From Online Dating Pioneer to Baby Gear Maven: A Startup Journey

Co-founder of Match.com and Founder of Baby Quip, Fran Maier dishes out real talk on building Match.com in the dial-up days, bouncing back from pandemic pivots, and shaking up the baby gear game. Tune in for practical wisdom on resilience, fundraising as a woman, and staying ambitious through every twist and turn of entrepreneurship.

Learn more about BabyQuip at: https://www.babyquip.com/

Follow Fran on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/franmaier/

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

Transcript

[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 (Host): 

Angelica Maestas (Host): I have a special guest joining us today, Fran, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself?

Fran Maier (Guest): So happy to be here at Jellica. My name is Fran Meyer. CEO and co founder of BabyQuip is a leading marketplace, baby gear rental service, and we've been around since 2016. And I'm coming to you from Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Angelica Maestas (Host): Wonderful. Well, I know that baby quip is, is still a young company, but you're no stranger to the startup world. Can you share a little [00:01:00] bit about how you got your start as an entrepreneur?

Fran Maier (Guest): Yeah. So my first startup was one, I bet a few of your listeners will know match. com. I joined the team and was co founder in late 1994. And if you recall, that was very early, super, super early. launched match in about May of 1995 and we quickly became the number one Online dating, course, consider, I can't say app.

Fran Maier (Guest): There were no apps in 1995. In fact that we had very few photos. Because, really, people didn't have digital cameras in 1995. And we had

Angelica Maestas (Host): baud rate, later maybe 28 8, because most people were doing dial up. So, yes, this all adds up to I'm a dinosaur.[00:02:00] 

Angelica Maestas (Host): I didn't even think about that. when you said that there, there was no app, everything was a website at that point. How did the idea come about? I mean, how, it seems kind of wild to think about how bizarre that must've seemed at the beginning 

Angelica Maestas (Host): I went to Stanford Business School and I went to Stanford undergrad, but what happened with batch is I went to my reunion, my five year reunion and Gary Kremen, a very eccentric, energetic, brilliant guy had bought a bunch of URLs. So rent, cars, apartments, all kinds of things. He was very fast on it. the idea was to build a company called Electric Classifieds that would put the classified advertising from newspapers. And just to remind everybody, this is before Craigslist or eBay [00:03:00] or any of the other ones that have emerged since that Facebook marketplace. And it was a hard sell though, because newspapers were having a difficult time understanding how they should really move their classified business online, whether or not they even wanted to do that. So Match. com, and this in part reflects that Gary needed a date. Batch. com was, was supposed to be the proof of concept. But unlike the rest of the business, we were building a brand. We were building a community. And so it really stood out. The other thing that probably people don't recall, or maybe will remember when I tell them, is it was mostly personals in newspapers. And they're very cryptic, and oftentimes they were very salacious. I don't know. And so the whole personals idea, especially for investors into our company was kind of deemed sleazy and potentially [00:04:00] dangerous. But of course, with match, we were trying to build it. a clean, well lit place, attractive to women. That was one of the biggest strategies that we had. And one that I was very much a driver of because we figured if we can attract women who believe it or not, not on the internet as much as men, they weren't doing personal as much as men. If so, we could get women, the men would follow. And that's basically what happened. Was it just like a sudden explosion in popularity?

Fran Maier (Guest): It was pretty fast. Of course, we didn't have anything to compare it to. And the internet was so, so young, I remember at one point looking at Yahoo's numbers and thinking, Oh, we're just a year behind Yahoo. You know in terms of the number of users. And I remember when we started charging for the service that I thought our revenues were, were fairly significant compared to the Walsh Journal, which was one of the early [00:05:00] publications that started to charge, but again, let me tell you, we didn't know how good we had it. We ended up selling, I should not say we, I was not for this selling match. com in 1998. For less than 8 million. And of course, you know, it's a multi billion dollar conglomerate of dating sites at

Angelica Maestas (Host): Yeah. Oh, man.

Fran Maier (Guest): you know, sometimes here's a lesson being too early. It's not always good.

Fran Maier (Guest): timing is everything. Well,

Angelica Maestas (Host): you have no idea how, how big it could be when you're creating a category like that. There is no benchmark. Tell

Fran Maier (Guest): Another lesson learned is I probably could have put the investment group together to take it to the next level and let it, we [00:06:00] sold it to a company and I stepped away. Didn't really have the confidence or the support, but I also think that being a woman, nobody said to me, you can do this. And I think had I been a guy, somebody would have said, why don't you take it on and get your fair share of it? And that didn't happen. Oh

Angelica Maestas (Host): I'm asking you because you seem very confident, but did imposter syndrome

Fran Maier (Guest): yeah,

Angelica Maestas (Host): end? Yeah.

Fran Maier (Guest): I think because I didn't have enough confidence, I didn't ask help. I think if I had asked for help, other people would have said, why don't you take it? it was a hard lesson and I took it to heart. years later, when I was running my last company, it was a nonprofit industry association. We needed capital. I proposed to the board that we go from nonprofit to for profit and raise some money. [00:07:00] And this time I led the investment and I got my reasonable share of the company. I got a do over oftentimes you don't get a do over, you know 

Angelica Maestas (Host): yeah, I think it's, I'm glad that you shared that especially when you think of successful women, which when you hear founder of match. com, you hear successful woman and you think, wow, she made it and she did all the right things and probably has no regrets. And, and yeah,

Fran Maier (Guest): I mean, I sometimes have to disabuse people of the notion that, you know, I made millions. But it was definitely, great experience to have had. I meet people all the time who met on Data Insights and I have no doubt about that impact.

Angelica Maestas (Host): yeah, well, myself included. I met my husband on match. Yes. 

Fran Maier (Guest): many years ago was that?

Angelica Maestas (Host): That was just, that was during COVID.

Fran Maier (Guest): Oh, [00:08:00] wow.

Fran Maier (Guest): Yeah. So that was still, so we've been together four years now.Congrats.

Angelica Maestas (Host): Thank you. Well, let's talk a little bit now about BabyQuip, different industry, sort of, how did you, how did you end up here 

Fran Maier (Guest): funny because prior to BabyQuip, I was running my last company, which is trustee, which is all now it's called TrustArc. It's all about privacy protections, privacy policies, and privacy assessments, and data, and all of that very wonky stuff. And we raised some money and I decided I didn't really want to do another 10 years privacy work. And in 2012, I left full time at trustee and I post divorced, moved from Alameda across the Bay to San Francisco, bought a house. On Potrero Hill in San Francisco, [00:09:00] I didn't know this, but you know, five blocks down and one block over from Airbnb, which was still a very, very young company. Okay. So I bought this three story house, had two nice bedrooms on the upper floor. And I was like, well, I'm going to see what this is about. So I started to rent rooms in my house that I lived in strangers. And I didn't even tell anybody, Because was embarrassed a little bit. And because I didn't want to be like one of these old English ladies, you know, you read in novels. They had to bring in borders, you know, but I quickly realized that this is something people really liked. They like to travel this way I had a really nice house that able to experience And I liked that idea and I was making really good money. And then shortly [00:10:00] after that, I bought my first vacation rental home here in Santa Fe, and then a few years after that bought another one. So I went from deep into to doing this whole gig economy rental thing. I was also on a board of GE Capital Bank. And I was also doing some nonprofit work and I was also advising at a, what they might be called a pre accelerator called Women's Startup Lab. And it was really talking to emerging female entrepreneurs.

Fran Maier (Guest): I mean, that's one of the biggest changes now versus in the late nineties. There's actually support for entrepreneurs, specifically support for female entrepreneurs, which is fantastic. Anyway, this gal came in, she was from Santa Fe, so of course I'm going to meet with her. she was building under the name baby airs, a very good marketplace for renting baby gear. And in her [00:11:00] pitch to me I think I even have it somewhere. I said to her, well, I should be your CEO. So she didn't say yes right away. I wouldn't have expected her to, but we started the conversation and. launched the company in May of 2016. And, and during that time I looked and I thought, you know, what is their competition and a lot of mom and pops all over the place, a few regional brands that looked like they were very tired nobody building a national brand based on trust and safety. And I knew given my experience at Match and also building brand and partnerships that I, I knew I'd have a playbook for growing this business. So that first summer of 2016, fortunately I had some of my own money I was able to put into the company, see how hard is it to generate demand, how hard is it to generate supply, [00:12:00] off we were. And our model relies on a community of what we call quality providers. These are mostly moms who are at the destination of the travelers. And they're renting out baby gear, not just stuff that they already owned from their own family, but really building a business on our platform. And so we train them on safety and cleanliness and what kind of gear to get and, how to do affiliate marketing, how to get a Google, my business page, how to Generate press and everything like that.

Angelica Maestas (Host): And right now we're in well over 2000 markets with over 2, 500 quality providers, not just in the U S U S Canada, Mexico, and a whole bunch of other places as well. Wow. That's incredible. Has it been, well, I imagine it's not been difficult, difficult to explain the concept because [00:13:00] it's so like Airbnb.

Angelica Maestas (Host): we hear this all the time, you know, I thought of that idea, you know,What's it? You've pursued funding as well. So you started with capital of your own and then have been raising, right?

Fran Maier (Guest): I think having the fact that I spent 40 years in the Bay area and had a number of, you know, match. com that was that women. com blue light. com blue light didn't go anywhere and women. com faded eventually. But also trust arc you know, I had raised money. People knew who I was. It. It really was helpful. but it's still very, very difficult. As you know, women founders get much less money than male founders. I mean, it's almost embarrassing to say that the number is no more than 3 percent of the money, which is crazy and can only be explained by incredible bias. Of course, one of the biggest challenges is, was the pandemic as well.

Angelica Maestas (Host): I mean, we're a travel oriented [00:14:00] brand. We were actually on Shark Tank. It aired on March 6th, 2020. I didn't know that.

Fran Maier (Guest): Yeah.

Angelica Maestas (Host): Wow. Wow,

Fran Maier (Guest): up and we got tons of traffic, but the next week, instead of getting tons of orders in March, it's usually a good month because it's spring break and Easter and so on, we got all these cancellations and

Angelica Maestas (Host): man.

Fran Maier (Guest): we really had to dial back everything, but I had just closed the crowdfunding round. I closed an investment that month in March, and then we got PPP money. by February, 2021, we started seeing things go up and honestly, they've been going up since then. This year's a little softer because. I think revenge travel is over 

Angelica Maestas (Host): must have been. Did you, I mean, you're a resilient founder. 

Fran Maier (Guest): I was at that point, I wasn't taking much as a salary because I had my [00:15:00] vacation rentals generating so much money. So, know, and then that went down to,

Angelica Maestas (Host): gosh,

Angelica Maestas (Host): mean, I was like, sitting there like, okay, let's see how this plays out. did your entire team panic during COVID?

Fran Maier (Guest): were pretty okay. I mean everybody took a pay cut for just 2020 2021. I,caught everybody up least for 2021. They didn't have to continue to take a pay cut. We focused on some platform improvements that we could do. We, we bought and launched a baby gear cleaning business. So we would clean the baby gear for local families like their car seats and strollers, et cetera. And that showed our community quality providers that we were committed to helping them the best we could. And no, we survived it. And like I said, by 2021, things went up.

Angelica Maestas (Host): Got it. What about plans for growth now? What's next for [00:16:00] BabyQuip?

Fran Maier (Guest): There's some exciting things on the on the horizon. We're continuing to work on partnerships with hotels, vacation, rental companies, et cetera. I think there's a big one that I can't talk about right now, but think that will happen and it makes sense. That will happen because customers really do want, customers staying at vacation rentals, they want they want a home like experience. vacation rental hosts don't want to store or pay for, or be liable for the variety of gear that families want. it makes sense to partner with us. also expanding what we're renting, this is because we already do it. Our quality providers are already renting beach gear. They're already renting pet gear. They're sometimes renting appliances and fitness gear. And so we're taking a page out of their book and starting to think about [00:17:00] these other rental categories that we could fulfill. So that's pretty exciting.

Angelica Maestas (Host): Yeah. The world is just evolving to, to that being the norm. I don't know. Or do you use Swimpley or are you familiar with it? You're probably familiar.

Fran Maier (Guest): I haven't used it. Have you?

Angelica Maestas (Host): We use it because we unfortunately do not have a pool and we have kids and live in New Mexico. So it's just a fun thing to do. They love it. And it seems so bizarre when my husband told me about it.

Angelica Maestas (Host): This was a few years ago. I was like, well, I guess, 

Angelica Maestas (Host): when Uber and Lyft first came out. I mean, this is bizarre, but now where would we be now? Santa Fe, unfortunately, does not have a whole lot of pools. but apparently there's a lot of pickleball courts. So, you know, well, I think Swimpley was even on shark tank too. And I think they passed on them.

Fran Maier (Guest): Yeah, I'm not, no, I'm not sure how well they're doing as a business, but that's a different age altogether.

Angelica Maestas (Host): Okay. Well, they need someone like you who's been in this space. [00:18:00] It can be a retirement job.

Angelica Maestas (Host): of money, yeah, they've raised tons of money. I've only raised about 12 million. And I think they've raised over 60 million. No way.

Fran Maier (Guest): Yeah.

Fran Maier (Guest): kind of the bummer because it is so hard to raise money. We've been a little bit of what I would call hand to mouth,and when, when mostly men raise these big dollars, I mean, sometimes they blow it, but sometimes they could take bigger bets that do pay off. have to be as careful. Which is kind of ironic also because female founded companies actually do do a better return to their investors. But,they raise less money, they raise money at a lower valuation, and it's kind of screwy. 

Angelica Maestas (Host): yeah, it is, which is why we talk about it a lot on the show. And as you know, we'll be hosting a screening of show her the money to talk about that disparity. But more importantly, how [00:19:00] we change that. And we, we educate women on investing and we get more women to become funders because they'll invest in other women.

Fran Maier (Guest): women. We need more women who are already wealthy to understand that part of their portfolio should go into this kind of investment. I mean, no, I'm going to tell anybody to put their whole portfolio, but a small part of the portfolio, 10, 000 a year. That would go so such a long way to help women get funding for their startups.

Angelica Maestas (Host): And for women that haven't invested before, it can seem kind of scary and intimidating and you hear minimum commitment sizes. And if you don't know venture well enough, you think, Oh, I have to write this really large check right off the bat.

Fran Maier (Guest): Usually it's spread out over four or five

Angelica Maestas (Host): Right.

Angelica Maestas (Host): Yeah. Well, I want to hear a little bit about your, your co founder with BabyQuip. So the [00:20:00] reason I ask is. Founder partnerships can, can struggle, especially if you haven't worked together. 

Fran Maier (Guest): Right. So, so Carrie left in 2017. And it was at a time where it looked like we weren't going to raise some money. she was concerned about what would happen. And I didn't share that. I was concerned about it, but I didn't, I wasn't panicking about it. And that tension, I think emerged, it just got to the point that she decided she didn't want to be part of it anymore. And I think that happens. It happens startups aren't for anyone and we're still friendly. She's in Albuquerque now works for one of the labs and has progressed in her career and still owns a, a nice little chunk of baby quips. So I think she's happy. I think I'm happy at that time. I forgot to mention [00:21:00] earlier my older son, who had been working at Accenture in technology development, the team as CTO. So I have a very unique experience because there's not a whole lot of mother son teams. and we get along pretty well, you know, I can't micromanage him at all. And he gets to call me Fran, not mom.

Angelica Maestas (Host): That's important. 

Angelica Maestas (Host): I actually don't think I've met another mother son team before. We've had mother daughter for sure, but

Fran Maier (Guest): Oh, and there's a lot of father, son

Angelica Maestas (Host): yeah.

Fran Maier (Guest): and sister, but no, it's kind of unique,

Fran Maier (Guest): trust, not only his skills, but also he's not going to leave me high and dry

Angelica Maestas (Host): Yeah. Oh, that's true.

Fran Maier (Guest): and every year I give them, you know, I say, look, you don't have to do this. 

Angelica Maestas (Host): how was the adjustment for him to work for you?

Fran Maier (Guest): You'd have to ask him.

Angelica Maestas (Host): Yeah.

Fran Maier (Guest): But he's still around.

Fran Maier (Guest): tape [00:22:00] together and that, that was so much more fun for me. To do Shark Tank with him than to do it by myself.

Angelica Maestas (Host): oh yeah, I bet,

Fran Maier (Guest): Yeah.

Angelica Maestas (Host): it's family dynamics. It's always interesting, but if, if it works well, then I mean, you certainly have someone who's not going to just be gone overnight,

Fran Maier (Guest): Yeah.

Angelica Maestas (Host): you know, is not going to burn you.

Fran Maier (Guest): Yeah.

Angelica Maestas (Host): that,

Angelica Maestas (Host): And this is safe. The rest of the team has to know that he has accountability. oh yeah, that's, that's important. How big is your team now?

Fran Maier (Guest): We're up to 20.

Angelica Maestas (Host): Okay. I must say I was perusing the team page and I, I've never seen it before, but I love what you guys did with the childhood photos.

Fran Maier (Guest): Yes. Yes. Of course, mine looks like it was from a different century. It was.

Angelica Maestas (Host): Well, you look very young.

Fran Maier (Guest): Thank

Angelica Maestas (Host): All right. Well, so we've talked about the journey, how you've gotten to where you are now [00:23:00] with baby quip. have you had any lessons learned that you'd share with other founders as far as, It's getting through those really tough times. And you, you mentioned something earlier that it's not for everybody.

Angelica Maestas (Host): And sometimes that's what you learn as a founder. But for those who are committed and want to stick through it, you know, how did you keep yourself going when, when things weren't always rosy?

Fran Maier (Guest): I think for me, given the age I'm at and so on, I really didn't think that, was any good reason to check it up and give up, I wasn't getting paid a lot, so not having that income, you know what I mean? It just marginally might as well just try and make it work. Right. So, so I think, I think it is a case of resilience.

Fran Maier (Guest): I think there was could go a long way. I mean, I think picking up that cleaning business, which is now a very small part of the business, but at the time sent a really important message to the That we are [00:24:00] willing to pivot. We are willing to try something new. We're willing to support our community. I think probably one of the things that I no longer surprised, but I was surprised at when I first started working, this segment is how important social media influencers are, just really, really important and can make a big difference in terms of setting the overall tone of the brand, getting the excitement. And all of that. So, so,we invest more in that than I expected, but it's for a good reason, All right. Well, we are going to transition to some fun, rapid fire questions. All right. Margarita wine or mocktail. used to be margarita now more wine,

Angelica Maestas (Host): Okay. Let's do it. Beach vacation or mountain retreat.

Fran Maier (Guest): mountain retreat, except

Fran Maier (Guest): one, so now I should really go to the beach more,

Angelica Maestas (Host): that's true. [00:25:00] If your entrepreneurial journey had a theme song, what would it be?

Fran Maier (Guest): I will survive.

Angelica Maestas (Host): How do you celebrate a big win

Fran Maier (Guest): Retail therapy. 

Fran Maier (Guest): art.

Angelica Maestas (Host): Oh, okay.

Angelica Maestas (Host): You know, my Santa Fean comes through. Well, and I've seen your home and all of the pieces of art. So those must've been a lot of wins

Angelica Maestas (Host): Yeah. A little rewards. Yeah. advice. You'd give a female founder in tech. Be confident. You know your market. Go for it. And last but not least, what can listeners do to support you?

Angelica Maestas (Host): Well, if they have small children and they're planning on travel, please go to babyquip. com or download our app. B A B Y Q U I P. And if they're interested in making extra money as a little side gig, we'd also go to BabyQuip and, and learn more about that. And of course you can follow me on LinkedIn, Meyer, F R A N M A I E R. Wonderful. Thanks for being on [00:26:00] Fran.

Fran Maier (Guest): Thank you Angelica, a lot of fun! 

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, we're Ambitious AF.