Nate & Vanessa Quigley: Something to Hold Onto

We are pleased to welcome Nate and Vanessa Quigley, the husband and wife team behind Chatbooks, a revolutionary method of printing photo books that focuses on helping families quickly (and economically) tell their story. In the past four years, Chatbooks has grown from a small start-up to a company that employs over 140 people and has sold over 5,000,000 books worldwide.

Chatbooks is not the Quigley’s first entrepreneurial venture; in fact, it’s not even the first photo-centric business that Nate has developed. Twenty years ago Nate pitched the idea to Vanessa that they should produce a scrapbooking supply catalog. Vanessa, an avid scrap booker, was enthusiastic about the idea, but the reality of starting a business was too cost prohibitive at the time.

As with most business stories, timing is everything, and both Nate and Vanessa admit that this idea for Chatbooks came at the right place and time, but in order for it to work their entire lives had to be disrupted. Vanessa had never participated in any of Nate’s startups before, and initially she had very little interest in being involved with the day-to-day operations. Nate gradually convinced her that her input was valuable to the five-person team of programmers working on the project, and Vanessa soon realized that she was the best person to tackle PR and help craft the story around their company.

For more takeaways and links from this episode - including a link to download the transcript - visit https://whitneyjohnson.com/nate-vanessa-quigley