850 Nancy Yen: Founder & CEO of OMIE

0:00I am unwilling to give up, but I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be.

0:09Kara Goldin:You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin Show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can't wait to get started. Let's go. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Decagon. As companies grow, customer support gets harder. More customers, more questions, more channels, and higher expectations.

0:54Kara Goldin:And a lot of teams want AI that can help, but without making the experience feel robotic or generic. Decagon helps companies create personalized concierge style customer experiences with AI agents across chat, email, voice, and SMS. They're available 24-7, feel natural to talk to, and can resolve customer requests on their own. so businesses can keep up with requests without losing their personal touch. Decagon plugs into your existing systems and workflows can be updated using natural language. Teams can make changes themselves without long engineering cycles. Decagon gives your team full visibility into why agents make decisions and what's happening across every conversation.

1:41Kara Goldin:Decagon helps power millions of conversations every day for brands you know and love, including Avis, Affirm, Fanatics, and Aura. Ready to transform your customer support? Go to decagon.ai slash Karagolden to get a personalized demo and see what Decagon can do for your team. Check Decagon out at decagon.ai slash Karagolden. That's decagon.ai slash Karagolden. Support for today's episode comes from Square, the platform behind so many of the best-run businesses. When you've built something from the ground up, you know operational excellence when you see it. The businesses that feel effortless to customers are usually the ones with the strongest systems behind the scenes.

2:29Kara Goldin:That's where Square comes in, bringing the tools together so owners can run their business with more clarity, confidence, and control. And here's the thing. Square is way more than just a payment swipe or tap. It's a system that keeps an entire business humming, taking payments, managing inventory, running payroll, tracking sales, all in one connected platform. And it grows with you, whether you're running a one-person pop-up or opening your next location. One of my go-to spots here in the Bay Area is Equator Coffee, and they use Square, and you can feel the difference as a consumer. Fast checkout, receipts sent instantly, even loyalty rewards, it just feels polished.

3:14Kara Goldin:So if you're starting a business or running one that deserves better tools, Square helps you sell, manage, and grow without slowing down. Right now, you can get up to$200 off Square hardware when you sign up at square.com slash go slash Kara Golden. That's S-Q-U-A-R-E dot com slash G-O slash Kara Golden. Run your business smarter, Square. Get started today. Go check it out and let Square help you do what you do best. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Golden Show. Why is it still so hard to pack a warm, healthy lunch for your kids or a cold, healthy lunch for your kids, even today. So today I'm joined by Nancy Yen, founder and CEO of AMI, a brand redefining how parents think about everyday essentials starting with their lunch.

4:16Kara Goldin:And Nancy's journey is such a relatable one. She and I were just chatting. I met her years ago when she was prototyping Ami. So cool to see what she has done beyond the prototyping and what she's built in this incredible company and how she's helping so many parents as well as kids really with this problem that really wasn't being solved. So I love the idea of ultimately turning any problem into a category-defining product and company. And that is exactly what Nancy has done. So more than anything, I'm going to be quiet and let Nancy help us really understand why she started this and what the journey has been like.

5:08Kara Goldin:So welcome, Nancy. Nice to see you. Thank you, Cara. It's such an honor to be on your show. I've admired you for so many years and I was over the moon when my team told me that you had invited me to be a guest. So thank you so much. Absolutely. Well, I'm very, very excited. And I'm also really excited to think about, you know, where you came from, right? Like at the beginning, and when you were starting this and when you were prototyping and not that today's part of your journey isn't hard, it's all hard, right? But you've come a long way. And often I tell people like, You know, it's so fun to talk to entrepreneurs and hear about those moments along the way and building what they have.

5:55Kara Goldin:But for listeners who may not know Ami yet, can you share how you describe the brand and what makes it unique? Our brand really aims to solve big pain points in parents' lives because it's already so hard being a parent and there's so many little tasks that we need to do. So we really aim to design products that make meaningful difference in our customers' lives. And I think what we're most known for is our food storage container solutions, our bento boxes and our lunch boxes. And the first product that we ever made is called the Omi Box. And that was the one that I showed you the prototype of like over 10 years ago.

6:32and that one actually really just came like with so many entrepreneurs. It just came from a pain point that I had in my life as a parent. So at the time I was on maternity leave with my second child and my first was three. He was going to preschool just down the street and he'd always been on the smaller side. I think he was like five, 7 % of like his growth curve. So we've always been just really worried about whether he was getting enough to eat, especially it was his first time away from home. and also being Chinese American, like having hot food, it was just something that's a big part of our culture.

7:08And so at home, he's used to eating like hot soup or like a stir fry or noodles, things that were hot. So when he went to school, it was really hard for him to get used to eating sandwiches. So I would get these lunchboxes home, not a bite had been taken. I just get a super cranky toddler at the end of the day. So I started going to school just to see what was going on. I sit in a corner at lunchtime, I noticed a whole bunch of things about how kids ate. So no kid wants to sit down and eat lunch. They're not like adults. They just want to play. So I knew like everything had to be right there for them to see.

7:44I noticed a lot of kids still like to have like hot lunch and sandwiches day after day. It gets really boring, even though the parents would make pinwheels or they'll cut sandwiches out in different shapes at the end of the day. It's still, you know, just like a cheese or some butter sandwich. So that gave me the inspiration to do something that could pack hot and cold together or just even cold. This just gives you so many more options as a parent to be able to warm up last night's leftovers than to try to wrap your brain to come up with something really fun every morning. And that was how Omibox was conceived.

8:16So that was the idea. Now getting it made is like a totally different story.

8:20Kara Goldin:This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Decagon. As companies grow, customer support gets harder. More customers, more questions, more channels, and higher expectations. And a lot of teams want AI that can help, but without making the experience feel robotic or generic. Decagon helps companies create personalized, concierge-style customer experiences with AI agents across chat, email, voice, and SMS. They're available 24-7, feel natural to talk to, and can resolve customer requests on their own. so businesses can keep up with requests without losing their personal touch. Decagon plugs into your existing systems and workflows can be updated using natural language.

9:08Kara Goldin:Teams can make changes themselves without long engineering cycles. Decagon gives your team full visibility into why agents make decisions and what's happening across every conversation. Decagon helps power millions of conversations every day for brands you know and love, including Avis, Affirm, Fanatics, and Aura. Ready to transform your customer support? Go to decagon.ai slash Karagolden to get a personalized demo and see what Decagon can do for your team. Check Decagon out at decagon.ai slash Karagolden. That's decagon.ai slash Karagolden. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Hiring Pro.

10:18Kara Goldin:applications, trying to spot the real standouts, second-guessing decisions, it can get overwhelming fast. That's why having a way to save time without sacrificing quality isn't just nice to have, it's critical. Luckily, LinkedIn Hiring Pro is built for that reality. It's your hiring partner designed to help you hire with confidence by surfacing only the right candidates without turning hiring into another full-time job. Posting a job isn't always the hard part. It's finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings.

11:03Kara Goldin:Their updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language, no recruiter jargon needed. Nearly 60 % of hires find a candidate to interview within a week. With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Terms and conditions apply. Yeah, totally. And did you come from this industry? I mean, did you, I know that you spent time in corporate America and larger companies, but what were you doing before starting AMI?

12:04Consumer products, hardware, manufacturing, not at all. But before that, I had worked at The Gap for about five years doing a variety of roles, one of which was doing merchandising. That gave me a lot of insight into how to run a retail business and, you know, also into aesthetics and color. So that was like my only foray into the consumer products world. It was a very steep margin curve.

12:28Kara Goldin:Yeah, I bet. And mostly dealing with apparel as compared to what AMI is, right? I mean, completely different. What do you think was the kind of big moment where you saw this problem? It's one thing to recognize a problem. It's another thing to start a company around it, as you have. But what was the moment where you said, no one is doing this. I need to go and do this? Well, I did a lot of market research into what was being offered out there and was really surprised to find that there had been not a ton of innovation in this space. And not surprisingly so because it's not glamorous or sexy. It's just, you know, food storage containers.

13:09So a lot of it was basic kind of pepper-ish type items. There just wasn't much out there. And I think what really gave me the confidence to like really move forward was when we did our Kickstarter campaign. So Kickstarters are really great for validating concepts and just seeing how, whether it meets a need in people's lives. And when we opened the campaign, it was back in June, I think it was on June 7th, 2013, I want to say. We had an overwhelming response right off the bat. People were emailing me just hours even before the campaign had opened to ask when we were going to open the campaign.

13:49and when it did, we got a ton of press coverage. We were on the front page of USA Today. I think that was a mistake. It was on review.com, but somehow it ended up on the front page of USA Today and our campaign was overfunded by like 200%, I wanna say. And that was when I knew I had product market fit, which is sometimes pretty rare to come by and that gave me a lot of confidence to move forward.

14:13Kara Goldin:This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Hi, Kara here. For small businesses, every hire matters, but so does your time. I felt that pressure firsthand. You know, a bad hire isn't just frustrating, it's expensive in time, money, and team morale. And yet hiring the right person can feel like a full-time job on top of everything else you're already doing. Sifting through applications, trying to spot the real standouts, second-guessing decisions, it can get overwhelming fast. That's why having a way to save time without sacrificing quality isn't just nice to have, it's critical.

14:57Kara Goldin:Luckily, LinkedIn Hiring Pro is built for that reality. It's your hiring partner designed to help you hire with confidence by surfacing only the right candidates without turning hiring into another full-time job. Posting a job isn't always the hard part. It's finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Their updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language, no recruiter jargon needed. Nearly 60 % of hires find a candidate to interview within a week.

15:40Kara Goldin:With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Terms and conditions apply. Support for today's episode comes from Square, the platform behind so many of the best run businesses. When you've built something from the ground up, you know operational excellence when you see it. The businesses that feel effortless to customers are usually the ones with the strongest systems behind the scenes. That's where Square comes in, bringing the tools together so owners can run their business with more clarity, confidence, and control.

16:26Kara Goldin:And here's the thing. Square is way more than just a payment swipe or tap. It's a system that keeps an entire business humming, taking payments, managing inventory, running payroll, tracking sales, all in one connected platform. And it grows with you, whether you're running a one-person pop-up or opening your next location. One of my go-to spots here in the Bay Area is Equator Coffee, and they use Square, and you can feel the difference as a consumer. Fast checkout, receipts sent instantly, even loyalty rewards. It just feels polished. So if you're starting a business or running one that deserves better tools, Square helps you sell, manage, and grow without slowing down.

17:12Kara Goldin:Right now, you can get up to$200 off Square hardware when you sign up at square.com slash go slash Kara Golden. That's S-Q-U-A-R-E dot com slash G-O slash Kara Golden. Run your business smarter, Square. Get started today. Go check it out and let Square help you do what you do best. So you did the Kickstarter campaign and then what was the next step at that point to actually being able to sell a product into market. Yeah. So by the time we did Kickstarter, we had already kind of mapped out the overall design. And we found a supplier in China and we had started talking to them about like the tooling and what it would take.

18:04So Kickstarter was to raise money to fund the initial tooling kickoff and the first inventory purchase. From there, manufacturing is a very delicate process where everything that could go wrong will go wrong. And that was a very steep learning curve for me to know that because I'd never done hardware manufacturing. They knew nothing about plastic injection molding. And at the time we were very barely funded. I had just a little bit of money from the Kickstarter campaign. I was actually self-financing it for a really long time. So we only had money to hire a very junior engineer. and he knew barely more than I did.

18:45And we just flew to China and we found a supplier. We kicked off tooling. And now in hindsight, I'm even amazed that it turned out the way that it did because like the factory wasn't as great as we had hoped that it would be. You know, like there are certain things that we needed to do that we didn't even know how to do. And we had, we made so many mistakes along the way and just had to learn. And I had to like even send out SOS to people who are very seasoned in manufacturing to ask them to help us to look through the design, the tooling design, to make sure that we were getting the parts that we needed.

19:18It was a very steep learning curve to get the first parts. And even when we got the first parts, it just didn't even fit. Like I had the first shipment arrive in my warehouse and I went there to look at it and I realized all the lids were too tight. I spent the next weeks like I hired a crew of temps we went there we opened every box we opened every lid and it was like a matching issue like some of the containers were a little bit on the smaller side some of the lids were on the bigger side and so we just matched it so that like the right sizes paired with each other so that they were all easy to open but we opened 5 ,000 boxes and did a pairing and sorting exercise packed it all back up and put it back into cardboard boxes to ship out.

20:04So that's what the early days look like. I think I was having heart attacks almost every day, just not knowing how to control some of these things at the factory where we're manufacturing, having to deal with a lot of consequences when products got here, and just trying to figure it out along the way as I went.

20:22Kara Goldin:This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Hi, Kara here. For small businesses, every hire matters, but so does your time. I felt that pressure firsthand. You know, a bad hire isn't just frustrating, it's expensive in time, money, and team morale. And yet hiring the right person can feel like a full-time job on top of everything else you're already doing. Sifting through applications, trying to spot the real standouts, second-guessing decisions, it can get overwhelming fast. That's why having a way to save time without sacrificing quality isn't just nice to have, it's critical.

21:07Kara Goldin:Luckily, LinkedIn Hiring Pro is built for that reality. It's your hiring partner designed to help you hire with confidence by surfacing only the right candidates without turning hiring into another full-time job. Posting a job isn't always the hard part. It's finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Their updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language, no recruiter jargon needed. Nearly 60 % of hires find a candidate to interview within a week.

21:49Kara Goldin:With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Terms and conditions apply. Support for today's episode comes from Square, the platform behind so many of the best run businesses. When you've built something from the ground up, you know operational excellence when you see it. The businesses that feel effortless to customers are usually the ones with the strongest systems behind the scenes. That's where Square comes in, bringing the tools together so owners can run their business with more clarity, confidence, and control.

22:35Kara Goldin:And here's the thing. Square is way more than just a payment swipe or tap. It's a system that keeps an entire business humming, taking payments, managing inventory, running payroll, tracking sales, all in one connected platform. And it grows with you, whether you're running a one-person pop-up or opening your next location. One of my go-to spots here in the Bay Area is Equator Coffee, and they use Square, and you can feel the difference as a consumer. Fast checkout, receipts sent instantly, even loyalty rewards. It just feels polished. So if you're starting a business or running one that deserves better tools, Square helps you sell, manage, and grow without slowing down.

23:22Kara Goldin:Right now, you can get up to$200 off Square hardware when you sign up at square.com slash go slash Kara Golden. That's S-Q-U-A-R-E dot com slash G-O slash Kara Golden. Run your business smarter, Square. Get started today. Go check it out and let Square help you do what you do best. So how did you know that you finally had the right product to actually launch, right? You went through these challenges and creating these products. And, you know, there comes a point where you just have to just get it out there in the market and see what happens. And what was that point where you said, okay, it's time?

24:12Kara Goldin:And how did you do it? It was slow. So we first launched on our website. We had a very basic site that we built for nothing. and we got orders. I mean, every day it was small, but it was increasing. And then we learned a lot about how to run Facebook ads, which was big at the time. Now, I don't think people even ran ads on Instagram at the time. So we did a lot of Facebook ads. We did a lot of press, you know, and we try to get out to the mom community. And slowly over time, like it didn't happen overnight. I would say slowly we got more orders the day, the next day and the next day it built up.

24:48And then Amazon came and asked us to join their Launchpad program, which is a small kind of incubator-ish program for startups. We started selling on Amazon and bit by bit, day by day, our sales grew and grew. And it became a viable business that could support me and one or two other employees. And it was like that for a long time. And then we redesigned the box for a lot of reasons. I mean, we needed it to be a little bit easier to manufacture. But, you know, all along the way, we were getting sales. It was pretty slow, but it was steady. It was growing. And we just kept working at it. And then we redesigned the box.

25:33And then it just really started to take off. Like after the redesign, we had a color redesign. And then sales just started to grow really steadily, just doubling our sales year after year, which emboldened us to introduce new products. we had. Then we introduced something for teenagers. We introduced something for adults. It just gave us a lot of confidence to keep building. But it was just, I would say, slow and steady and just not being like daunted by all the obstacles that'll come your way and just slowly making progress.

26:04Kara Goldin:How many years did that take for you to kind of feel like, okay, now we're getting it? It took about, let's see, 2013 was the Kickstarter. I would say it didn't, it wasn't until like at least seven years later where like we were making really good revenue in seven years but I say all along the way we were making money so one thing that I that was really important to me was just like knowing that it was really hard to get funding I didn't run an unprofitable business so every day since the first year we've never been in the red so that helped so we always had cash that was going back into the business and but when we really started to see a lot of growth was probably in 2020.

26:49Kara Goldin:So, so interesting. So when you were, I mean, you were not just creating a new company and new products, but also an entirely new category. I always tell people that, you know, competition is always kind of an interesting, you know, plus and minus because you see competition going, but especially when you have a category that hasn't been paid much attention to, competition's going to help you grow your category overall. Do you remember when for the first time you started to look at competition and kind of like figure out how you felt about it, but also what did you do? Around the time that we started, there started to be a lot of different entrants in this category.