We have some exciting news today that I just had to share! We did a press release with UpSpring Baby about our partnership to offer free subscriptions to Babble Soft web and mobile applications for customers who purchase their milkscreen product in Babies “R” Us! UpSpring is a great company with awesome women/mom entrepreneurs at the helm. Please let new parents know how they can try two cool products for the price of one. It’s sort of like you buy one, you get the higher priced item for free. Don’t you love those kind of offers. 😀
If you are a blogger, know a blogger, or a journalist who might be interested in telling their readers about it especially since it’s so close to Mother’s Day, I would be truly grateful if you mentioned it to them. Or even a Stumble of this post, would be so appreciated.
The press release is below and is also on our site and on PRWeb. I think it’s kind of cool that a Consumer Packaged Goods company and a Tech company are offering solutions for new moms, together in Babies “R” Us!
Babble Soft and UpSpring Baby Offer Free Subscriptions to Baby Insights for Milkscreen Customers
Customers who purchase a Milkscreen 3-pack, available at Babies “R” Us, will get a free subscription to Babble Soft web and mobile applications.
AUSTIN, TX – May 7, 2008 – For a limited time only, customers who purchase the MilkscreenTM 3-pack at Babies “R” Us and other retailers for $4.99, will get a free 3 month subscription valued at $19.95 to Baby InsightsTM and Baby Say CheeseTM!
“We are thrilled about the opportunity to provide our customers with access to Babble Soft’s unique web and mobile applications!” said Lisa Williamson, founder and CEO of UpSpring Baby. “Our customers use milkscreen as a simple, two minute test to detect alcohol in breast milk. Every woman metabolizes alcohol differently so milkscreen allows Mom to relax and remove the guesswork and Babble Soft’s Baby Insight’s product helps new moms keep track of their breastfeeding and pumping schedule as well as how much pumped milk they feed their baby. We feel that giving our customers the chance to try out easy-to-use tools to help them manage their breastfeeding and pumping schedules is a huge plus for busy moms.”
“Our goal at Babble Soft is to help make the transition into parenthood easier by taking some of the worry away about whether baby is getting what he/she needs.” said Aruni Gunasegaram, founder and CEO of Babble Soft. “We are excited about partnering with UpSpring Baby to not only offer their customers an easy way to try our Baby Insights application to help them track pumping and breastfeeding, but also our Baby Say Cheese first year online baby album with milestones and family tree.”
Baby Insights helps caregivers gain insight into baby’s breast & bottle feeding, sleep periods, diaper changes, medicine doses, immunization records, as well as mom’s breastfeeding, pumping and medicine intake. Having important information stored in one location makes communication between parents, their nanny, babysitters, grandparents, or doctors seamless and reliable and gives new parents insight into their baby’s patterns to help with crucial baby care decisions.
Baby Say Cheese lets you create a wonderful online baby’s first year photo album with milestones such as ‘first crawl, first smile, first word’ and family tree that you can share with friends and family. You can even send fun, cute picture postcards of any of your baby’s milestones to anyone with an email address!
About UpSpring Baby
UpSpring, founded in 2005 and based in Austin, Texas, is a premiere parenting and child consumer brand that consists of popular labels such as Walking Wings® and MilkscreenTM. Founded by momprenuers, the company is dedicated to offering parents and children the most innovative and trustworthy health, wellness and safety products available in the baby care industry. The founders are inspired by how many unmet needs still exist in the childcare industry and how many great ideas other parents have to offer. UpSpring, has worked with designers, medical experts and testing laboratories, to ensure fresh and more natural product alternatives that are safer and supportive for every facet of babies’ early childhood. To learn more, please visit us at http://www.upspringbaby.com.
About Babble Soft
Babble Soft is based in Austin, Texas and creates products that help make the transition into parenthood easier. Whether you need breastfeeding support, are experiencing baby sleep issues, are expecting twins, or taking care of a premature (preemie) baby and would like to create your baby’s first year album, Babble Soft offers unique, easy-to-use Web and Mobile software solutions that improve communication between caregivers. Babble Soft makes a great baby shower gift that you can easily send via Email to any new parent anywhere in the world! To learn more and purchase Babble Soft applications, please visit http://www.babblesoft.com.
For more information, please contact:
Gillian Robb
Upspring, LLC
(512) 828-7988
Gillian(at)UpSpringBaby(dot)com
Aruni Gunasegaram
Babble Soft, LLC
(512) 961-6002 �
aruni(a)babblesoft(dot)com �
Author: Aruni |
Filed under: entrepreneurship |
Tags: alcohol and breastfeeding,
alcohol while nursing,
babble soft,
babble soft and upspring baby partnership,
babies r us,
baby insights,
baby say cheese,
baby sleep,
breastfeeding support,
entrepreneurship,
milkscreen,
mompreneur,
upspring baby,
women entrepreneur |
2 Comments »
I’ve seen companies doing soft launches of software products which makes me wonder what a hard launch is. So far the main difference I’ve noticed is that the official press release about the new application or new feature doesn’t go out until after the ‘hard’ launch. My guess is that a lot of bug fixing is going on between soft and hard launch.
So, I’m happy/thrilled/ecstatic to report that we just soft launched our new sleep and immunization recording features of Baby Insights Web! We are still working on some development issues on Baby Insights Mobile and plan to hard launch that app in January 2008. The mobile app is not web-based (yet) so we don’t have the luxury of a soft launch.
Babble Soft is offering FREE 3 month gift subscriptions valued at $19.95 until March 15, 2007 to anyone who discovers a software bug in our NEW Baby Sleep and Immunization features of Baby Insights Web. Gifts are transferrable! Sign up for your FREE account today. Happy hunting!
So far the soft launch has been uneventful (i.e., no major bugs), which is nice. Thanks go out to our development team Cressanda and especially our project manager. I recommend them highly. The smoothness of the soft launch is also because we don’t have thousands upon thousands hundreds upon hundreds of users yet. I’m banking on our foray into SEO to help get us there. I mean if the “right people” (a.k.a. target market) don’t know we exist; it’s not surprising that we don’t have thousands of users yet. Even viral marketing takes a bunch of upfront work because you have to get to the right early adopters who have major Internet influence. I need to figure out how to do a video and get it in YouTube.
Given the fact that over 4 million babies are born in the US each year then include Australia, Canada, Europe, Japan and other Internet savvy countries, I’m anticipating that once those new parents and nannies find out about us, the floodgates will open. Babies and floodgates…not sure if the analogy works but I think you get the point. 🙂
I’ve been spending my time the last couple of days doing website updates to reflect the new features. And I’m working on pulling the pieces together of a business plan for some potential angel investor meetings that I have scheduled for early next year. If you know an angel investor (or you happen to be one) who likes the baby/new parent/web application/social networking space, please send them my way! The applications we have now are only the tip of the colossal iceberg.
Now for a short SEO break:
Whether you need breastfeeding support, are excitedly following your pregnancy week by week, are experiencing baby sleep issues, or are already under way creating your baby’s first year album, Babble Soft offers unique, easy-to-use Web and Mobile software solutions that improve communication between caregivers about baby’s and mom’s schedules.
Baby Insights helps caregivers keep track of baby’s breast & bottle feeding, sleep periods, diaper changes, medicine doses, and immunization records, as well as mom’s breastfeeding, pumping and medicine intake. Having important information stored in one location makes communication between parents, their nanny, babysitters, grandparents, or doctors seamless and reliable and gives new parents insight into their baby’s patterns to help with crucial baby care decisions. Baby Say Cheese lets you create a wonderful online baby’s first year photo album with milestones and family tree that you can share with friends and family.
If you are interested in reading about how I cope with manage software launches, fundraising, and SEO consider subscribing to this blog’s feed. If you are an entrepreneur, it will be worth your while…even if I crash and burn….which I won’t…because I said so, that’s why. Now go play with your Power Rangers. Sigh.
Author: Aruni |
Filed under: baby insights,
baby say cheese,
baby sleep,
entrepreneur,
entrepreneurship,
fundraising,
sleep,
technology |
Tags: ,
angel investors,
babble soft,
baby insights,
baby say cheese,
baby sleep,
breastfeeding,
fundraising,
seo,
soft launch,
software |
3 Comments »
To help illustrate how different people use Babble Soft web and mobile applications, we have created family user stories. I am grateful to the families who are willing to share their time, pictures, and energy to write/edit these case studies with us! To see our other user stories please check out our Testimonial page or click on the user stories tag.
Jacob’s Family: (pdf)
Mother: Lea (Financial Reporting Manager)
Father: Chris (Partner/Marketing Consultant)
Baby: Jacob
Born: September 2007
Place: Newport Beach, CA
Browser Used: Mozilla Firefox v2.0.0.11
Website: http://www.fullmixmarketing.com/
Situation
Jacob, Lea and Chris’s first child, was born via unplanned C-section after a long and arduous labor. While in the hospital, Lea was asked to keep track of Jacob’s feeding and diaper activities using generic paper hospital forms. She had planned on entering the information into Baby Insights, which she had already set-up prior to Jacob’s arrival. Unfortunately the papers were lost in the shuffle between the hospital and home, so she started entering information into Baby Insights four days after Jacob was born.
Prior to leaving the hospital, Jacob’s pediatrician recommended formula supplementation as Lea was concerned about breastfeeding following the c-section. Lea’s milk did not fully come in for over a week, and with breastfeeding, pumping and formula feeding, using Baby Insights was tremendously helpful in keeping track of Jacob’s feeding schedule and intake. Baby Insights was also very helpful in tracking Jacob’s diaper activities. A feature of Baby Insights that Lea wasn’t initially aware of, but came to use extensively, was medicine dose recording. She was taking three separate pain medications to aid in her recovery from the C-section.
Lea’s Experience
The information I got from using Baby Insights was so helpful! I really liked the fact that I could go to one place and see all of Jacob’s information at a glance. In hindsight, I wish I had bought a PDA or smart phone before Jacob was born to make entering the information easier! Some of the benefits I gained from using Baby Insights are:
- Since we were supplementing with formula, it helped to see how much formula versus breastfeeding time he was receiving. It’s been fascinating to see how the two amounts have changed over time. The Daily Summary report was beneficial as it calculated the total amount of milk we gave to Jacob.
- It was great to see how much I was pumping to get an idea of how much he was getting at each feeding. Knowing this helped me make decisions about how often and how much to supplement.
- As a first time mom, managing my time throughout the day can be quite challenging. Baby Insights helped me see how much time I was spending breastfeeding and pumping so I could better plan my day.
- Tracking my pain medication using Baby Insights was particularly helpful during my recovery from the C-section. I was taking 3 different pain medications at varying times and being able to view my medication schedules became one of my favorite Baby Insights tools!
—End—
If you are interested in participating in your very own user story, please activate a FREE Babble Soft Account. If you find that Babble Soft applications work for you, you want to tell the world about your great experience, and you are interested in being a part of our media campaign, please email us at info at babblesoft dot com for more information and a hook-up! 🙂 We plan to do a family story every one to two months so please let us know as soon as possible if you are interested.
Author: Aruni |
Filed under: babble soft,
baby,
baby care,
baby insights,
breastfeeding,
breastfeeding schedule,
pumping |
Tags: babble soft,
babble soft family user story,
baby,
baby care,
baby help,
baby insights,
baby insights family user story,
baby software,
baby tracking,
breastfeeding,
breastfeeding schedule,
software for parents |
1 Comment »
In case you haven’t heard, I am not fond of software testing. If you want proof, just check out the following posts I wrote the last time when I had to test software.
Software Testing – DOH!!
Speaking of Software Testing
So now I’m at it again because we are about to release a new feature for Baby Insights…which is very exciting because I’ve wanted to release one of these features pretty much since we began Babble Soft. In fact the pain we experienced from this particular issue when our son was born 5 years ago was the single driving force for creating Baby Insights. Hint: the lack of this much needed activity (or inactivity) in our lives was often used as a means of torture back in the day.
Erin (my husband who works full time elsewhere and couldn’t help me with this particular issue) strongly suggested we do this feature with an expert in the field. I slowly realized that given that I’m wearing a gazillion different hats, finding an expert (who is super busy but would still somehow want to partner with an unknown company) was not going to happen. So I figured I’d do it backasswards and build something and then let an expert discover us and tweak the feature later. Doing this violates pretty much most of what I’ve studied, been told, and read about when starting a business which is “This ain’t the Field of Dreams honey…you can’t build things and they will come.” To them I say “Um…well…we’ll see about that!“
Now for a couple of great comics from Blaugh which I discovered from a post written by Pelf on Pearl’s Interesting Observations blog. The first is funny and it’s even funnier because I can’t fire myself for being honest about my distaste for software testing and my ‘build it they will come’ frowned upon strategy. 🙂 The second is funny (to me) because when you test software you are pretty much glued to your computer and dream about anything endorphin related! But oddly enough, I don’t drink coffee.
Author: Aruni |
Filed under: babble soft,
baby insights,
entrepreneurship,
technology |
Tags: ,
babble soft,
baby,
baby insights,
business strategies,
entrepreneurship,
honesty,
software development,
software testing |
6 Comments »
Some of you may have noticed that we have changed the name of one of our web applications from Baby Manager to Baby Insights. Well at least one of you noticed because she (Carole) emailed me asking me when that happened and wondering if she missed a blog post about it and I’m just now getting around to telling the name change story…
So here’s how it all went down. For the last year or so Erin and I have been wracking our brains trying to figure out a better name for Baby Manager. My intent when coming up with that name was to imply that the Baby IS the Manager and not that someone could actually Manage a Baby. However, looking back, it was probably not a good idea to pick a product name when you have been operating on little to no sleep for quite some time!
The topic of changing the name came up every few weeks in our house and then whammy! The Austin American Statesman ran an article called Gadgets for new parents can ease baby’s first month on September 22, and the reporter wrote “Austin-based Babble Soft LLC’s Web-based program Baby Manager (babies can be managed!?)…” Ouch!
We were out that same evening on one of our not-frequent-enough date nights and of course the topic of the name came up again. We now had proof in print for thousands to read that we needed to come up with a new name and do it asap! I’m sure the waiter at McCormick and Schmick’s wondered if we were crazy. Erin threw out the name Baby Insights and in that instant I knew that was it because it encompasses what our application does: helps caregivers gain insight into their baby’s patterns so they can make informed decisions about baby care! Since we spent practically the entire dinner talking about business, I wrote off the meal as a business expense. It’s good to be married to an entrepreneur!
After we got home, I did a quick search on the Internet and here’s what I discovered:
I wasn’t too worried because we wanted to change the name to Baby Insights with an ‘s’ at the end. I spoke to the owner of http://www.baby-insight.com/, and he was in the process of deciding what to do next with his company. He told me that he would let me know if he planned to sell the name. I didn’t bother contacting the Dutch company because I don’t know how to speak or type in Dutch. The guy who owned http://www.baby-insight.com/ said he had tried to contact the Dutch company before and they really weren’t interested in selling.
I then discovered that http://www.babyinsights.com/ was taken, but it was parked. I dug through the domain records and found some contact information for the owner. I sent an email and left a voice message asking them if they were planning to sell the domain. A guy replied saying he wasn’t sure what their plans were but that he would get back to me. After a few days had gone by, he told me they would be willing to sell for what seemed to me a very large sum of moola. Since I have only bought domain names directly from Go Daddy or Network Solutions, my jaw dropped at the price. I told him I was too embarrassed to even give him a counter-offer because it would be so far away from what he was asking that he’d probably laugh (or cry) right then and there if I tried. We could build an entire web application or maybe even two small ones for that price! I told him I would get back in touch if things changed and we got overrun by millions of paying customers at once or happened upon a ton of money, knowing full well if either of those things happened, he would probably increase the price. 🙂
Fortunately, I had speculatively purchased http://www.baby-insights.com/, http://www.baby-insights.net/, and http://www.babyinsights.net/ from GoDaddy.
Add a little time pressure because we had just issued a press release on Baby Say Cheese to the intensity of the whole process and voila a new product name was born: Baby Insights.
Now if we were AT&T, we would have spent millions of dollars coming up with the brand name Cingular only to change it back to AT&T Wireless soon thereafter. Since we are currently bootstrapping, we don’t have the luxury of billions of dollars behind us. Sometimes I think that’s a good thing and sometimes I think it’s a ‘how can I take this company to the next level on my piggy bank’ thing. That’s a topic for another post.
So what do you all think of the new name? I hope you like it!
How did you come up with your product or blog name?
Author: Aruni |
Filed under: babble soft,
baby insights,
entrepreneurship |
Tags: babble soft,
baby care,
baby insights,
changing product name,
domain names,
product name |
2 Comments »
Recent Comments