Babylist founder’s success story bursts with lessons for entrepreneurs

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I like telling stories about leaders – particularly when those leaders share secrets of how they scaled a small business.

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On a recent podcast hosted by Guy Raz, Natalie Gordon, the founder of Babylist, shared her origin story that bursts at the seams with lessons for entrepreneurs.

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Raised in Ontario, Gordon started her career as part of the founding team of Amazon Fresh from 2004 to 2008. Having made herself a promise to take time to see the world, she left the company to go on an 18-month trip to Latin America, learning Spanish and splitting time between Cuba, Colombia and Mexico.

During her time in Cuba, Gordon described the period as having very limited internet access, akin to a “digital detox.” Immersing herself in a new culture with no distractions led her to found her first start up, a language-based app.

After moving back to Canada, Gordon became pregnant in 2010. In preparation for her baby shower, she was tasked with setting up her baby registry. Armed with a product scanner at Babies R’ Us, Gordon described feeling overwhelmed by the thousands of products to choose from.

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Babies need a lot of stuff, and Gordon knew that soon-to-be mothers needed to know which products are worth it with not a lot of time or money to waste.

Gordon built the product while living it

From this experience, Gordon launched Babylist, a baby registry that allowed users to choose products across different stores and platforms. At the time, Gordon found that most retailers limited registries to a single store. She built the product while living it and solved problems she herself was experiencing.

Gordon built the business while pregnant and as a mother of a newborn. She told the story of money being tight and working 45 minutes a day on her business as a new parent. A few months into motherhood, she began paying a babysitter a few times a week so she could focus on growing her product and responding to customers in three-hour blocks at a coffee shop down the street.

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Short on time and resources as a new mother, Gordon had identified a gap in the market and consistently worked each day to build a product that solved a unique problem.

After gaining traction, growing revenue and building the market, Gordon raised several rounds of investment. Relocating the business to San Francisco, California, she hired a small team. For the first time, Gordon was thrust into the position of CEO and people manager.

Having no management experience or training, Gordon admitted to being a less-than-great people manager the first few years she ran Babylist. She described the emotional hurdles tied to hiring and firing within a small team. These changes can be deeply personal and huge distractions to the business.

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Despite the meteoric success of her company, Gordon was particularly self aware and identified she needed to grow as a leader. She hired a coach to interview her entire team. That coach turned around a seven-page summary of findings. Over three pages were comments confirming everything Gordon was amazing at as a leader. The other half of the summary described where she was falling short and needed to step up.

Simple changes strengthened her team

This 360 experience, while simple, was a game changer to Gordon’s growth as a leader and the success of her business. She took the feedback and made simple changes, remained solution oriented and strengthened her team.

As of June 2025, the company is valued at over $500 million with Gordon at the helm.

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I shared this story because Canada is a country of small and medium-sized businesses. Most of us business owners do not have a business partner to share the duties, much less an HR department. When trying to juggle all of the different aspects of business ownership, leaders rarely seek out training or time to self reflect on how their leadership style could be impacting their own growth.

Gordon’s story tells us that even when short on time, resources and even as a sole owner, there are innovative decisions one can make to become a better leader and achieve immense growth.

Babylist – a story from seed to sequoia.

Are you a workplace leader with an interesting story to tell? Email me at sunira@worklylaw.com and your story may be featured in a future article.

The content of this article is general information only and is not legal advice.

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