Founder Matt Breen of Rahoo Baby is back to update us on the progress of the company and on their new product, Walk Block. This startup is building a brand around helping parents support the cognitive development of their babies.
Highlights:
Sal Daher Introduces Matt Breen, Co-founder of Rahoo Baby
“...scarcity of information that parents should have about how to positively impact their child's early development...”
“...only about 6% of families actually tap into that knowledge that we [therapists] have.”
“...oftentimes, it really isn't rocket science. It's stuff that can really easily be implemented into a parent's daily routine in terms of how they interact and play with their baby.”
Many Developmental Delays Can Be Remedied with Simple Interventions that Do Not Entail Onerous Visits to the Hospital
Rahoo Baby’s First Product Is a Baby Lounger that Reduces Reflux and Increases Tummy Time – Funded by a Kickstarter Campaign
“Very little marketing spend is required to attract customers, which is a huge advantage for our startup.”
Walking Independently Drives Cognitive Development – Second Product “Walk Blocks” Promotes Walking
Rahoo Baby Is Creating Content to Help Parents Based on Each of the First Twelve Months of the Baby’s Life
A Shout Out to Angel Investor & Listener Mark Bissel Who Connected Us
Martin Aboitiz Made Himself an Expert in Electronic Health Records – 80 Million EHRs in His Company’s Data Lake
Sal Daher Pitches Purdue Entrepreneurship & Peter Fasse, Patent Attorney at Fish & Richardson
Matt & Erica Have No Model for Entrepreneurship in Their Families
Another Reason to Join Sal Daher’s Syndicate List
ANGEL INVEST BOSTON IS SPONSORED BY:
Transcript of “Rahoo Baby 2”
Guest: Co-founder, Matt Breen
Sal Daher: This podcast is brought to you by Purdue University Entrepreneurship, and by Peter Fasse, Patent Attorney at Fish & Richardson.
Sal Daher Introduces Matt Breen, Co-founder of Rahoo Baby
Sal Daher: Welcome to Angel Invest Boston, conversations with Boston's most interesting angels and founders. I am Sal Daher, an angel investor who is tremendously curious about how to better build early-stage startup companies, usually technology companies. Today, we are talking again with Matt Breen, who is the founder of Rahoo Baby. Say hi, Matt.
Matt Breen: Hello. Thank you for having me back.
Sal Daher: Awesome. A big thing has happened in Matt's life since he was on the podcast back in February. He got married.
Matt Breen: That's right. That's right. We did. We got married on June 19th, and then we took our one-week honeymoon, which was a lot of fun. We were out in California for that. I think we made it about three days, where we didn't look at our email at all. Then on the fourth day, we checked our email and saw everything building up, so, the anxiety started to kick in again. The startup life really kicked in on the fourth day of the honeymoon, but no, it was a memorable summer for sure.
Sal Daher: I'm glad as it says in the Scriptures: ... “marrying and giving in marriage” ...life is still going on. We're not all just hibernating.
Matt Breen: Yes. We got super lucky in terms of not only the weather, which was phenomenal, but the window of time when we got married, it was this lull of sorts with the way COVID was impacting those types of events. It wasn't the full capacity wedding we originally planned, but we still were able to have most of the people we wanted there.
Sal Daher: Awesome. Shout out to Mark Bissell by a colleague at Walnut Ventures who connected me to Matt. Mark is an investor in Rahoo Baby, a very satisfied investor right now. Anyway, Matt, let's start out for people who haven't listened to Matt Breen 1, Rahoo Baby 1, I don't know what we're going to call, tell us what's the premise of Rahoo baby.
Matt Breen: Rahoo Baby is a company founded by two pediatric therapists and a physician. What we noticed through working in various hospitals, clinics, I, myself, worked at Boston Children's Hospital for a number of years, we realized that there was really this lack of, or not a lack of, more of a scarcity of information that parents should have about how to positively impact their child's early development than there should be.
“...scarcity of information that parents should have about how to positively impact their child's early development...”
Another way of saying that is the information that we hold on to, the tools we hold on to the knowledge, the expertise we have around how to really facilitate early childhood development. By the way, that's when neurological development is really unfolding on, not even a daily, but an hourly basis.
Sal Daher: Massively important.
“...only about 6% of families actually tap into that knowledge that we [therapists] have.”
Matt Breen: Yes, massively important. Then when you look at the percentage of families that are actually receiving access to, again, the types of expertise, and information, and tools that we hold on to as therapists, it's only about 6% of families actually tap into that knowledge that we have. The whole idea around Rahoo Baby is we want to make this type of information readily available. We're doing that by creating products that bake in all of the therapeutic techniques that we use in sessions with kids, right into the development of those products.
We're able to, that way, help babies meet the most important developmental milestones at each stage of their development from birth all the way through five years old.
Sal Daher: One of the reasons why I like this so much is that my wife is a specialist in early childhood development. I've seen the impact of it with our kids and now with our grandkids. I have grandkids. I was telling Matt before, I've got a seven-year-old, a four-year-old, and a two-year-old who live upstairs with their parents, second, third floor of the house where we live, and the ground floor is my wife and me.
We're very involved with the grandkids, my wife, of course, much more. I've seen how helpful it is. A small intervention, it's stuff that you don't think about. It's not necessarily very intuitive. Most of it is pretty intuitive, but a lot of it is not. It makes an enormous difference in how kids develop.
“...oftentimes, it really isn't rocket science. It's stuff that can really easily be implemented into a parent's daily routine in terms of how they interact and play with their baby.”
Matt Breen: It really does. What's just fascinating, it really is the fact that only 6% of children actually end up receiving this type of treatment. To your point, oftentimes, it really isn't rocket science. It's stuff that can really easily be implemented into a parent's daily routine in terms of how they interact and play with their baby. They can have a really profound impact on their child's development. The 6% of children that do receive this type of expertise-
Sal Daher: Intervention, yes.
Matt Breen: -intervention, it's usually because they are more profoundly delayed in some way. That's not to say that every child can't benefit or should benefit rather from having this type of intervention.
Sal Daher: Yes, every child should. It's remarkable because the amount of development that's going on in those years is just so massive. You were saying it's by the hour, it is by the hour.
Matt Breen: Truly.
Sal Daher: I noticed with my two-year-old grandson that in the morning, he's doing things, in the afternoon, he's doing something else. There are breakthroughs all the time.
Matt Breen: Not to cut you off, I'm sorry.
Sal Daher: Sure.
Many Developmental Delays Can Be Remedied with Simple Interventions that Do Not Entail an Onerous Visit to a Hospital
Matt Breen: I just didn't want to forget to say, I mentioned last time, I think for anyone who listened to the first episode when you and I spoke, parents go into the hospital and it's really this long-drawn-out hospital to meet with a therapist and learn a thing or two. I can't tell you the number of times where a parent has come in and expressed a concern, and maybe it's, "My baby isn't walking yet, is this a gross motor delay? Could it be a cognitive delay?" All it took was a five-minute conversation and implementing this really basic strategy, and wouldn't you know it, the baby is walking right there in the session.
Now tell me, why does it take for you to get a diagnosis, or a referral, or set up the evaluation, and then go through that whole process and leave, when it can be delivered way more readily?
“The system is set up for major cases, pathological cases. It's not set up for the garden variety delay that might come from something as simple as the fact that kids aren't sleeping on their tummies anymore.”
Sal Daher: The system is set up for major cases, pathological cases. It's not set up for the garden variety delay that might come from something as simple as the fact that kids aren't sleeping on their tummies anymore.
Matt Breen: Totally.
Sal Daher: They don't get enough tummy time, so their necks don't develop so they don't learn how to crawl. There's so much happening in early stages that little things have massive effects.
Matt Breen: They do. You can oftentimes draw a straight line from one thing that is occurring at 15 months old that maybe started to manifest, or around 3 months old. You really can. It's that linear.
Sal Daher: Yes. It's like with my first grandson, he had a massive head compared to his body.
Matt Breen: Sure.
Sal Daher: He didn't have a lot of tummy time because of fears of sudden infant death syndrome and all that stuff, sleeping on the back. The kid never crawled. He went from dragging himself around, he didn't know how to crawl, to standing up. Now, the younger one, we paid more attention to the business of tummy time and all that stuff. The kid became a champion crawler. He could just outrun you down the hall, crawling. It's phenomenal. It's just [crosstalk].
Matt Breen: Yes, it is. It really is. The number of developmental benefits that come with that skill crawling, there's many of them.
Sal Daher: You get to see a whole lot more of the environment around you and so on.
Matt Breen: Absolutely.
Sal Daher: Anyway, tell us where you were. Back when we did our interview, it was the beginning of the year in the middle of COVID. Let's do this. Explain to listeners, what kind of interventions your company is providing for parents.
Rahoo Baby’s First Product Is a Baby Lounger that Reduces Reflux and Increases Tummy Time – Funded by a Kickstarter Campaign
Matt Breen: The way we've gone to market is by launching a physical product. That dates all the way back to 2019 when we launched a Kickstarter campaign. That product is known as a baby lounger, but it is actually a way more advanced type of baby lounger than compared to what was on the market originally. This is a baby lounger that not only helps prevent your baby from developing a flathead, as you mentioned, it facilitates what's known as tummy time, a hugely important developmental skill. It helps reduce acid reflux.
Sal Daher: Oh yes. Do you have a large version for fat adults? [laughs]
Matt Breen: You're not kidding. No, it is a super-- In fact, I get that all the time. It does, it helps prevent acid reflux, which is a hugely common issue to babies. Babies are the ones in discomfort, but parents are in equal discomfort watching their baby deal with this.
Sal Daher: Speaking about their development, they are in a race. They need all this nutrition, and their stomachs are too small to provide all the nutrition they need, so they're filled to the gills all the time, and they throw up. It is just amazing.
Matt Breen: Yes. You need a lot of towels on hand at the house for sure.
Sal Daher: Yes, it's like a very fast-moving stream. You put your hand in, it causes-- The water goes off in a crazy direction, and that's how kids are. Any slight thing that you do, they're going to go-- You pick them up, they squirt at you, [mimics] baah.
Matt Breen: Truly, yes. I've worked with many babies like that.
Sal Daher: You had the lounger?
Matt Breen: Yes, and we went to market with the lounger. That was our first product, and it really did extremely well in its first two years due to the fact that it just covers the developmental concerns that weren't being addressed by competitive products.
Sal Daher: You started out with a Kickstarter campaign.
Matt Breen: Yes, we did. That goes back to 2019.
Sal Daher: Then you ended up in retail stores [crosstalk].
Matt Breen: Of course, yes.
Sal Daher: A massive number of the products on the shelves and so forth.
Matt Breen: Yes, we can be found with Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, Buy Buy Baby. We're growing our Amazon listing by the day, at this point. With that success, we launched our second product. Now, this is a product--
Sal Daher: Just give me a ballpark number on how many of the loungers sold.
Matt Breen: Oh God, we've sold close to 4,000 of them at this point.
Sal Daher: Oh, wow.
Matt Breen: Which speaks to the product-market fit, of course, but it really speaks also to the fact that we've been able to establish a really rock-solid supply chain and distribution network even in the face of COVID, which has been no small feat.
Sal Daher: Excellent. Back in the original interview, you were just getting into-- Was it Target or was it Walmart?
Matt Breen: Yes. We were getting online with Target.
Sal Daher: With Target? Okay. Where are you today?
“Very little marketing spend is required to attract customers, which is a huge advantage for our startup.”
Matt Breen: The lounger has done incredibly well in the last 18 months. We're scaling distribution, we're scaling our supply chain, and product-market fit remains what we hang our hat on at this point as a company. Very little marketing spend is required to attract customers, which is a huge advantage for our startup. We're going to be found in stores all across the country in Year 3 coming up here, which is super exciting. What we're really excited about in this particular quarter is the launch of our second physical product, which is the Walk Blocks.
Walking Independently Drives Cognitive Development – Second Product “Walk Blocks” Promotes Walking
Now, this is a product that is also clinically informed based on our experience working at places like Children's Hospital. What we noticed working at places like this is that so many babies actually get stuck moving through the stages of gross motor development around the age of 9 months to 12 months, and even sometimes thereafter, to 15 months where they're still not walking. The reason this is a big deal that so many babies are not starting to walk independently by this time is that we know that cognitive development is directly related to their gross motor development.
In fact, you alluded to that earlier when you said, "They're crawling around, they want to look around." When you can move around on your own two feet, the amount of information that your brain is processing when that occurs is like hitting a light switch, right?
Sal Daher: Massive.
Matt Breen: The inherent gross motor benefits of being able to walk around, speaks for itself. We're so passionate about this product, is this really helps babies learn to walk at a younger age, which therefore allows them to start developing those cognitive skills at a younger age. Again, it's all about sparking as much learning as we can during these crucial months of neurological development. That product is also going to get plugged into that same distribution network we have. We're getting listed with Bed Bath & Beyond and Buy Buy Baby.
We're in the process of getting it up on Amazon, and we're talking to Target. We're really, really excited about this product.
Sal Daher: Great.
Rahoo Baby Is Creating Content to Help Parents Based on Each of the First Twelve Months of the Baby’s Life
Matt Breen: The other thing that's really cool, Sal, is that for anyone who hasn't listened to the first episode that you and I did, and they're hearing this, and they're saying, "Okay, they're all about providing as many parents as possible with developmentally useful information," and they're hearing, "Products," products is certainly a component of it. But what we've also done, and for anyone who's listening and who hasn't really been to our website, we also have a free online course that's available to parents, where they can learn about how to play with your baby from birth to three-months-old to maximize learning in all the right ways at that stage.
We also have a podcast where we speak with pediatricians.
Sal Daher: Oh wow.
Matt Breen: Yes. Speech therapists, physical therapists, sleep consultants, you name it. We cover birth all the way through 12-months-old. Really, it goes back to our mission where we think the type of information that we hold on to as specialists should be distributed to every family who's looking for it because we know that most families are looking for it.
Sal Daher: Oh yes, that kind of thing, there is always something you pick up. If I had children that age, I'd be listening to your podcast nonstop because even if your kid is going really well, there's always some little tweak that you can do, and then you will see the results in an hour or something.
Matt Breen: Yes, right.
Sal Daher: It's so spectacular. It's amazing, yes.
Matt Breen: It really is. It's a very rewarding job in that sense. Being able to make recommendations, suggest using a certain product, and then seeing the effect that it has so quickly, it's a really great positive reinforcement.
Sal Daher: How much material have you put on? How many episodes have you done with the podcast? How many videos do you have?
Matt Breen: We've recorded all 12, one for each month of the first year of their life.
Sal Daher: Oh, great.
Matt Breen: We've produced two of them at this point, so now we have to do all that tedious backend editing that I'm sure you're all too familiar with, to get it out and in live.
Sal Daher: Editing for video is very different from editing for sound because you do very close editing in sound. With video, it's more about special effects and so forth that we do a little bit with sound, but it's just a different world. But, very good. In terms of the scale of the business, what's the next big step that you expect to be taking?
Matt Breen: We are currently raising our first seed round for the business. It's about half full at the moment, and we're really excited about that because, as I mentioned earlier, at this point in the lifespan of the company, this is the first time where we can really say, "Okay, we have a supply chain, we have distribution, we have sales reps. We understand how to successfully market these products." What I'm describing is, for the first time, having infrastructure, where we can say with complete certainty that at this point, we just need gas to put on a fire that's already burning.
I think when you-- As a first-time founder this isn't the first time, I've tried to raise money, but it certainly has a different feel to it where--
Sal Daher: Now that you have, you could show the actual sales, and so forth, and the product on the shelves, and all that stuff. It's a very different thing.
Matt Breen: Yes, right. Someone once told me, they said, "When you're ready to raise money, you'll know because it really shouldn't be that challenging to raise the money."
Sal Daher: It's a lot easier. This is really interesting. To me, what's fascinating about this is a husband-and-wife team, that can be either heaven or hell in founding terms. In this case, it seems to be a little piece of heaven.
Matt Breen: It is.
Sal Daher: Two developmental therapists for children get married, they both have this passion for helping kids develop faster, better, fulfill their potential in a way that's not clinical, that is more hands-on, and yet informed by science, informed by tremendous amounts of experience. They create this product line, which is fantastic. In the middle of this whole thing, they get married, which is amazing. That's great news.
Matt Breen: It's been a journey for sure.
Sal Daher: No doubt.
A Shout Out to Angel Investor & Listener Mark Bissel Who Connected Us
Matt Breen: When you bring that up, it makes me think of Mark Bissell, who you mentioned earlier. When I met with him, and him and I, when he was considering investing, we'd been on a few calls at this point, and he actually lives in the same town where my mom lives, and I said, "Hey, I'm actually going to be down there." I think it was Thanksgiving morning. It was Thanksgiving morning or the day after, and we're talking. He's asking about the business, and we're getting pretty close to finding a deal that we're both excited about.
He says, "I have to ask, how do you and Erica work together? Because what we know as investors is that--" He's like, "I hate to say it, but this, heaven or hell," you said it. "It can build really poorly, and it can be devastating for the marriage as well." The answer that I gave him, it wasn't an answer I had to search for because it's just so true, is Erica and I complement each other incredibly. It's not just from an interpersonal standpoint. Of course, we do, if we're going to get married, but when we met, we didn't know we'd be starting a business together.
It just turns out that we also have this incredible chemistry from a business standpoint where we just have very clear and distinct roles within the company, that they don't get muddied, and they don't get tangled up in a way that causes confusion or frustration. It's unspoken, and it makes it that much easier.
Sal Daher: Awesome. What is the division of talent, division of labor between you in the startup?
Matt Breen: That's a great question. I'm certainly the type that would be excited about coming on and doing a podcast like this. I think of myself as the spokesperson for the company. I certainly am the one standing on the hill, waving the Rahoo flag, all about the vision for the company and the builder of sorts. But for every sort of big picture task at hand, Erica is right behind me with cleaning up the details because that's ultimately what makes the business tick is attention to details.
Sal Daher: She's COO, your CEO?
Matt Breen: Correct.
Sal Daher: That's a good combination.
Matt Breen: It really is.
Sal Daher: I'm sure I brought it up in the previous episode, but it bears repeating again, a bit of advice from Dave Ciccarelli, who is the founder of Voices.com, which is the Number 1 site in the world, I think, for voice talent. He got into this business, and at the same time that he met his wife. She was his first client, I think, in the voice studio that he had before, Voices.com. It was a voice studio. She was a singer, an opera singer, ended up getting married. Their secret of success, they do very different things, complementarity, and so forth, but the secret of success is that they create times when they don't talk about the business.
They segment. There are times they talk about the business. There are times when they don't.
Matt Breen: Yes, that's key. Erica and I listen to a different podcast by a husband-and-wife founder when we were getting started. That couple actually had a phrase they used. It was called respect the stop. You have to respect the stop. If it's oftentimes we're working pretty late at night, if one of us says, "You know what? I'm at the end of my rope here, respect the stop," it means that you may want to keep going, but you have to respect the fact that I got to go to bed.
Sal Daher: rahoobaby.com is the site.
Matt Breen: Yes, rahoobaby.com. All the products that we have on the market right now could be found right there.
Sal Daher: What's the vision for Rahoo Baby going forward?
Matt Breen: If you look at the logo and slogan for Rahoo Baby, it's, "Rahoo for the most important journey." That's just because we put so much respect on the fact that birth to three or five years old really is the most important journey that you as a parent, really embark on. Not to say that it's less important when they get older, but again, from a neurological standpoint, this really is when it matters most. What we envision Rahoo becoming over the next three to five years is your ally from birth all the way through five years old. Someone that you know is looking out for your child's development right alongside you.
Someone you can turn to every step of the way. We're going to do that by building a product line that provides parents with go-to products for every stage of development. 3 to 6 months, 6 to 9 months, 9 to 12 months, and so on and so forth, so you know that you're working on all the right skills, whether it's gross motor, fine motor, cognitive, speech at every right time.
Sal Daher: This is so tremendous. My wife, I got to get her to listen to this podcast because half the time she's running around grandmothering. She'll enjoy this.
Matt Breen: Yes, I get energized by conversations like this because I really feel that the proof is already there. The parents have really latched onto what we're doing because they see the value that it brings, and so we're going to build the product line we just talked about. We're going to continue to make information and education readily available for parents who are looking for it.
We're going to just continue to become a brand that really is an authority figure in the juvenile product industry. Meaning just products for children and infants. We really want to be seen as the authority around developmental milestones within the category.
Sal Daher: Great, very ambitious, but it's already, having sold thousands, it is so hard to get a product in front of these big box stores.
Matt Breen: It is. Keep in mind too, it would be just a shame if we didn't at least touch on the fact that Erica and I have bootstrapped this company in large part over the last two or three years, which is just a very, very distinct journey that people who have been there, done that can say, "Wow, it's worth talking about." Also, I've told myself to never lose sight of that, which is why I'm bringing it up now, unprompted like this because I just think there's so much baked into that statement alone that speaks volumes. Speaks more than just pointing at revenue figures.
Just saying that you've been able to just figure it out on the fly, the way we have, it speaks to those punchy startup founder words you read about like grit or being scrappy, tenacity, you name it. It really just speaks to that.
Sal Daher: Have you pitched to Walnut all?
Matt Breen: Have I pitched to Walnut at all? I have not pitched to Walnut at all at this point. Mark of course is involved, and I think the COVID got in the way.
Sal Daher: Yes, but maybe if you're raising right now, you should get Mark to introduce you to the Chair in November. By the time this podcast launches, it will all be history, but you could get them to introduce you to the Chair. That's how Walnut works. Walnut is, you get an introduction. In this case, you have an advantage because one of the people in the meeting, I'll be one of those people. I don't write checks in the space anymore, but I certainly think very highly of what you're doing.
Matt Breen: Thank you.
Sal Daher: I think this is a very worthwhile effort. It's very tempting. I feel like writing a check to you, but I'm like, "No, no, I have to be focusing on life science companies, and so forth."
Matt Breen: Sure.
Sal Daher: Yet I see this as extremely compelling.
Matt Breen: I appreciate that.
Sal Daher: You should have Mark propose you for the November meeting.
Matt Breen: I will reach out to him. I was actually planning on texting him. Time got away from me today. I'd be like, "Hey, I'm on Sal's podcast again."
Sal Daher: I think Raul, you can leave this in. This is how angel investing works. Even if I'm not writing checks to the space, this is still a very compelling company. Mark, who's already an investor, who's a member of Walnut, he should bring the company forward.
Matt Breen: Yes, Mark has been great. He just blows me away the way that I can get on a call with him, and it doesn't matter what stage of the company we're at, I can explain where we're at, and what I'm struggling with. His ability to just understand it and provide relevant, pertinent advice based on what I've told him-- Which is, by the way, sometimes it's coming from all angles. My brain works as such that it's not always A plus B equals C. I can come at him sometimes from this, that, the other thing. He will just take it, process it, and get me back on track.
Sal Daher: He's a software guy, so he's [crosstalk] software.
Matt Breen: [chuckles] Right, yes. He's got the engineering brain, yes.
Sal Daher: Yes, methodical. I'm starting to think here, what are the things you might want to get across to this audience of founders, angels, people who are thinking of founding companies?
Matt Breen: People who are thinking of founding companies? It's, of course, a very loaded question. I think what's worked for us is that we have experienced backgrounds, degrees that give us legitimacy right off the bat. Before we had any revenue whatsoever, we could get on a call with a buyer at one of these retail stores, or a parent who was considering buying our products, and just tell them, "Look, we've built this product for a very intentional reason. You can trust us because this is based on years of clinical experience we have." You know what I mean?
If you can find an industry, an avenue, a story that is really, really genuine and speaks to your overall competitive advantage, I think that's a great place to start.
Sal Daher: Yes. It proves that you can add value, that the product you have adds value.
Matt Breen: Yes, right. Exactly.
Martin Aboitiz Made Himself an Expert in Electronic Health Records – 80 Million EHRs in His Company’s Data Lake
Sal Daher: This reminds me of my brother-in-law who is the founder of Healthjump, who's been in this podcast a couple of times, most recently as a guest host when we were interviewing Ryan Hess of Connective Health because he's in the digital health space. Back in, I'm trying to think, 2013 it was when he was thinking about starting this company to change the way electronic health records; the information comes out of it and so forth, I was like, "Martin, you've run a software company in Argentina. You built software, but you don't know anything about electronic health records." I tell you the guy has pulled off.
Matt Breen: Yes.
Sal Daher: He's got 80 million patient records under this data lake.
Matt Breen: Oh my God.
Sal Daher Pitches Purdue Entrepreneurship & Peter Fasse, Patent Attorney at Fish & Richardson
Sal Daher: It's all accessible. He can go back and look at the data longitudinally and do all the stuff. It's just phenomenal. Oh, before I forget, it's important at this point, I should say, that this podcast is sponsored by Purdue entrepreneurship and by Peter Fasse, patent attorney at Fish & Richardson. I don't know if I ever told you this, Matt, but Purdue is a place that, in the school of engineering, they don't just look at publications of their professors, they have 500 professors of engineering, or how often their papers are cited. They also look at if they've started companies, if they've filed patents, and so forth.
They're like Number 3 in America right now in creating startups. They're shooting to be Number 1, behind Columbia and MIT. MIT and Columbia out of the three top--
Matt Breen: Sure, sure.
Sal Daher: They sponsor this podcast because I'm trying to get their name out to angel investors, so they understand that there are some phenomenal-- Today, I was on an investor call with a Purdue company, which is Savran. I'm on the board of that. It's a biotech company. They do a lot of the biotech. This is what I do for a living is to work with startups that are taking technology from the lab, out to the clinic, out to industry [crosstalk].
Matt Breen: That's where you can be of extreme assistance, I imagine, with the more practical advice for these entrepreneurs that are coming out of school.
Sal Daher: Yes, universities. Anyway, it impresses me that you, given your background as a therapist and so forth-- Did you have any entrepreneurship background in your family or anything like that?
Matt Breen: I can't say that I did.
Matt & Erica Have No Model for Entrepreneurship in Their Families
Sal Daher: What did your dad, what did your mom do?
Matt Breen: My dad was in finance, he worked at Merrill Lynch for close to 30 years. My mother was an early education teacher, so she worked in a preschool. That's probably where I got my love of working with children.
Sal Daher: What was your dad doing? Was he on the operation side of Merrill Lynch, or was he on the advisor side, on the marketing side?
Matt Breen: No. He managed mutual bonds, and so he graduated from Suffolk University with his MBA.
Sal Daher: He was a mutual fund manager at Merrill Lynch?
Matt Breen: Yes. No obvious answer to is there the entrepreneurial background, but I certainly get the genes from both side of them that I can see it's funny to do. Anyone could do, with any profession whatsoever, but it's like, "Oh okay I think I got that from you. I think I got this from you." Hey, you got to be a little bit weird to be an entrepreneur. I'm proud of that because something has got to be a little bit off, I think, for you to go out and try to do this.
Sal Daher: Definitely the path least taken because [crosstalk].
Matt Breen: It is. I think if it meets your personality, then there's almost no other way for you to go and be successful because it really energizes me. I actually wrote a blog about it, if anyone is curious. I talked about why I left Children's Hospital to start this company. In a nutshell, what it comes down to is, building a company, moving a company forward, really energized me, and it really just jived with my personality being able to push on something and see it move.
Sal Daher: Send me the link, I want to put it on the show notes.
Matt Breen: I will.
Sal Daher: How about Erica, any entrepreneurship in her family?
Matt Breen: Same thing. Same thing. I'm laughing because I just having gotten to know her parents so well, over the last five, six years. Same thing, I can just see. It's like the apple is right above her head in terms of, I see her mom in her, and strengths. I see her dad in her in terms of her strengths. That's really what it comes down to, is finding people, putting them in positions of strength with an early startup is, with any company, huge I imagine, but I can only speak to this. It's like if you can put someone in a position where they play to their strengths, then, exponential output.
Sal Daher: Fantastic. Matt, it's been great catching up. I think we'll call it Rahoo Baby 2. I'm just thinking if you could do a promo video-- Hey, Raul, you can keep this on. Promo video for LinkedIn, but this time, if you can do it with the lounger and the blocking block-- What is that called?
Matt Breen: Yes, the Walk Blocks.
Sal Daher: The Walk Blocks, maybe Erica can manipulate them, and you can talk or whatever, or you can do just a little short video or even footage that you have already from your video. You can talk over it. Just [unintelligible 00:33:59], what's your technology stack for videos?
Matt Breen: Oh, ur website is on Shopify, and we have a content guy who chops up [unintelligible 00:34:09]
Sal Daher: Oh okay. You got somebody who creates the videos for you?
Matt Breen: Yes.
Sal Daher: I create my own videos with Squarespace Video Studio, which used to be Videolicious. I was an investor of Videolicious. They had to exit to Squarespace, and now they relaunched the product within Squarespace. I'm using it now. I'm still learning a little bit, but it allows me to do voiceovers with stills and that kind of stuff.
Matt Breen: Sure.
Sal Daher: Anyway, create a quick demo showing the products, and also just promoting your video, but also because it will draw people to the podcast, it will draw people to the company.
Matt Breen: Sure, that's great advice. I think we need something like that right now actually, is something that encapsulates everything we've built over the last year as opposed to just a promo video for one product or one product launch at a time.
Sal Daher: Great. This is very exciting. It's not an area where I can add a lot of value because, consumer stuff, tons more than I'll ever know. The baby angle fascinates me because I'm crazy about babies being surrounded by them here.
Matt Breen: Yes, how can you not be? This is what a friend of mine said, you can keep this on if you want, it's up to you, a friend of mine said, "Babies are so boring. You just put them there, and they don't do anything." What I told him is, "They're boring to you because you don't know what you're looking at. If you look closely at a baby," and of course, this takes years to be able to look at them through our clinical lens, "You can see what they're thinking. You can see what types of skills they're working on. You can see what types of skills they're getting close to, but not quite.
You can get a sense of their personality. You can just see the wheels turning, and it makes it so much fun to be around them."
Sal Daher: I can say that what attracts me to babies is what attracts me to startups. To see a young person discovering things, doing things for the first time, whether they are 4 years old, or 24 years old, or 34 years, it is fascinating to an oldster like me. It's this ability to discover the new, and to push their boundaries, and to come up with new things. That's the commonality between babies and startups because startups are baby companies.
Matt Breen: Yes, they are. Always fresh, and it's always a new scale or a new milestone every month. There's a lot of similarities there. I feel the same way.
Sal Daher: Okay, I'm going to wrap this up, and I'm going to go play with the grandkids.
Matt Breen: Love it. Perfect way to end this.
Sal Daher: Tremendous. Matt Breen, thanks for making time to be on, and congratulations once again on your wedding to Erica. Congratulations also on getting all additional products, and all these stores, more sales. Best wishes.
Matt Breen: Thank you, Sal. Thank you so much. I appreciate it, and I'll talk to you soon.
Sal Daher: Excellent. This is Angel Invest Boston. I'm Sal Daher.
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Sal Daher: I'm glad you were able to join us. Our engineer is Raul Rosa. Our theme was composed by John McKusick. Our graphic design is by Katharine Woodman-Maynard. Our host is coached by Grace Daher.
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Another Reason to Join Sal Daher’s Syndicate List
Sal Daher: Hey, this is Sal Daher. I'm the host of the Angel Invest Boston podcast. I sit down and talk to these tremendous founders and these wonderful angel investors. Here's something new. If you happen to really like the company that I'm interviewing on the podcast, I invite you to join my syndicate list. If it happens that I have a special purpose vehicle for that kind of company, for that particular company, you can join, if they're raising at the moment. If not, I'll be glad to connect you with the company directly and see if the kind of investment that you're looking to make is a fit for them.
Of course, this is just for accredited investors; you know who you are. I need not describe that. Take a look at angelinvestboston.com and look for our syndicates page, or there should be a link on your app that will take you to that page and sign up. Then you might be able to invest in a really interesting company. Who knows? Something like Rahoo Baby, or Axle.ai, or one of these companies that comes on the podcast and say some really interesting things. Anyway, let's connect.