How a Mom’s Lunchbox Idea Turned Into a $24 Million Business: Preview

Nancy Yen shares her journey from corporate professional to successful entrepreneur, highlighting the importance of market research, authentic branding, and continuous learning in scaling her business to $24 million. She discusses balancing entrepreneurship with motherhood and turning personal challenges into innovative products.

You can hear the full episode on Wednesday, August 5, 2026

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Entrepreneurs, I'm excited to bring on someone who's not just sustained seven, eight years we're talking going on year 14. Nancy is the founder and CEO of Ami Life, a kids' consumer products company dedicated to making the everyday work of parenting easier. With over two decades of experience in corporate strategy, merchandising, and product development, she has a proven track record of bringing new products to market. So a lot of you listeners, you know this could be the perfect show for you. And remember to share this show with someone who you know could use the value and expertise from Nancy. Before entrepreneurship, she held leadership roles at Gap Goldman Sachs, right? She's gonna help us learn so much. So, Nancy, welcome to that entrepreneur show.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Thank you so much, Henson. It's such a pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Where are you streaming in from today?

SPEAKER_01 1:04

I'm in San Francisco. I've been here for over 20 years. I grew up in LA in a small town just like in the east side of LA. And then I went to the East Coast for college, went to a small college called Williams College, where I just went for my 30th college reunion, if you can believe it. Wow. And then I came back to the West Coast for grad school at Stanford.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

So you're a West Coast girl. You like the West Coast.

unknown 1:28

I love it.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

I can't leave.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Well, everyone, especially if you're in that area, we have a great service to provide you. But first, let me welcome everyone back to That Entrepreneur Show. My name is Vincent A. Lancy. I'm excited to have you listening on today. Please remember to subscribe to Stay Current and check us out on any social media platform and website is thatEntrepreneurshow.com. As I tease before, Nancy brings great experience to the show. Some other areas we're going to dive into. What does it really take to bootstrap and scale not just to one million but 24 million? How do you navigate entrepreneurship and motherhood at the same time? And I love how your company and this, we're going to get into that because I know there's a lot of strappy entrepreneurs out there who are also parents, and you have been a beacon of hope while raising a child to find business excellence. And then, of course, how you turned your mom problem into a business idea and scale it. So please, Nancy, wherever you feel comfortable, what led you to become an entrepreneur?

SPEAKER_01 2:36

It was something that I was always intrigued by. I'd spent gosh, started working in '96. So had spent, you know, my whole career working in corporate. And I wanted a challenge. So actually, after the birth of my second child, I was staying home for maternity leave and I was packing lunches for my older one who had just started preschool down the street.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

Amazing.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

I was, you know, he's a smaller kid. He's always on the 1% of the growth chart. So we've always been really worried that he didn't get enough to eat, particularly when he went to school and we weren't helping him with meals. And true enough, he wasn't eating lunch very well at school. So I started just, you know, thinking about like different things I could pack him that would entice him to eat more. I even went to school to spend time there to see what was happening at lunchtime to just better understand the environment. I noticed that it had a lot to do with the containers that the lunches came in. So they want to sit there and eat lunch for a long time. So it was really important that everything was visible at once and there wasn't a lot of small containers with lids to open. It was really important that you give them foods that they're used to at home. So if a kid grows up eating warm foods, you know, soups, pastas, and then all of a sudden they're expected to eat wraps or sandwiches. It's a little bit hard to adjust at first. So that gave me the idea of inventing a bento style lunchbox that could pack hot and cold food together. So that was kind of where I got the idea to start this product. And I looked around and I was really surprised it didn't exist. So it made me want to do a lot more research. I went to playgrounds, I went to people's homes to watch them pack lunch in the mornings. I went to schools to watch kids eat lunch. And I learned a lot from that process. Um we have hundreds and hundreds of pages of customer notes that we analyze and synthesize. And that gave us the direction that we needed to work with the designer to come up with the first version of the only box.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Well, you're inspiring me right now as we're talking. I love how you're highlighting market research and filling a need, right? Those are two things, entrepreneurs, whether you're in the same space or not, these are things you need to do, right? Something may sound great to us. And as entrepreneurs, we have quite a few ideas every day. Not many of them are actually worth pursuing and doing. So you've done a great job at that. When you were a younger kid, did you ever think you were going to grow up and be this powerhouse entrepreneur, founder of a company?

SPEAKER_01 5:01

Oh, first, I'm not a powerhouse, but I didn't. When I was growing up, we're first generation immigrants. My parents moved here from Taiwan when I was eight years old. And as part of a very traditional Asian family, I was always encouraged to choose either one of two professions: either go to law school or go be a doctor. So never in my mind had I thought I would become an entrepreneur. And in fact, I really thought I was gonna go to law school and be a lawyer. Took a really different path after I graduated high school. And I worked in consulting, which opened my eyes to a bunch of different problems that corporations had and just really enjoyed the mental stimulation that I had from that job and just went on to work in other corporate environments. But I never thought that I would become an entrepreneur. And in fact, I didn't take this step until my sister started it. My sister, Jane Chen, is the founder of a company called Embrace, and she really like inspired me to challenge myself and take a step forward and try an entrepreneurial journey.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

How the heck does it happen where you bootstrap and scale to 24 million? So please provide our audience with some lessons learned, maybe some tips across that experience of how you accomplished it.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

You know, it didn't happen all at once. Kind of very slowly grew. I would say in the very early days, it was just me and one other employee, and we would be thrilled if we could make two sales a day. So it was something that happened slowly over time. And I think one thing that was really helpful to us is that we knew we had a product that parents needed. So all the research that we did in the beginning and identifying the product market fit was super duper important. Because if you are creating something that solves a problem and not just something that looks pretty on the shelf, my husband always says, you want to make a painkiller and not a vitamin. And I felt like I had that. So I really believed in the product that we were making. And we try to stay really authentic to what our values were and what our mission purpose was. And we really tried to communicate that to our customers across every single touch point. So we're a brand that, you know, really believes in authenticity. Everything we make is a very unique design. We're not a copycat. We don't do any me to designs. Everything we make, we spend hours and hours going into people's homes and understanding like, what are the pain points that you're facing as a parent? How can we make your life easier? What can we design that can just save you a little bit of time throughout the day so that your day runs a little smoother? We really keep that in mind. And actually, almost everyone who works at the company is a parent and we're able to share these stories with each other. We test products out on each other's families. So that's just a huge part of our culture. And I know the sales started just coming really slowly, you know, slowly and slowly, one by one. We joined Amazon, did really well there. We had a lot to learn. And every step along the way, we're learning new things. And just when you think you've fully learned something, you've conquered it, there's something else new that you have to learn. So it's just continual learning. And one of the mindsets that we have as a company is that