Mother-Daughter Duo's App-to-Acquisition Adventure

Sada Naegelin shares her journey of co-founding De Las Mías with her mom. From creating a health app for Latinas to navigating the twists and turns of startup life, Sada dishes on the ups and downs of this adventure. Learn how the De Las Mias duo used non-dilutive funding to ultimately score a successful acquisition. It's a story of innovation, family teamwork, and the power of pursuing a mission you believe in. Get ready for some real talk about entrepreneurship, letting go, and finding your path!

You can follow Sada on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sadanaegelin/

And learn more about Facilitate Insight at: https://www.facilitate-insight.com/

Follow us on Tik Tok @shesambitiousaf for more content and episode teasers!

Transcript

Angelica Maestas: [00:00:00] Welcome to She's Ambitious AF, the bold and empowering podcast that turns up the volume on female entrepreneurship. Join us as we dive headfirst into the wild world of boss babes, where we spill the tea on all things ambition, success, and the occasional hilarious disaster. 

Angelica Maestas: Today, I'm joined by guest Sarah Nagelin,

Sada Naegelin: Hi, thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to this conversation. Yes, my name is Sara. I am co founder of De Las Mias, a bilingual healthy lifestyle platform for Latinas. And that business was acquired a couple of years ago. And so I founded my own business. I have a consulting business called Facilitate Insight, where I provide facilitation and design strategy and human centered design.

Sada Naegelin: Consulting for businesses of all kinds.

Angelica Maestas: , I'm excited to have you on. I think I mentioned to you that one of the reasons I was so interested to have this [00:01:00] conversation was the fact that you've Gone through acquisition or no longer with that part of the organization, or, you know, doing your own thing just eager to hear a little bit more about the experience leading up to that when, when, when it was involved in the decision making behind it. but before we get into that, why don't you tell us a little bit more about where the idea even came from for that? Mm

Sada Naegelin: Sure. So my co founder is my mom, Ana Consuelo Matiella. And so I was very fortunate to be able to have that opportunity to team up with her. So really it was her brainchild. We received a small business innovation research grant. From the National Institute of Health, specifically the National Cancer Institute to test the idea of the lesbians and really it came out of my mom's work as a bilingual health educator.[00:02:00] 

Sada Naegelin: So she's had her own business for many, many years doing bilingual health education and saw a real need for a. Culturally tailored linguistically tailored intervention for Latinas in the U. S. to help foster healthy habits. And so that's where the idea came from, and the SBIR grant enabled us to build and test initially what was a bilingual app, but then turned into a digital platform with a website as well.

Sada Naegelin: And we conducted a randomized trial in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And we learned a ton from that experience, which then informed the products that we ultimately launched about a year later.

Angelica Maestas: Got it. So your mom brought the bilingual education experience that was able to help with developing the app. What was your background at that point?

Sada Naegelin: [00:03:00] Yeah, that was the cool part is we really had complimentary skill sets, right? So she. Was the subject matter expert and my background is in human centered design, design thinking and community engagement. And so I was able to bring that lens. So I really brought kind of the business chops of building out the strategy and the business model and the day to day operations of the business, as well as the community engagement piece, right?

Sada Naegelin: Because from the beginning, everything that we built and created was informed by our, target audience, which is Latinas in the U. S.

Angelica Maestas: What was that customer discovery process? Like, what did you all do?

Sada Naegelin: Oh, it was so fun. We did a lot. So we at the time did mostly in person user research. So we did a series of focus groups interviews, both in Albuquerque, New Mexico and in Oregon. So I'm based in Portland, Oregon, grew up in Santa Fe, but based in Portland, [00:04:00] Oregon. So we did a series of focus group interviews in Hood River.

Sada Naegelin: Oregon as well. There's a really strong community there of Mexican, Mexican Americans. So they informed a lot of the user research in addition to the trial that was happening right in Albuquerque, which was more formalized, but we did a lot of informal focus groups and interviews to inform the product design.

Sada Naegelin: Totally.

Angelica Maestas: Got it. What was hiring the, the technical team when you got to, Hey, we've got the idea. Hey, we've got some grant funding. Now we need to actually build. What was that like coming from a non dev background? Mm

Sada Naegelin: dating. I mean, it was just like right. Because my mom and I knew very little. About developing an app,

Angelica Maestas: hmm.

Sada Naegelin: know, I think we had both kind of dabbled in like website design or development, right? But it's just a totally different animal. And so [00:05:00] we, it was a longer process, right? I would say it took months of meeting different people, networking, getting referrals, having coffee with tons of different people.

Sada Naegelin: Developers and art directors and product managers to just really understand what the landscape was of, of options. Right. And ultimately the developers that we went with were great. They were an excellent fit for us and our style of working. They were highly collaborative and really I could adapt quickly and they were nimble and they believed in the product.

Sada Naegelin: Right. Which is I think another big piece of it. They were very invested in the values that we held and creating something that was specific and tailored for Latinas.

Angelica Maestas: The reason I asked that is because just yesterday I was talking to a tech founder, non technical background, who hired a lot of the wrong [00:06:00] people. it took the third round, I think of, of building the technical team to where she had finally learned, okay, this is what I needed. her, her problem was that. They didn't really take her seriously, and it was very easy to not give all the answers to the questions or say it in a way that would deliberately hide what they were doing. And so there was definitely not trust there. So I'm curious, you said some of the positive traits in your devs were they really believed in the product.

Angelica Maestas: But how did you happen to find people like that? Was it just, saying that as you were going through the recruiting process.

Sada Naegelin: That was certainly part of it, but it was also, I think A communication style. the development team that we worked with from the very beginning were very transparent and authentic in how they communicated with us in terms of what they knew or didn't know.

Sada Naegelin: You know, they deferred to us in terms of, they knew [00:07:00] that we knew our audience best. Right. And that what they were bringing was the technical expertise. So I feel like there were lots of positive signs in terms of their communication. 

Sada Naegelin: something else just to highlight underscore was the authenticity that. Owner principle is the person that we initially met with. And then he was the person who really led the team. And from the beginning, he was always just a very authentic person and would explicitly say, you know, we want this to succeed.

Sada Naegelin: How can we help you make this happen? It's going to have someone in the trenches with you who's willing to make sacrifices, like, right. willing to not make as much money as he might have otherwise on another project, to, yeah, just really be in it with us with sweat equity and believing in what we were creating.

Angelica Maestas: to transition to the funding side of the business. So you were, you were non dilutive funding that really got your start. Did you ever take [00:08:00] venture or did it remain grant funded until acquisition?

Sada Naegelin: It remained grant funded until acquisition with a few pilot projects that provided some revenue as well,

Sada Naegelin: But it was primarily grant funded until acquisition. And we pursued Venture capital,

Sada Naegelin: but we weren't wholeheartedly in it. It's not what we really wanted and it was very difficult because we had a very hard time finding Investors that were values aligned. That was a big sticking point for us. We did not want to take investors or pursue investors that didn't really.

Sada Naegelin: understand and buy into the opportunity of increasing the health and wellbeing of Latinas.

Sada Naegelin: We only ever found, two or three investors that really got it. And they understood not just the, the kind of benevolent part of that, but they understood that there was an economic benefit at the end.

Sada Naegelin: That Latinas with their [00:09:00] buying power, with their influence, with the sheer number of us in this country, that there was a real upside opportunity to empowering that group. Like I said, there was like two or three investors that got it, but that wasn't enough. And they weren't willing to take the jump just two or three of them.

Sada Naegelin: And so I think that was a frustrating point. You know, we were like at the same time that we were raising, you'd hear stories of, some pet brand creating, some sort of product for dogs receiving millions of dollars. That was frustrating and disheartening to feel like, like the investment community.

Sada Naegelin: Like they didn't care. And maybe, I take ownership of, maybe we didn't sell it. Sell the business opportunity well enough. Maybe that was missing from our story, but I think that was a frustrating piece.

Angelica Maestas: I mean, it could be that you just didn't need it and not every founder needs venture

Sada Naegelin: [00:10:00] Well,

Angelica Maestas: I think it's definitely a positive mark in your book that built something with non dilutive funding. That's awesome. Did you all have writing grants or did you have folks to support you?

Sada Naegelin: so my mom has had a lot of experience writing grants. The Las Mia's funding, I think was her second or third, successfully funded grant that she received from NIH. So she is well versed and it's 1 of her skills. Which not all founders have, but we were, 

Sada Naegelin: lucky enough to have her,

Angelica Maestas: What was the best way to leverage your skill sets with mom? Did you go in saying, Hey, this is my role and this is yours and you're responsible for this? was it more, we'll just kind of see as we go.

Sada Naegelin: we were pretty clear about it from the onset. And I think that really served us well especially going into meetings with potential [00:11:00] clients or customers, going to meetings with investors, if there are questions about, business model, technology, that's Sada.

Sada Naegelin: If there are questions about content, behavior change models, that's Anna, right? If there's questions about the audience, we'll both jump in and both answer those questions. So that was very helpful, but also just in our working model, I would defer to her if it had to do with content, behavior, change. Just health education, best practices, she's the expert, and she would defer to me on, project management technology, the kind of day to day business things. There were times too, where we had to kind of work it out, or maybe we didn't agree with each other. But ultimately, we always were aligned.

Sada Naegelin: And also we had a lot of trust, I knew she knew what she was talking about all the time. It was like, she's the expert. And I trusted that. And likewise, like she really deferred to me and [00:12:00] my background in business and human centered design. And I think that was a real strength of us as a team.

Sada Naegelin: And people saw that,

Angelica Maestas: It sounds like it, the skill sets were distinct enough that it was very easy to know which lane you were best suited to be in. I want to. Now transition us to a little bit more on the acquisition side. And I've shared on many podcasts that my acquisition provided more value in the form of lessons learned. Then it did financial reward, which are priceless. So think , it worked out well for me in the end. I also always say that there were a thousand and one questions that I just didn't know to ask. And so I'm curious, how did you and your mom even get to the point where you were entertaining this of acquisition?

Angelica Maestas: How did it come about?

 It came about pretty organically. [00:13:00] We had entered into a few different Pilot projects with different community based health organizations. And through those pilots quickly realized that we were having to come up with a lot of workarounds for not being HIPAA compliant. And so that HIPAA compliance really became the sticking point of our growth. And we didn't have the resources to become HIPAA compliant. That was when we thought, well, we have these two federally qualified health centers that we're working with, they're HIPAA compliant. What if they absorbed the LASNIAS and built out the functionality that is needed that aligns with HIPAA compliance and then took it to the next level. And my mom, Anna and our creative director, they pursued the HIPAA compliance as far as they could. And then very soon we all kind of came together and realized, okay, this is a critical [00:14:00] juncture. We have to make a decision.

Sada Naegelin: We, want to figure out how to get more money to make this happen or transition. And we had kind of feeler conversations with the 2 health centers that we were working with. And they were both very interested, so we said, okay, let's just keep pursuing it. And so we did that in parallel with the pilot projects and just continuing our day to day operations.

Sada Naegelin: We pursued those acquisition conversations with those 2 different entities.

Angelica Maestas: What was the timeline of when that happened? conversations.

Sada Naegelin: So we founded the last in 2016. I would say those acquisition conversations happened in 2020. So we're about 4 years in.

Sada Naegelin: We had launched the pilot programs early 2020 and then. started having those conversations like mid year.

Angelica Maestas: Hmm. Okay.

Angelica Maestas: I'm curious then, you have the emotional angst of [00:15:00] letting go of the las mias?

Sada Naegelin: I did not. I think through that year, 2020 really through that process realized that we had probably taken as far as we could take it. Also, so 2019 was when we attempted our, to raise funds. And after we decided to call that and, and stop that activity,

Angelica Maestas: hmm.

Sada Naegelin: you know, I had to go get a regular day job.

Sada Naegelin: And I think that helped me with my transition of accepting, we've taken this as far as we can take it. And here are these two organizations that are really well suited to carry it forward. And so I didn't have that. I was ready to let it go on to a team that could really help it thrive. And I think for my mom, it was harder.

Sada Naegelin: I think that took a little bit longer, but ultimately I think she got there. She understanding that we could, we took it as far as we could. [00:16:00] We had huge successes with what we could do with our resources. And then it was time for someone else to take it to the next step.

Angelica Maestas: Yeah. And for for Anna, she continued on, didn't she, for a little bit with the acquiring

Sada Naegelin: She did. So with the acquisition we were both offered contract roles. I chose to kind of pursue it in a very different vein because I was starting to build my consulting business. I leveraged that opportunity to say, yes, I will consult with you in these ways, right? Around community engagement, around audience research, because that's where I want, that's the focus of my career now.

Sada Naegelin: Didn't want to be Consulting on the product development or product management so much. So I made that clear as part of the acquisition conversations, but Ana did continue in her role as content director for a full year. And that was part of the acquisition agreement [00:17:00] that they hire her in that role for a year.

Sada Naegelin: So, we both had different takes on it, right? I saw the acquisition. As an opportunity to then pursue what I really wanted, because I think through the journey of working in the startup and then going back to work for someone, I learned a lot about myself and realize the ways that I want to work and the type of work that I want to be doing.

Sada Naegelin: And but for my mom, she's always had a successful. Business. She's always been self employed, so it, I don't think it was much of a pivotal moment for her, but for me, I saw the acquisition as like, okay, this is my chance.

Angelica Maestas: Yeah. And no regrets. It sounds like you look very happy, you know, for

Sada Naegelin: Yeah.

Angelica Maestas: Sada looks, you know, just loving life, bright and glowy.

Sada Naegelin: Yeah, no regrets. I. I am so grateful that I got the opportunity to [00:18:00] work with my mom so closely, to learn so much from her, and then to have this really unique experience that not a lot of people get to have of building something from the ground up. It was awesome. And through that, I also learned that I like to be my own boss and have flexibility and autonomy.

Sada Naegelin: And and so that's. Was a very valuable takeaway from that. It was like, okay, well now I know what I need to work on to create the life that I want moving forward.

Angelica Maestas: Yeah.

Sada Naegelin: and that lesson came from doing De Las Mias.

Angelica Maestas: Yeah. On that vein, I, I say that entrepreneurship ruined me for employment and that's okay. I just can never do that ever again, but that's okay. It's good that I know. But yeah, of acquisition is if you do go on and stay with the acquiring company, then you're essentially their employee. Even if it's contract, it's, it's, it's doing what [00:19:00] someone else is directing you to do.

Angelica Maestas: And that can be very hard for founders.

Sada Naegelin: Absolutely.

Angelica Maestas: Do you know what's happened? Did the Las Mias, did the name, the brand stay, or was it all consumed? Is it still going? Do you know anything about that?

Sada Naegelin: So the acquisition was was the brand and everything, right? It's now part of One Community Health and they're working on their funding to build it out more, but it's been a minute since I've checked in with them. They've had some leadership changes, so I don't know where they're at exactly, but there's a real motivation there for them.

Sada Naegelin: To make it happen and make it a success because it can potentially be a revenue stream for them. And that was kind of the way that we approached kind of the pitch for the acquisition is patient engagement, but also ultimately a way for them to generate revenue and diversify [00:20:00] their sources of revenue by having a platform that they could license to other federally qualified health centers. So if, the vision, the motivation is still there, they have all they need

Angelica Maestas: Yeah. All right. Now we're going to transition to some, some fun rapid fire questions.

Sada Naegelin: ready.

Angelica Maestas: Most used emoji when texting your mom.

Sada Naegelin: The purple heart.

Angelica Maestas: Okay. Favorite way to celebrate a business milestone.

Sada Naegelin: Hmm. Probably a glass of wine

Angelica Maestas: one word to describe your entrepreneurial journey so far.

Sada Naegelin: word.

Sada Naegelin: Entrepreneurial. Journey so far, rollercoaster.

Angelica Maestas: Okay. That's great. That's normal. Yeah, that's fair. All right. And [00:21:00] last but not least, how can listeners support you?

Sada Naegelin: Ah, yes. Well, as I said, so one of the gifts of the acquisition was me being able to reevaluate and prioritize the work that I want to be doing. So earlier this year, I launched my brand for my consulting business, Facilitate Insight. And through that, I am offering. Facilitation, community engagement, human centered design, consulting services.

Sada Naegelin: So really just supporting organizations in how they engage groups of people to meet their mission, to develop products. And also as part of that facilitate insight, I am developing. A series of workshops and have a collaborator, Lee Wilmeth, and we have two leadership focused workshops coming up. It's the same curriculum, but two different offerings.

Sada Naegelin: It's called be here now embodied leadership. And it's [00:22:00] for folks that are in leadership positions. So managers, entrepreneurs, founders who want to have a higher Self awareness and understand how their own emotions and behavior impact the decisions that they make and to just be more mindful and how they move through business and interacting with different people and different teams.

Sada Naegelin: So those workshops are coming up. There's a virtual workshop. On September 19th, and there's an in person workshop in Portland, Oregon on September 25th. And information for all of that is on my website, which is facilitate insight. com.

Angelica Maestas: Great. I'll make sure to put that in the show notes. It was wonderful having you on. Thank you, Sarah.

Sada Naegelin: Thank you. 

Angelica Maestas: And that's a wrap on another episode of She's Ambitious AF. Remember to dream big, hustle harder, and show the world that when it comes to success, we're not just ambitious, [00:23:00] we're Ambitious AF.