Everyone Told Her Not to Build Peanut. She Did It Anyway | Michelle Kennedy
Michelle Kennedy was told to build another dating app. She knew dating. She had worked at Badoo and Bumble. It was the obvious move. Instead, she built Peanut. Michelle created Peanut after becoming a mother and experiencing first hand how isolating that transition could be. What began as the product she wished existed has grown into a global community connecting women through motherhood, fertility, menopause and some of the most important stages of their lives. But the journey started unusually. Michelle raised investment before she had a product or a team. At that point, she essentially had herself, an idea and a deck. She then made another unconventional decision. Rather than slowly expanding from London across the UK, she went directly after the US market, launching into cities including New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. In this episode, we unpack how she did it. Michelle explains why she deliberately targeted America, what she would do differently if she were raising money today, and why taking institutional investment so early created lessons she only understood later. We also explore one of the most important but least discussed advantages in business: your network. Michelle openly admits that she spent much of her early career without understanding networking at all. She explains how she eventually realised that relationships were driving opportunities all around her, and how founders can build a network intentionally rather than simply collecting contacts. We discuss the difficult balance between founder instinct and data, why listening to every piece of advice can damage a company, and how Michelle learned to distinguish useful feedback from pressure to follow trends. Michelle also explains why she believes great consumer founders need taste, why experimentation is fundamental to building products, and why a catastrophically bad experiment can sometimes teach you far more than a small improvement. We explore Peanut's mission beyond technology and why Michelle believes real world human connection will become even more valuable as AI becomes more powerful. Michelle also shares Peanut's work around matrescence, the biological, psychological and emotional transition into motherhood, and the company's wider mission to make women's experiences better understood. And finally, Michelle shares the three qualities she believes have been most important to her success as an entrepreneur: grit, passion and team. In this episode • Why Michelle built Peanut after becoming a mother • Why people encouraged her to build another dating app instead • Raising VC funding before having a product or team • Why Peanut attacked the US market from the beginning • What Michelle would change about her fundraising strategy today • The funding challenges still facing female founders • Why founders need to filter advice • The danger of following trends instead of your customer • How Michelle learned the importance of building a network • Why relationships can become a hidden advantage in business • Combining founder instinct with data • Why great consumer founders need taste • How to run experiments that actually teach you something • Why a dramatically unsuccessful experiment can still be valuable • AI and the increasing importance of real human connection • Peanut's work around matrescence • The Village Fund and helping mothers connect in real life • Michelle's three ingredients for entrepreneurial success: grit, passion and team About Michelle Kennedy Michelle Kennedy is the founder and CEO of Peanut, a platform designed to connect women through different stages of life including fertility, pregnancy, motherhood and menopause. Before founding Peanut, Michelle worked in the dating industry at Badoo and was involved in the early development of Bumble. She launched Peanut in 2017 after experiencing first hand the need for better connection and community following the birth of her first child. Learn more about Michelle and Peanut Peanut https://www.peanut-app.io/ Download Peanut through the Apple App Store or Google Play. The Village Fund https://www.peanut-app.io/village-fund Peanut and Coterie have created a six figure fund designed to help mothers turn online connections into real world meetups and communities. Book recommended by Michelle Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth https://www.angeladuckworth.com/grit/ Michelle describes Grit as a phenomenal book and recommends it for founders. The book explores Angela Duckworth's research into why sustained passion and perseverance can matter more to long-term achievement than talent alone.
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