About Lorin
Lorin, American entrepreneur woman in Barcelona, is one of the cofounders of toddl.co, a new platform that aims to digitise the kids’ education market. She’s originally from Chicago but lived and worked in San Francisco, London and Berlin before relocating to Barcelona with her husband, Rob, and two kids, Nicolas and Alina. Prior to toddl.co, she worked in consulting, pursued an MBA and spent 8 years at eBay.
About her journey living and working in Europe
Why did you decide to move to Europe?
I guess you could say I’ve always had a wandering spirit. My grandma took me on my first trip outside the US when I was 9, and I’ve had the travel bug ever since. During my undergraduate program, I studied for a year in London, and then I spent another semester abroad here in Barcelona during graduate school.
My husband and I met working at eBay in California, and we both jumped at the chance to move to London with the company in 2011. Our jobs took us to Berlin in 2013, where our kids were born, and we relocated again to Barcelona for his work in 2018. Becoming parents for the first time in Germany – where we had just barely begun learning the language – was definitely one of the crazier experiences, but it’s all been an exciting adventure.
And finally you decided to settle down in Barcelona…
It was an easy decision to move to Barcelona when we had the opportunity. I’d visited many times and spent a semester here as a student at IESE, and I’ve always loved it.
Barcelona has everything: the sea, mountains, warm climate, great food and a relaxed attitude”.
What is it like to live in Barcelona?
Barcelona has everything: the sea, mountains, warm climate, great food and a relaxed attitude. The quality of life is really high and cost of living is low compared to many other cities. And Spain in general is so family-friendly!
What do you like the most about the city?
It was wonderful living in London and Berlin, but both are large, sprawling cities. For me, Barcelona is the perfect size. It has all the excitement of a big city, but it’s still possible to travel from one end to the other in under 30 minutes, often with public transportation! Every neighborhood has a different vibe, and there are so many interesting corners of the city to explore.
And what do you dislike?
The only thing I don’t love is having to watch my bag when we’re in the city center, and the fact that many people don’t pick up after their dogs (!).
One of our favorite weekend activities is taking the train up to Vallvidrera and then hiking back down, stopping for lunch on the way home.
Do you have a favorite spot in the city? And a favorite place or town in Spain?
COVID has made it difficult to enjoy everything Barcelona has to offer, but we’ve still found many lovely neighborhoods and parks to visit. One of our favorite weekend activities is taking the train up to Vallvidrera and then hiking back down, stopping for lunch on the way home.
There are so many great little towns and villages to explore outside of Barcelona too. Everyone loves the Costa Brava – for good reason, it’s beautiful! – but the coastal towns south of the city are also very nice, and many of the beaches are bigger and sandier, which is perfect with kids.
What would you like to have known before moving to Barcelona?
There haven’t been too many surprises, outside of the bureaucracy. Whether applying for a NIE or padrón, registering with the CAP, opening a bank account, or whatever – it’s all just that much more complicated to navigate in a foreign country and in a foreign language (or languages, as the case is here!).
About being an American entrepreneur woman in Barcelona
Recently you started a tech project with a friend, and launched the app toddl.co. What is toddl.co exactly?
Our mission at toddl.co is to digitise the kids’ education market. For this, we’ve built a marketplace to help parents discover and book activities for their kids, which we launched just over a year ago. Today we have the largest catalog of kids’ activities in Barcelona, with more than 1500 listings from about 500 providers. We’re also developing a software for education providers to help them automate and optimize the management of their businesses, so they can free up time to focus on what matters most: the kids. We’ll be launching this new product early next year!
How did you come up with the idea?
My cofounder Stephanie Meagher came up with the original idea for the toddl.co marketplace after struggling to find a swimming class for her son. At the time, the two of us had children in the same preschool, and she recruited me to be one of her first test users. I shared the same frustration around finding kids’ activities and loved the concept, and we’ve been working together ever since!
How is the adventure of being an American entrepreneur woman in Barcelona? How do you feel about the entrepreneur scene in this city?
Spain maybe doesn’t have the reputation of London, Berlin or Silicon Valley when it comes to entrepreneurship, but it seems to have one of the fastest growing startup ecosystems in Europe, with Barcelona as one of the most established hubs. As is unfortunately still the case in most places, it’s a very male-dominated sector, especially in the world of venture capital.
However, there are some really interesting female-focused VC and entrepreneur networks popping up, like WeRockCapital, WA4STEAM and Planet Venus. We’re also part of a few informal networks – for example, with other entrepreneurs we met at a female founders event hosted by Wayra and AticcoLab and with a group of international women we’ve met who are running their own small businesses. And there’s even a new membership club and workspace designed specifically for women opening up in the new year, called Juno House.
Do you have any other projects ongoing, or any other future projects?
We’re a tiny team at toddl.co, all of us wearing many hats – product management, marketing, customer service, you name it. The to do list is infinite, so I’m trying to stay as focused as possible on this project. And of course enjoying as much time as I can exploring this wonderful city with my husband and kids.