Creating physical products and getting feedback from toddlers — KiwiCo’s Sandra Oh Lin

Today’s episode is with Sandr Oh Lin, founder and CEO of KiwiCo, which creates hands-on learning kits for children. Sandra started KiwiCo over ten years ago, after a career with executive positions at PayPal and eBay. She was looking for ways to give her own kids more hands-on projects to exercise their creativity, which led her down the path to become an entrepreneur and create KiwiCo. Today, KiwiCo has expanded to include 8 different lines of crates that are shipped out monthly. In the first half of today’s conversation, we excavate some of the thornier challenges that come with creating a physical product — and Sandra’s biggest aha moments as a first-time founder. She talks about creating the first KiwiCo crate, including the product development process and spinning up a supply chain and shipping department. Sandra also walks us through how KiwiCo approaches new product lines, particularly in the last year when KiwiCo demand skyrocketed. She also discusses how the team gathers quality consumer feedback when your customer is often a toddler. In the second half of our interview, she talks about some of the cultural practices at KiwiCo that all sorts of companies can learn from. Sandra’s a big believer in manager training for everyone from folks that manage just one person, to executives that have been managing for decades. She outlines the specific management training modules they leverage at KiwiCo and makes the case for having everyone at the company fill out a motivations spreadsheet. Finally, she discusses the specific tactics she leans on for creating a feedback-rich environment for herself as a CEO. You can follow Sandra on Twitter at @sandraohlin. You can email us questions directly at [email protected] or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/firstround and twitter.com/brettberson