Dori(left) and I(right) met many years ago while working at a design agency. We were pregnant at the same time. She was the cute pregnant lady with that perfectly shaped basketball extruding from her otherwise normal body and I was . . . not. I was so swollen that when I took my socks off at the end of the day I would have the elastic pattern embossed into my legs. My husband would look at me with something that was between a caring cringe and disbelief. Not “bad husband” disbelief, just the reaction one sometimes has when you learn something new about the body that you didn’t care to learn. Dori and I bonded instantly. We had a lot to talk about. Those pregnancies resulted in our now 9 year-old sons that are two months apart, a very special friendship and a business partnership that is Kidizen.

When you become pregnant for the first time, your life changes. You don’t realize the magnitude of the change when you’re in that moment, but one son and one daughter later, you can look back and pinpoint the exact moment when you lost a little bit of yourself that you always took for granted – the part of yourself that felt attractive, interesting, social, and kind of cool. Of course you also gain so, so much more. You’re a mother. Little humans think you’re the best person on the planet. And then they show their love by throwing up all over you and waking you up in the middle of the night every night and screaming. They scream their love for you. And it’s kind of great. But not always.

As a new mother, there’s one thing you keep hearing from “pro” parents: “They grow up so fast  – enjoy every moment.” Every moment? I must be doing something wrong (you’re not, by the way). I must be a terrible mother (you’re not; you’re a good mother). No parent enjoys every moment; ask any social scientist. Dori and I would get together for weekly wine nights, reflecting on those enjoyable moments, as well as the ones that were really hard. There were a lot of each. After exhausting the conversations about our babes, we’d start talking about what was second nature to each of us, business ideas. There were a lot of these too. We knew early on that we wanted to start a business together.

And then there’s this other thing that happens that we weren’t quite prepared for…every parent friend you know cleans out their kids’ closets and drives a van filled with bins of their stuff over to your house. It doesn’t even matter if they own a van, they’ll borrow one. And they’ve saved up, just waiting for you to get pregnant so they can pack up that van and drop it all off. As Dori and I were each preparing for our own journeys into motherhood, this just kept happening to us. The piles of stuff kept showing up. We couldn’t believe it. “Hey new parents, don’t lift a finger tonight because we’re bringing over some lasagna”…in a VAN. We would wonder, “Why don’t they just go to Goodwill?” “You’re getting the ‘good stuff,” they would tell us. And then they throw you a baby shower on top of that…more stuff! I mean how much could this little creature actually need?

It turns out, quite a bit. Because the thing is…they do grow up so fast.

Before we landed on Kidizen, we were almost many other things: a food truck business for frites and dipping sauces that we would park outside music clubs after shows and businesses at lunch time; a compostable take-out container business; a modular presentation folder system for ad agencies; a behavior incentive product for toddlers; a social network for physical objects; and more. My husband still reminds me that he could be retired now if we had gone with the food truck. But we went with the social network for things, and we called ourselves Itizen, which meant “the citizenship of things.”

I’ll start at the end. It failed. The business was based on the idea that the things we passed between us had stories to tell and that we would digitally track these stories as they passed through hands. Brilliant! It was going to be the next Twitter, we were sure of it. You could scan a special sticker on an object and view photos, video, or words about where it had been in its former life. We thought this would be the way we would add value to the physical things in our lives and encourage more people to tap into what they already had and share (it wasn’t and didn’t). We had received great press early on and became somewhat known in the early sharing economy. “Ahead of our times,” they wrote. We were flattered and determined to make it work, but it turned out that no one really needed this in their lives. Once we figured out what we needed in our lives, we took steps to transform Itizen into a special place for parents like us to share – Kidizen.

We failed many more times from that point three years ago to now. I believe that women, especially mothers, are really good at failing because we endure. We’re built for picking ourselves back up, analyzing our failure, learning from it, and carrying on. If something doesn’t work the first ten times, we continue to seek creative solutions. We lean on each other for support (although not enough). We don’t allow ourselves prolonged self-pity. We are resilient and amazing (you are). Dori and I are simply moms with ideas who never give up, just like you. We’ve also weathered this journey with some equally incredible and very talented men who believe in our mom-powered community as much as we do. Make no mistake, their contributions have helped take Kidizen farther than we could have imagined on our own.

You could say that the idea for Kidizen came out of the sharing bestowed upon us and the need to both get rid of things and acquire things in a fun, van-free way. You could say that it came out of the need to have weekly wine nights with another new mom who gets exactly how you feel and wants to talk about your child’s achievements in bathroom training. You could say that it came from the sheer pride we have as moms over our kids’ exceptional taste in fashion and superior cute genes that lend themselves to photos. “I mean, she’s 3 and she dressed herself in Zara and Freshly Picked moccasins! Clearly, she’s a fashion genius. Right?” Right. Or you could say it came from the failure of many paths that led us down the right one. But something special happened when these experiences started to come together in one place. Sharing and shopping, mom companionship, taking pride in our kids, expressing our inner fashionistas, growing as entrepreneurs – all of these experiences made us feel really good as women and as mothers. This place came together, not because of us, but because of you who share a little bit of yourselves every day or every week or every month and need this place like we do. Because our community reminds you that the woman you may have set aside along your journey into motherhood is interesting, and social, and attractive, and stylish, and cool and amazing. And that you, too, are an entrepreneur and co-founder of Kidizen, who wants to raise your kids in a world made a little bit better through the power of sharing. We are raising Kidizen, together, with you. And like new mothers, we’ll learn together along the way.