The Exchanges

Q How did you deal with that personally when you had those situations where you thought, like, I could drop out, I feel excluded? What was the personal gumption that made you continue?

A Well, I think deep down, I've always been such a feminist, and I've always believed that women can do anything men can do, and, and I guess early on, I sort of took this as a challenge. As soon as I declared engineering as my major, everyone, my classmates, Some of the teachers, just some of my friends were just sort of looking at me like, why would you do that? And I always got the sense that they looked at me and thought I didn't have what it took to do it. And so I just took that on as a personal challenge. And there were many times that I felt discouraged, but I also had many wins. I remember there was this one class called stress, strain, and strength as part of our mechanical engineering program. And it was one of those brutal classes and it was tough. And I was struggling with it. All the, almost all the kids in the class were struggling with it, but I remember with one test, I really applied myself, and, and I actually, I remember forming a study group, and we were up until maybe four in the morning, every night at the library, studying for this thing, and finally, when we took the test, they were passing out the test, and all the students, like, they're in a big stack, so you get to see everybody else's grade, and And I remember my steady partner happened to see my grade, and he was the one who had been training me, yet I scored a higher grade than him. He was sort of …

AI assessment note: “I just took that on as a personal challenge.”

Q love that. I'm sure he was thrilled to see that, but I would love to touch on, on some of the elements we did just touch on there. You said about, kind of, not feeling part of the boys club, so to speak. I spoke to Kanye, Matthew Bellat, Before, and he said about gender diversity, and the gender diversity issue, is it primarily a pipeline problem, do you think?

A Well, I think it's a very complex problem. I think that there's definitely, there's a pipeline problem in the sense that what I'm most passionate about is what is the root of this problem, and I believe that the root of the problem is that from as young as age three or four, and that's the age when kids start to form a A sense of gender identity. That's the age when kids, because of the toys and media that they're surrounded with, particularly in North America and in Western Europe, the toys and media for kids three and four is that boys are builders and superheroes, and girls are princesses and dolls, and so to have those kinds of gender stereotypes root in that young becomes harder and harder to sort of overcome that. When as a kid, you're trying to figure out, you know, what it means to be a boy and what it means to be a girl. And there are many, many other problems along the way. You know, people talk a lot about middle school and girls really start to lose interest in middle school. Age six is a really critical time, even before middle school, when girls are losing confidence in their ability in math and science. And then you have them kind of dropping out through college, then through their careers. And so, It's a big, hairy problem, but I've decided that my focus will be at the very beginning, because I think that that's where we lose the most of them.

AI assessment note: “there's definitely, there's a pipeline problem in the sense that what I'm most passionate”

Q No, absolutely. You mentioned one element there about the Kickstarter and the virality element. I spoke to Harley Finkelstein at Shopify, and he asked the question, why do you think all of your promotional videos Went so viral and created such a strong brand that they did. What do you think was core to that success in virality?

A Well, I had a secret weapon, and that's my co-founder and husband, Beau. And prior to joining me at GoldieBlox, he had started his own viral video production and distribution company, which he grew over five years ago. A thing or two about how to make things go viral. For him, he was really inspired by what I was doing at GoldieBlox, and like many of our fellow millennials, we really want to spend our time doing things that are going to have an impact in the world, and so he jumped in, and we just started brainstorming, how do we make GoldieBlox go viral, and there are a few tips and tricks. I mean, it wasn't by accident. The first viral video that we made was the Kickstarter video itself, And we knew that if we were able to capture my genuine passion for GoldieBlox, because when I go and meet somebody in person and I tell them about GoldieBlox, I'm so obsessed and passionate and excited. I mean, it's just infectious. And so we set out to recreate that in a video, but it's really hard to achieve that when you have a camera and And light six inches from your face. We did two different days of shooting. We ended up renting a fancy studio and getting all of these professional lights and all these things in, and it was too staged. And we actually ended up scrapping that entire video moments before we were supposed to launch and reshooting it on my living room floor in my apartment …

AI assessment note: “making that authentic connection. And that was critical.”

Q Can I ask then, a second, do you think we're at a real turning tide and an inflection point in the change? Your Kickstarter campaign proved the sheer appetite for this in the market. Do you think that we are at an inflection point or do you think that's potentially over-exaggerated of me?

A No, I think we're at a huge inflection point. Before I started GoldieBlox in 2012, I brought my prototypes to the New York toy fair to get advice from folks in the toy industry. And everybody looked at me like I was crazy. They all said, girls don't want to build. Girls aren't ever going to be interested in engineering. Girls just want princesses. They want the pink aisle. That's what sells. This will never go mainstream. I mean, nobody believed it. And then we launched GoldieBlox in 2012 and it practically went viral overnight. And what ended up happening was that GoldieBlox had finally shown that there was market demand for more empowering toys and characters for girls, and it was something that I just, to me, it was such common sense, but the toy industry and the children's media industry, they just glom on to these pieces of conventional wisdom that they believe to be true, and it takes startup companies and innovators and people who are willing to take risks And believe in something to really prove them wrong, and as soon as we did, it was fascinating to see how quickly all of the big toy companies and media companies started to come up with their Me Too products, and only five years later now, there's been a huge domino effect. Target has taken down its gender labeling and its toy aisles. We have companies like the creators of Brat, who are the epitome of prostitute dolls…

AI assessment note: “No, I think we're at a huge inflection point.”

Q How did you deal with that personally when you had those situations where you thought, like, I could drop out, I feel excluded? What was the personal gumption that made you continue?

A Well, I think deep down, I've always been such a feminist, and I've always believed that women can do anything men can do, and, and I guess early on, I sort of took this as a challenge. As soon as I declared engineering as my major, everyone, my classmates, Some of the teachers, just some of my friends were just sort of looking at me like, why would you do that? And I always got the sense that they looked at me and thought I didn't have what it took to do it. And so I just took that on as a personal challenge. And there were many times that I felt discouraged, but I also had many wins. I remember there was this one class called stress, strain, and strength as part of our mechanical engineering program. And it was one of those brutal classes and it was tough. And I was struggling with it. All the, almost all the kids in the class were struggling with it, but I remember with one test, I really applied myself, and, and I actually, I remember forming a study group, and we were up until maybe four in the morning, every night at the library, studying for this thing, and finally, when we took the test, they were passing out the test, and all the students, like, they're in a big stack, so you get to see everybody else's grade, and And I remember my steady partner happened to see my grade, and he was the one who had been training me, yet I scored a higher grade than him. He was sort of …

AI assessment note: “I've always believed that women can do anything men can do... took this as a challenge”

Q Can I ask then, a second, do you think we're at a real turning tide and an inflection point in the change? Your Kickstarter campaign proved the sheer appetite for this in the market. Do you think that we are at an inflection point or do you think that's potentially over-exaggerated of me?

A No, I think we're at a huge inflection point. Before I started GoldieBlox in 2012, I brought my prototypes to the New York toy fair to get advice from folks in the toy industry. And everybody looked at me like I was crazy. They all said, girls don't want to build. Girls aren't ever going to be interested in engineering. Girls just want princesses. They want the pink aisle. That's what sells. This will never go mainstream. I mean, nobody believed it. And then we launched GoldieBlox in 2012 and it practically went viral overnight. And what ended up happening was that GoldieBlox had finally shown that there was market demand for more empowering toys and characters for girls, and it was something that I just, to me, it was such common sense, but the toy industry and the children's media industry, they just glom on to these pieces of conventional wisdom that they believe to be true, and it takes startup companies and innovators and people who are willing to take risks And believe in something to really prove them wrong, and as soon as we did, it was fascinating to see how quickly all of the big toy companies and media companies started to come up with their Me Too products, and only five years later now, there's been a huge domino effect. Target has taken down its gender labeling and its toy aisles. We have companies like the creators of Brat, who are the epitome of prostitute dolls…

AI assessment note: “No, I think we're at a huge inflection point.”

Q No, absolutely. You mentioned one element there about the Kickstarter and the virality element. I spoke to Harley Finkelstein at Shopify, and he asked the question, why do you think all of your promotional videos Went so viral and created such a strong brand that they did. What do you think was core to that success in virality?

A Well, I had a secret weapon, and that's my co-founder and husband, Beau. And prior to joining me at GoldieBlox, he had started his own viral video production and distribution company, which he grew over five years ago. A thing or two about how to make things go viral. For him, he was really inspired by what I was doing at GoldieBlox, and like many of our fellow millennials, we really want to spend our time doing things that are going to have an impact in the world, and so he jumped in, and we just started brainstorming, how do we make GoldieBlox go viral, and there are a few tips and tricks. I mean, it wasn't by accident. The first viral video that we made was the Kickstarter video itself, And we knew that if we were able to capture my genuine passion for GoldieBlox, because when I go and meet somebody in person and I tell them about GoldieBlox, I'm so obsessed and passionate and excited. I mean, it's just infectious. And so we set out to recreate that in a video, but it's really hard to achieve that when you have a camera and And light six inches from your face. We did two different days of shooting. We ended up renting a fancy studio and getting all of these professional lights and all these things in, and it was too staged. And we actually ended up scrapping that entire video moments before we were supposed to launch and reshooting it on my living room floor in my apartment …

AI assessment note: “I had a secret weapon, and that's my co-founder and husband, Beau.”

Q Fiji with Tony Robbins. What was the highlight?

A Oh, wow. Okay. I think Tony was incredible. He was hugely inspiring. The highlight for me was I was with a group of incredible other mentors, so Joe Gebbia, who's the co-founder of Airbnb, Tim Ferriss of the Four Hour Workweek, Marie Forleo. We had such a blast. I think that the highlight was we were actually at the airport waiting on our way to head back, and there was this unexpected delay, and we were all really tired and jet-lagged, and all of a sudden, one of the stores was playing, like, a Top 40 song, I can't remember, and I don't know, I think it might have been Marie who told them to, like, turn it up, and all of a sudden... We just started this impromptu dance party at the airport, and there's, like, Harley and Joe and me, like, everybody was just, like, full-on dancing like a nightclub, and even the Fijian employees were, like, kind of, like, coming out, busting some moves, and it was hilarious.

AI assessment note: “The highlight for me was... we just started this impromptu dance party at the airport”

Q love that. I'm sure he was thrilled to see that, but I would love to touch on, on some of the elements we did just touch on there. You said about, kind of, not feeling part of the boys club, so to speak. I spoke to Kanye, Matthew Bellat, Before, and he said about gender diversity, and the gender diversity issue, is it primarily a pipeline problem, do you think?

A Well, I think it's a very complex problem. I think that there's definitely, there's a pipeline problem in the sense that what I'm most passionate about is what is the root of this problem, and I believe that the root of the problem is that from as young as age three or four, and that's the age when kids start to form a A sense of gender identity. That's the age when kids, because of the toys and media that they're surrounded with, particularly in North America and in Western Europe, the toys and media for kids three and four is that boys are builders and superheroes, and girls are princesses and dolls, and so to have those kinds of gender stereotypes root in that young becomes harder and harder to sort of overcome that. When as a kid, you're trying to figure out, you know, what it means to be a boy and what it means to be a girl. And there are many, many other problems along the way. You know, people talk a lot about middle school and girls really start to lose interest in middle school. Age six is a really critical time, even before middle school, when girls are losing confidence in their ability in math and science. And then you have them kind of dropping out through college, then through their careers. And so, It's a big, hairy problem, but I've decided that my focus will be at the very beginning, because I think that that's where we lose the most of them.

AI assessment note: “I think that there's definitely, there's a pipeline problem in the sense”

Q You've said before that you're obsessed with GoldieBlox and with the mission. As am I about my company, how do you find balance? Help me out.

A Well, I think for the first four years of building GoldieBlox, I didn't have any balance. I worked twenty-four-seven on GoldieBlox, and I was pretty run ragged, and actually, the first time that I ever found balance, it was sort of forced upon me because I got pregnant. And I had my first child. I had a son, ironically enough, a year ago. Thank you. And I was really worried because I didn't know what this would mean. How would I be able to raise a child and continue to grow my company? And what ended up happening is it actually forced me to spend more time with my family, to figure stuff out, to hire the executives that I needed to hire so that I wasn't doing everything. It forced me to take time off, to take breaks, And as soon as I started doing that, I realized, wow, I'm such a better leader. I'm not spending my time worrying about the little stuff that's not significant. I'm not micromanaging. It was a huge discovery that it took me probably way too long to figure out.

AI assessment note: “first time that I ever found balance, it was sort of forced upon me”

Q So if we say it's at the very beginning, can I ask, where does accountability rest? Is it with the parents themselves, or is it with the education system and the teachers who maybe don't support them and provide those tools to educate them in the right way equally?

A Well, I think there are a few issues that I like to look at. If you look at children's toys and media, gender stereotypes are so pervasive. These big kids toys and media companies have found formulas that work. They have discovered that girls are into princess culture, and they have monetized that upwards to multi, multi billions of dollars around the world where every girl grows up having a princess phase. Can you imagine how different things would be if instead of the focus always being on princess, What if the toy and media companies wanted every girl around the world to grow up having a maker face? And that's what I'm really focused on at GoldieBlox. I think that parents and teachers play a huge role too. It's actually fascinating. There was a study done at Penn State about GoldieBlox, and they actually took our very first product, GoldieBlox and the Spinning Machine, which was a toy and a book about a girl engineer building and fixing things. They kept the same version, and then they did another version where the protagonist was a male, and they observed differences in how parents and kids played with one versus the other, and what they found was that when the protagonist was a male, the parents actually played with it more with their daughters than when it was the female, because for some reason, they had this unconscious bias that boys are engineers. The other thing that…

AI assessment note: “I think that parents and teachers play a huge role too.”

Q thinking. In terms of another element of growth, often one that I, I discuss with founders being the VC funding side of it, and we mentioned the scaling there in terms of the virality. In terms of the funding side, VCs seem to have a love-hate relationship with both CPG and hardware products. How do you think about VC's relationship with these types of companies? From a meta perspective, maybe.

A Well, when GoldieBlox went after the toy industry, we really pushed back against all of these things that were conventional wisdom, like construction toys for girls won't sell, or ridiculous things, like girls hate the color yellow. You can't have yellow in your products, or it'll never sell for girls. Like, so weird things that just become common knowledge, and I think that the same is true in VC. So many VCs, they don't want to touch the children's space with a ten-foot pole. They don't They don't want to take on any inventory risk, and I think it's a shame because I see so many really, really exciting young entrepreneurs and innovators who are tackling really, really hard problems and building really exciting things, and they're having trouble getting access to capital.

AI assessment note: “They don't want to take on any inventory risk”

Q So if we say it's at the very beginning, can I ask, where does accountability rest? Is it with the parents themselves, or is it with the education system and the teachers who maybe don't support them and provide those tools to educate them in the right way equally?

A Well, I think there are a few issues that I like to look at. If you look at children's toys and media, gender stereotypes are so pervasive. These big kids toys and media companies have found formulas that work. They have discovered that girls are into princess culture, and they have monetized that upwards to multi, multi billions of dollars around the world where every girl grows up having a princess phase. Can you imagine how different things would be if instead of the focus always being on princess, What if the toy and media companies wanted every girl around the world to grow up having a maker face? And that's what I'm really focused on at GoldieBlox. I think that parents and teachers play a huge role too. It's actually fascinating. There was a study done at Penn State about GoldieBlox, and they actually took our very first product, GoldieBlox and the Spinning Machine, which was a toy and a book about a girl engineer building and fixing things. They kept the same version, and then they did another version where the protagonist was a male, and they observed differences in how parents and kids played with one versus the other, and what they found was that when the protagonist was a male, the parents actually played with it more with their daughters than when it was the female, because for some reason, they had this unconscious bias that boys are engineers. The other thing that…

AI assessment note: “I think that parents and teachers play a huge role too.”