We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ana Guzman. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ana below.

Hi Ana, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

Luciana, my partner, and I both grew up in El Salvador and were fortunate enough to be raised bilingual, with Spanish as a first language and English as our second. This opened up enormous opportunities for us, including going to college in the U.S. where we started our careers.

When our kids were born three years ago, we knew we wanted to give them to be bilingual but couldn’t find the right resources. Like many parents, we turned to books and found that our kids loved books that made fun sounds. That said, selection for these was quite limited, and we hadn’t come across any that were written in Spanish and English. After a few months, we came up with the idea to combine the types of sound books our kids loved with audio in Spanish we wanted them to hear.

Before launching Binibi we spent months understanding the market by talking to other parents. We found that like us, so many parents wanted their kids to speak two languages but didn’t know how to raise bilingual children and couldn’t find the right resources.

We are working on this idea because we know that our product is solving a real problem that we understand deeply.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Ana Guzmán and I am the co-founder of Binibi. I am originally from El Salvador but I currently live in Miami with my husband and 3.5 year old daughter. I grew up speaking two languages – Spanish at home and English at school. Being bilingual has given me so many opportunities.

When my daughter was born, I knew I wanted her to be bilingual but I had no idea what to do. Like many parents, I turned to books and found that there was a gap in the market for dual language products for kids at their earliest ages. Determined to solve this problem, my partner, Luciana, and I launched Binibi. We make bilingual sound books for babies and toddlers that are designed for parents like us to have a fun and easy way to introduce Spanish at home, from day one, when the child’s brain is most ripe for language development.

Before Binibi, I built a career working in tech, working in roles ranging from business development to strategy and operations. I have a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University and an MBA from Columbia. When I’m not working you can usually find me cooking!

At Binibi, our mission is to support bilingualism at home at the earliest ages by creating beautiful products parents can use at home with their children to practice a second language. I am so proud of the product and brand we’ve created and look forward to supporting the millions of families looking to raise multi-cultural, multilingual kids.

How’d you meet your business partner?

Luciana, my co-founder, and I have known each other since 1994. We grew up in El Salvador, two blocks away from each other. We carpooled to and from school every day until we graduated. While we both went to college in different places and embarked on separate professional journeys, we reconnected in 2019 when we were both pregnant with our first child. We gave birth three weeks apart from each other and bonded even more after our kids were born over similar parenting styles.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Building an audience on social media is hard and it takes a long time. That said, my biggest piece of advice is to pick a platform, stick with it, and get to know your audience by trying different things. One of the things that has worked the best for us is to step away from talking about ourselves, and instead celebrating the stories of other members of our community and sharing advice. For example, our account @binibi.co is all about supporting families raising bilingual children. Two of the most successful things we’ve done is tell the stories of the different ways in which families raise bilingual children (strategies, approaches) and sharing tips on ways to support the development of the target language at home.

My other piece of advice is to constantly run tests. On Instagram it’s easy to do as you’ll quickly see what your audience likes and doesn’t like. Sometimes, to get a broader perspective we boost our posts and by doing so, we can quickly differentiate between content that is resonating and content that is not.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.binibi.co
• Instagram: @binibi.co
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/binibiworld
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/binibi/