the winner will receive a $50,000 grant. So for the past week, we've been introducing some of these fellows here on the podcast and getting to know them a little bit better. Both of the founders we're going to meet today are working on companies
6:08 Guy Raz? that are focused on women. And first is Caitlin Mcgraeas. She's the founder of Be Her Village. Now, for anyone who has had a baby or knows someone who has had a baby, it may not come as a surprise that Americans spend billions of dollars every year on baby registries. But Caitlin says that expectant families today, they're concerned about more than just cribs and strollers.
6:32 Speaker 01 Parents in the United States and this next generation of parents are waking up to the fact that their needs are different from their parents. They don't have or want big houses filled with stuff. They don't want thousands of dollars of baby gear. They want impactful gifts. They want people to take care of them, people to cook meals for them, teach them how to take care of their babies, and make sure that they're whole and healthy and supported as they welcome their baby into their lives. But right now, the existing gift registries don't address that. They're filled with all kinds of stuff for our babies. So much stuff. And the stuff creates more stress, right? You're already
7:17 Speaker 01 stressed because you have this sweet, adorable, lovely little newborn bundle, but it's hard to take care of a newborn. And it's even harder when you have a house full of things to clean and dust to end. Launder and all of these gifts create more work for parents rather than easing their burden.
7:36 Guy Raz? So the idea is, instead of a registry where you just get stuff for somebody, a registry where you can pay for a night nurse, or somebody to cook you meals after the baby's born, or like a doula to be in the delivery room with you, that's basically what the idea is?
7:52 Speaker 01 That's exactly the idea. The bigger idea is that parents need to be cared for to take care of their babies. And so instead of looking at babies as this individual little thing that needs their own, you know, items, we're looking at babies as needing well-supported parents, and we're getting gifts to make that happen, so that the baby can have a better experience with parents that are fed and cared for and feel good.
8:18 Guy Raz? Caitlin, I know that you're a mom of three. I'm a dad of two. They're older now, 10 and 12, but I intimately remember those. Certainly was my first one, the just coming right from the hospital and being like, what do we do now? And we were alone, my wife and I, because we were in, he was born in Boston. We were living there that year. My family was all, you know, in the West Coast. My wife's family was in Canada. And it was a lot. Tell me how you came up with this idea. I imagine It came from a personal experience?
8:50 Speaker 01 It really did. It happened. It happened in so many places. There are so many seeds that were planted, but I think the one was really in that moment after birth, after the baby shower, the gifts were all given. I had all the things after the birth. Everyone asked about the baby. And then, like you said, you find yourself alone. And a little bit doesn't matter if your family is nearby. You find yourself alone. You find yourself completely out of your element. Your body has gone through something huge. No matter how you've given birth, your body is completely disrupted and needs healing. Your day to day routines are completely upended. Everything gets flipped upside down and you find yourself
9:35 Speaker 01 utterly alone in so many ways. And that's what happened for me. I was three days postpartum with a cesarean section that I didn't plan for and didn't necessarily want. And I was trying to breastfeed my baby and I was trying to get us both to the pediatrician's appointment. I didn't know anything and I didn't know what I was going to need because at my baby shower, I got diapers and cute baby clothes and baby toys and bibs. And I didn't realize that what I was really going to need was somebody to come into my house and care for me. Somebody to say, you're doing a great job. This is gonna be okay. This isn't forever. Let me take the baby. Let me show you how to do this.
10:20 Guy Raz? And those services are often only available to people with means, right?
10:25 Speaker 01 You've really hit on something big here, Guy. And this is where we know, we look at these countries that have low maternal mortality rates. We look at countries that have low postpartum mood and anxiety disorder rates, where women are supported and thriving in motherhood. And we see what they have. They have these postpartum supports. They have people walking them through their pregnancy. And everyone has access to the type of care that Be Her Village is providing. In our country, only people with resources get that. Only people that have thousands of dollars to spend are able to access that sort of care. And so we have this two tiered system that's unfair and women in our country are suffering because of it.
11:09 Guy Raz? I want to ask you about the business side of this because this is also business. It's a mission and easily something you could probably do as a nonprofit. But this is a business that ultimately will need to become sustainable. So talk to me a little bit about how the business would work.
11:26 Speaker 01 It's funny you mentioned nonprofit. I like to say, we're not a non-for-profit, but we're not profitable. Right? So that's where we are right now. So because this is so much about increasing access, we couldn't have obstacles for the new parents. So the new parents, every step of their interactions with our communities, with our registry, and with raising funds for these services is absolutely free for them, and it always will be. That will never change. For our gift buyers, there's a small platform fee that covers the credit card costs. It's pretty standard across the board whenever you're interacting with a company like this. And then where we're actually going to make our money, and by make our money, I mean,
12:10 Speaker 01 move this forward, right? So we are organizing the birth workers. And so what we're doing is actually creating this widespread network of micro businesses. The people that are supporting parents are in the niche right now. They're not in the mainstream. And so we're bringing them together and we're saying, hey, you're not competing against each other. Let's work together. Everybody come onto this platform, throw in a couple of bucks a month, and then we're going to reach the masses together.
12:40 Guy Raz? It would be a little bit like, I mean, a sort of a, like a TaskRabbit, or some kind of service where people would offer their services, doulas and home care nurses and others, and they would pay us a monthly fee to be on the site to advertise their services?
12:59 Speaker 01 Right. So what's interesting, Guy, I have to, I have to admit, being part of this fellowship, we've changed, we've changed how we're approaching this. And we're thinking more about building community now rather than the business side of things because the business and the revenue and the profits will come. But the most important thing is going back to what we've been talking about this whole time, which is creating the community for everyone to join. So right now,
13:27 Speaker 01 Businesses can sign on for free and there will be upgrades and it's, you know, it's a freemium model, but it will be accessible for them as well. Because the businesses are people like me, Guy. They're not people with MBAs. They're not people that are actually going out necessarily for entrepreneurship. The people in this birth worker industry are heart-led and they want to be highly impactful with mothers. So, we want to give them that tool and say, hey, you want to go and, and put your energy into working with mothers and making a change? Great, plug into this platform and we can connect you with the families that need your services.
14:02 Guy Raz? Tell me about the team that you have right now. It's you, of course. Any, anybody else working on the project with you?
14:09 Speaker 01 Once I created Be Her Village, I realized this has to happen and this idea is so much bigger than just me. And so, it kind of knocked me down a few notches and it forced me to ask people for help and to call people up that I might not have spoken to in a long time and say, hey, I'm building this. I need help with this. Can you help me? What has shocked me and is so beautiful about this process is that people are willing. People are showing up. I have people on my team that have quit their full-time jobs to come work for me for free because they believe in this and what we're building. So, my team is made up mostly of people that are smarter than me. Because, because that's really what it comes down to.
14:54 Speaker 01 It's, it's this recognition that I have the passion, I have lived experience, and I have the vision. And I can get people excited about that vision. And part of the people that I'm getting excited about it are people that have the skills, that understand how to grow an organization, that know how to run it, that know how to create partnerships, and can get us where we need to be.
15:16 Guy Raz? Caitlin, we have interviewed the founders of The Knot and of Zola and of other sites that are focused on weddings and wedding registries. I think a lot of people would agree that When you do have a baby, you do need some stuff, right? Like, you do need a good stroller, and you do need a crib, and you do need, you know, a diaper changing table. Not forever, but you do need those things. Is there a world where Be Her Village does both?
15:46 Speaker 01 My truest answer is I don't know, because I don't know what next week holds. So I don't know what the future holds. But I'll say this, I think there's room for both. I think there's room for traditional baby registries that have all the baby stuff, and I think there's room for Be Her Village as well.
16:06 Guy Raz? I know that you attended, as part of the fellowship program, one of the sessions you attended was on leadership and company culture. It was led by Wyvon Hutchinson and Sadie Lincoln, both awesome friends of How I Built This, and they'd been to summits in the past. And Sadie was a guest on our show, so was Wyvon. What stood out for you from that session?
16:28 Speaker 01 So two main things stood out for me. One was when I asked Sadie, how do I instill the company culture? How do I take my values and make sure that it reaches everybody throughout the organization from the top down? She flipped the script on me, and she said...
16:47 Speaker 02 It's more like you were saying, how do I bring those values down? It's actually bring those values up, out of them, right? That's how it's worked for us. So everybody, oh, that's what I value. And that's how it links to our mission and our vision and this problem we're solving. For people to have, everybody in your organization to have that aha for themselves is really key.
17:07 Speaker 01 The company values come from the bottom up. You hold the meetings with your team, with the community that you're building internally, and you ask them why they're here. You ask them why they showed up, and those are your company values. And that's what the company embodies. The other thing that stood out for me was Wyvon talking about her experience as a Black woman with pattern matching in her own company.
17:35 Speaker 03 As you all know, as an international human rights lawyer, I went to Harvard Law School and then, you know, I started my company. Well, my second hire was an international development person who went to Harvard Kennedy School. We got along swimmingly. Our third hire was almost an international development person from Harvard Kennedy School, who we got along with swimmingly. And we kind of had to recalibrate very early on because there was a pattern matching thing. I also, and this is just something that I really like to do, every now and then I'll hire an agitator on purpose. So like somebody who's orientation is a little bit like shake stuff up,
18:15 Speaker 03 not for the purposes of destabilizing, but somebody who I know is just like not necessarily going to agree with everything I say. They have a different point of view. And if we can work together well, that doesn't always happen, but if we can, like that person can be really additive to your team.
18:31 Speaker 01 So in that moment, I'm looking at my company and we have big visions about addressing black maternal mortality. And then I look at my organization and I've been pattern matching. I've been picking out people that look like me and have the same background as me and talk like me. And after that meeting, we actually were able to reach out to somebody in the community that we had been talking to and bring her on as a community ambassador. She is a black grandmother doula from, you know, inner city Detroit. And she is helping us in this diversification and breaking from our norms and our patterns. And so it's painful work to do that.
19:15 Speaker 01 It's not easy to say any of this. It's not easy to recognize it, but it also is part of not only the anti-racist work that our company is working on, but the internal work that we have as white women in this industry.
19:30 Guy Raz? Caitlin, if you win the competition and you receive the $50,000 grant, what will you do with it?
19:38 Speaker 01 We will, first and foremost, continue building our community because that is, that is our task now. That sort of thing takes time. It's not going to happen overnight. There's, we're not going to like have Oprah find us and suddenly be billionaires. It's really that grassroots work that takes time. And so that money is going to go to buying us that time so that we can do this in a really authentic, organic way from the ground up, from the bottom to the top.
20:08 Guy Raz? That's Caitlin McGreyes, founder of Be Her Village. When we come back, we'll hear from another How I Built This Fellow whose idea stems from her own personal experience. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This Fellow's Edition from NPR.
20:45 Guy Raz? Hey, welcome back to How I Built This Fellow's Edition from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So last year, our next fellow, Nicole Argüés, was looking for an idea that could solve a problem that she had. She wrote down a bunch of them and finally ran them by her friend Jackie Sanchez. And eventually Nicole realized the problem she might be ready to solve was one that she had a lot of personal experience with.
21:11 Speaker 04 You know, when you face a problem yourself for so many years, it was shocking that we hadn't had the realization before for something that we'd faced for so long. So as a woman, I think every month when you have your period, you're out in public, you kind of have to hope and pray that you have a solution with you in your purse or in your backpack. And so finally I had written down, I think it was like two or three months in a row, I had written, would like to be able to purchase tampons with a credit card. Maybe you step into a restroom and they have, you know, some organizations are really progressive and have these products for free, but most of the time it's not accessible. And so you have to leave the venue that you're at to go try to find the solution somewhere at a local drugstore or grocery store. And I shared this one with Jackie and, you know, it was at the same time at the pandemic where we were learning about all the things that we were going to be scared to touch in the restrooms.
21:56 Speaker 04 And we started realizing that everything in the restroom had been upgraded. So we had, you know, touchless hand dryers and sinks and automatic toilets. But, you know, this old clunky quarter operated tampon dispenser hadn't been updated.
22:08 Guy Raz? For people who who don't know how it works, I mean, most of the time, if if they're even available, it's like this old clunky vending machine with you put in a quarter and you you pull a tab or or a knob and then something drops down, right? And it's
22:23 Speaker 04 Yeah.
22:23 Guy Raz? It's and sometimes there's nothing in the machine and sometimes the machines are kind of grimy, right?
22:30 Speaker 04 Pretty much, and we'd have both been looking for some type of passion project, some way to impact the world. And we started learning about period poverty. And while, truthfully, we've always been privileged and had the luxury to have these products, we learned that so many girls in our neighborhoods didn't, right? It wasn't a problem in a country far away or or somewhere that we didn't know was happening in the United States. And we thought, you know, it was our our chance to find the solution. So we summarized like what we thought were the four key problems with the traditional dispenser. And that was that you had to touch it, right? So like you said, it was grimy. It seemed like something dirty that was never cleaned. It required cash, so specifically it was quarter operated and we didn't carry quarters. And then was it reliable? So a lot of times, maybe the machine is there, maybe you have a quarter, but it's out of stock or it just doesn't work.
23:15 Speaker 04 And lastly, what kind of products were inside? So maybe it does work and maybe you were able to get a product, but it's you can think of it like one ply toilet paper. It's just not nice to use. It doesn't last very long. So one of the first steps we took was we actually surveyed over a thousand women in our community and across the United States, asking them some of those key points to see if there was a solution that tackled all of those. Would they be more interested and more inclined to using it? And the answer was overwhelmingly yes.
23:39 Guy Raz? Now, I know right now you you've bootstrapped, right? That the two of you have paid for this yourself so far.
23:45 Speaker 04 Mm hmm, that's correct.
23:46 Guy Raz? You had this idea to build a like a vending machine, but that with a digital display and a touchscreen. And you you've actually done that, right? You've actually built a few of these machines.
23:57 Speaker 04 Yeah, we're we're super excited. Currently, we have three fully functional dispensers out in shopping malls in the South Florida area. And it's been really great because a lot of the hypothesis that we had initially have actually been disproven or changed over time. So, for example, at first, we thought that the most popular product was going to be tampons, just based on our personal use among family and friends. And so we would make sure that we always had a majority of tampons in stock in the machine. But what we learned was that there were two other products that were actually more popular, which was like pads, or even disposable masks, which we have in there currently because of the pandemic. And so we've been able to learn about, you know, our consumers and things that they're going to need more often. So we can make sure it's always stocked with the right amount for the products that they're looking for.
24:39 Guy Raz? So tell me, how were you able to design the the vending machines? Are either of you engineers? Or how did you figure that out?
24:47 Speaker 04 No, no engineering background between the two of us, other than just something that we would like to use, or that we thought was fun and modern in an industry that had been really outdated. So it just started with different sketches and designs and thinking, we want it to be curved, because right now, everything is like pointy and sharp and metallic. And so we want it to look different. And we want it to look clean, but not too clean that it's like hospital-like, or kind of scary or icky to use. So I think one of the best things that helped us come to life is when we thought about the name and the branding and what we wanted it to represent. So we wanted the machine to be something that was like a friend, someone who was there for you to help you when you needed it. We also wanted it to be a play on the word ally. So an ally that's there with you when you need it, and kind of like your friend Ally, who's there and has a tampon for you when you're out of one. So kind of thinking about
25:32 Speaker 04 the brand and the mission and the voice that we wanted to represent, along with the look and feel, was where we got started. And there was a lot of trial and error. You know, at first, we thought we didn't need a screen, or we didn't need it to be touchscreen. And we slowly started learning that that was the route we wanted to go. So just chatting with manufacturers and experts in the industry is really what helped us have the knowledge that where we lacked otherwise.
25:52 Guy Raz? Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to figure like if I if I wanted to, because it's a complex product, and and I wouldn't even know where to begin. Like, how did you make the machine? How was it made?
26:02 Speaker 04 Well, I think first, the first step is was to Google what was out already in the market and to do research on, because you know, there were others tackling the problem in similar ways, but they didn't necessarily all have the exact points that we wanted. So touchless and cashless and reliable and, you know, be able to withstand millions and millions of people that visit these spaces each month. So, you know, with a quick survey of the market, we realized that it wasn't something that existed. And then it was just, how are we going to find the right manufacturer and the right team to build what we were looking for? So we were lucky, you know, after a few dozen phone calls, we found people who shared our vision and we were able to get started, you know, we didn't need a huge order quantity like a lot of times you do with manufacturing. We were able to start with just four. And so we were really thankful to the team that we're working with that they've brought our vision to life.
26:46 Guy Raz? So tell me about the business now. It's just still you and Jackie, right?
26:52 Speaker 04 It is, yeah. Just Jackie and I. And, you know, just to touch on the point earlier, we do have those three machines live currently and we'll be expanding to a total of 16 machines by the end of next month, by the end of June 2021.
27:03 Guy Raz? And those machines are all, I think, in the Miami area, right?
27:06 Speaker 04 The three currently will be, but we actually will be expanding with these 16 to different cities. So Washington DC, San Antonio, Chicago, Atlanta. So lots of different cities will be welcoming an alley dispenser in the coming weeks.
27:19 Guy Raz? And they'll be right now initially in restaurants or bars? Or where are you putting them?
27:24 Speaker 04 They'll be in shopping malls. So these 16 units will be in shopping malls. And we're hoping to expand to other industries. So airports and stadiums, right? When that starts picking up with sports games and concerts. And then also working on some type of rental component for festivals and sports games and, right, you know, tennis matches when all that is back in the world again.
27:43 Guy Raz? And will they be inside of bathrooms? Or will they be just, you know, sort of anywhere?
27:49 Speaker 04 Our goal is to have it inside the restroom. I think that's a conscious effort that we're making because, you know, one of the biggest problems with accessing these products is there's a little bit of shame and embarrassment, although there shouldn't be. We do know from our survey and from chatting with our consumers that it's something that not everyone is comfortable, you know, having the tampon shown in public. So we don't want to make it a barrier for someone to have to exit the restroom to find the product that they need. And so we want to make a conscious effort that they are all within restrooms so that women can feel safe and comfortable when accessing these products.
28:19 Guy Raz? If you win the fellows competition, how would you use the $50,000 grant?
28:25 Speaker 04 As you know, I mean, as an entrepreneur, there's always so many things that are kind of needing your attention and things that you can spend money on. But I think what we would do is make sure that, first of all, we can mobilize a force of, you know, right now, we're looking really primarily at high school and college students to be able to refill and restock and really take ownership over these machines. We call them our account managers or campus ambassadors so that they can, of course, be incentivized and make some income while they're in college or in school. But more importantly, just getting more dispensers out into the world. As you can imagine, with the hardware business, the upfront costs are a little higher than they would be with software or other type of tech-enabled companies. And so we want to make sure that, I think our biggest route to increasing access is having machines out there. And so with the $50,000, we'd be able to put in so many more machines out
29:07 Speaker 04 into the world and really continue to achieve our goal of increasing access.
29:14 Guy Raz? That's Nicole Argüés, co-founder of Alley. More stories from our How I Built This Fellows will be in your feed on Tuesday. To learn more about the Fellows or to get tickets to the How I Built This Summit, you can visit summit.npr.org. And to find out more about NPR's live events, visit nprpresents.org. This episode was produced by J.C. Howard with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. Thanks also to Janet O'Jong Lee, Gianna Capadona, Bruce Grant, Farah Safari, Liz Metzger, El Mannion, Joanna Palowska, John Isabella, Jessica Goldstein, Eva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This Fellows edition from NPR.
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