melanie kaplan is the founder of oPPal, a platform that pairs new moms with moms who have been there, one to one. she joins sean to share how a former publicist turned her own postpartum story, and one instagram post, into a company she never planned to start. she gets into running a free beta she called "love is blind for moms" on squarespace, typeform and imessage, getting 300 survey responses in 48 hours, and launching with a practical baby shower instead of ads. plus why pr is a founder superpower, why oPPal is not an app, and why she is building the anti-ai business.
In this episode of Read Receipt, Sean sits down with Melanie Kaplan, founder of oPPal, the platform that matches a mom who is pregnant or freshly postpartum (a Little oPPal) with a trained mom a couple of steps ahead of her (a Big oPPal). Their slogan says it plainly: "A mom who gets it because she's been there too."
Melanie spent her career in entertainment, lifestyle and impact PR and never wanted to start a company. That changed after her own postpartum experience, and an Instagram post that filled her inbox overnight. She walks through going down to 10 hours a week at her agency, a survey that drew 300 responses in 48 hours, and a free beta run on Squarespace, Typeform and iMessage that she calls "Love is Blind for moms."
She also gets into the $20 model, a friends and family round, a PR-led launch built around a practical baby shower, the seven-video training every Big oPPal takes, and why growth comes from showing up in person, not ads. Plus why oPPal is web-based instead of another app, and why, in a world of AI chatbots, she is betting on one human connection.
Melanie Kaplan: When my first daughter, who's almost four, Sienna, was four months old, I woke up one morning and laid down on my kitchen floor and said to my husband, "I can't do this today."
Sean: I am super excited to have you back for another episode of Read Receipt. It's a deep dive into the how and why of the brands we love and the creatives behind them. From blueprints to launch day, customers as community, and the detours in between. Big lessons and easy listening. Read Receipt is hosted by Antidote, the email and SMS marketing agency by people who hate boring email. Read Receipt.
Melanie Kaplan: And I left about four months before I fully launched oPPal, was when I left the agency. And from there, I just kept iterating and building and thinking, like, there's gonna be this one-to-one matching program where we're taking a mom who's pregnant or freshly postpartum, and we're matching her to a mom that has been through it and is a couple steps ahead of her. An AI chatbot is never gonna get you the way another mom... Our, our slogan is, "A mom who gets it because she's been there, too."
Sean: How long have you guys been in market now? May, like
Melanie Kaplan: three months? Three and a half
Sean: months. Well, I'm excited to, to connect and hear more about everything that you're building and working on. What's-- what was your background before?
Melanie Kaplan: So I spent all my career as a publicist. I started in entertainment PR working for a talent publicity agency, and then I transitioned after a couple years there to doing more lifestyle event PR. And then I spent eight years at an agency that was all impact PR-driven, so half the agency was nonprofits and incredible activists, and the other half was also lifestyle consumer products, but that were ethical or sustainable. Worked with a lot of incredible authors. But every brand that I touched started with such, like, a concrete mission behind it, and I only left that agency earlier this year.
Sean: And what was the impetus? Did you always know that you wanted to start something on your own?
Melanie Kaplan: Absolutely not. It's not something I wanted to do in the slightest bit, because I think in agency life, people are always thinking, "Are you gonna leave and start your own agency? Are you gonna go freelance?" Especially in the current state of PR and marketing. And I never had that drive to do that from the PR perspective. I was really happy working at the last agency I was at. I had an incredible boss that really fostered me through becoming a mom and starting my own family, and I didn't have that entrepreneurial spirit, or so I thought. So it was really only because I had this mission and drive to build something so specifically in the postpartum space that I decided to start my own company.
Sean: And how, how did the idea come up, and what, what was the initial idea?
Melanie Kaplan: Sure. So it, it all stems from my own postpartum depression and anxiety experience, which happened around three-- when my first daughter, who's almost four, Sienna, was four months old. I woke up one morning and laid down on my kitchen floor and said to my husband, "I can't do this today. I, I can't parent. Like, something is wrong, and I need to leave this house." And he at first thought I needed to just, like, go take a break, go take a shower, like, take some time alone. So I tried that, but I was really-- the pa- the, the weeks leading up to that, I was experiencing such debilitating anxiety, and I'm somebody that has a history of mental health and- depression and anxiety at various points in my life, so I was very aware of the warning signs and what that felt like. But that morning so specifically, I, I just needed to, like, run away. I just needed to get out, and I didn't end up coming home for three to four nights, and spent some time just really by myself. I cried a lot and just felt inconsolable. And I called my OBGYN, we worked through getting me on medication. I really needed to get some sleep 'cause I was severely sleep deprived at that stage, and I just felt really... The best word I can describe it is I felt really suffocated at home. I felt like I couldn't do anything right as a mom. I felt like I thought I knew what it was gonna be like, and I thought I was gonna love having a baby, and it turns out I was a person that really didn't enjoy the newborn phase, which, like, hurt me to feel, 'cause I thought I would, and everybody's asking you, "Aren't you, like, so thrilled and, like, in heaven with this newborn baby?" And I felt, like, gaslighted by a lot of my friends during that time. But what got me through and pulled me through that really dark depression and anxiety was friends that had just gone through it. It wasn't the friends that were in it with me at the same time, which I loved my Mommy and Me class, but the people that really helped me were the ones that were a few steps ahead of me and could provide that light at the end of the tunnel, and the reassurance that they were okay, so I was also gonna be okay, and I was gonna figure out how to become the mom I wanted to be. And then fast-forward to two years after that. I had had-- I'd gone on to have my second child, Jade, and when she was four months old, I was sitting in bed one night playing around with the app Timehop. And it, I guess, had been two years since I had left Sienna, and I was playing on Timehop, and I came across a video that I had made of myself while I was gone from my house, crying and talking to Sienna in the future, explaining to her that I had to leave her because I wasn't... I couldn't take care of her if I couldn't take care of myself. That was, like, the core thing I was trying to get across to her. And when I saw that video, it just became this, like, flood of memories of what that experience looked like and felt like for me, and I decided to post it on my, at the time, was a private Instagram account, as kind of a series of, "I woke up one morning, this happened." Exactly that story that I just shared with you, I shared that in a series of stories. And then I decided to share that video that I had made, which I hadn't... I didn't even remember making it. Like, I made it, and then I moved on with my life and never looked back at it, and decided to post that, too. And the next morning, I woke up to all these messages of women that I hadn't spoken to in years, or people I'd met two weeks before, sharing their stories, thanking me for sharing mine, and Literally that morning I said to myself, "I think I'm gonna leave my career behind and go and do something in the postpartum space," even though I have zero qualifications. I'm not a doctor, I'm not a therapist, I'm not a lactation consultant, I'm not a doula, but I am a person with a lived experience and a serious passion to want to fix this gap that I, I continue to learn exists in the space of postpartum. And from that morning forward, I was like, "I'm gonna start figuring out how to build something." I had no clue that morning what it was going to be. I didn't start with the idea. I started with the broader mission of wanting to fix something that was, is broken.
Sean: So how long after that idea did you end up leaving your role at the, the agency? Were you still working at that time?
Melanie Kaplan: Yes. When I went back after my maternity leave with Sienna, I went back part-time, and I c- I went back with Jade part-time as well after she was born, and then- Once I started to formulate the idea further and was spending the other part-time of my time parenting and also now building this out, I called my former boss and said, "This is something I really wanna pursue and build, but I don't wanna like lose working here, and I love what I do here. I need more hours to also be building this and be a mom 'cause, you know, I also have these two children." And so we worked it out where I started then working 10 hours a week at the agency while I had the other time to work on this and then be with my kids. And then I guess it was about a year of that before I fully said, "It's time for me to leave."
Sean: And what was the, the idea for oPPal after you started kind of formulating what you wanted to build?
Melanie Kaplan: Yeah. The first thought was I was gonna build an in-person wellness center, like a YMCA for moms. I had all these big dreams of what would be offered within the space, and my husband kept being like, "Where are you getting the rent in LA to build a whole wellness center like this? It's a very expensive undertaking." It's like, okay, so like it won't be a physical space, but what else could I do? And so I started setting up meetings with doulas. I had never met a doula. I didn't have a doula. I didn't even know really what a doula was. I, I learned more about the therapist and the maternal mental health specialty that they have to get accredited for, talked to my pediatrician, to my OBGYN, talked to a ton of other moms, and was trying to figure out like, what, where is the gap and how could I fill it, and what is the answer to the gap and the problem that exists in such a big overhead of like our healthcare system as a country? And what kept coming up is that, you know, there's this six-week follow-up with your OBGYN that they kinda check you. They're like, "Okay, you're doing great. Like see you maybe at your annual next year." But you're really just sent home with this baby to figure it out on your own. But then you're seeing your pediatrician, and then I learned about this Edinburgh scale that does, does screen you for postpartum depression and anxiety. And I do remember filling that out, but you're filling it out while your baby is screaming at you at the pediatrician's office, and it's asking you some questions that are rather harsh. And it... I, I'm so grateful that it exists and it is there, but the way in which it's being administered and the way it's being scored and the way it's being followed up on- isn't exactly helping the problem. And then every time I talk to a provider within the space, I led from this approach of, "I'm not trying to blame you, but let's talk about the problem, and can you also give me some insight into where you see this problem is and what would be helpful to you as a provider for this demographic of women?" And time and time again, they were so receptive to me wanting to have this conversation, and kept sharing that they are so overwhelmed with their insurance codes and with the time that they're given with the women, and just how the whole system sets them up. They're not supported enough to take on these women that are struggling. And yeah, I just kept having those conversations, and somewhere along the way of that was like, what if I created this model where it really is taking... The, the answer to this problem is moms, already existing moms. Moms are always showing up for new moms. If people t- are constantly talking about the village and, you know, you need to have this village around you, but we don't live in traditional villages anymore, so you can't keep saying like, "Oh, go look for your village," when you walk outside and it's not a village around you. You're in a huge city. So I then put together this survey that I just thought, you know, I'm gonna ask some basic questions. I'm gonna get some feedback from other moms and not just base this on my own experience. And I sent it, because of my PR background, I sent it to every single mom that had responded to my Instagram story, any mom I knew, and I said, "You're all in five to 10 other mom chats, text messages, WhatsApp groups, whatever. Would you mind sending this survey to those, to any chats you're in? And here's a copy and paste to make it super easy." And then within 48 hours, I had over 300 responses to this survey about people's postpartum experience from all over the world, which I didn't even intend it to go past the United States. And at the end of that survey, I asked the question, "If you're already a mom, would you be open to mentoring a new mom?" I didn't put what would be required, what that would look like. I just kinda wanted to get a baseline sense of, if I were to build something that was, was really built on one mom showing up for another mom, I better make sure that this mom is going to do that. And over 80% said yes or maybe. And that then gave me the confidence that that group of women would show up. And it's also, you know, there's models like this that exist in other spaces. There's the AA model. There's Big Brothers Big Sisters. There's sor- the sorority bigs and littles. So sort of taking something that existed in other spaces and making it into my own for postpartum
Sean: This sounds like a, I feel like this sounds like a random or a harsh question after such a deep mission-based idea Were you like looking at business model at that point and figuring out revenue-wise, like how you were gonna support it? No. Or no? I
Melanie Kaplan: don't know what the right answer is, but-
Sean: Incredible ...
Melanie Kaplan: but no. I was, I did spend a lot of time contemplating how to build it out of, you know, my background at that last agency was split between working on nonprofits and then working for-profits that were mission-driven. So I spent a lot of time doing some deep thinking of which route am I taking to build this. And the truth is, there are nonprofits and there are hospitals that have these kind of peer-based programs or this, you know, matching programs. Then there's the baby brand industry, and I was like, there has to be some middle, because I also think that the reason I picked the model that I did was the belief that I, I actually truly believe we're gonna help more women by being a brand and being this like cool, zeitgeisty thing that moms just like wanna opt into. Moms are very familiar with community and different things that already exist. But if I can build something that's sustainable, yes, a business model's important and how is this company gonna grow and, you know, drive revenue, but there are different ways to do that. And so I ran a beta test of it last year for free. I just threw up a basic website, had some friends help me, said, "I'm just gonna start matching moms together that apply for this beta test," and felt like I was running a social experiment or what I called Love is Blind for moms, because I had people talking from other countries to women in, in the States, and then people across the country, people in the same city. And that beta test was completely free, but throughout it I was sending feedback forms and was kind of doing some testing of what would make you feel like you'd still wanna do this if there was a cost behind it.
Sean: What were like the biggest learnings while doing the, the testing phases? How did you set the tests up? Were you just like having people message each other in WhatsApp or something? Or like did you like build a platform?
Melanie Kaplan: So the beta test was a very basic Squarespace site that an old friend and colleague of mine had come back into my life and just become a doula, and I was... Now it's very easy to like build your own basic website, but a year ago I felt very overwhelmed by that concept, and I, I like working with people. So she came on board and helped me build the website. Then I used Typeform as doing the intake forms, and then it was a lot of Excel sheets of me looking and saying like, "How am I gonna match these women?" So the, the also real special thing about it is it's not arbitrary. It's not just because you're a mom and you're a mom, you're gonna be able to get along and have this connection, and you're gonna be able to support her. The main criteria for the beta test, and it still is a main one today too, the, but for the beta test it was fertility path. So if you'd gone through IVF, I was matching you with a mom who went through IVF. If you've experienced loss, you were matched with a mom who had experienced loss. And looking at some other key similarities of the two people. But yes, the actual communication was over iMessage. I put everybody that I would match together, I would like send them an email and be like, "You're matched to so and so, and I'm gonna put you on an email together, on, on a text together." And then I was on all of those text messages. I asked them to keep me on it so that I could be learning and like watching these things happen in real time. Eventually a couple people were like, "Can I kick you out of this chat? This is weird that you're like reading our conversation." And I said, "Of course." If you're more c- uh, if the little or somebody felt like they couldn't confide as much or be as open because there was a third person in the group chat, that was totally fine. I did rely on WhatsApp for community, so I put all bigs in a WhatsApp chat together. I put littles based on the age of their babies together in a WhatsApp chat for them too.
Sean: And, and after going through that, like, w- what ended up being the, the business model that you landed on?
Melanie Kaplan: That exists today?
Sean: Yeah.
Melanie Kaplan: So with the beta, what we also did though is we ran a training. So all of the Big oPPals had to go through a training. I had met this incredible maternal mental health therapist named Casey, and she ran a Zoom training because I was like, I'm not just throwing these, what we call these Big oPPals, into these conversations without any form of guidelines. Like, let's talk to them about this is your role and your scope. So she ran a Zoom with all of the Big oPPals that were part of the beta. And then after the beta wrapped... So the commitment was for three months, the Big oPPals would text their Little oPPal twice a week for that minimum of three months. I kept having people apply, like, after I opened it up, so I would just kinda keep adding people into the beta as it was going. But then to build it out. So for-- So once we wrapped the beta, I felt, I went into the beta telling myself, "If this helps one mom, one new mom, I will continue to go. I will continue to figure out what this could look like in a business model, in a scalable approach. I will go after the tech of it." So during that time, I had met with a couple different engineers. I talked to some app builders 'cause at first I thought it was gonna be an app. I ended up meeting this incredible engineer, his name is Jeff, and he became my technical advisor. And then he brought on who's now my CTO, her name is Stephanie, and she built out with me the actual tech backend of what our, like, portal looks like, what the algorithm looks like, because again, before it was a bunch of Excel sheets and me, you know, doing it all manually. So we launched that version of it in early May, and it took me a long time between wrapping the beta and getting to that May launch to figure out what the business model was. And so how it operates right now is that both Bigs and Littles pay $20 upon sign-up. That gets them their match, and then once their match starts, the three-month clock starts, and then once that match is up of that three months, it rolls into an optional subscription for both people to opt in or opt out of.
Sean: So interesting. Did you end up-- To build the platform, did you end up, like, raising any, any funding to do it?
Melanie Kaplan: I just did a friends and family round, right? Like, I probably did that about two months before I launched 'cause I was like, "I need some funding to get to my launch." With my PR background, it was important to me that I didn't just, like- small. I didn't go into it as like a small launch. I went into it with, I'm gonna do a launch event in LA, I'm gonna do a launch event in New York, I'm gonna go after some key press. And, and like my background in PR just continues to be very beneficial when it comes to certain parts of building. But I used to think it wasn't a beneficial part to being an entrepreneur and a founder, and I've actually found it to be the most beneficial part of all of it because it's also all about people, relationships, talking to people. I have probably ha- sat down and had a coffee or a Zoom with over 300 people over the past year, and n- just gotten to know a lot of different people and asking them for their help, finding advisors. I built this incredible board I call the constellation of maternal mental health experts. Then I have the orbit, which is more of my pediatricians and my OBGYNs. And I think the thing I learned the most was y- people just aren't gonna say yes if you don't ask them, and that's what PR is. You have to be willing to put yourself out there and ask people questions and pitch your clients. So I just found myself pitching myself and my own company.
Sean: Yeah. I mean, that's like expert sales training. Yeah. I feel like it's, like, the most important thing possible, especially for, like, a digital thing where you have to reach out to people all the time to get any traction, at least in the beginning. So what, what has it been like since launch?
Melanie Kaplan: It's been incredible. The launch was-- The two weeks of the first launch, like, event in LA and then the, the one in New York were just so cool. It was so amazing to see it all come to life, and I think the hard part about having a digital platform is it's not, like, a tangible product. It is very hard. I can't just, like, be a, at a booth or be in a farmers market, like, handing people samples and trying to get their feedback on the spot. It's very different. But for the launch party in LA, I wanted it to be a practical baby shower theme to really hone in on the, the thought of, like, moms don't need more stuff. They actually need more help and more, like, guidance, and expert-led guidance. So I did all these stations with a pediatrician, with a lactation consultant, and then I worked with a bunch of brands to then bring in product that were then tied to. So an example is we had gas drops paired with my pediatrician, and he was teaching you how to burp because nobody's talking about baby's gas until you're calling and you're like, "What's wrong?" And they're like, "Oh, it's probably just gas," and you have to burp the baby, and you're like, "Nobody taught me how to do that or told me that baby gas was a problem." So then we had the product there, and because, again, of that background of mine, like, I was very comfortable reaching out to brands, bringing them into the space. So we probably had over 25 brands activate within the space. It was held at Baby Lotto in West Hollywood. And then I started filling the guest list of, you know, obviously I'm gonna invite my press contacts, and then I wanted to invite influencers. I wanted to invite pregnant moms. I wanted to invite the moms that existed. So then it became also how do I make this event for the big oPPals and for the little oPPals? But the space, it was over 100 people in the space, and it really just showed the energy and the heart of what I was building. The people that showed up were all people from all stages of my life, and then influencers or moms that I had found on Instagram two days before that, that I DM'd and was like, "Hey, will you come to this event?" And everybody was really receptive to it, and since then it's just been- It's definitely a learning process for me of building and now growing a company. I was on the phone a couple weeks ago with a friend who's kind of a pseudo advisor of mine, and I was starting to feel like, "Okay, so what, what is my growth and my scaling plan?" And she was like, "You're still in build. Just because you've launched doesn't mean you're not still in build mode." And that was actually a really helpful reframe for me as a new founder and entrepreneur and CEO of a company of Understanding that and that it's okay that we're still at this point and things don't just like, you don't snap your fingers and then everything happens overnight. It's a slow build and process. But we're about to hit 30 active matches. We have more people that are like in the queue or haven't given birth yet but signed up, and then we're starting to pair them with all the Bigs that we have in our platform too. And then the way now with the tech platform behind it is that the two people get connected through a platform called Twilio, which is how you talk to your Postmates driver or your Uber driver, so that if they don't want to exchange personal phone numbers, they don't have to, and there's that level of anonymity if they want there to be.
Sean: That's awesome. How, how do you think about iterating on the product? Like what's b- what's been the feedback, and are the Bigs still going through the training aspect of things or did they already go through that and you have like a set number of people that you're working with right now?
Melanie Kaplan: No, for the b- so before we launched, it was really important to me to just, to develop the training in a more like professional way. So over last year while I was meeting with all these mental health, maternal mental health professionals, I developed this board of the constellation, which includes a doula, a midwife, a therapist, a psychologist, this woman that leads these incredible women's circles, an infertility specialist. And I said, "You guys are all these incredible minds that work in the space. I want you to come together with me to define what is a Big oPPal and what is the training that a Big oPPal needs to go through in order to get the match." So we put that all together. We spent a couple months together working on different like Google Sheets and Google Docs and going back and forth on what the different modules of the training should look like and what are the key topics. And then a couple months before launch, we filmed it all really professionally and beautifully. My brother works with me. He's my head of product and one of our founding partners, and he comes from the entertainment industry and works in film and TV. So he helped me put together this crew. We filmed the training with the constellation, so they each sat and filmed their different portions of it. And then now every Big oPPal that once they get approved in our, in our portal, they have to watch those sev- it's a seven-video series of training that goes over what is a Big oPPal, what is postpartum, let's talk about the definition of that, what are actual red flags, what to do, when to escalate, and then there's different things about self-care and boundaries, and then there's a whole section on like realistic scenarios of if this, then here are some suggestions of how to respond. And yeah, everybody has to go through that before they get matched.
Sean: And what is-- what's the, what's the response been like from Littles going through the process now? I guess- You have like one group that's gone through the full three months?
Melanie Kaplan: Yeah. We had a big group through the beta, and I did feedback testing every single month with them. I now have a couple of littles that were part of the beta. To be a big, your baby has to have turned one years old if it's your first child, and so I just had my first couple littles from the beta hit that mark, and now they have signed up to become big oPPals, which has always been my hope, is that it's kind of this like cycle of life. And the littles that have been signed up since launch, the emails I get, the feedback I get. There was one twin mom who I met in New York when I was out there for the launch. I'd never met her before she came to my event. I was like, "You should sign up for this. Like, I actually know a twin mom that I'd love to match you with. She's been a big supporter of this. I think she'd be great for you. She does live in LA. You're in New York, but I think you guys would be a great pair." And she was sort of hesitant, and I could tell she wasn't like sold instantly. And then after checking in with her a couple times, she did sign up. And after her first, I think she sent me this email a month and a half in, she wrote me an email that I read and was like, "That's exactly what I would have written if I wanted to write my own user testimonial about what I hope somebody experiences and what their outcomes are with signing up for this." She basically explained, "I wasn't sure I need-- I, I... this was something I needed. I have a good support system. I thought I was set up for success, but this is invaluable to have this person with such a specific experience that is checking on me twice a week." That it's all proactive. The little isn't in charge of reaching out. They're gonna get the text twice a week that's asking them how they're doing, that's asking them, you know, "D- did you get any sleep last night? Have you taken a walk? Have you had a snack today? Are you feeling like a disruption in your marriage?" Like really normalizing the things that happen to us postpartum from the lens of, "I've been there, too. You're not alone in this. You're not, you're not the first person that is, that is experiencing this. You're not the last." And that validation and normalizing the experience has such massive impacts on your mental health and what you're experiencing during that time. Because if you're feeling like, "I'm the only one. Why can't I get this right? I'm the only person that's feeling like this," that just sends you deeper and darker into a spiral.
Sean: How do you guys manage, like, the systems and the people, like, to make sure people are reaching out when they should be? What is that like? 'Cause it's almost like you have, like, a team of people that you have to, like, check in with to make sure that they are doing-
Melanie Kaplan: Yeah. I mean, for right now, it's still very-- I'm still extremely involved in every single match that happens, and I want it to be that way for right now. I don't let our algorithm and our system approve a match and then just run with it. I still look at a set of these are the top three matches our system is recommending based on how we built our algorithm and what we told it to base it on, and it's the scoring system. I look at the two profiles side by side. I really think about these different... They're asked a bunch of different questions on their intake forms, but we also make some of them optional because not everybody cares about being matched on every single part of their personality or where they live. We have some things that are optional, faith and spirituality. There are certain key things that we ask that it's really important that I know. And then from there, I tell the system to send them both an email that they're getting their match, and then Twilio puts them both in the text chat together. I can then see the cadence of the conversations that are happening. I'm not actively, like, reading their conversations. Um, and then our system, if it goes a couple days without no- noticing that the Big has reached out, it sends the Big an email and reminds them to check in. And then if I notice that that still hasn't been happening, I then go in. And then the Bigs are also trained to know at what point if they're not hearing back from their Little or what's happening, when to reach out to us too.
Sean: How do you, how are you thinking about scaling a platform like this? Are you guys doing, like, how do you get new, new customers or users, I guess? Or-
Melanie Kaplan: So interesting, I just told our tech person, I was like, "We need to ask a question in the intake of where did you find us," because every day new people are signing up, or every couple days there's like two to three new people that are signing up. And, you know, I can tell of like, you know, if this press piece came out or this Instagram post happened or, or what it is, this podcast episode came out, some people write in of like, "I saw you on this and this is what made me wanna sign up." But my plan for scaling is a lot of in-person activations and events, because that proved to be so extremely important at launch of having that in-person touch. I had somebody tell me recently that if they had seen an ad for this, they would not have signed up, but they'd met me twice and heard me speak about it and watched my content, and she was like, "I signed up because of that." And I was like, "Cool, I'll just multiply myself and put myself everywhere and keep talking about it." But it's, it's also gonna be word of mouth, right? Like, it's gonna be the women that then get to the end that are like, "I had the most amazing experience. I'm now gonna pass it on to my friend." I'm working on partnerships with different baby brands, doing social media collabs, doing giveaways with them, doing these events. I'm planning to go to Austin in October. I wanna go back to New York. I'm going to San Diego next week to really get in front of these moms. And there's two different audience bases, right? So I also have to factor that in, like there's trying to attract the littles and then there's trying to attract the bigs. For the littles too, what I've been working on is getting into doctor's offices and giving OBGYNs offices information and like QR codes, and then pediatricians offices information. I just signed up to do the Prego Expo, which is in LA in November. That's just all pregnant moms. We're doing some work with NICU parents, but then it's also making sure that I always have a huge database of the big oPPals, because that's the piece that's so important. I can't have a little oPPal sign up if I don't have a big oPPal to match them to. But through the beta, what I kept finding is that the big oPPals are just so, I don't know what the right word, like motivated and driven by this mission and by wanting to do this. And that was also really why I built it too, because the big oPPal gets so much benefit out of this. And I've even had some of them say to me that the training made them a better friend to all of their friends having babies. They were like, "I would've never thought of this. I would've never thought to check in on them this way. I thought I was saying the right thing. I'm absolutely not saying the right thing." So it's a really beneficial training outside of just even your one-to-one match that improves kind of how we can talk about and understand postpartum and the different various things that can happen to women. And yeah
Sean: So a lot of in-person and word of mouth. What do you feel like some of the biggest challenges will be for you as you scale? Seems like it might be like the supply and demand of having enough bigs that are trained on how you guys do things as you scale, just like awareness for people to sign up
Melanie Kaplan: The question is what are the biggest challenges that I think we will start to face? Yes, I think that continuing to ensure that we're always thinking about both audience sets, and we're not just going after the events or the places where we're gonna find the littles, but making sure that we're always balancing that out with the Big oPPal side. I think that as technology evolves, like making sure that we're continuing to improve our platform. Everybody assumes it's an app. It's not an app right now. It's all web-based, so every user gets a portal, gets their login. That's where they get information about who they're matched to. It then is even keeping track of their progress within there. We're about to unlock chat rooms so that every big can access a chat room, every little can access a chat room. And for right now, I kinda like that it's going to be like an old school desktop, but web version of a chat room, and not just a WhatsApp chat, something else. I think there's something nostalgic about that for my generation of these like chat rooms and functions, but we're also gonna see how that works. But I did a lot of testing during the beta of would you want an app, and I, it, it just wasn't clear enough that moms wanna download another app, even if there are different functions and features that make it worthwhile. Th- we're inundated by apps, and we're inundated by information, and I think even as a, as a brand and as a company and as a founder, one of my biggest missions is not to add to the noise that moms are already experiencing, because that's one of the problems we're trying to solve for, is that moms now are met with 500 diaper brands, 5,000 different methods of sleep training. You could do solids, you could do baby-led weaning, like, and we, we've lost how to trust ourselves, because we're just sitting and we're being fed so much information, and yes, it's great that we have information, but if you look back in time, you know, our moms had like one or two books. The moms before them just had their neighbor. Like, I'm trying to get us back to that point of really being able to rely on one person, but not for that person to be the person telling you what to do, but for that person to be guiding you to figure out how to trust yourself what to do. Because for me, I really struggled with trusting my own instincts, and felt frustrated by people being like, "It's the maternal instinct. You're gonna know what to do." I was like, "I have no clue what to do." And then I would second-guess myself constantly, because I would have my mom saying one thing, my mother-in-law saying another thing, my father-in-law saying another thing, the internet saying another thing, the pediatrician saying another thing, and I was like, "I don't know which one to listen to." And the moment that I really felt like I o- overcame all my postpartum depression and anxiety and stepped into motherhood was when I figured out and found how to trust my own instincts, and when to make a decision about my kid and move on, and not feel like the world's gonna end because I got this nap schedule wrong today
Sean: Yeah. I mean, s- I feel like there's so much pressure on people to keep routines and structure and everything. I think it's, like, actually kind of rare for people to really just, like, listen to the needs of the moment-
Melanie Kaplan: Uh-huh ...
Sean: with a baby.
Melanie Kaplan: Right. And I, I just talked about this last week on Instagram. Like, I have gone-- I've had to, like, kind of grapple with my own decisions and things that I did in terms of breastfeeding or feeding and sleep training and sleep, and I don't really like the word or feel regret. I-- But I wish that I had been able to do things differently. I wish I had... I was just talking about this last week, like, I wish I had tried to breastfeed my second, but I was so terrified from the first experience that I didn't even try. I was like, "I'm just gonna go straight to formula." I'm now, as I'm reading more about sleep or kind of getting adjusted to a four-year-old's sleep and a two-year-old's sleep, I'm like, "Why?" Like, I thought sleep training meant that they would never bother me again. So that's not true. Like, my four-year-old is now in my room every single night, and I'm like, "What happened? I thought that if I sleep trained you, this would never be a problem." And I really convinced myself, too, that I was doing her a favor because I had really-- I still have really bad sleep anxiety, and I thought that was because my parents never taught me independent sleep. So, I, like, forced my daughter into independent sleep, and now I'm like, "Oh my gosh," like, "why did I do that?" But it's because I... Again, I don't regret it. I just wish that I had been able to make better choices at the time, and that I had been able to let go of the anxiety over the schedules and the this and the that. But I got, I got very consumed in that cycle of routines, and if I don't sit in a dark room with her all day long to get her to nap for two hours, everything else is gonna break.
Sean: Yeah. What, what did you learn about the sleep training situation that changed your view?
Melanie Kaplan: I think I've just now watched a couple other parents and family members and people go through different versions of it and co-sleep or do different things, and it's interesting because I feel like when I had my first, there was just this narrative of co-sleeping is super dangerous, do not do it, do not do this, like all these things. Did I wanna co-sleep? No, I wanted to be able to sleep. I- my husband was also like, "This isn't happening." But I think to have had a little bit more of a relaxed approach about it or just for my own mental health, like not be so stressed about contact naps or feeling like I always had to put her in the crib. Like, I just was trying to follow such a strict set of rules that I couldn't... I remember a couple friends coming over and being like, "Melanie, so what if this nap is only 30 minutes?" And I was like, "What do you mean so what?" Like everything's... I don't know how to do the math of what the next wake window is and all these things. And then there was a day where she skipped like the third nap of the day, and my brain completely like malfunctioned, and I handed her to my mother-in-law and went and locked myself in the bathroom and sat in my bathtub crying. And I was like, "I need you to figure out bedtime," because I couldn't like compute the math of then what bedtime should look like or be like because she missed that one nap. And it's like my s- mother-in-law was like, "She's gonna be fine. Like, I'm just gonna put her to bed when she's tired and that's that." And I was like, "Oh, okay."
Sean: Yeah. It's so funny. It's like, I guess it's like all of life I'm thinking about me, like with work. It's like the harder you think something is, probably like the easier it could be.
Melanie Kaplan: Yeah.
Sean: But it's so hard to like let go.
Melanie Kaplan: It's so hard to get out of your own head in those ways too, and I think when you become a parent, it's the biggest lesson in letting go of control. And it's interesting that I wasn't able to do that in those senses, because when she was-- when I was pregnant with her, she was breech. And I tried flipping her in like very, very light ways. I didn't go crazy or I didn't try and do the like, like manual flip that they do at the hospital. I didn't go to a ton of chiropractors. I wasn't doing handstands in my pool. Like a ton of my friends were really actively trying to flip breech babies, and I remember feeling like, "Okay, if this is how she wants to come into the world, so be it." Like, who am I to force her to come into the world how I want her to come into the world? It felt like kind of my first true act of letting go of my own needs for her desires. But then that didn't translate to anything else in the newborn stage.
Sean: I'm also thinking about how we, uh, do things and, um, I mean- I feel like there's so many stigmas to everything too, so I'm almost like I should probably not say because people will think we're insane.
Melanie Kaplan: It, but, but you, it doesn't matter. Like, I literally believe that do whatever works for your family and your household, and that's a big part of our training too, and something that I really had to spend time with last year is that parenthood can become a very judgmental space very, very easily. There are a lot of people out there that have very strong opinions and that do believe that you have to do things the way that they're doing them. So our training really also goes over you are not there to impose your beliefs or your sets of what works for your family onto this new mom, because every family is different, every mom is different, every baby is different, and every family is entitled to figure out what works for their family unit without being judged for that. Obviously, keeping your baby safe, all of those things very important, but all of these other decisions, like it shouldn't be about because somebody else told me to
Sean: What, what's like your time- timeline that you have in your head or your ultimate vision or goal for the, for the platform in the long term?
Melanie Kaplan: My short term goal is I'm working to make it a registry item. I wanna work with a registry platform to make it something that's giftable and so that women are getting gifted it as like this is a very important thing that you should have instead of like a burp cloth. I want to expand to other countries. Again, during the beta I had people from other countries applying, but currently we're just set up as like a US-based operation and company. I just want it to be a part of the normal conversation of if you're having a kid, like I, I kept last year visualizing women at baby showers like gossiping almost like, "Oh my God, did you get your Big oPPal yet? Like, who are you getting matched to?" Like it's this really exciting thing that's just part of having a baby because part of the problem is that everybody is waiting till they're hitting a breaking point and then having to work backwards. I mean, we're not a medical platform. We're not a clinical platform. There's a lot of different terms and conditions and waivers and things to make sure that nobody goes into it thinking that. We do have a pathway to more clinical care, which is through a platform called Phoenix Health, which is maternal mental health therapy providers in 42 states and 10 states that take insurance. So if you're in our oPPal portal, you can easily sign up to get paired to a therapist while feeling like you're still within the oPPal space because I also really dislike... There's so many parts of the medical system that just feel like you're being constantly passed over to the next person and, "Okay, I can't help you, so now here's something else." So I wanted it to feel like if your Big oPPal is recommending that it might be time to look into therapy or some other options, that it's within you feeling like you're already with oPPal to do that. So I wanna continue that. I mean, I just think there's so much opportunity. There's unfortunately, and also fortunately in a weird way, a lot of conversation around this topic right now because of various news things that are happening. And I think it's amazing that a lot more awareness is coming to it, but there also has to be like tangible ways to solve this problem. It can't just keep being us yelling and shouting and saying "We need more help. We need more infrastructure. Our doctors need more help." And so last year when I was building this, I was like, "I don't have the answer from the government level or federal funding or like the medical system. Like I can't go build something that's going to fix that." But I do very much believe that moms are going to help solve this problem, and moms are gonna show up to solve this problem and fill this gap, and hopefully one day our care system also catches up to provide more for moms.
Sean: I love, I, yeah, I love the concept of it. I think it is a really interesting, um model to scale to. I feel like it's a simple idea, but hard to scale. So I would love to stay in touch with you over, over time and-
Melanie Kaplan: Yeah. I'll let you know when I, when I get to that point. I mean, I, I also have some... I just brought on this incredible marketing, marketing advisor, and so we're gonna start doing some other stuff to get the word out there. I also am gonna start testing out it being a gift with purchase, and working with baby brands and, like, a stroller company or a formula company as, like, let's get this to new moms. I want it to be super accessible. I don't want price to ever be a prohibitor for a mom signing up. So if a mom gets to the website and is like, "The $20 is not something that I can afford right now," they just email us and we always have spots available to take on people that can't afford it. Um, and yeah, we're just gonna keep, keep seeing how it goes, but so far so good. I mean, I, again, like I said, I get emails almost every day of a Little telling me a different reason as to why it works and why it's helped them, and it's words that I knew was the reason why this would work, but they're now saying it back to me without me ever explaining that to them. They're like, "Oh, this is like an, a stranger and a friend that I don't have to worry about saying these things to." And I'm like, "Yeah, that's exactly why I built it in this way, so that you did feel really comfortable and like you had this confidant, and that it's somebody to share all your deepest, darkest secrets with." And you know, people can choose between wanting somebody that's close or local to them, or do they want somebody that they're never gonna see. And that's also why I wanna open it up to other countries, because I have this, like, dream vision of moms connecting through other... Even though the time change, the, you know, that would be kind of complicated. But moms who are talking at different countries and the Little then is like, "I'm bringing my family on a trip to Spain," and then they're gonna go and meet their Big oPPal and their family. And I want there to be a lot of in-person touchpoints and, like, meetups and ways in which we can bring our community together, because everybody is joining in this community with this shared mission of wanting to support new moms. And I think that's what really differentiates us from all the other mom communities out there, is that it's not your, your reason to join isn't about the community aspect of it. Your reason to join is to support a new mom, and then you get all of this amazing community out of it. And the Big oPPals loved that. Like, during the beta and with these chat rooms, they felt like, "I'm getting so much out of this. I can now ask this group." Like, "Hey, I'm about..." Somebody last night in the Big oPPal chat was like, "My four, my four-year-old, like, needs a new bed," or like, "What do you recommend?" Or it works, too, for crowdsourcing help for their Little oPPals. If they're like, "I didn't have this one experience, but I'm, I'm trying to find some resources for my Little," they then ask all the other Big oPPals. And this happened a ton during the beta, where then Bigs were, like, sending all these different resources and then, then that other Big would compile it and then send it to their Little oPPal. Like, the stories that happened out of the beta test were absolutely magical. And so it's cool to now see it in this way and to start getting that feedback from it being live and just other people that have signed up to join it, and continuing to see that even the bigs that did the beta test are now signing up to do it this, you know, now that it's fully in this version of it too. And I feel like I've made all of these virtual best friends of these bigs and littles throughout the country. And next week when I go to San Diego for an event, one of the big oPPals is based there, and she's coming and, like, gonna talk on behalf of it, and I'm so excited to meet her. We did an event last year at the end of the beta where I brought a bunch of bigs and littles together I've had to meet in person for the first time, and, like, filmed the meeting for the first time, and it's just really cool to see and to create connection in this way, in a world that feels very disconnected.
Sean: Yeah, this is like the, the anti-AI- Uh-huh ... business.
Melanie Kaplan: Well, it's- Yeah ... it's interesting because people kept saying last year, "Why aren't you building this with AI? Why aren't you using Lovable? Why aren't you doing this? Why aren't you just building an AI chatbot?" And it's like, I'm not gonna take away that one-to-one human connection. An AI chatbot is never gonna get you the way another mom, like our, our slogan is, "A mom who gets it because she's been there too," and it's just that plain and simple. We're about to launch a newsletter that's called Been There, and it's that concept of just having somebody who has been there that continues all throughout parenthood of, I still feel like I need to talk to a mom of a six-year-old who's like, "Ugh, yeah, my four-year-old also was a nightmare," you know? Yeah. Because they've been there, and they're validating my experience. So that's another thing for the future is we're gonna iterate on, you know, I've had people ask me for the dad version of it, which we'll call Dopal, 'cause no offense, you know, dopey dads. Like, I don't know, there's just something about Dopal that feels right. And I think that dads will really be receptive to it too. I've met a lot of guys that have created these really cool, like, dad strollering communities or dad meetups and walks, and I think that's incredible. I know there's more studies and research that are being done about, you know, male postpartum depression, what can happen to the dad. I want there to be, you know, eventually, like, perimenopause, menopause, like, there's always, there's gonna be different branches of how t- of what that connection is, is for you. But my core offering and the thing I had to start with was this postpartum period.
Sean: Yeah. Well, I love the, the concept and yeah, I'm excited to see how you scale it over time- Thank you and keep iterating on it. So I would love to do a round two at some point.
Melanie Kaplan: Sounds great.
Sean: What, what's the event that you have next week in San Diego? Is it-
Melanie Kaplan: It's a community through a mom that runs a community called SD Mom Walks, and so I'm doing an event out there. I'm bringing-- I've met the most incredible group of other mom entrepreneurs, mompreneurs. We call ourselves the Venture Moms through doing this, and so we meet up about once a month, and one of the other moms in that has a kids' clothing company, and so her and I are co-sponsoring this mom Pilates event together. And it's really helpful to have these other women that are building at the same stage as having young kids and all kind of figuring it out at the same time, and we all have different backgrounds and different skill sets. So as we're all kind of single small team businesses that are operating, like I call each other, we're all our employee number ones. Like we're constantly asking somebody else to, you know, give marketing advice or I give PR advice or somebody else is better at social or somebody else comes from product, and that's a really cool thing that's come about all of this too, is having that network.
Sean: All the community aspects of this seem really incredible for life building.
Melanie Kaplan: It's important. I mean, I was just sitting last night with my neighbor who you're talking about how incredible our neighborhood is, and it really is a village, and I said to her, I was like, "Well, you were, were the person that did show up." She's had two older daughters, and when I was walking with my first daughter hysterically crying, like so deep in the postpartum, she's the one that like just held me and hugged me and said, "I remember this. I know this feeling. I promise you, you're gonna get through it. I know it's really hard. It sucks. I know you're mad at your husband. I know you're feeling rage. I know you're sleep deprived." Like normalizing all of it, and that, having that was-- I don't know if I would've, yeah, gotten through it in the same way without that support system.
Sean: Thank you again for taking the time to do this. I feel like that was an incredible ending.
Sean: Read Receipt.