A mini crib showed up at my house and that’s when Poppylist was born.

I can remember the day, not the exact day, but the day. I remember walking in our neighborhood with my husband, Scott, talking to him about the time and energy I'd spent creating our baby registry. In addition to the items I added, we also bought quite a few ourselves including the nursery furniture (minus the rocker, thank you, Mom), breast pump and the accompanying accessories

We’d just finished framing two prints that went above the crib and I sent my twin sister a proud photo from Amelia’s nursery. Her response was, “Why is your crib so small?” I called her right away and asked her what she was talking about. She told me to send her the measurements, so I did. I can only assume she measured them against her son’s crib and then she sent me a second text, “You bought a mini-crib.”

Did you know nursery furniture is non-refundable, especially after it’s been assembled?

As we continued our walk, I thought to myself that there had to be an easier way. There are a ton of resources out there like Babylist, Mother.ly, Babycenter, etc…the options are truly endless. But what I couldn’t find was simplicity and specificity. What exactly did I need and where exactly am I going to buy it? What are the top 25-50 items that my baby will 100% need? That’s when I knew I would create it.

Our mission statement is simple, and has remained the same two years later: We help simplify the way expecting parents build baby registries.

This post was first published on June 10, 2020, and it's remarkable to see how we've evolved. Poppylist first started out at a product recommendation engine. I built the Parent Type quiz in Typeform, and launched Poppylist on July 20, 2020. Shortly after that, I met my now co-founder, Tamiz Ahmed, and we built a custom quiz with a smarter algorithm. That launched a year later. Fast forward to January 2022, and we're about to launch our baby registry platform.

The day I found out I was pregnant with my daughter, she was the size of a poppy seed. I’m originally from California and the poppy is the state flower. In fact, here’s the journal entry I wrote on August 30, 2018:

Today, you are a poppy seed. The state flower of California is a poppy. One tiny seed - so much sunshine.

Amelia remains the sunshine of my life.