We’re continuing with Season 2 of Real Good Company! We’re so excited to welcome today’s guest Laura Modi, the CEO and Co-Founder of Bobbie, an infant formula brand that is taking the formula industry by storm. Although the Ireland native never thought she’d leave her native country permanently, Laura’s proclivity for adventure landed her in Silicon Valley. Laura would go onto work at major companies such as Google and AirBnB before launching her own company with Co-Founder and COO, Sarah Hardy.

Dubbed as Allie’s own “Women in Tech Hero,” Laura is known for her easy going, quiet confidence and her ability to take risks. With a little bit of luck, hard work, and being in the right place at the right time, Laura landed a job at Google as the Program Manager in 2008 on the heels of the recession. Her internship experience at Google Ireland gave her a leg up in landing a job in the U.S.

After four years at Google, she left her dream job to join a little start up called Air Bed & Breakfast, aka AirBnB. In 2011, She joined as one of their first Operations leaders as the Host Operations & Community. There, Laura met her husband, and shortly after, they had their first daughter.

Quickly, Laura learned the struggles of breastfeeding as a new mother and the disconnect between her expectations and reality: It’s time-consuming (about 30 hours a week of pumping). It’s painful, or you’re so stressed that you cannot produce the necessary milk supply to give your child sustenance. Five days after having her daughter, Laura found herself in a pharmacy tired and confused as she purchased formula, a decision that 80 percent of new parents eventually make. After experiencing the shame and stigma that came with feeding her child formula, Laura knew she wanted to make a change.

In 2019, she left the tech industry and took her real life experience as a mother and the knowledge of the gap in the formula market to launch her own U.S. infant formula company with her Airbnb coworker and mother of two, Sarah Hardy. Laura’s love of risk taking paid off and today, Bobbie provides thousands of new moms and babies with a high quality European style recipe modeled after breast milk. Bobbie is the first national infant formula to launch in five years, and it is the only infant formula brand to meet European nutritional standards.

Today’s podcast focuses on the shame and stigma attached to baby formula, the importance of taking risks in career and in life, and the baby formula “black market.” She shares her story on leaving the tech world, her motivation as a mother to disrupt the formula industry, her journey of pitching to 68 investors, and raising two and a half million dollars of investor capital before her son was born, and how her team faced being recalled by the FDA.

You can find out more about Laura and everything mentioned on today’s show here. Also, you can find Laura on Instagram @lauraclairemodi as well as Bobbie at @bobbie. Get to know our hosts on Instagram @CaitlinCrosby and @AllieBridge. Please be sure to rate, review, and subscribe so that we can stay in Real Good Company!

Laura Modi: On The Formula for Startup Success