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After more than 10 years of working in early-stage companies and a brief stint in venture capital, Michelle Grabau (MBA’25) knows that, to be successful, startup founders must understand their customer base. So, when devising her business, , which combines drop-in childcare with socializing and working spaces for adults, Grabau drew on her knowledge as a parent of two.

“I live this experience on a daily basis,” she said.��

“I'm surrounded by people that have similar experiences, and so I very deeply understand and can empathize. I'm constantly getting bombarded with the pain points of my customers.”��

Entrepreneurial aspirations

Grabau realized she wanted to start her own company early on in her career, when she was working as a general manager at a fitness franchise in the Bay Area of California. She went on to work in operations and strategy for several more fitness companies and spent a year at a venture capital firm, where she evaluated pitches for startups innovating new fitness technology. Through it all, she never lost sight of her entrepreneurial goals. Because she had spent so much of her career working for fitness companies, she imagined that her own company would also be related to home fitness. “But then I had children. And that changed my purpose or my calling.”

As a parent, Grabau was frustrated by the lack of public spaces enjoyable for both children and parents. Places aimed at adults, like breweries, don’t offer enough to entertain children, while kid-friendly spaces, like playgrounds, can be unengaging for parents. She envisioned R Place providing something for all members of the family—social and work opportunities for parents and childcare to entertain the little ones.

“We have a place for us, the adults,” she said. “We have a place for them, the children, but there's nothing that's ours. And so that's where the concept of R Place came to me. It's just as much for the children as it is for the adults, and just as much for the adults as it is for the children.”��

Taking the mic

Grabau and her husband relocated from San Francisco to Denver, attracted to Colorado’s abundant outdoor activities and booming startup scene. Given Leeds’ stellar reputation in entrepreneurship and its ties to the Colorado startup community, Grabau decided to apply to the hybrid MBA program, hoping to gain key knowledge and to use the program’s capstone project to officially launch her idea.

“There were big gaps that I felt were missing in my skillset,” she remembered. “Finance, for example, was the big one. Although I knew that some people just go for it, I decided to get my MBA to fill those gaps, and to accelerate the startup.��

In the fall of 2023, with a 2-year-old at home and another child on the way, Grabau entered the MBA program. While at Leeds, she participated in Assistant Teaching Professor Brad Werner’s New Venture Launch course, where she developed and refined her pitch for R Place. She then went on to pitch R Place in the New Venture Challenge (NVC).

In her time working for a venture capital firm, Grabau had heard pitches before, but the NVC was her first time on the other side of the table. Luckily, her past as a fitness instructor helped her feel at home onstage.

“I love having a microphone, so that environment was very comfortable in terms of doing it in front of an audience,” she said. “And I'm also quite a competitive person. That played into a lot of my strengths and the things that I like to do.”��

Grabau’s idea was a hit. She ranked among the top five finalists in the 2025 Women Founders New Venture Challenge and as a semifinalist in the general NVC.
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“R Place is ultimately about being a parent. But it's about being more than that.”

Michelle Grabau (MBA’25)

A founder and a parent

Since graduating last May, Grabau has been working on getting R Place off the ground. She is building a waitlist of interested families and finding the company’s flagship location. In late July, she hosted a happy hour focus group with complimentary childcare, which she said “sparked real conversations about what modern parents need and reinforced the value of building alongside your future members.” Through it all, she continues to be a startup founder who is also a parent, taking calls while her daughter plays in the other room.

In a recent post on LinkedIn, Grabau shared two photos—one of her cradling her baby bump on the first day of the program, and the second of her and her two children on graduation day. Working and getting her MBA while parenting a toddler and a newborn required sacrifices, but Grabau feels that it has made her a better mother to pursue her goals. In her words, motherhood is “a very important core piece of my identity, but it’s not my whole identity.”

“My MBA journey is a perfect example of that,” she said. “Yes, R Place is ultimately about being a parent. But it's about being more than that. It’s about being a parent and ... fill in the blank.”