How Ana Guzmán Launched a Bilingual Book Brand

Ana Guzmán, co-founder of Binibi, joins The Female Founder to share how a personal need evolved into a mission-driven bilingual children’s book company. After struggling to find high-quality English and Spanish books for her daughter, Guzmán partnered with her childhood friend to create Binibi—a brand designed to support families raising bilingual children. Drawing on her upbringing in El Salvador and her corporate experience at Squarespace, she reflects on the leap from a structured tech career to building a product-based business from the ground up.

Guzmán discusses identifying a clear market gap as the U.S. moves toward becoming the largest Spanish-speaking country, navigating manufacturing and retail challenges, and funding early growth through a successful Kickstarter campaign. She also shares candid lessons about patience, long-term thinking, and balancing entrepreneurship with motherhood. Her perspective offers practical insight into starting small, setting achievable milestones, and building confidence through steady progress.

Join us as we discuss:

• Identifying a market gap in bilingual children’s education
• Transitioning from a corporate role at Squarespace to entrepreneurship
• Launching a product-based business during the pandemic
• Preparing for and exceeding a $10,000 Kickstarter goal
• Building a brand that stands out on Amazon and direct-to-consumer channels
• Balancing business growth with motherhood and personal priorities
• The power of small milestones and long-term vision

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Transcript

Meet Anna And Binibi

SPEAKER_00 0:07

This is the Female Founder Show with host and entrepreneur Bridget Fitzpatrick exclusively on ASBN.

SPEAKER_02 0:18

Like so many founders, today's guest saw a need in the market and decided to do something about it. When Anna Gusman became a new mom, she wanted bilingual books that could help her child learn Spanish and English from an early age, but she couldn't find what she was looking for. Alongside her childhood friend and co-founder, Luciana Yarhee, she created Binibee, a bilingual children's book company designed to help families raise little ones in two languages. Since launching, Binibee has seen incredible success. Their Kickstarter campaign hit its goal in just four hours, and they've built a loyal community of bilingual families who love their interactive Spanish-English books. In our conversation today, Anna shares how she turned a personal frustration into a growing business, what the journey from corporate life to entrepreneurship looked like, how she manages running a company while raising a family, and while social media has been so important in building the Binne B brand. Anna, thank you so much for joining us today.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Thank you for having me. It's such an honor to be here.

Finding The Bilingual Book Gap

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Yes. Now, I'd love to talk about Binabe for a little bit. Can you take us back to the very beginning when you what what gave you the inspiration to start Binabe? And how did you first realize there was a need for this?

Leaving Corporate For Purpose

SPEAKER_01 1:33

So it all started when I had my first daughter. This was about five years ago. As soon as she was born, I realized that I really wanted her to be bilingual. Myself, I grew up in El Salvador. I grew up speaking Spanish at home and English at school, and being bilingual has completely changed my life. And I wanted the same for her. But of course, like any new parent, once your baby's born, you have no idea what to do. And so I turned to books naturally. And I started investigating this market and learning so much about it, but really found that there was such a shortage of quality books in Spanish for babies and for parents like myself that wanted to teach their kids a second language. And so upon seeing this gap and then learning about all these trends about the growing Hispanic market and how the United States is going to be the biggest Spanish-speaking country in the world by 2050, it was a no-brainer to start, you know, get to work and start filling this gap and launch this collection of musical soundbooks that would help kids develop Spanish very early on.

SPEAKER_02 2:31

Okay, we're gonna we're gonna talk more about Benevean a little bit, but I know before that you were in the corporate world. So talk to us a little bit about how what that transition was like, starting your own company from coming from out of corporate.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Yeah, such a good question. So I was in the corporate world, I was in tech, I was a company called Squarespace, um, a website builder. And so starting my own company was a total shift. And it was very scary at first because I came from a very structured, very uh, for lack of a better word, safe like career trajectory, if you will. But something that I had always wanted to do was start my own company. But to start your own company, you really have to be in love with the the problem that you're solving. And so that had never happened to me until this moment. And so when I felt it and I I just couldn't get it out of my head, I decided to to start it. And it was really tough at first because you come from an environment where you have all these teammates and all these resources to an environment where you know it's yourself and and no resources, so it was quite the adjustment, but but eventually found my way.

From Idea To Manufacturing

SPEAKER_02 3:33

Yes, and for starting a product-based business like you have, and where there you don't have the the resources like you had in the corporate world, um, how did you approach just starting with product development, manufacturing, all of that in the early days?

SPEAKER_01 3:50

Well, it was um it's a kind of a funny story. I think I Googled how to make a book at first, but very luckily my co-founder joined me very, very early on, and she's a really strong background in product and paper packaging manufacturing. And so she's a total expert in this field. And so I had a background in research and product development from a tech perspective, but I was able to take all those skills to interview customers and prospective customers at the time and really understand what they were looking for, design with them as we designed our first prototypes, and then with her knowledge, we were able to find a manufacturer and create samples that eventually brought our blind to life.

SPEAKER_02 4:27

Now, I'm sure there were a lot of lessons learned in that process. Can you recall maybe one of the bigger lessons that you learned during that?

Patience And Long-Term Vision

SPEAKER_01 4:36

You know, I think the biggest lesson I've learned is that everything is harder than it seems. And just be patient with yourself and and and everything takes time. And you know, I think we I myself, I I will just speak for myself, but I'm very used to doing things very fast and seeing results very quickly. But when you're launching a company and you're building it, you're you're building for a long term for a long-term vision. Yeah. And so it's truly one foot and for the next, and and just making sure that you're making progress. And that's been my biggest lesson. It's like staying focused on your vision and and just progress is progress is progress and accepting that.

Funding And Kickstarter Wins

SPEAKER_02 5:13

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Um now, one of the things that is that usually takes a little while and when you're starting a business is funding. It's always a challenge for any new founder. So, how did you initially fund Binaby? Was did you did you raise money? Was it boot, have you been bootstrapping? How did that go?

SPEAKER_01 5:30

So at the very beginning, um, I had a part-time job and I was funding it with that. Uh, but eventually we launched a Kickstarter campaign. And for those of you that don't know what Kickstarter is, it's a crowdfunding platform for creators like ourselves to raise enough money to buy basically your first round of inventory. And so we did that, and we reached our funding goal in less than four hours. And I think that was the first moment that we were like, oh my god, there could be something here. So with that money, we were able to buy our first batch of inventory, and then eventually we did raise a small round for friends and family and and you know the the rest is sort of history at this point.

SPEAKER_02 6:03

Yeah. Nice, nice. Kickstarter can be a great resource. Do you have any advice for anyone that might be thinking about going that route?

SPEAKER_01 6:11

Yeah, so for Kickstarter, it's all about the preparation. So make sure you're telling your your story, your vision, um, make sure you're connecting with the audience and and spending a lot of time on planning your Kickstarter campaign. The more you you planned for and the better, the better the results will be. So it it it's definitely a commitment, but it's so worth it. And it was so good for us.

Brand Building And Community

SPEAKER_02 6:31

That's amazing. That's great. Now, since then, you've built a loyal community of parents and families that are using and reading your books. What strategies helped you gain early traction and ultimately got your books into the hands of these customers?

SPEAKER_01 6:47

So, what I think that we've always we still live and breathe every day is like our customers come first. And you know, we're in the world of books. There's there's just a million books out there, and so why why buy ours? And we've always believed that building our brand and being very meticulous and being very thoughtful about how we build it was always gonna differentiate us, and that's what it's been. So we've been building a brand um in line with our customers. Everything we do, every book you see, everything we, every product we release is done with their feedback. And so I believe that one of the keys to our success has been connecting with our audience and making sure that we're look we're building for them and always staying true to our brand.

Social Media Strategy

SPEAKER_02 7:25

That's great advice for any business for that you're in, for sure. Now, I've seen your social media and you have a present that feels very authentic and mission-driven, which is critical, I think, nowadays. Um, how important has social media been in growing your business?

SPEAKER_01 7:41

Thank you. Um, it's been it's been really impactful for us in gaining um in gaining visibility. So most people that end up buying one of our books have found us on social media. So I'd say it's been critical for like telling the world that we're here and um and as founders, it's been really cool to be able to tell our stories, but then share those stories of our customers through that platform. And so it's been it's been very important.

Balancing Motherhood And Startups

SPEAKER_02 8:07

Yeah. And it does, it looks great. What kind of team do you have? Do you have an internal team that works on your social media or is it well?

SPEAKER_01 8:14

We're a very small team, we're three people, but we work with a graphic designer who's incredible. And so um, our director of marketing, Daniela, is very, very creative. So she comes up with most of the content that you see on there, and we work in line with our graphic designer to bring the designs to life.

SPEAKER_02 8:30

Nice, nice job. Thank you. Many of our listeners are moms building businesses while they're raising families. How do you personally find balance between entrepreneurship and motherhood? And what what helps you stay centered?

SPEAKER_01 8:44

That is a great question.

SPEAKER_02 8:46

If you do stay centered.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

Oh my god, today you should have seen my morning. Um, you know, it's crazy. I have a five-year-old and a two-year-old. Um, and so it feels like you have no balance ever. But what I try to do is my my co-founder and I talk about this all the time. We're like, we're not gonna be everything to everyone all the time. But some days the business will get more of me, some days my kids will get more of me, but in the end, that balance is out. And so making sure that the time I'm spending with my kids is quality, that I'm there for all the really important things. And then from the business side, we are really good at prioritizing, so very organized. And so making sure that absolutely everything that needs to get done gets done whenever it gets done. And so that is maybe the best way I've, you know, I've found balance, but I think life is crazy as a mom, as an entrepreneur, um, or if you're working a full-time job and have kids or, you know, so it's really figuring out like what is most important that day and and and and just accepting that it's not perfect always, but in the end, it's it's good.

Competing And Scaling On Amazon

SPEAKER_02 9:45

Yeah, very well said. I've been asked that question many times myself, and I answer it the same way. I say you can't be everything to everybody all the time, but when you are with your business or with your children or grandchildren, my case, whatever, you can be you can be 100% while you're in that moment. So very, very well said. I totally get it. Thank you. All right, let's shift gears for a second and talk about Amazon. Your books are on Amazon, and that's such a competitive marketplace. What have you learned about selling on Amazon that helps you stand out and scale?

SPEAKER_01 10:16

Definitely. So Amazon's been so great to us, but it certainly like takes a lot of work to succeed on the platform. And I would say for any founder thinking about Amazon, definitely do it, but build a brand. And so it's not your success will not come from building a page for your product. It will come in investing in your brand. So making sure you create your your pictures and your images are beautiful, your A plus content is there, your brand store stands out, and making sure that you're always um building the brand on Amazon, not necessarily just selling the product.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

Yeah, I'm sure going back to you, we're talking about being patient. I'm sure Amazon was one of those times. Cause I'm sure that was, you know, developing a brand on such a massive uh platform, I'm sure that was something you had to be patient, patient.

Start Small And Reduce Overwhelm

SPEAKER_01 11:00

Yeah, definitely. And I think it's again, it's about like when we launched on Amazon, um, we had no idea what we were doing or how to do it. And it was really and truly about learning. Like every day we watched a webinar, every day we read, you know, something and and slowly sort of like did all the things. And we're still growing, we're still learning, and the platform is ever changing, so you have to adapt. But I would say be patient and and definitely be patient with anything you're doing, and especially if you're if you're looking to grow on Amazon.

SPEAKER_02 11:26

Yeah. Any any other advice um for those that are watching um that might be thinking about starting a business? Would would you do you have any specific advice for them?

SPEAKER_01 11:36

You know, one of the things that I think many times stops people from starting a business is that it's just so overwhelming. Like there's so many things to do, and going from zero to one is is super difficult.

unknown 11:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

And so I would say if you have an idea and you feel overwhelmed by it or you really want to pursue it, just make like smaller milestones for yourself. So for us, the first year, like we had newborns, it was COVID, it was crazy. Um, you said, you know what, by the end of the year, we just want to have a prototype. And then we worked backwards to set the smaller goals that would lead us to that. And so that would be my biggest piece of advice. It's like start small and just set smaller goals for yourself, and and you'll see eventually how far you've come.

SPEAKER_02 12:11

Yeah, for sure. Great advice. Great advice. Um, would that be the same? So if you could talk to your younger self when you started the company or even back when you were in corporate, what advice would you give yourself then? Or what have you learned that can like stands out the most?

Confidence And What’s Next

SPEAKER_01 12:27

I think confidence. I think if I could talk to myself, you know, even five or ten years ago, um, I would say just be more confident in yourself. And like, you know, you're you if I I believe that now the confidence that we've had in ourselves, in our ability to create this, in in the brand we're creating, is what has led us like to move forward because you're gonna have so many challenges. But if you're not confident, if you're not strong in how you believe in yourself or in that vision, like you won't, you know, you won't keep going with the same momentum. And so I'd say that to my younger self for sure.

SPEAKER_02 13:04

Great advice. I think I would say the same thing to my younger self. Now we look back for a second. Let's look ahead. What is next for Binibi?

SPEAKER_01 13:14

So we have more books in development, which is really exciting. We have um potentially other products that will complement our books, and so we really and truly um will continue expanding our product line, continue serving um the parents that you know that we're serving, continuing the zero to five age range, and so we have a lot in store, and especially for next year.

SPEAKER_02 13:37

Well, congratulations on all your success so far. I know it's gonna be even next level. So um really enjoy talking with you today and appreciate all the advice you've given and talking about your story. Um, maybe we'll have you on for a follow-up um down the road, but it's been great talking with you and really appreciate your time today. No, thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

This is the Female Founder Show with host and entrepreneur, Bridget Fitzpatrick, exclusively on ASBN. If you're a female founder and would like to help other female founders with your inspiring story, we would love to hear from you.