Bobbie: Laura Modi. How a Baby Formula Startup Took Market Share From Two Industry Giants
August 17, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readLaura Modi spent years working at Google and Airbnb before a deeply personal experience pushed her into one of the most regulated industries in the world. After struggling to breastfeed her first child, she found herself in a pharmacy at 11 p.m., buying formula and feeling ashamed. That shame, combined with her discovery that U.S. infant formula nutritional standards had not been updated since the 1980s, led her to leave her job while pregnant with her second child and start Bobbie, a baby formula company built on European-style nutritional standards. What followed was a multi-year ordeal involving an FDA shutdown, a national recall, a skeptical investor community, and a supply chain so fragile that a single contamination event at a competitor’s factory nearly broke the company.
The Problem Was Not Just Product — It Was Culture
Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.
Read Full Summary →Free • No credit card required
Never miss an episode of How I Built This with Guy Raz
Get every new episode summarized in your inbox — free, ~5 minutes to read.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **Episode Introduction & Laura’s Background** - Guy Raz sets up the episode: how Laura Modi broke into the heavily regulated, duopoly-dominated baby formula market to build Bobby.
- 2 (06:22) **From Rural Ireland to Silicon Valley** - Laura describes her upbringing in a small Irish town and her ambitious path to working at Google in the US.
- 3 (11:33) **The Airbnb Experience & Entrepreneurial Spark** - Laura explains her decision to leave Google for the fast-growing startup Airbnb and her long-held desire to build her own company.
- 4 (13:46) **The Founding Story: Shame, a Pharmacy, and a Research Rabbit Hole** - Laura recounts the deeply personal moment that led to the idea for Bobby.
- 5 (20:04) **The Mini PhD & The Market Opportunity** - Laura details the key differences she found between US and European formulas.
- 6 (26:34) **The Leap of Faith** - Laura describes the moment she decided to leave her job at Airbnb to build the company while pregnant with her second child.
- 7 (38:10) **Formulating & Naming Bobby** - Laura explains the expensive, regulated process of creating a prototype and the story behind the brand name.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Laura Modi set out to build a better infant formula.
What followed was years of setbacks: a crippling dispute with the FDA, a frustrating search for a manufacturer, and the constant fear that the company would run out of money before it reached customers.
But today, Bobbie generates over $100 million a year and has captured nearly 4% of the U.S. infant formula market by challenging one of the most protected industries in America.
In this conversation, Laura explains how she made it through—and why many of the moments that looked like disasters ultimately built a better company, and made her a better entrepreneur.
You'll learn:
- Why Laura left a great job to launch one of the most heavily regulated products in America
- How she spent nearly $200,000 of her own savings before raising outside capital
- How 64 investor pitches helped her tell a better story
- How a public apology changed the trajectory of the company
- Why Bobbie turned away thousands of customers during its fastest period of growth
- Why Laura moved to Washington, D.C., and how she thinks about federal oversight
Timestamps:
13:17 – The emotional experience that revealed a massive business opportunity
23:09 – Laura learns about the two companies that had a lock on U.S. formula
25:52 – Quitting Airbnb, starting Bobbie while pregnant, risking her savings
38:52 – Pitching 64 investors—and the brutal feedback that fueled her to keep going
50:04 – The FDA shuts the company down after two weeks
1:01:14 – Building a community while waiting nearly two years for approval
1:09:11 – Launch day, and selling out faster than expected
1:13:59 – Why Laura shut off new customer orders during the infant formula shortage
1:17:12 – Buying her own manufacturing plant to control Bobbie's future
1:20:19 – Navigating Washington, regulation, and building a mission-driven brand
This episode was researched and produced by Alex Cheng with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant. Our audio engineer was Robert Rodriguez.
Follow How I Built This:
Instagram → @howibuiltthis
X → @HowIBuiltThis
Facebook → How I Built This
Follow Guy Raz:
Instagram → @guy.raz
Youtube → guy_raz
X → @
More from this podcast
How I Built This with Guy Raz →