Small to Big: How 4Moms Kept Its Baby Seat From Meowing

4Moms makes high-tech baby gear for the kind of parents who use an iPhone app to keep track of their infant’s feeding schedule and buy Huggies on Diapers.com. Its lineup includes a stroller that folds at the touch of a button ($850), an oscillating baby seat ($240), and a self-installing car seat ($500). Rob Daley, who has a background in venture capital, teamed up with Henry Thorne, a roboticist, to start the Pittsburgh-based company in 2005. The two were convinced that the old-line makers of baby gear would be slow to grasp the opportunity created by rapidly falling prices for sensors and other automation equipment. The 160-employee company logged sales of $48 million in 2014, but like any small business, it’s encountered glitches along the way. Here, Chief Executive Daley recalls one hair-raising product launch.

Our first product took us about 18 months to bring to market. It was an infant bathtub with a temperature reader. It costs us $20.84 to make, and we sold it for $18. We discontinued it after the first year.