Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Hanna & Anne-Louise. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hanna & Anne-Louise, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s kick things off with a hypothetical question – if it were up to you, what would you change about the school or education system to better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career?
We are huge believers that language learning should be an early education topic – vs – a middle school “foreign language elective.” We are always struck by how the rest of the world seems to be more in tune with this. We often get questions about whether exposure to a second language will cause speech delays … but this question usually comes only from US parents who grew up monolingual. The question would strike any parent in Europe or Asia as odd, since they are multilingual and know how much easier it is to learn language early in life. Research has shown that 80% of a child’s brain is formed by age 3. So our question is – just like any other part of their physical development, why wouldn’t we try to maximize their growth potential and opportunity? Even if they don’t reach fluency young, they will have the tools to better pick up language in the future.
Hanna & Anne-Louise, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
We are Habbi Habbi Bilingual Resources – we provide bilingual books & toys (Spanish, Chinese, French, Korean, Hindi) that come alive with just a tap of our magical Reading Wand ®. Every inch of our materials is tappable – the text, the illustration, even the white space. Tap to hear words, phrases, sound effects, or musical tunes. Kids think they’re playing; Parents know they’re learning. Our books are as intentional in content as they are beautiful – featuring themes like self reliance, worthiness, inclusion, empathy, and more. Our Wand can be played in 3 modes: Bilingual mode, Target language only mode, English only mode, so you can tailor your play based on your desired goals!
How’d you meet your business partner?
We joke that we’re twins from opposite coasts (Hanna West Coast, Anne-Louise East Coast), joined by our first employer (BCG) in Minneapolis (our first project), followed by China (where we both did a 1-year externship). In China, we ate, adventured, grew, and started a lifelong friendship. We returned to our respective coasts for business school (H to GSB, AL to HBS) and got married, where we were each others’ bridesmaids. Now, we are both mothers, co-located in California and on a new adventure as entrepreneurs building Habbi Habbi – a journey of experimentation, vulnerability, excitement, discovery, joy, and fulfillment.
Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?
We didn’t have any near death moments – but we do think it’s worth mentioning how scrappy we were when we first started. When we launched (2019), starting a company in Silicon Valley meant “raising as much money as you can” to show you’re a legitimate business. Sometimes, we wondered if we were missing something and at one point, even considered raising a friends & family round because we had several inbound emails from private investors and VCs. At the end, some (wise) friends talked us out of it, and we are so happy we didn’t! Of course, self funding means that every $ you spend is your own, so you are very choiceful about what you spend on, and we did a LOT ourselves. For example, for Holidays 2019 – we packed every single box ourselves, which means that Anne-Louise (who had just given birth) was hands-free pumping while we spent the whole day in our shared warehouse space, which had only 1 bathroom. Of course as we have grown, we have tried to strike the right balance (for us – because it’s such a personal decision about what type of company you want to build) of where to invest, hire, spend, develop, grow. Today, we have 5 languages and almost 100 SKUs. Our goal is to make language learning more accessible for ALL families (heritage and non-native) and that mission gives us joy and meaning every day!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.habbihabbi.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/behabbi/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BeHabbiShop/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcXccyLZ-yCQVU_A8VXuaXQ
- Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@behabbi