Decades after helping launch Match.com, Santa Fe entrepreneur Fran Maier is still defining what works online

Fran Maier has been launching new businesses for decades, so there’s bound to be some ups and downs.

The ups: The self-described “super-founder” from Santa Fe just landed a partnership between her company, BabyQuip, and Vrbo, the vacation rental platform. That means her baby equipment rental business will have a ready market among travelers who book through Vrbo.

The downs: Maier was a co-founder of Match.com, the online dating site, in the 1990s, but she decided against purchasing it when the company went up for sale. The price tag carried the bargain basement price of less than $8 million, but sold again a year later for $70 million, Maier says.

“It was hard to take,” she says. “And it was a good lesson.”

Maier got her business degree from Stanford University and lived in San Francisco during the time when tech companies were exploding and the gig economy was taking shape.

She joined the ranks of gig workers when she turned part of her three-story San Francisco house into a short-term rental and then purchased a home in Santa Fe for the same purpose.

Ultimately, those experiences led her to start BabyQuip for families who don’t want to drag kids’ gear on vacation or for grandparents who don’t want to buy playpens and high chairs for visiting family members.

BabyQuip, which also rents beach and pet gear, was included this year on Inc.’s list of 5,000 fastest-growing private companies, and it came in at No. 1 in New Mexico. The company is now in the midst of a crowdfunding campaign on StartEngine.

Did Maier expect this kind of success?

“Oh, of course I did,” she says. “I expected it a lot sooner. But things take a while in the marketplace.”

How does BabyQuip work?

Right now, we have over 3,000 quality providers. They’re mostly moms. They’re the ones who own the baby gear, deliver it, pick it up, set it up, etc. They might start out with their own equipment, but over time, they usually end up buying additional cribs, car seats, playpens, what have you.

What has made you successful?

I think I am a marketer, and I do have a sense for what people like, what people want and what will make a difference to them. I’m confident in that. And so that helps. And I think I have both a creative and an analytical ability.

How did you get involved in Match.com?

Match was a division of the company called Electric Classifieds, which is no longer. They were trying to get classified advertising onto the internet. Again, this is late 1994, early 1995. So I’m brought on to Match because I went to business school with Gary Kremen, who is the founder of Electric Classifieds and Match.com. And Gary wanted somebody who knew about marketing, especially to women.

How did you approach that?

Believe it or not, women were not as active on the internet as men. The basic idea was if we got the women, the men would follow. So we developed personas of what the woman would be like (and) what she would be looking for. And that’s how we started to build the product.

Do you feel like you made any lasting impact on Match.com?

Keep in mind, there were not digital photos then. We’re getting on the internet by dial-up. So a lot of the initial questions were very basic: How do you look? Color of hair, color of eyes, you know, etc. So the engineer comes into my office and says, “What are the weight ranges?” And I said, “No way, man, we’re not (asking about) weight.” You know, as a woman, I guess I will say most are sensitive about their weight. I said, “No, no, no, we’re going to do body type, you know, slender, athletic, Rubenesque, what have you.” And to this day, I’ve never seen any dating site ask you for your weight. And that’s because of me, you know.

Why was it sold, and why didn’t you buy it?

Part of it was to fund the rest of the company, the classified business. Part of it was we were too early. People did not appreciate what we had built, which was the leading online dating website. Had I been a guy, I think somebody would have said to me, “Why don’t you pull the investor team together and you buy it?” With other investors, obviously. I think had I had more confidence, maybe I would have done it or asked for help. I think you have to have confidence to ask for help.

Tell me about promoting venture capital for women.

The statistics have been very, very consistent, despite a lot of efforts to try and get more money to female-founded companies. And the statistic at best is women-led companies get only 3% of venture capital. Sometimes it’s 2½%, sometimes it’s 2%, but anything less than 40%, I think, reflects extreme bias and sexism and misogyny. That percentage is just way too low. That’s like, women only have 3% of the good ideas. How can you possibly think that that would be true?

What are you proud of?

Well, one of the things I really like about BabyQuip is that we have all these moms who are building a business on our platform, and they’re making good money. We have some that are doing tens of thousands a month, some that are doing just a few hundred and some less than that, but the money seems to make a difference to them and their families. And we’re teaching them how to be entrepreneurs. I won’t be surprised if some of these people end up being entrepreneurs in their own right. And that’s really where I get a lot of gratification.