WoW Woman in FemTech I Genevieve Mena, CEO and co-founder of Mamieli
Genevieve Mena is the CEO and Co-Founder of Mamieli, a new platform for the next generation of moms. Genevieve received her bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College, MBA from the Wharton School, and MA from the Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania. After working for many years helping other entrepreneurs start and grow successful companies, she is excited to be diving headfirst alongside her co-founder into building a venture of her own. Genevieve lives in Manhattan with her husband, toddler, and baby, where she loves spending weekends and early mornings (ideally not too early) in nearby Central Park, these days mostly at playgrounds.
Mamieli is a new platform for the next generation of moms that brings together top products and expert content across the many stages of motherhood. Mamieli recently launched the first step of this platform, offering topic-based bundles curated with essential products and content for key stages of the motherhood journey, and will be expanding outward from there. Mamieli partners with a strong and growing network of top brands to source the best products in each category, along with experts across disciplines to create digestible evidence-based content for each topic.
Tell us a bit about your background and your projects so far.
I grew up in a small town in the Philadelphia suburbs called Yardley, and my dream since I was a child – aside from a brief stint when I was convinced I’d become a vet—was to be an “international business person”. I didn’t really know what that meant but thought it could be fun to travel the world while making money. Over time this morphed to include an important clarification: I wanted it to be my own business. Entrepreneurship is the default option in my family, and I’ve known for a while I’d launch something of my own when the right idea and timing struck.
My career focuses leading up to Mamieli have been at the intersection of entrepreneurship and strategy, largely with a social impact and international focus. I spent several years helping launch and grow entrepreneur support programs including investments that Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase have dedicated towards supporting entrepreneurs, particularly women. I most recently spent several years managing strategy consulting projects at Dalberg, an impact-oriented strategic advisory firm that works in emerging markets. Additionally, I spent much of my time while getting my MBA at Wharton advising local entrepreneurs and launching a direct-to-consumer home textiles business with my family. In retrospect, all these experiences—along with the support of my husband and family—have coalesced to give me the inspiration, skillset, and confidence to make my mark with Mamieli.
How did you get into the parenting space, creating products that fill a need across all stages of motherhood? Has it been easy or have you had many challenges?
Like most businesses in this space, the inspiration was my own experience becoming a parent. After having my first daughter, I experienced what every mom does – which is that there’s so much to know and buy, and these questions and needs constantly change from one stage to the next. In the first six months alone this spans your physical recovery, breastfeeding, newborn care and baby health questions, introducing solid foods, getting your baby to sleep, transitioning back to work (or not), navigating childcare options, and so many other topics.
Two insights, in particular, compelled me to start Mamieli: one is that the industry is extremely fragmented, and the second is that the main platforms that do exist in this space are very dated.
First, I was struck by how disaggregated the entire industry is, from content to products to services. With content, it feels like a bomb has gone off where parenting content exploded and is scattered all over the internet and social media. Some of it is good, but a lot is inaccurate or makes moms feel judged or more anxious. With products, there are so many brands and options for everything, and knowing what you actually need and why and then choosing can be overwhelming and time-consuming. When Amazon has fifty thousand SKUs for burp cloths or the top search results are identical-looking devices by suspicious-sounding no-name brands (search for baby electric nail trimmers and you’ll see what I mean), you either become paralyzed or skeptical. With services, finding, comparing, and booking service providers from lactation consultants to newborn photographers is time-consuming and frustrating because there’s no central place to do this.
The second insight is how old-school the dominant content and shopping platforms are. The main content platforms which I won’t name out loud date back to the 80s and 90s and are cluttered with ads, affiliate links, and sponsored posts. The main retailer in the US that’s dedicated to baby and parenting needs is now going out of business, not because the concept of a curated shopping experience for parenting doesn’t work, but because they didn’t keep up with the modern age and how customers shop today.
This is what prompted me to create Mamieli, where we’re building a curated platform for the next generation of moms that brings together shopping, content, and services in one spot. To your question on whether it’s easy: definitely not! It’s not beyond me that this is a very hard thing to do and will take years to build. This is why we are tackling our broader vision one small but strategic step at a time.
How long did it take you to be where you are now? What was the biggest obstacle? What are the challenges of being a female entrepreneur?
My co-founder and I started working on Mamieli full-time last summer (2022) and launched our first live iteration of the platform in February 2023. We are working on lots of exciting things behind the scenes that we’ll release throughout this year and next.
The biggest challenge for me personally is the time constraint that comes with being a mom. In my previous jobs, I had intense workloads but never felt like I didn’t have the time to accomplish everything I wanted to. I could always work late and on weekends whenever I needed. Now, there is a hard start and stop to the work day when childcare starts and ends, which creates a non-negotiable constraint to tackling the endless and always-growing list of things to do to build a business.
But, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Being time constrained has forced me to be even more efficient and highly disciplined in how I prioritize and focus, which ultimately is also better for our company. And most importantly, I wouldn’t trade the time with my family for anything!
What are your biggest achievements to date?
We are especially proud of the broad network of relationships we have built in a short amount of time across brands and experts in this space. This isn’t visible yet to the outside world, but hugely important for what we’re creating. The only way we can build a platform that connects moms with the best resources is with many partners and supporters by our side. Our brand and expert partners’ excitement about our vision and their eagerness to be involved is very motivating, and their feedback helps us constantly sharpen our strategy.
What are the projects you are currently working on?
As I said and any parent knows, there’s a ton to know and buy when it comes to babies, especially in the first six to twelve months after they’re born. We’re working on broadening and deepening our content and curated product bundle selection to hit on all the major topics and stages of this critical time. From there, we’re moving into something very exciting that we hope to announce in 2024.
What will be the key trends in the parenting space in the next five years and where do you see them heading?
There are several but I’ll highlight three that stand out.
1. One is a desire for expert-driven content, delivered in a digestible way. Parents want advice that’s supported by data, expertise, and evidence—a pushback against the fluffy “What to Expect When You’re Expecting”-type content that has been the main voice in the space for decades. Parents also are searching for and consuming content differently: on our phones, via social media, and increasingly short-form videos. I can hear the eye rolls of older generations, but it’s a trend and it’s real.
2. A second trend we anticipate is that purchasing decisions will be driven more and more by a desire for products to reflect your own individuality as a parent. We already see this trend across other industries like beauty and fashion as Gen Z consumers’ purchasing power grows; whereas millennials have placed more importance on aesthetic and social status than previous generations did (which has resulted in so many parents seeming to have the exact same baby products), Gen Z customers look more for items that let them express how they are unique. Aside from this difference, we’ll see an acceleration of trends we’re already seeing among millennial parents, such as a concern for social issues and sustainability.
3. A third is the increasing need for curation. The reason for this is the overwhelmingness of the sheer amount of content and product options in this space, which I alluded to earlier and which is only going to continue growing. Parents are time-strapped as everyone knows, and so in such a noisy space, we will increasingly turn to places that bring a curated edit of the best content and products. Such places include creators on social media as well as companies.
What is the most important piece of advice you could give to anyone who wants to start a career or business?
Be deliberate about your decisions. Think them through and play them out in your head. That way when you do go ahead with your decision, you have created a strong conviction within yourself that it’s a worthwhile pursuit. This internal conviction is so important because it gives you both the courage to act as well as the endurance to persevere, which you need to have because building anything worthwhile takes time.
Who are three inspirational women in your respective industry you admire?
I am inspired by every single woman in this industry and feel so fortunate to be in such great company. Most are moms themselves who are dedicating their careers to helping other moms, whether through an innovative new product that saves time, a personalized service that helps moms through the challenges of breastfeeding, or whatever else their inspiration or expertise leads them to focus on. All these women are doing their best to improve the lives of others while balancing their own personal and family needs. These women are truly inspiring – I cannot choose just three!
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This interview was conducted by Marija Butkovic, Digital Marketing and PR strategist, founder, and CEO of Women of Wearables. She regularly writes and speaks on topics of wearable tech, fashion tech, IoT, entrepreneurship, and diversity. Follow Marija on Twitter @MarijaButkovic and read her stories for Forbes here.