Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jenny Best. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Jenny, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.

I have an unusual career history. I actually spent most of my youth training to become a professional ballerina, which I succeeded in doing with the New York City Ballet, but a back injury cut my career short and forced me to choose another path. Soon after 9/11 happened and my head quickly turned toward public service and helping New York City get back on its feet. It was an incredible time to be in government; there was so much energy and unity at the time. After a few years in government, eating the same boring lunch from the same deli every day, I stumbled upon a farmers market outside of City Hall. It felt like such a healing experience to meander through the market, looking at all the colorful produce of the season, tasting the samples of cheese, etc. I fell in love with food writing and started to teach myself to cook. And after a lifetime of being told to lose weight as a ballerina, it felt healing to embrace and explore food in a creative way. Fast forward a decade of working in various food and agriculture non profits, and I found myself a mom with a child who was struggling to eat baby food. He didn’t like the experience of being spoon-fed at all. And the more he refused to eat, the more my husband and I panicked, creating a downward spiral of anxiety all around. Later I would stumble upon books that offered an alternative to the traditional mode of feeding babies and a light sparked. If babies could have sweet potatoes, could they have steak? Salmon? Eggs? That year I set out to convene a team of pediatric experts to explore how to prepare any food for a baby. And Solid Starts was born.

Jenny, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a mom of three, including twins. One of my hopes for our kids is that they will enjoy eating, and be free of the negative food and body issues that plagued so many in my generation. That we can come to the table to share the joy of food, together.

Commercial baby food as we know it was invented. There’s no developmental need for “baby” food. As it turns out, babies can eat modified versions of what the rest of the family is eating as soon as they are developmentally ready for solid food. And, in fact, the longer a baby is exclusively fed textureless baby food, the more challenging it will be to interest them in chewable food, and the more likely it is they will have delayed oral motor skills. At Solid Starts our goal is to make it easier for parents to learn how to introduce any food to their baby, and to help families fold baby into their unique family food culture sooner than later.

Our award-winning app features a free First Foods database where you can look up any food to see how to cut and safely prepare it for your baby. My personal hope is that the app will house every food in the world. The app has had 2M users.

Our team is unique in that it’s multidisciplinary: we employ pediatricians, an allergist MD, feeding therapists and infant swallowing specialists, as well as a pediatric dietitian and food researchers. Then we take all of that evidence-based research and work and put it through a lens of a tired parent. My hope is to pay it forward – to make it easier for the next generation of parents to raise happy eaters.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your firm or practice?

Solid Starts is unique in that it was 100% bootstrapped by a team of moms in a pandemic. We recruited like-minded, passionate parents and all of us gave it our all, after our day jobs and tending to our own children. We have never taken any outside investment, though we’ve had many offers. I’m proud that we built it ourselves. It forced us to be disciplined with our time and with what our community really wanted. We listened first, then built what folks needed. And when we needed to raise capital to build the app, we were able to do it easily with a crowdfunding campaign. My biggest tip for entrepreneurs out there today is to build the community first.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

We’re experiencing a massive pivot right now, actually. When we first built Solid Starts we created video courses and downloadable guides for parents and because that info was so desperately needed at the time they sold themselves-we never had to spend a dime on marketing or advertising. But times have changed and not many young parents want to sit down and watch a course or read something on a downloadable — they want a guided experience in our app. So that’s just want we are doing this year – taking all of our course and guide content and weaving it into the Solid Starts app, which is simply where our parents want it to be. If you answer all of your community messages and really listen these pivots won’t ever come as a surprise – you’ll be able to see the tide changing before it does and to plan for it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://solidstarts.com
• Instagram: solidstarts
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/solidstartsbaby
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/discover/solid-starts?lang=en