On the TechTO stage ×1
First seen on the TechTO stage in 2020. Every talk is searchable — ask the archive about Jessica ↗
In their words
I remember craving a moment of connection with my child, and felt very disconnected from this experience — and had a lot of hunger for more information. And I stumbled upon a doctoral thesis that this guy had written 20 years ago about what was happening in the developing brain.
We were very under capitalized. We were able to get the company to 63 million in sales and sold it for 230 million to Danone. So it was kind of like we did the impossible — but we were always very fearful of what it would look like to work with a real venture capitalist.
So much of parenting is really what we're trying to do — asking parents to change behaviour to some extent, to lean in to more intention in their parenting.
More from TechTO ×1
Around the web ×1
Quick answers
Who is Jessica Rolph?
Co-founder and CEO of Lovevery, the Boise child-development company she started in 2015 with Roderick Morris. Before that she was founding partner of Happy Family, the organic baby-food business she helped build with Shazi Visram and which Danone acquired.
Why did she start Lovevery?
A gap in her own parenting. She told TechTO that after Happy Family she felt she knew everything about infant nutrition but nothing about developing cognition, found a 20-year-old doctoral thesis on the developing brain, started making her own toys, and built the company around stage-by-stage development windows.
What did she learn from fundraising at Happy Family?
That institutional capital felt intimidating. She said on the TechTO stage on 2020-05-22 that Happy Family raised about $20 million from individuals and mission-driven lenders, reached $63 million in sales and sold for $230 million — and that her Lovevery co-founder Roderick Morris drove the process that got her comfortable raising venture money.