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Frustrated with the hardships faced by parents of babies with developmental problems, Matt Breen and his co-founder / fiancée, Erica Costa, both pediatric occupational therapists, started Rahoo Baby to make it easier for parents to support their baby’s development. Their first product is now at buybuy BABY and Target. A fun chat with a down-to earth founder.
Click here for full episode transcript.
Highlights:
Sal Daher Introduces Matt Breen, Founder of Rahoo Baby
“…how acutely aware parents have become about how important brain development is from birth to three years old…”
“…something's happened to them or they've just fallen behind in one category of development.”
“…he's not rolling independently at five months old, but quite literally within two minutes of this session starting with this baby, by implementing just the most simple fundamental therapy technique, this baby was rolling over independently from his back to his belly once, twice, three times.”
“We can be curating education for parents that gives them the ability to help their own baby reach these developmental milestones…”
“…not only is tummy time important for strengthening, but it also reduces pressure on the back off the baby's head.”
“The way it supports tummy time is because it makes far more engaging for the baby and the parent together.”
“We are in buybuy BABY which is the number one premium baby wear company. We're launching with Target in just a couple of months.”
“One of those advisors… he has hands-on experience in this industry working directly with factories, overseas, going all the way from the design phase to the supply chain phase, to your own warehouse.”
“…we're really going after is building a brand that's really synonymous with early childhood development, early childhood well-being…”
“We want parents to feel comfortable around this idea that their baby is working towards developmental milestones.”
“We're trying to make sure that all parents can have access to these tools, this information that sparks early childhood development.”
“We know the bumps in the road where babies tend to stumble developmentally.”
Matt’s Co-Founder Is His Fiancée
“Erica and I together, we are a really, really strong team, but separate. We wouldn't have had any success so far, I'm sure of that.”
Matt Breen Points to Valuable Advice from Ed Belove
Transcript of, “Rahoo Baby”
Guest: Co-founder and CEO Matt Breen
Sal Daher Introduces Matt Breen, Founder of Rahoo Baby
Sal Daher: Welcome to Angel Invest Boston, conversations with Boston's most interesting founders and angels. I am Sal Daher, an angel who's very curious to learn more by talking to founders, angels, and other people who know stuff about how to build really excellent companies. Today, I'm privileged to have with me Matt Breen. Say hi, Matt.
Matt Breen: Hey, how are you? Thanks for having me.
Sal Daher: Matt is the founder of Rahoo Baby and I'm going to have him tell us a little bit about that later on. And welcome. Also, a shout-out to Mark Bissel for introducing Matt Breen. Mark is a fellow Walnut member and also a listener to the podcast, and he connected me with, Matt. Anyway, Matt, Rahoo Baby, what problem is it addressing?
“…how acutely aware parents have become about how important brain development is from birth to three years old…”
Matt Breen: Rahoo Baby. So the founders of Rahoo Baby are healthcare professionals, two pediatric occupational therapists and a doctor. And one thing that really struck us over the past seven years of us practicing in healthcare was just how acutely aware parents have become about how important brain development is from birth to three years old specifically. So understandably with that growing awareness, parents have become very, very intentional about products that they surround their young children with, the experiences that they create for their infants and young children during this period of birth to three years old.
Now again, us thinking critically through our lens as pediatric occupational therapists, we do look at products on the market and we say, "Okay, they may be falling a little bit short in terms of what we can really be offering young children that's really going to spark their development, spark their learning from birth to three years old." And we can get into really how the seed or the idea of…behind this company came to be, but really it all stems back to our ability to look through our lens as pediatric occupational therapists about what type of products, tools are we providing our young babies.
Sal Daher: Matt, let's talk a little bit about your profession and what it is that you normally do when you get involved as a pediatric occupational therapist? What are the kids that come to the care of a pediatric occupational therapist?
“…something's happened to them or they've just fallen behind in one category of development.”
Matt Breen: That's a really great question, and it also lends itself to why what we're doing is so special. So typically the type of infants or young children that are seeing an occupational therapist specifically during birth three years old is seeing that therapist because they've fallen behind developmentally. So generally, you're working with children under that umbrella of what you would call rehabilitation. So something's happened to them or they've just fallen behind in one category of development.
Sal Daher: Okay, yes. If a child has an early major disease that can cause children to fall behind in development, other causes as well. But that's the one that's you do something about to kind of help them catch up. Let's give a concrete example here of your first products. What is the problem you're solving with the existing products that you have?
Matt Breen: So, going back to when I was working at Boston Children's hospital, I was working in outpatient therapy and there was a young family that came to see me, went for an appointment because their five-month-old baby was not rolling over independently. And at this stage developmentally, you would expect the baby to be doing so. I remember this appointment stuck out in my head so much is because you could just see on the parents face the stress that this was causing them. And mind you, that this family had traveled all the way from the suburbs of Boston into one of the most congested parts of Boston, had to struggle to find parking, had to come into a hospital that they had never been to, had to navigate to the right elevator.
Sal Daher: It's a daunting environment. Yeah, it is.
Matt Breen: Daunting for even the staff ourselves.
Sal Daher: Yeah. When you have a five-month-old a baby that has developmental problems with you, it's more difficult. So please continue.
“…he's not rolling independently at five months old, but quite literally within two minutes of this session starting with this baby, by implementing just the most simple fundamental therapy technique, this baby was rolling over independently from his back to his belly once, twice, three times.”
Matt Breen: Yeah. Well, you're exactly right. There's already the stress that exists and then so coming into this stressful environment doesn't exactly help. And that's sort of my point because finally when they do find the physical and occupational therapy department and we start our session, I immediately recognize how stressed these parents are. And again, he's not rolling independently at five months old, but quite literally within two minutes of this session starting with this baby, by implementing just the most simple fundamental therapy technique, this baby was rolling over independently from his back to his belly once, twice, three times.
The baby is so smiley, is like so proud of himself for what they've done. And I look over at the parents and they're just floored. They cannot believe that they've just come all this way, went through all this headache to accomplish what only took two minutes. So they left happy customers, right? But I got back to my desk that day and I thought to myself, how many babies are out there? How many young children are out there that don't get access to the type of information, the therapy that I just delivered to that family, and then are going to continue to fall behind developmentally?
“We can be curating education for parents that gives them the ability to help their own baby reach these developmental milestones…”
And that was really the seed behind what led to become Rahoo Baby. We said, "Okay, we can be creating products. We can be curating education for parents that gives them the ability to help their own baby reach these developmental milestones rather than having to look to where they can find it online or have to go 45 minutes into the city to find a specialist to help with this sort of thing. We want to make this type of information more readily available for parents."
Sal Daher: Wow, that's quite a story. That's amazing. I wonder if the problem has something to do with the fact that babies are now kept on their backs, newborns for fear of certain kinds of sudden infant distress syndrome or SIDS. A very small number of kids have succumbed because they were placed on their belly. I observed that. I'm a very involved grandfather and my older daughter had her first baby during medical residency. So I was very hands-on with her firstborn. And the kid was always on his back and he never got any tummy time. So he couldn't crawl. He never crawled. The kid was amazing in the jumper, the thing.
Matt Breen: Right.
Sal Daher: I mean, he became a master of the jumper. He used to do things in the jumper that you would not believe, okay? But he couldn't crawl. He looked like a slug on the floor. There's nothing wrong with him, it's just that his back muscles and neck muscles, he couldn’t get his head… he also happened to have an enormous head.
Matt Breen: That plays a significant role. That really does.
Sal Daher: He'd be helpless on his tummy. On his back he was fine. He used to do all sorts of things, but he didn't want to be on his tummy. So the subsequent children, we've made sure that they get a lot of tummy time and they haven't had the problem. I mean, the third one crawls at a remarkable pace.
Matt Breen: He makes up for the other two, yeah.
Sal Daher: He never developed the skills on the jumper that the elder one did.
Matt Breen: Right.
Sal Daher: So, they have trade-offs. And now this kid who didn't know how to crawl, climbs walls like you wouldn't believe, okay? Super, super active. So they catch up really fast. But yeah, I can well imagine these little tweaks here and there can make an enormous, enormous difference.
Matt Breen: They can.
Sal Daher: Is there a physical product that you guys are selling in addition to instruction?
Matt Breen: Yeah, absolutely. So we went to market first with the first product that we launched. We have two that are currently in the design or manufacturing stage, but the first product we went to market via a Kickstarter campaign. And this was a product that works on exactly what you were just talking about the experience that you had. It actually is aimed at helping babies master tummy time. So, the time they need to spend on their stomach in order to work on all those extensor muscles.
“…not only is tummy time important for strengthening, but it also reduces pressure on the back off the baby's head.”
And not only is tummy time important for strengthening, but it also reduces pressure on the back off the baby's head. You see babies nowadays that are starting to develop... Well, the incidence or the occurrence of flat head syndrome, what's called plagiocephaly is actually going up and up nowadays because babies aren't getting as much tummy time as they were when you were allowed to sleep on your stomach in the 1990s.
Sal Daher: Well, you're getting me on one of my favorite humorous topics in the family. I'm of Lebanese ancestry. In Lebanon at a certain time, it certainly was true in the late 19th century. It was thought to be a sign of great male beauty for you to have a Triple Decker forehead, very high forehead and they achieved that by having male babies sleep on a board so their heads in the back would be flat and it would result in a very high head.
Matt Breen: Whoa.
Sal Daher: Yeah. My father's uncle, uncle Assad who was from the old country. I was born in Brazil, but of Lebanese family. My uncle, Assad happened to have, completely bald. So we could see this at work. The back of his head was like he had been sleeping on a board. That is very high, because it doesn't seem to do anything to your health. It just makes you look really strange.
Matt Breen: It is truly amazing how I mean a baby's head for lack of a better analogy, whatever you want to call it. It's like a sponge. It does not take much pressure for a very long period of time before you actually start affecting-
Sal Daher: Deforming it, yeah.
Matt Breen: Yeah. Deforming the shape of the head. Now, as you pointed out, typically it's just thought of as a cosmetic. It's not really a defect, but it's just thought of... Interestingly though, now research is coming out that's finally looking at whether or not there's a correlation between babies who do develop plagiocephaly and academic performance around four or fifth grade. So into those formative early childhood years. Now, there's nothing conclusive at this point, but the point is that they're starting to see if there is a correlation.
Sal Daher: Well, thank God in the case of Uncle Assad, he led a very fruitful life. He was very successful in business. He had a very successful life. He had a really nice family and everything, but he had that flat head and everybody used to say Uncle Assad head.
Matt Breen: Oh, my goodness. Well, Uncle Assad would be an anecdotal example of how it may even actually help developmentally.
Sal Daher: I don't know. It seemed funny. A lot of these studies, you got to take them a little bit of a grain of salt because they come out with conclusions that are not statistically significant. It's a little bit anecdotal and so forth. Like the study that they use right now to say that wearing those neck gaiters actually is not a good thing. It fractions the stuff that people spit out. It turns out that there's one person with a neck gaiter in that study.
Matt Breen: Yeah.
Sal Daher: I mean, how much are you going to be able to tell.
Matt Breen: People don't read the footnotes, right, where that says it at the very end in the fine print, that's where the trouble lies, right?
Sal Daher: Yeah. I mean, maybe in that particular case. So we have to take all these things with a grain of salt. I mean, when you see something like that, when you see something so dramatic as a kid that has not been able to turn over and with a small intervention that kid can turn over.
So, what is it that you do to support tummy time in the device that you have? How does it support tummy time?
“The way it supports tummy time is because it makes far more engaging for the baby and the parent together.”
Matt Breen: The way it supports tummy time is because it makes far more engaging for the baby and the parent together. So the number one motivator for any baby is going to be their own parent's face, which is why you see... In fact, there's a great picture of Barack Obama doing tummy time in the oval office with a baby. For us, it's kind of a funny picture to look at, but the point is, is that that's why you see parents on the floor with the baby trying to get them to look up at their face.
What our product does is it makes it more engaging because it comfortably positions the baby on the product which puts the baby at eye level with the parents so that they can do tummy time in a more of a relaxed state than putting them on the floor and sort of hoping for the best.
Sal Daher: Excellent, excellent.
Matt Breen: And there's a whole number of other benefits that come along with the product. It's a three-in-one product. So for the 80% of what you'll actually use this product for, which is called The Learn and Lounge by the way is going to be using it as a lounger, meaning it's a safe place to put your baby down where they can rest. It facilitates them being able to bring their hands to midline to play with their hands or put their hands in their mouth. It keeps them at an incline that keeps them comfortable, helps to prevent acid reflux after a feed. So there's a whole number of benefits that come with the product.
Sal Daher: I've seen that. Yeah, our second grandchild had that problem. She used to eat so much. Her eating was way ahead of the development of her digestive tract. She's perfectly healthy now, but there was a time when she would eat and then she would just regurgitate. And certainly keeping them at an incline is very helpful for that. I can see that. Would you care to talk a little bit about the traction that you're getting for your products?
Matt Breen: Sure, yeah. Between the time that I stopped working at Children's Hospital to where we are today, I actually worked in early intervention for two years, which is where you're going into families homes and working exclusively I should say with babies from birth to three years old. So that was where I got additional experience working with this population. But at that same time, I was also working on this business before and after work. So sort of burning the candle at both ends sort of a situation.
“We are in buybuy BABY which is the number one premium baby wear company. We're launching with Target in just a couple of months.”
I've now been on the business though full-time for about a year. In that period of time, we've achieved a little over $70,000 in revenue selling just our first product. We are in buybuy BABY which is the number one premium baby wear company. We're launching with Target in just a couple of months.
Sal Daher: Oh, wow.
Matt Breen: Yeah. There's tremendous upside to look forward to in 2021. The challenge for us is that we need to keep that momentum going and certainly that's requires ongoing hard work. It requires us to continue to build our team which we've been able to do so far. Requires additional capital to fund purchase of more inventory and develop the other two products that I mentioned are in the pipeline. So really right now, it's about keeping the momentum.
Sal Daher: Yeah, I can imagine. If you're going to be in Target, you have to have a very large manufacturer that you have a deal with and so forth. Do you have anybody on your team who's familiar with the logistics of producing a physical product?
“One of those advisors… he has hands-on experience in this industry working directly with factories, overseas, going all the way from the design phase to the supply chain phase, to your own warehouse.”
Matt Breen: I'm so glad you asked that because what I was going to bring up is how... I think to even get to the point where we are now, we've certainly been very fortunate. But I think one of the ways we're most fortunate is that we have two wonderful advisors. One of those advisors is... I mean, he truly is an expert when it comes to product development and logistics. And the reason I say he's an expert is because he has hands-on experience in this industry working directly with factories, overseas, going all the way from the design phase to the supply chain phase, to your own warehouse.
So being able to rely on him and lean on him for his, not only expertise, but his relationships that he's curated over the last 20 years has been absolutely huge. So certainly if anyone listens to this, who has a hardware startup of any sort, certainly you want to have someone in your corner who is very plugged in with that.
Sal Daher: Oh, yes. It's interesting, before we started recording, Matt and I were talking about a podcast interview that Matt listened to which was the interviews of Bryanne Leeming. Also, from New Hampshire. You're from New Hampshire.
Matt Breen: I'm from Mass, but I went to school at University of New Hampshire.
Sal Daher: You went to UNH. I thought you're from New Hampshire, you're from Mass. Okay. So Bryanne is a New Hampshire founder. She's here in Boston now. Actually she went to school, not in UNH, she went to McGill.
Matt Breen: That's right. I remember her saying that.
Sal Daher: She had exactly the problem that you're about to confront with her device, the Splat!. A device for kids to step on. It's part of a system for them to program. It's like the active STEM. They program the device and they play with the device, social play. They interact with other kids while they're doing it. It teaches them the beginning of coding and they get to do physical exercise, and they also engage socially. Great idea. She's off to the races.
The challenge of building the device is that is such a huge, huge thing. I mean, the life of a founder is a little bit like you try so hard to get to the next level, and when you get to the next level, it's like, "Oh, boy. This is pumped."
Matt Breen: Yeah, right.
Sal Daher: I got that order from Target. Oh, God. [crosstalk 00:18:35]
Matt Breen: Truly, truly.
Sal Daher: When you fill the order, it's more like, "Oh, no. We got to ratchet down the cost. The next shipment has to be cheaper. We have to do this and the quality control. Blah, blah, blah." So it's great that you have on board somebody who's been on that rodeo before. Great. So basically you're taking samples of your product to large retailers like Target and then talking them into stocking them in their stores.
“…we're really going after is building a brand that's really synonymous with early childhood development, early childhood well-being…”
Matt Breen: Yeah. I mean, what's nice is that when we have a meeting with a potential buyer, it helps to have our degrees, our clinical backgrounds, so that we can explain the developmental benefit that our products offer, because ultimately that's going to be a great selling point for them, for their end customer too. What that's also going to do is allow us to build a really strong brand, because having a great product line even is a great start. But what we're really going after is building a brand that's really synonymous with early childhood development, early childhood well-being and that's kind of why we've taken the initiative now in 2021 to focus also on launching our podcast, launching our video series.
Sal Daher: I wish I'd known that before the interview. I would have listened to some of the episodes.
Matt Breen: Well, you're a heck of a lot better at it than we are It's so funny. That's one of the coolest things about being a founder is that you end up getting yourself involved in so many different elements of the business and you leave with such a greater appreciation for what you've just learned about. So now every time I listen to a podcast, I say, "Oh, geez. He's really good at it. I know how challenging that is to put on a good podcast." That was a really good segue or that was really smooth the way he did that. You have such a greater appreciation for all these different things that you would have otherwise never even thought twice about.
Sal Daher: Like everything you do, you pick up a few pointers. With time you learn things becomes really evident, things that you're doing wrong and you learn to talk about yourself less. My younger daughter is very good at that, really get on my case, Grace. She's my coach on the podcast. She said, "Oh, you talked for about seven minutes. Your guest didn't get a word in edgewise."
Matt Breen: Yeah. Who's the guest here? Right.
Sal Daher: Listening through it with a stopwatch.
Matt Breen: Yeah.
Sal Daher: So, tell me what is your podcast called?
Matt Breen: So, the name of the podcast which launches by the end of January is The Milestone.
Sal Daher: The Milestone?
Matt Breen: Yep.
Sal Daher: Okay.
“We want parents to feel comfortable around this idea that their baby is working towards developmental milestones.”
Matt Breen: In terms of we're all about helping your baby meet developmental milestones. We want parents to feel comfortable around this idea that their baby is working towards developmental milestones. The way we're formatting it is that we have a specialist from each area of development come on and speak about whatever is generally viewed as most pertinent or most important for each month of your baby's first year. So we have doctors. We have physical therapists, occupational therapists, a feeding specialist, a sleep specialist who together are going to be able to help parents feel like they have all their bases covered like they're really providing their baby with all the right experiences that again facilitate learning and growth from birth to one.
Sal Daher: That's really valuable. Milestones is a little bit abstract, unless you're all set with your things. I would wonder if you put something in there that's like baby milestones, so that people when they see the title, they know what the podcast is about. I mean, Milestones are so general. It could be Milestones in this project or that project, but baby milestones, it's more words.
Matt Breen: Right, a little more specific for a SEO standpoint and all that especially, right.
Sal Daher: Typically, what happens is that when someone pulls up something on development, child development, right, there will be like the top ranked one and then all the lower ranked ones. You want to have a graphic for your podcast, which stands out. Mine, the designer did. It's orange. It's orange and kind of gray and black. So colors that really contrast with each other. You want to have something that visually stands out. And also, you want to have a name that says exactly what your podcast is about right there, so that people are not in any doubt.
Matt Breen: Sure, yep. We'll give it some thought, for sure. Yeah, we'll speak about it in our marketing.
Sal Daher: Yeah. But it's a really good idea to have a podcast. Angel Invest Boston, now in retrospect that's a lot of, "Oh, well." It does convey exactly what it's about, angel investing in Boston and it's shorter than angel investing in Boston, Angel Invest Boston. So I gave it some thought. But anyway, so this is really wonderful to have someone with that kind of experience literally hands-on experience because you're-
Matt Breen: Exactly.
Sal Daher: Kind of moving the baby about and all that stuff.
Matt Breen: Exactly, yeah. And that's what our video series is going to be all about too. In fact, we just shot the first portion of the... When I say video series, it's an online course is what it is and parents are going to be able to learn just by opening up their laptop, what they would have learned if they did travel into the city and wait in that traffic and find the physical occupational therapy department at children's hospital. You're going to be able to get that type of really hardy developmental information right from the comfort of your own living room.
“We're trying to make sure that all parents can have access to these tools, this information that sparks early childhood development.”
Again, that's really what we're all about at Rahoo Baby. We're trying to make sure that all parents can have access to these tools, this information that sparks early childhood development. So this is an industry right now that's really exploding actually. You see the emergence of these really wonderful companies that have set up subscription services for toys that arrive at your doorstep right at the exact stage of your baby's development that they should be using toys like that.
Really from our standpoint, these toys leave a little bit something to be desired in terms of the type of products that we can really be offering babies that actually alter the course of their development for the better. So between the products that we're offering and the online courses that we're offering in the podcast that we're offering, we're really building a platform. We're really building a brand that parents are going to be able to rely on and trust as a partner, as they're raising their baby during the first years of their life.
Sal Daher: You're putting your finger on something really valuable because the toys themselves, they can be useful, but they're useful in the hands of parents who are engaging with the child. The example you gave before on the child learning to turn over and using the device which is basically you're helping the parents interact with the child so that the child can respond. So what you're doing is really you are providing tools for parents to help them engage with their children more effectively.
Matt Breen: Yeah. You're hitting the nail on the head.
Sal Daher: It's not just the device, it's also the formation of the parents. It's sort of like giving them a shortcut because every family, parents learn, they have the first one and then they have the second one, if they have a third one. By the time they get to the third one, they've learned a lot, okay? And maybe with podcasts, with videos, we can short-circuit that and have, not a theoretical expert, but an expert who's hands-on sort of provide that support. Let me tell you, being a parent particularly a mother at home with a newborn, it is so heavy. It's such a heavy burden, and it is so lonesome. So it's really helpful to have a support. Have you thought about doing live events, live group sessions?
Matt Breen: Absolutely, yeah. At first, we had other local Boston companies outsourcing to us to host classes for them, which we were more than happy to do. We're just happy to share the information that we have, but now, that we are expanding our reach kind of within house ourselves, we're going to start offering that as a service in 2021, we think.
Sal Daher: Yeah. If you have one expert in the session and you have all the parents with their kids, they can spot a problem and say, "Hey, have you tried this? Have you tried that?"
Matt Breen: What's interesting though too is that from a business standpoint, there are a good number of services companies that offer these live classes, these live events. The trouble of scaling a company like that, because there are only so many experts who can hold that type of class for your own right, which is why it's so important that we're developing this product line of actual hardware products because once we're in with a buybuy BABY, once we're in Target and then we're bringing them our next product and our next product, now we're building a scalable, repeatable business model and we're building brand because it's really a brand play the way that we're launching these online courses and the podcast to become the kind of large company that we think we can.
Sal Daher: But Matt, think of it this way, the courses that you are holding, if you get the right releases and everything, it's content that you're creating, okay? The problems are they're not infinite. There's not an infinite number of these problems, there's a finite set of problems that babies encounter. So if you hold a few dozen classes, you're probably going to hit 80% of the problems in those classes. So if you can make the content available to mothers you know who have that particular problem, if you have it properly indexed and showing baby won't turn over, baby regurgitates, baby does this, baby does that with a proper content management system, it has massive value on your site and with the ancillary products that you have and all the other formation that you have and so forth. That creates value.
“We know the bumps in the road where babies tend to stumble developmentally.”
Matt Breen: I am with you. I'm actually impressed at kind of how well you understand this already because you're right when you say that in the sense that there's a finite amount of problems that parents are worried about, another way to say it, and it's the same thing is that the most common challenges that parents run into when they're working with their baby, they're so predictable. We know the bumps in the road where babies tend to stumble developmentally. So that's what you're talking about really to say, "Okay, we know that babies don't tolerate tummy time. We need to do a class on tummy time." If we know that babies have a hard time going from cruising to walking, then we need to do a class on how to facilitate cruising to walking. So I'm totally on board with that.
Sal Daher: Yeah, that is tremendous. Okay. So Matt let's do this. Let's switch gears right now and let's talk about how you came about deciding to become an entrepreneur. But after this little plug that I'm going to do, Angel Invest Boston is a podcast that is created to help people learn about creating startups. Another way that I help build startups is through my investment syndicate. Investment syndicate is a list of people who sign up and who, if they like the investment, they can invest with me in a particular startup that I find very attractive.
So, I invite you to go to angelinvestboston.com, go to the syndicate section and become an accredited investor. I only accept the accredited investors into my investment syndicate, and then we can talk about particular interesting companies that I'm investing in at the moment or just keep you up to date on how these companies are doing. The other thing I wanted to say is that our podcast is brought to you sponsored by Peter Fasse, patent attorney, who is one of Boston's top life science patent attorneys. He's at the firm of Fish & Richardson.
So, if you're a company, a technology company whose future value really depends on your patents, get the best patent lawyer and you could do no better than Peter Fasse at Fish & Richardson.
So Matt, you're not a solo founder. You have a co-founder. So, tell me the story.
Matt’s Co-Founder Is His Fiancée
Matt Breen: So, my co-founder is also my fiancée. Or I guess the better way to say that would be my fiancée is also my co-founder. So that's Erica. Erica is also a pediatric occupational therapist.
Sal Daher: Erica Costa?
Matt Breen: Erica Costa, yes. Soon to be Erica Breen come June of 2021.
Sal Daher: Congratulations.
Matt Breen: Thank you very much yeah. We're looking forward to it.
Sal Daher: I hope you guys get to have more of a wedding reception than my daughter and her husband did.
Matt Breen: Oh my god.
Sal Daher: They were getting married on March 28th. The governor basically shut down Massachusetts in March 24th, but it was just like-
Matt Breen: Did they still have the wedding?
Sal Daher: They got married; eloped with benefit of clergy.
Matt Breen: Okay, sure.
Sal Daher: She sneaked out of here and they met at the church because they were afraid that... We're a big Mediterranean family. They thought 50 of us were going to turn up at the church and contaminate the poor 71-year-old priest.
Matt Breen: Yeah. And get arrested in the process and make the news. Yeah, right.
Sal Daher: We're going to be very careful. We're going to be socially isolated. I guess you can just imagine the whole huge family turning out. Invariably, there's going to be somebody coughing and the poor frail 71-year-old priest would be done in by her family. So she decided to it. Besides her fiancé, her now husband, his family is down in Virginia, but they couldn't come up for the wedding because everything shut down. It was just that week and everything shut down.
At first, it's like, "No, no. The people from overseas won't be able to come and then the people from other states won't be able to come. And nobody was able to come." So we'll have a big party when this whole thing is over.
Matt Breen: I was going to say there must be something coming down the pipeline, but it's definitely been a source of stress for everyone whose weddings have been during all this craziness.
Sal Daher: Well, I hope it works out really well for you and Erica.
Matt Breen: Yeah, I appreciate that.
Sal Daher: So how did you guys decide that you're going to start a company? I mean, when did this...
Matt Breen: I mean it all sort of goes back to the story that I told earlier. That was not an isolated event. I worked at Boston children's hospital for almost four years. I think I just over time started to develop an appreciation for... I hope parents listening to this don't take this the wrong way, because I think even to some extent this is how I'll be even with all the knowledge I do have, but you're just so clueless when you... There's just so much you don't know and it causes so much anxiety that I started to realize like, "Oh, man. The information that we have, the products that we could create we could really do a world of good in the lives of these parents who just want to help their baby meet that next developmental step."
Sal Daher: It's a hard, it's a difficult and lonely task to be raising a newborn.
Matt Breen: Yeah.
Sal Daher: Usually one parent is home alone, frequently the mother. It's just that one parent that's home and it's very lonely. It's all this uncertainty. You're doing it the first time. Even if you're doing it the second time. The second time, you've got the first one to worry about and then you have the second baby. I mean, it is a very stressful... Of course, it's wonderful. It has many, many rewards. But it is also, you're like... I mean, this is for real. So any support that can be provided to young parents, I’m all in favor. Because I'm part of the support system for my daughter's kids.
I'm maybe 15% of the support system and my wife is 85% of the support system. I do help out where I can, and we are very lucky here that my wife is a specialist in early childhood development and she studied that at school and she practiced it with our children, and she's taught and so forth. So she's kid savvy. And even then, you're nervous. Even then, you have questions, you have doubts.
Matt Breen: Doubts, exactly.
Sal Daher: It's a lot like starting a company. The very major things that you can do wrong, you kind of sort of... I mean, it's kind of like there's a handful of them that you can kind of avoid, but then there's so many twists and turns because human beings are very complex, and babies, they're highly complex creatures. Even though they're very young and very unformed, they're already massively complicated.
Matt Breen: Well, it's so true. I've had friends make comments here like, "What is it about babies that you find so interesting? They're just kind of sit there." I don't even really answer, but if I were to answer what I would be saying is like, "What they're showing you, if you're looking, if you're a trained eye and you know what you're looking at, they're giving you all of these signals. Are they in an organized state? Are they ready to reach that next milestone?" There's so much you can take just by the look on their face, what they're doing with their hands, their posture while they're sitting. So it's one of those things that the more you know, the more interesting it becomes.
Sal Daher: And the other thing is that babies are changing all the time.
Matt Breen: Oh my God. Amazing.
Sal Daher: My one-year-old grandson, sometimes I see him like early Monday morning and I don't see him until like late Tuesday evening. That 24-hour period or whatever, how many hours that is.
Matt Breen: Yeah. They could have learned three new skills in that 72-hour period, right.
Sal Daher: It's different. His face looks different. He's a little better at walking. He's better at picking this thing up and so on. It is just so amazing.
Matt Breen: Yeah, it's fascinating.
Sal Daher: They're such fast-changing little creatures. Yeah, they're endlessly fascinating. I think you're doing a very beautiful thing.
So basically, you and Erica were seeing the same problem. You were seeing the promise that you could probably do a lot, but at the same time you were kind of frustrated that parents have to come in all the way into Jamaica Plain or wherever Children's Hospital, near JP. All the way there, the Longwood Medical area to have this problem addressed when it could have been dealt with at home.
Matt Breen: Right. Yeah.
Sal Daher: This is interesting because it also kind of plays into the developing role of telemedicine, digital medicine that we've seen with COVID. It's kind of created a breakthrough. I see with my older daughter who is a physician, is a primary care physician, I would say that maybe 70% of the contacts she has with patients now is digital.
Matt Breen: I mean, it's so amazing because... And the reason it's probably here to stay is because at least for... I can't speak for her, but from our perspective as pediatric occupational therapist that's because 70% of the back and forth that takes place doesn't require being in the same room. Now, there are exceptions, right?
Sal Daher: It doesn't require auscultation. It doesn't require-
Matt Breen: It doesn't require a physical exam. It doesn't require that I feel the baby's muscle tone. And that's why there's such an opportunity right now for us to be the first company of pediatric therapists to do what we're doing, which is make this information readily available just by opening your laptop.
Sal Daher: Have you thought about creating an online pediatric physical therapy practice?
Matt Breen: We have, yeah.
Sal Daher: Where you'd be a marketplace? Maybe that's part of it too. So that might be the way that you can scale up.
Matt Breen: Interesting, yeah. I mean, that's an interesting thought. I think that we've been maybe circling the edges of doing that. The other advantage we have just with our years of experience working in the field is we have this amazing network of incredible specialists from every different field that we could pull in to be part of this platform that you're talking about which is something we're going to act on sooner rather than later for sure.
Sal Daher: Yeah. I'm an investor in a company called AceUp. And what AceUp does, it's a platform for coaches. Companies pay for coaches for their employees, sort of career coaches. People helping employees develop, it help them acquire the skills they need to become more effective employees.
Matt Breen: Interesting.
Sal Daher: So basically, it's a marketplace that kind of finds the right coaching talent and kind of makes it easy and they have sort of a curriculum and so forth. So yeah, I think that there are some various models that could help scale the sort of stuff that you're doing.
Matt Breen: Yeah, absolutely. That's good food for thought, definitely.
Sal Daher: Yeah. So anyway, Matt, I'm very happy to hear of your upcoming nuptials. I hope you and Erica have a great married life together. It's a wonderful thing and remember, it's what you put into it. Marriage is what you make out of it. It's not something that happens, it's something that you build along the way. And I'm sure that you two are going to have a great marriage together.
Matt Breen: I appreciate that. Thank you.
Sal Daher: Have you found that all that working together in the same business, have you found it stressful to your relationship?
Matt Breen: If I sat here and said that it didn't ever cause additional stress, that would just be a total lie. There is for sure spillover, you could say from business things into the more personal relationship. What Erica and I have been very good at though is addressing that head-on. So we actually have language that we use with each other that helps us communicate effectively. So I'll just give you an example. There are times, say, if Erica is head on a laptop, it's 9:00 pm. She wants to keep working, meanwhile I've had a terrible day. I have nothing left in the tank and Erica is like, "Matt, you need to help me with this."
“Erica and I together, we are a really, really strong team, but separate. We wouldn't have had any success so far, I'm sure of that.”
If I say, "Erica, right now, I need you to respect the stock," is what we say. "That means that respectfully, I have nothing to offer at this point in the night and I need you to respect that and say okay." It's vice versa. Fortunately, the other thing that we have going for us is that our strengths and weaknesses complement each other incredibly. I joke sometimes. I say there has to be founders out there who are the total package that Erica and I put together. Maybe those are the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world, but it's not me and I can admit that. Erica and I together, we are a really, really strong team, but separate. We wouldn't have had any success so far, I'm sure of that.
Sal Daher: Well, let me tell you. Here's a little bit of advice. Some of the content that I've created that might be helpful to you there is a guy that I interviewed, his name is Dave Ciccarelli. He's CEO of voices.com, which is the world's biggest marketplace for voice actors. He's up in Canada, but he was in Boston for an event at MIT. I had the chance to interview him in the studio. A delightful guy. Well, he and his wife started this very successful business together. He had a sound studio. He was a sound engineer. She was a singer, an opera singer who wanted to cut a demo CD. Those days, they used CDs.
She heard about this guy and he had just opened up a studio and so forth. Then they got together, they hit it off. They're married and they're very successful. One of the secrets is that they kind of have times where they completely disconnect and they're just husband and wife and not co-founders. So I would advise you, if you're embarking on this, listen to that interview with Dave Ciccarelli.
Matt Breen: Sure.
Sal Daher: You will learn this and lots of other stuff about starting a business. And he has a marketplace. He created voices.com which is a marketplace for voice actors. Thank god, I don't have to support myself with my voice.
Matt Breen: Yeah, you and me both.
Sal Daher: A great piece of content. Just a delightful person.
Matt Breen: Sure, sure. We definitely look at it as a blessing. For all the stress that it can cause, it also causes a lot of excitement. And being able to share the excitement around the startup, that's that's a really special thing that we definitely enjoy.
Sal Daher: Excellent. Matt, are there any thoughts that you want to leave our audience with as we wrap up the podcast?
Matt Breen: Sure. And this will be a plug for your podcast too because I actually listening to an episode you did with Ed. Is it Belove?
Sal Daher: Ed Belove.
Matt Breen Points to Valuable Advice from Ed Belove
Matt Breen: Belove, okay. So at one point during that, he used the phrase, "You need to know what you don't know." When I heard that, I realized that what the way I'd been saying that phrase was you don't know, what you don't know. I would talk to whether as an investor or a potential partner, I'd say, "Something we're very good at is that we don't know what we don't know, and we can admit that." But I think that's almost short-changing ourselves because the truth of it is that we're good at knowing what we don't know. And the difference is that you really have to apply yourself to go and find out what you don't know. It's not a passive thing.
Sal Daher: Fill those holes.
Matt Breen: Exactly. What I'm always doing as a first-time founder with Erica is whether or not it's going to become your area of expertise or this is going to be the part of the business that you're running, you need to go out and find a way to educate yourself because that way you at least find out what you don't know. And from there you can come up with a plan to fill that void or bring in expertise where you need to. So you just really need to be open to finding out what you don't know, and then coming up with a course of action.
Sal Daher: Ed Belove, my colleague at Walnut Ventures is someone who's very well equipped to talk about this problem because he really got into the software industry in the 1970s before they did not even have computer engineering programs, they didn't exist. It was kind of like applied math. I know one of the guys. I've met one of the guys who programmed the Apollo Lunar lander, the software. He said, "Software in those days, it's kind of like an afterthought because the hardware was so primitive." That software now, it really has eaten the world.
Marc Andreessen, 2011 in the Wall Street Journal talked about software eating the world. It is so much more developed now. So Ed Belove has observed the development of software from something that was kind of like an add-on to this all-encompassing thing. So he has a very good sense of trying to understand what it is that you don't know because he was around when people were making things up. Now, a lot more is known about how to build software. Still a lot has to be known. I can tell you that.
Matt Breen: Sure, sure.
Sal Daher: So, Ed, I really commend. He's a very deep thinker and really a great guy. So I'm glad that you got that nugget of information from him and I hope it's helpful to you. Well, Matt, I'm very thankful to you for making time.
Matt Breen: Yeah. Thank you for having me. Startups are such an emotional journey that sometimes having a conversation like this is such a great way to take a step back and even just listening to myself, it's a great way to kind of just be a fly on the wall and say, "Oh, you know what, that's pretty cool that I am able to say that we're launching with Target. That's pretty cool that we have multiple products." Like, "Oh, that sounds pretty good." Being able to talk about it, being at the kind of 50,000 foot view is really important. So I appreciate it.
Sal Daher: Let me also extend to you an invitation to come back. When you have a major inflection or something that you want to tell people about, come back and let's be on the podcast again, okay?
Matt Breen: We would love that. Thank you, thank you.
Sal Daher: All the best with your wedding plans.
Matt Breen: Thanks, Sal. I really appreciate it. This was great.
Sal Daher: This is Angel Invest Boston. I'm 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.