Tech-Enabled Parenting, Marketing Wizardry and Activating Communities with Lisa Barnett Co-Founder, President, and CMO of Little Spoon

Lisa Barnett is the Co-Founder, President, and CMO of Little Spoon, a fresh, direct-to-consumer baby food and early childhood nutrition company reinventing the modern parent’s experience of keeping their child happy and healthy.

Lisa and I discuss her journey (which has a unique twist as she left a coveted job in venture capital to start Little Spoon), the importance of identifying an enemy when honing the focus of a company, special marketing tactics that everyone should embrace, and what her ideal legislation would look like if she could implement sweeping government changes to the food industry.

What is your enemy? What problem are you trying to solve with your business?

Special thanks to Lisa for joining the podcast.

Show Links

• Follow us on Twitter: @LisaBarnett_11, @LittleSpoon, @mpd
• Guest Links: Little Spoon

Transcript

Mark: Lisa, thanks for being on. You've become a bit of a marketing whiz in the space.

And you're a co-founder of a company called little spoon. But before we get into all that, I want to run through a little bit of your background because I think it could be instructive to folks who are listening.

Lisa: Great. Well, thanks for having me here. Okay, great.

Mark: Starting off, you did track and field at Penn.

Am I right in that we're going

Lisa: real far back. Okay. Oh yeah. We're doing that. Yeah. Yes. I ran cross country and track at Penn. It was unplanned. I walked onto the team a couple of weeks into starting my freshman year.

Mark: Interesting. Tell, tell us about how far you went in that, but also, do you think that journey has helped you in any way in business?

Lisa: Yeah. So, I mean, basically for full context, um, I was always really into fitness and athletics, and that was always my whole life spent, you know, every weekend, as I'm sure you do with your children, um, running around to games and tournaments and things like that. Um, Decided not to pursue a sport in college.

And then when I got to Penn a few weeks in, I was really bored. I didn't understand what people did with their time. Uh, you finish your work, you hang out and then what else? Um, I started getting better at running. I would say I was definitely like mediocre. Um, in my college level, uh, I always saw myself as mediocre, even in high school, but I was starting to get better at my, I called up my coach who, um, was well connected with a bunch of the collegiate coaches and she set up a meeting for me and I walked down there and I was like, Hey guys, I would like to try to walk onto this team.

I'm a 400 800 meter runner. Um, I've just done, you know, spring track and they're like, You can walk on and we'll see what happens, but you're not a 400 meter runner. You're a distance runner. You were doing cross country. And that therein started my very first season of cross country at the collegiate level.

Uh, I was terrified out of my, out of my mind. Um, I had never run. Erase that was longer than two laps around the track, let alone doing a six K um, so that experience, um, and I think, I actually think about this a lot. Going back to your question, that experience has shaped a lot about me and how I approach, uh, startups and just like life in general.

Um, it forced me to really. Trust my training and trust myself. Um, I used to get like a lot of anxiety before races. Um, I would be so nervous. I can barely talk to anyone. There was a rule in my parents would come to my meets. Like they weren't allowed to talk to me until after I ran my race because I was so nervous.

I couldn't even engage in a conversation. And over the years of running track, I ended up doing 12 seasons of cross country and track. So every year to three season sport for distance athlete, um, in the collegiate level, um, I got a little bit better and better and learned that. You can't have assurances life doesn't have any assurances, no matter what you do, there are things that are going to be thrown at you that you can't predict.

And you kind of just have to like, believe in yourself, trust yourself, and know that, you know, whether it's a race where you adjust in the middle of the race, or you adjust your goals and priorities. That's just like a good life lesson. Um, especially coming from someone who I think immediately, um, Really wants to be able to control those outcomes and wants to be able to like get in front of everything.

It's just impossible. And as a founder and you, you, I'm sure you're laughing because you're obviously a serial entrepreneur. You can't control like anything. You can only control your reaction to things and your focus. That's literally it.

Mark: Yeah, we live in

Lisa: chaos. We thrive in chaos. Yeah,

Mark: absolutely. Some of us thrive in chaos, but we're all living in

Lisa: it.

Yeah. Unfortunately we are all living in it. Um, so I think that was a really big learning. And I also think just like the discipline, um, and. Focus on like execution, um, everyone's given any talents. Um, but there are, there's no kind of like sacrifice other than, you know, how hard you work. Um, and that's really, what's determining.

Who's succeeding in the startup world, right? Because like everybody has the same ideas. Like I don't think I could ever claim that I've had a novel idea, idea. Ideas are a dime, a dozen. And I think what I learned from just being a collegiate athlete was. It matter if you are the most talented or if you had the best idea relating it to startups.

Um, if you're working harder and you're training and you're consistent and you are ruthless about what you're pursuing, um, you'll see the benefits from that. And you'll, you'll win. That is the surefire way to win. That's the only thing you can control is how hard you work. You can out execute a lot.

Mark: That's fantastic. What attracted you to marketing? And I think when I look at your background, It's kind of a, it looks like a linear marketing story, right? Uh, all the way back to the beginning, I noticed you studied psychology in college. Uh, I find that very often careers are a windy road out the front windshield, but in the rear view mirror, it looks like a straight line.

Somehow. It all kind of makes sense if it goes the right direction. So, uh, what got you to marketing in the first place? Yeah,

Lisa: it's a little bit of hindsight, 2020. I feel like every time I talk about my career path, to your point, it sounds so linear. And not that it wasn't planned out as very thoughtful about what the experiences I wanted to have in my, in my career, but I actually attribute most of the, the.

Linearness, uh, that's even a word too hindsight, 2020. You can piece it together once you look at it. But in the, in the moment I was really just pursuing exciting opportunities, um, that, that I was passionate about. Um, so I started out actually in management consulting. I was at BCG, so. That was kind of like the general experience that I needed.

I had no idea what business really was. I mean, my dad is a small business owner, so I saw him build from the very beginning. Um, but I hadn't even heard of the industry of consulting until. My junior year in college, when everyone's talking about these on-campus recruiting events and everything, and consulting came up, literally never heard of it as a sector.

Um, but decided that was a good first step because I didn't really know exactly what I wanted to do. Um, so pursued that and while I was in consulting, I ended up working on. A lot of consumer brands, CBG, retail, and doing a lot of work. Um, both in like deep data analytics. Um, I was fun fact. I was like a couple of courses, short of a stats, uh, major in college, never finished it.

It was just like accidental that happened, right.

Mark: Psychology and stats. And then ended up in marketing.

Lisa: Yeah. Yeah. Um, so, so did the consulting thing for a couple of years, um, and then quickly realized, okay, I have a good understanding of lots of various activities. Um, what can I do with that? And this is where sort of the opportunity.

And, you know, just being open to trying new things, I think really pays off in your career, especially when you're younger. Um, I just like stumbled across, uh, an opportunity at Estee Lauder companies. Um, the role wasn't even exactly the kind of role that I would have, like put on paper that I wanted. But as I got to talking about the people I'd be working with, it became very evident that.

I say modern companies, which is, you know, a beauty giant that owns 35 plus individual brands in their portfolio. They were facing a really interesting inflection point. Um, with regard to consumer behavior, people are moving from the department store to many other channels, too. By their beauty products.

Um, and unfortunately Estee Lauder companies was looking at their portfolio of brands and saying, gosh, North of 80% of our top line is coming from a department store. The department store is on the decline. We have no ownership over our customer and they're watching all of these startups. Then at the time to orient you, this is like, when.

Warby Parker and dollar shave club were really becoming, uh, forces in the retail environment. And they were looking at that saying, we don't even have a concept of a CRM. Like you have to buy in traditional beauty. You have to buy your data from Macy's to even know who your customers are. You have no, no idea.

Um, and so I was joining right at that time when they were focused on how do we change our business models and. This sort of lead me, not into specifically marketing, but into this world of direct to consumer and e-commerce and brand building outside of the traditional channels. And so my directive, why was there was really to understand what can we do with the existing portfolio and how can we even potentially start up or incubate other brands that are more, uh, suited to these high growth channels?

Like digital, like e-commerce stuff like that. Um, so that was kind of how I inadvertently I didn't even join in a marketing role. I was in a, I was in not kind of like office of a CEO type role working with M and a and corporate strategy. And I was just kind of deployed in random, but

it

Mark: was a marketing issue, generally.

Lisa: I, yeah, it was a marketing issue. It was a business model issue. Um, and I learned most of my chops in marketing and any commerce from that experience, at least that served as the foundation. W when

Mark: you look back at the large companies who are head-on with this new breed of e-commerce, how do you

Lisa: think they're going to fare?

This was already how many years ago? Uh, like eight, nine years ago that I was at Estee Lauder companies. And, um, It's it's a little funny because we're still having the exact same conversation now. Like how do we fight against these startups that are doing things differently and blah, blah, blah. You know what I think about this a lot, because my background is from the corporate world.

Um, it was more recently that I, you know, started spending all my time in the startup space. Um, I think that corporations. Big companies, the fallacy is that people think they're unaware of what they're doing wrong. They're actually extremely aware of the holes and the gaps in the market. It's that there are these institutional barriers that prevent them from solving the problem in the way that like, uh, an underdog started up.

Can, um, well, an example of this would be even just how. How they are able to make decisions in a large company, right? Like the people who are on the ground, seeing customer behavior, aren't empowered to make those decisions to respond to it. So it has to go up a rank and a ladder, and you have to gradually convince people who are further and further away from the problem that it's worth investing in resources to try something unproven.

Um, out, uh, and the risk reward is not there for a large corporation. It's, they're better off taking a sideline approach, seeing how the market plays out, let the startups take all the risk. And then once it's proven we'll go and pursue it, except they're always starting from a disadvantage. Um, this is why there's so much opportunity for startups to.

Tackle problems where they should lose, because they're so significantly under-resourced compared to the incumbents. Um, I think that's going to continue. These institutional barriers are not going anywhere. I mean, they're certainly big companies that are trying to change the org structure change.

Decision-making try to get rid of these, but I don't think we'll ever. Be able to fully, fully, uh, take down all those barriers. So I think they will continue to struggle, but that's also the relationship and why there's a good market for startups because these companies need startups to help solve those problems for them.

If

Mark: you were running Estee, Lauder, what would you do differently?

Lisa: Uh, without getting in trouble? No, I'm kidding. Um, what would I do differently? I think I'm thinking

Mark: about the position these folks are in. With, you know, organizations that are not able to be dynamic and an onslaught of innovation coming at them.

What's the move.

Lisa: The move is to, well, they're a complicated company because there's a lot of different brands playing in very different segments. Um, but I think generally. The first thing I would probably do is look at the organizational structure. So Estee Lauder companies, like a lot of large international corporations is a matrix organization.

So there are roles at the corporate level that are then repeated at the brand level and repeated at the region level. So there's a lot of redundancy and that creates, uh, it slows you down a lot when you're making decisions because you end up having to coordinate. With a lot of different people because you're technically in the same role, just focused on a different part.

Whether it's a region or a specific brand and you share resources. So I think one thing would be rethinking the org structure. Um, and I'm, I'm definitely not going to claim to be an expert in org structure for massively complicated companies. But, um, I think that's an overlooked area that can actually unlock a lot of value for a large corporation.

Um, and thinking about how do you find the right nodes in your organization that are going to be the people that ruffle the feathers? Um, because the way the corporate. Environment is structured unless you're really comfortable being aggressive and upsetting people. You don't reward the innovative thinking.

Um, and it's, it's not on purpose. It's not intentional, but it happens because it's just the way, you know, the hierarchy of a corporation works and how difficult it is to continue to get promoted and grow within a larger organization. Um, so I would think first about the org structure and how you can empower and identify who those nodes are in your company.

So

Mark: you, so you would retool to structure more innovation within. Versus take a defensive strategy of acquiring companies earlier on, or,

Lisa: well, I think you kind of have to do a combination of, of both. Um, I think for sustainable, you know, to have a competitive advantage and build that foundation, you have to start from, from the organization, not foundation, I think on the M and a side, I mean, depends on how the company is structured and what they can stomach.

If you're a public company, you can stomach, you know, you have different risk. Profile I'm in the beauty world. Estee Lauder companies is significantly smaller than their biggest competitor, which is L'Oreal L'Oreal, but pleasing both the prestige, like luxury beauty segment as well as mass. So they have a lot more cash.

Um, they can pay up for companies where Estee Lauder companies can't, um, they don't have the same cache and tolerance for paying up for a startup. So if you're a company like ELC, You need to tackle it at the foundation level, cause you're never going to win entirely just from buying up companies. Um, cause you can't even compete with your other incumbents who might take that strategy and they have a very different cash situation

Mark: on the reorg point.

There's a story that stuck with me. I once heard from another VC that they had hired in a new CTO, into a company and the company was having a really hard time getting their, uh, development cycles sped up. The product was just getting built too slowly. They get the CTO in. They've sent them down there and like, what do you need?

You have a blank check. We'll hire whoever you want. We need to accelerate throughput. The guy stops and thinks for a minute, leans over and says, how many people can I fire? It's exactly the opposite.

Lisa: I love that. Um, it was, that is, that concept is actually ingrained in me because I was in venture capital right before starting little spoon and one.

There are a few things that stuck out from my short time, especially relative to your career in venture capital, but one of them was that companies bloat way too fast and a little bit a starvation mode is a good thing. So we were very intentionally slow to grow little spoons team. Um, and I think we extracted a lot, a lot of value out of constraining resources in that way.

People are. People are awesome. They're creative, they're scrappy. But like if you cushion them, you're training them not to be that way. Um, so I like that CTO. Maybe I should hire him. He sounds great.

Mark: Before you jump over to little spin, which I want to get into, um, the venture fund you went to is a big name, ma Maveron.

That is a fund that is known around the country by everyone in the venture community. Most entrepreneurs know it. Um, do you want to give a little overview on the, from, for people listening? Just so they know.

Lisa: Yeah, sure. Mavron is an early stage venture capital fund that was started by Dan leather, the time and Howard Schultz who started Starbucks.

Um, it would, they have a diversified set of LPs now, but it's around $150 million fund where they look to invest in. Consumer brands, um, that are obviously leveraging technology, whether that's in the form of e-commerce or, or otherwise, um, in a purely, uh, brand first, uh, mentality. Um, they do see it in series a and they stop there.

Um, so they are, um, They were right in my sweet spot. I've always been obsessed with consumer brands. Um, and I got introduced to someone who was at the firm at the time while I was in my first year at Wharton. Um, and I actually started working with them. Part-time in my first year, remote from Philadelphia, and then came on board, um, like that summer and that fall.

And I stayed out in the Bay area and continued to work with them until I then jumped to another VC firm after that.

Mark: Um, But eventually you did something that a lot of VCs think about, but don't do right. VC is very hard. The job is very hard to get. I think it's harder to get them to do. And so once people get a spot in VC there, it takes a lot to get them to relinquish it.

Right. And you stepped out to start little spoon, which we'll get more into in a minute. Uh, how did you think about that decision? I think. Most well, if you, if you get most VCs and set them down and say, Hey, would you think about going and starting a company they'll pay lip service to the idea of getting more hands on operating experience, because it will make them better investors it'll make them better board members.

But the fear is that if they step out of the game, they might not be able to get back in. So you made a choice to step out. Can you take us through that decision?

Lisa: Yeah, absolutely. Um, so I mentioned earlier, I grew up with a father who has always been in small businesses. He's always been running his own, his own show and grind grinding away.

And I think, uh, And he's an extremely passionate, optimistic guy. Um,

Mark: what does your dad, do you have to tell us a little

Lisa: more now? Uh, well, growing up he was doing, he was running a bicycle company. Um, he is like a Jack of all trades kind of guy. Now he runs a bunch of different e-commerce sites. Um, literally everything under the sun.

Um, he has a bobblehead business. Um, my dad's a quirky guy. Uh it's it's very fun. Um, He, he, I think instilled a very strong desire that I didn't Arctic know how to articulate to myself early on of really wanting to be able to build, um, and be on the frontline and on the ground and, you know, for, for both good, good reasons.

And I think some sometimes have. Negative, uh, byproducts. Uh, he very much instilled the value of hard work and grinding. Um, very early on, uh, everyone in my family is, are incredibly hard workers. Um, and there was just something that in that was inside. I, that was like, I know I'm meant to be an operator. Um, I sort of fell into venture capital actually, to be honest.

So maybe I just didn't value the job the way everybody else did. Um, I'm saying that like slightly facetiously, but, um, I went into business school with the intent of getting into the startup world. I worked on a bunch of different ideas that I had while I was in business school. And none of them really.

Stuck. And then I got introduced to Maveron and I was also working on dorm room fund, which is students investing in students with its subsidiary of first round capital. And I sort of fell into the VC world and I went with it because it was interesting. I was learning a ton. Um, but you know, I think a year into it, I started.

Seeing so many ideas come across the table and I'd find myself getting really frustrated when I was sitting in a room with founders because I just wanted to, to do it. Uh, I, you know, there's a lot of value VC can provide, but when it comes to operating the company, Um, the best VCs, like take themselves out of those, those granular decisions.

It's not their place. Um, and I hated that. I would see all of these challenges that the founders are going up against and, you know, have ideas and want to get more detailed. And it just wasn't my role. Um, so I, I realized pretty early on that I needed to just get on the other end of the spectrum, but I. I didn't immediately have an idea.

And I kind of learned, especially from being in business school, one of the positives was, um, I was knocking my head against the wall, trying to think of an idea. And this goes back to my earlier statement. I was actually going about it very incorrectly. I was trying to figure out an idea. I wasn't focused on a problem.

Um, and VC actually taught me to care a lot about the problem. And so I started thinking about problems that I care about, and I've always been really interested in kind of the health and wellness industry. So that was always kind of in the back of my mind. Um, And I started noticing, especially being a consumer brands investor, that there was just this pattern of pretty much every consumer category was getting innovated to respond to the needs of a, of a very dominant new generation.

This millennial generation and billion dollar opportunities were being created in dog food in mattresses. Like literally every consumer category, um, targeting them, launching products and experiences that. We're convenient, high quality, like transparent speaking to this generation. Um, and you know, that struck me as, as interesting let's shelve that.

Um, and in the process, I was also just starting to notice these generational shifts. I was like, Hmm, we're innovating in dog food. We're innovating in here, like what happens next? Um, and I realized that, you know, no, I think this was a couple years ago, like 2016, four out of five babies that were being born were born to millennial parents.

We had an inflection point where now this generation that was creating all this value and change and opportunity. And the other consumer categories were bringing those same behaviors to parenting. Uh, but you know, This generation didn't have any products or brands or services that was speaking to them, whether it was because the products were, you know, shelf stable, crappy baby food, which I'll get into that.

Um, or they were too expensive. Uh, you know, I think that I started to spend a lot of time, um, Thinking about these parents and thinking about my own life, which I am spoiler alert. I'm not a parent yet. Um, but want to be one, one day. And I was starting to see how nobody was really like speaking to this whole new generation of parents that are coming into the fold and that there has to be incredible opportunity to solve problems for them because it's incredibly difficult to be a parent.

And at that time my sister had her first baby. And then I got into the fold of my sisters. Like my best friend were super tight. So I was living and breathing what she was living in breathing. Um, and she was struggling and this is a well-educated smart person in the health industry. And she called to my attention like, Hey, I want to feed my child.

Well, like, this is incredibly important to their development, but all of a sudden three months, and I have to go back to work. And I literally can't figure out how to make sure my child is eating and the things I want her to be eating. And it's like, how is that a problem? How is that not solved for, um, I started diving into this baby food category and I realized all the things I now know to be true, which is that baby food know convenient baby food that would help solve the problem for this working parent, which side note.

Another interesting part of millennials parents are that, you know, it, they are more often than not a dual income household. Which is not a quality of a previous generation, meaning like. There's generally someone staying at home. Um, that really is a big paradigm shift in terms of the businesses and the products and services that are available to parents.

It wasn't caught up yet to service an extremely time-starved couple. Um, and so as I was diving into like what's available to help my sister. What's convenient. I just found all baby food processing crap. That's sitting on the shelf. That's older than the child eating it. And it was really crazy to me that this was the only convenient option for parents.

Um, and it occurred to me that parents just really aren't set up with the right resources that meet their lifestyle. Um, so me and my co-founders decided to create little spoon. Um, and I got into this in a, in a bit of a long-winded way, but like, as I started getting into this space, It didn't even occur to me like, Oh, should I leave VC or start this?

All I could think about was this. It wasn't even like, I wish I could tell you I was mulling over this decision. I honestly barely thought twice about it. It was just a natural step. And I was fortunate enough to be working with co-founders who were separately, very passionate about this space for different reasons.

My co-founders are all coming from the food industry. Um, To have people to build this way. Um, that's one of the hardest parts about starting a company, um, is finding the right partners to do it. And I had that and the stars were aligned and I, you know, was, I don't know how old I was. I 26 at the time, 25 at the time.

And was like, yeah, like what else, what else would I do? Yeah,

Mark: that's great. There's a something you hit, you hit on. Most people define entrepreneur as a risk taker. I've always hated that definition. I'm an entrepreneur and I've never considered myself a gambler's someone who's going out and taking risks.

The definition I like is opportunity obsessed, and it sounds like you smelled opportunity and grabbed onto it and everything else. Wasn't part

Lisa: of it. I could not agree more. I could, I am not risky at all. I hate taking risks like that. I like adventure. I like excitement. I like opportunity, but I don't consider myself a risk taker either.

This is very calculated.

Mark: A lot of people in your life looking at you starting this company, probably think, you know, you're doing something very risky.

Lisa: Oh my God, Mark. You don't even understand when I got on the phone, especially my parents, people are talking about the parenting industry. Now there's really been an interruption of.

Innovative brands that have come out of, I think all these macro factors that I was talking about earlier when it comes to this generation of new parents, um, no one was talking about BB food, kids, food. I remember getting on the phone, my mom. And I was like, so I'm gonna leave my, my cushy VC job, uh, and going to start this company.

And yeah, I still have my student loans by the way. Um, and she's like, you're gonna work on BB food. Like she was speechless. She was like, what? And my, and my parents are very supportive. So I'm lucky in that regard, but like they were scratching their heads, like. How did she end up here? Um, I do think a lot of my decisions in life to an outsider appear very risk-taking and could even appear random, but in reality, it's been such a natural progression of what I'm interested in and what makes sense.

At that time. Um, so I got that a lot. I got that a lot from the venture community. I was out in the Bay area at the time when we started little spoon we're now are located in, in New York. But, um, I got that a lot. People are like, you're leaving,

Mark: you gave up a seat at the table, very hard seat to get, to go chase something.

Cause you were obsessed.

Lisa: I was obsessed. I have been known to get obsessed about things. So yes, definitely.

Mark: That's real entrepreneurship. I love it. So that's a lot of buildup. Tell us about little

Lisa: spin.

Mark: That's great. I think, I think everyone's going to want to know what you guys do now. Yeah. Now

Lisa: we should tell you, well, obviously we target parents.

Um, so little spoon is all about. Making this experience of being a parent and keeping your child healthy, which is obviously one of the chief responsibilities as a parent. Uh, how can we make that easier for parents? Um, so we are a national direct to consumer children's food and nutrition company. So we make everything from fresh, organic BB food to find clean vitamins, to natural medicines, to kids' meals.

Most recently that we launched a few months ago. Um, Accessibly priced high quality ingredients and as easy and simple to get that to your door and in your child's body. Um, so that is

Mark: what makes it so easy, right? But what, what, what steps have you taken out for folks that were there before? Um,

Lisa: a ton of, uh, a few different parts of this experience.

So when you look at keeping your child healthy, nourishing your child, um, from the beginning, your child starts solids. Um, so that means that for those of you who are not parents out there, that means you're taking them from formula or breast milk, which is all they're consuming for the first