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From Landfills to Launches: Jennifer Mathisen's Journey in Tech Entrepreneurship · Work It Like A Mum

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, I'm Elizabeth Willits and I'm obsessed with helping as many women as possible achieve their boldest dreams after kids and helping you to navigate this messy and magical season of life.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: I'm a working mum with over 17 years of recruitment experience and I'm the founder of the Investing in Women Job Board and Community.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: In this show, I'm honored to be chatting with remarkable women redefining our working world across all areas of business.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: They'll share their secrets on how they've achieved extraordinary success after children, set boundaries and balance, the challenges they've faced and how they've overcome them to define their own versions of success.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Shy away from the real talk?
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: No way.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Money struggles, growth, loss, boundaries and balance we cover it all.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Think of this as coffee with your mates, the mixed with an inspiring TED talk sprinkled with the career advice you wish you'd really had at school.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: So grab a cup of coffee or a glass of wine and make sure you cozy and get ready to get inspired and chase your boldest dreams, or just survive Mondays.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: This is the Work.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: It Like a Mum podcast.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: This episode is brought to you by Investing in Women.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Investing in Women is a job board and recruitment agency helping you find your dream part-time or flexible job with the UK's most family-friendly and forward thinking employers.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Their site can help you find a professional and rewarding job that works for you.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: They're proud to partner with the UK's most family-friendly employers across a range of professional industries, ready to find your perfect job?
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Search their website at investinginwomencouk to find your next part-time or flexible job opportunity.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Now back to the show.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to this week's Work it Like a Mum podcast episode.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Today, I'm delighted to be chatting with Jennifer Matheson, who is an executive search consultant with Acutee Partners.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: This is a part-time job because Jen is also a co-founder of the Circular Tech Startup, a marketplace app.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Kidsy.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Kidsy helps families save money, save the environment and make money by keeping children's items in the loop.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: We'll be chatting about how Jennifer juggles a business and demanding corporate job, and why having both a business and a job simultaneously may just be the future of work.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, jen, for joining me today.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: I'm so delighted to chat with you and learn more about your juggle and how you are managing a business, a job and an open human recruitment, which is very demanding.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: And I know that you're a parent as well, so you're wearing lots of hats at the same time, so I'm really excited to chat with you.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Yes, it's great to be here and chat with you as well.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'm really interested because I think what you're doing is like the future of work.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: A lot of people are interested perhaps in setting up side hustles.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: Potentially they've still got bills to pay.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: They don't want to leave the security blanket of having a regular paycheck coming in every month.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: So what was the sort of decision process around you know you having a job and a startup and how you sort of managing both?
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm in the absolute thick of it.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: So not sure how much helpful advice I can give, but I am.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: When we set up Kidsy, we took a very conscious decision that we wanted to be a tech startup.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: We wanted to build, get to the market fast, get product market fit, validate the idea, build the tech platform to, you know, a usable, minimum viable product that families could use.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: And because it's a marketplace, you have to fill up both sides of the marketplace at the same time.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: As you would know from running a job board, you need buyers and sellers at the exact same time and that takes a lot of work.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: So we had to just go really, really, really fast and really full on At the same time.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: We are we're a team of three.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: Two of us are working parents in London.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: I've got two kids.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: My kids are young, so at the time we started Kidsy last year, both kids were in nursery, which caused a fortune, and just wasn't in a position where I could quit working and go and be with a startup full-time and pre-generating any funding into the business or revenues.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: So I took the conscious decision to look for a company that could support me on my journey by offering me flexible working so I could build, startup and work for them and be a mom at the same time.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Wow, how did you approach it with a QT, how did you let them know that you had another business, and what was their initial reaction?
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: Very transparent.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: So I found a QT through you.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: I used your job board to find you know, to see what part time work was available for someone in sort of mid to senior level in their career, and I was really open about it with them from day one.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: When I met the managing partner there, I said you know, this is what I'm doing.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: I want to continue doing it.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: This is what I can deliver to you guys as a business.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: I think I could add value.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: I believe in what you're doing.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: It's really helpful that and I can talk a little bit more about what Acuity does as well but they we operate primarily in the climate tech space, so we help build senior management teams and boards for investor backed businesses and Fadarone businesses in climate tech, which is very synonymous with what Kinsey does, because we're climate tech as well.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: So it felt it just felt really good and a really good overlap and so, yeah, by just being very transparent about the fact that I could deliver value.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: This was my experience.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: I'd love to help them out and would they be OK with the fact that I've got this exciting startup as well?
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: And I think they appreciated the transparency and we worked together to find what was the best outcome for both parties.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: That was, you know, having some specific set days that I work with Acuity per week and you know KPIs and deliverables that I have to hit, but beyond that, they are super.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: They've been amazing.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: They're very open to not just how I work with having a startup, but with how any of their employees work.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: They promote a flexible arrangement for, you know, anyone and everyone who wants that type of working work from anywhere.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: So they've made it very, very easy and I'm very thankful to have their support.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: And obviously you know climate change.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: I know you started your career at the United Nations, so is the you know is looking after environment.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: Is that a real value of yours?
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: Is that a driver when you were looking for a job, with your starting your business as well?
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: Yes, very much so I'm.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: So I'm originally from San Francisco, california.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: We've always been very environmental in California.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: I moved to London after a certain Germany where I was doing a master's in sociology and working for the United Nations and I loved working for the United Nations.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: I the only reason why I left is because I was at such a low level of like policy research.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: It was kind of like me and like a dusty library in a very, very small office and it felt quite isolating and it takes a long time to build a career there.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: It's quite slow moving.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: It's very bureaucratic.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: They tend to hire based on how under or represented your country is and there's a lot of Americans that work in the United Nations.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: So I wanted to do something more commercial.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: I moved to London because my sister was here and I kind of just fell into working in private equity and leadership advisory, working with investors, their portfolio companies, in both tech and energy, and I've always been interested in sustainability and, from the energy side, energy transition and how we can reduce the amount of carbon going to the environment.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: So, along with an answer, but yes, I've always been interested in climate tech and how we can build commercial businesses while still being respectful and responsible to the planet.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: So it sounds like the position you have with the QT partners, where you're placing candidates in those sustainable businesses that are focused, you know, on looking after the environment and, obviously, with kids.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: They're both feeding your soul and your sense of purpose.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: They're both really aligned with your values and that what a lovely position to be in, where you're.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: You know it's not always necessarily, but I know.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: Obviously money is important, but you're getting, you're filling up your cup in other ways as well with both, both things you do during your week.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: Yes, which is really important to me.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: I think everyone has different ideas of what drives them in the morning, and it's for me, beyond my kids and feeling a sense of purpose, it's also feeling that I'm doing something that's ultimately going to have a positive impact on them.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: Absolutely so.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: I was going to start asking you a little bit about kidsy, so do you want to give a bit of an overview about the business, what you do and who you help, and what was the motivation, the inspiration behind the company?
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, of course.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: So kidsy were here to help families save money, save the environment and make money by keeping outgrown children's items in use.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: We're an app that's available on the App Store or Google Play.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: It's free to download and families can go onto the app and list all the gear toys, furniture, a kit their kids outgrow.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: Other families can locate what they need for their kids, connect and contact families who are selling the stuff and ultimately purchase it.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: We believe that this model saves on both the cost of purchasing new and the environmental resource of buying new, and we feel like it's a model where everyone wins, including the staff.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: We're also location-based, so you can search within your own neighborhood if you like, because we do appreciate that all of this stuff is so big and bulky and sometimes it's easier to collect something that you're buying a pram or a bassinet or a high chair it's just easier to find it in your neighborhood.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: We are quite early stage and we're new in the market, so we only built and released our app just in 2022, last summer, but we've so far grown into a community of several thousand families who are using our app.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: I'm one of three co-founders, and then we've got a small tech team working with us as well, how we came up with the idea for Kids.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: A so a bit of shocking, a shocking fact that so 80% of what we currently purchase for our kids ends up in landfill, and that's already with a huge number of parents shopping secondhand for their kids.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: So there's a real problem of stuff.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: But more on a personal journey, my kids are young and I've just completely first hand experienced the amount of stuff that they've needed and outgrown in the past four years that I've had them.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: It's just been completely shocking to me.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: I didn't know that there was so much stuff that came with kids, and when I say stuff, it's not just like clothing that they've infamously constantly outgrow, but there's like, if you have a newborn, you require like bedside sleepers that pre having like a crib, like a Moses basket.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: There's baby baths, there's newborn car seats and they have to go into a different stage car seat.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: There's the pram bassinet, there's breast pumps, bouncy suits, baby carriers, like, and all of this together cost a fortune.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: Right and on the environmental side, even if you buy more sustainable products, which tend to be a little bit more expensive, they still have plastic pieces and they still have materials which require a lot of natural resource and energy to make and they still end up in landfill.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: So just from my experience of this, I just felt like, you know, there must be a better way for parents to be able to sell the stuff secondhand and purchase it secondhand.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: That didn't involve things like Facebook marketplace, where you get totally like irrelevant stuff and you get weird DMs through to eBay, where it's really hard to find what it is that you're looking for.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: And, yeah, I just felt like there is a better solution to this and so I looked at you know what other resale apps were out in the market and what you know how parents.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: I spoke to tons of parents and looked at and spoke to them around how they were keeping stuff in the loop and selling it off and where they were looking secondhand.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: And that's how we built Kids Eat ultimately.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: And, yeah, so long story.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: It's a really good business.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: It's a really good idea because you know, I know, you know also got young children that they grow out of stuff really quick before really they've actually had a chance to use it.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: So if you are going to sell it, it's really good condition A lot of the time exactly it is.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: A lot of the stuff is really in great condition and the concept of second hand is just, you know, nothing new in the kids space, but there's just not a dedicated platform to kids stuff where you shop like you could at any other retailer and find Exactly what it is that you're, after that, like focused on the stages that your child's in.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: So I think you know there is all this stuff that everyone has when it's in the garage, you're trying to offload it on Facebook Marketplace or you know Well, the parent whatsapp group, but I, yeah, there should be, and there it now is a dedicated platform where you could Offload and share within your community, and it's also a community of families.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: So we've built, you know, I think, a real sense of community in a, in a map, essentially.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I noticed you've done quite a lot of founding.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: You've been a founder of quite a few businesses before kids days, entrepreneurship, something, that's something you wanted to do.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: No, well, no I don't think.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: I don't think I grew up feeling very entrepreneurial until I think it was.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: So I grew up always interested in.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: I studied anthropology and sociology so I was always interested in, you know, exploring new things and ideas and Understanding how.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: You know, dots were always connected and I've always been a very curious person.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: I've always yeah, I think I've always been very open-minded and interested in what people were doing, which I think ultimately led me to a career in leadership, advisory and executive search.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: But I think it was working with lots of different amazing founders and leaders in Executive search.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: That's where I developed an entrepreneurial bug.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because you're working with those founders and entrepreneurs and you get inspired.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: You have to know a very influenced down you by the people.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's, it wasn't until.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: It wasn't until, like I guess you know, maybe Seven years ago that I started thinking, you know I could do like a side hustle Well, I do my career and see where it takes me.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: So me and a business partner or who's a friend, we were kind of thinking around like what can we do that we love that you know we could work, that we can make work around our own careers.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: So we both loved to like cook and so we and we both missed look, california food.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: So we open, we basically opened like a little pop-up supper club that where we would cook the food that we missed from California and feed it to our friends, and it sort of snowballed into People we didn't know coming and then we got a little bit of press and then it turned into a very, very long term pop-up and then we turned it into a restaurant ultimately, and then beyond that, I also helped a gluten-free bakery because I was in the food, I was doing stuff in the food industry.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: I helped a gluten-free bakery launch in the uk and I also launched a little superfood brand.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: So I've done like lots of.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: But those are I think those were all like little side hustles that I did on, you know, have you always had a job like alongside the side hustles, yeah, okay, and so they have been quite side hustling.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I did take a couple of years off when I launched the restaurant because that was Very, very, very, very full time.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: You had to be there all the time.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: It's a restaurant, so you just have to be there.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: You can't work from anywhere else.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: I I mean when I my first child was born, I would be at the restaurant with her, like a little sling, running around like she, you know, start crying and have to like go take her to a corner and hope that not everyone In the restaurant would hear her crying.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: And you know I'd like breastfeed her and like store breast milk in like the like storage fridge and, oh my gosh, the chefs and the staff are just like oh my god.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: What are you doing?
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: That's what we have to do, isn't it?
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: What's?
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but what you know?
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: You've had a really rich Experiences, haven't you?
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: And all the stories that you must have about.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: Do you think you you know?
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: If people listen to this and are interested in a side hustle alongside a job, what would be your advice to them about how, how to do it and how to juggle it really?
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: And, and what boundaries do you set between your job and your business, or is it quite, they quite, integrated?
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: No, so I time block.
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: That would be my biggest piece of advice.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: I think as moms we are so good at multitasking, but sometimes you just need that focus time.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: So you know, parts of my business have definitely been built by you know, in like three minute increments, sometimes 30 second increments, because you get so you know I'm like I literally started my business during that time.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: I'd be like tight I put the kids down to for a nap, run down to bed.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: I've never typed the past in my life and that was there when the monitor's praying.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: You know they didn't cry, yeah.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: Yes, it was 100% and so that obviously is part of it.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: But I think as well, you need like focus time and I think it's really hard to do that as a mom.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: So my biggest advice would be like try and schedule your day to where you can get like that work, like that proper, like focus workflow, no interruption time.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: Turn off your phone, you know, put on like some music that's gonna make you concentrate because the like, yes, you can build a business within those little, you know three minute, 30 second windows, which I have done.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: But it also takes like really, you know, some real concentration to dive and solve, you know build, you know what it is that you want to build ultimately from scratch.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: So I would say time blocking and that's how I'm able to juggle like kids in acuity.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: I have set days where I am 100% focused on acuity.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: Obviously, kidsy is, you know, constant.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: We have people who use the platform, we have tech, bugs and issues that happen all the time and I, you know there are times where that my day with acuity gets interrupted by stuff that happens.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: But there's also, vice versa, days where I'm purely focused on kidsy, where, you know, client is only available and I just have to run with it.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: So there's fluid, like, yeah, you have to be.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: Except the fact that there's fluid, I think as much you can do to just say, okay, this is going to be the focus area for today, whether it's you know, I've got one hour, two hours, eight hours, whatever it is, have to use your time really wisely.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: I would encourage anyone to do it.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: I think it's.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: For me, it's been an amazing journey, even with businesses like the restaurant which didn't, you know, unfortunately survive because of two kids and COVID and everything but regret doing it.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: I loved doing it and I learned a lot of mistakes, which then make me a better founder with kidsy, I hope.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, I would encourage anyone to do it.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: You just have to be really mindful of the fact that you do need it, does take time, do me time.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: Things take three long, but three times longer than you think that they will take, and it costs three times more as well.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: So I think you're doing it actually in a really sustainable way having a job you know.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: You know the nursery fees are paid, you know the mortgage is paid, you know the the, you know you've got food that you can pay for, and then you know.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: So that actually takes that pressure off the business and maybe you feel like you have to start charging too early.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: You know too early, like you said, you're trying to get market share.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: Are you charging too much?
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: It takes some of that pressure off the business knowing that you as a family are sort of paid for by your job.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it definitely helped.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: And when we're fundraising at the moment, and everyone is, one of the questions that we get asked is you know what's the burn rate on your business?
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: And we're like, well, we're bootstrapping.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: So I guess you know we could just continue to do this forever, but we don't want to.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: I would like to be able to afford the holiday at some point, maybe.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: Maybe in like a year, 18 months time after you know, because we've got so many milestones we have to hit with kidsy first.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: But but it is helpful and I couldn't have asked so what's burn rate?
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Because I've not heard of that face before and people listen to this might not have heard of that.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: So burn rate is how much you're spending on your business per month and how long can you sustain yourselves, for you know for the money in.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: South or for the money runs out Exactly, and because we are, because we are working to, we are working to support our family and working to support our business.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: At the time there's like there's literally nothing left at the end of the day, so you paying yourself the salary from your business then, or not?
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: No, my only salary comes from from working with a Q&A.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: So we we're not at a stage where pre-revenue and the app is currently out in the market, free to use, minus a fee that the sellers pay for on as like a the payment processing fee to our payment process stripe, so that's like 2%.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: So otherwise it's out in the market, free to use, because we're just really trying to work for feedback and build a really amazing product that people want to use and we would feel much better having it out in the market and working for feedback than taking a revenue at the moment.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: When we, you know, hopefully at some point when we feel like we are at a stage where we've got 100% product market fit and we're scaling, then we're in a position to implement a revenue model into the business.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: But right now it's out in market free.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: So if anyone's listening.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: Please use it.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, I'm going to be downloading it.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: It sounds a bit like you know vintage, is that it?
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: But that's obviously for clothes, yes, so it's very similar.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: Yes, exactly.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: So it's a very similar model to vintage.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: It's just it's dedicated to kids stuff and rather than you know all come to see and I think you know vintage is great, I use it myself for clothing, but it's hard to find because vintage.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: So the market is so full it's really hard to find what you're looking for so did you want to be?
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: you know I think we had a little chat about this before we started recording about women in tech Did you want to be somebody in tech?
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: And before you founded kids, say that you know how important is it for you to feel that you are running a tech business, particularly as a woman.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: I don't think I really thought about.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: So I don't think I really thought about like tech specifically, like we are a tech product but we're a mission driven business and it happens to be that we rely, as our business model on also being a tech product.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: Do you consider yourself a woman in tech?
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: Because we are a tech business.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: But but I don't, like, I don't think, like I didn't, specifically when I was looking at how to address the problem at hand with build, you know, building a business that could help solve the issue of you know stuff, you know, when I looked at the different various business models, it just it felt like this, like technology, was the best solution to building a business to address, especially in 2023.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: Exactly so and so I didn't.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: You know, I didn't set out to be like, okay, I'm going to founded a tech business.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: It was the other way around.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: It was like I want to solve this problem and the best way to solve this problem is through a technology product.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so did you have to educate yourself, do you?
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Do you think of yourself as quite tech savvy?
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: I'm from San Francisco, which is kind of tech epicenter of the world, and but I guess I've always been a technology user and I've always enjoyed new products that come out to the market.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: I've never I don't think I'd ever really like geeked out on anything that, but I rely heavily on technology to get stuff done and I enjoy it and I, like you, know the cool innovative things that come out and I love.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: You know I wouldn't say I was those people who like line up around the corner like the day of something being released, but you know I'm quite an early adapter, adapter of things that come into the market.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: So it's always been like interesting for me from like a consumer perspective, but never from like.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: I just never set out be like I want to be a tech entrepreneur.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: It was more.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: I want to solve this problem and this is the best way we can do it.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: But I really enjoyed being in the tech industry.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: I had to learn so much so much but I thought, a CT and a VQ from officers, so they've really helped.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: Well, like, by asking everyone like, what is this?
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: And when we had, when we started building the MVP for kids, you know I like.
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: So I did like the original, like, just like flow, like user flow on, like a mirror board and, you know, did each wireframe of what I wanted everything to look like and how I thought from a user perspective.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: You know what your journey through the app would be.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: I did all that stuff myself, first, before we built anything, and then I worked with our tech partners.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: Our tech partner has a tech team, so I worked very closely with them as they were building it, asking lots of very elementary questions to understand better of, like, what does that mean?
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: And I had to learn you know what everything, the whole tech stack that we used, what each of those was for and how it fit into the next one and why we were using each of those.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: And yeah, it was.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, it was an enormous learning because, like.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: I've always worked with tech businesses in executive search and most of them have been privately backed high growth technicians, so a lot of them have been very technical.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: But I've never really gone into like the real, like the real juicy, intricacy of how it all works and gets together from the product side.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: But I found it fascinating.
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: I love it and the amount of learning is been incredible because I did not yeah, I know so much more than I did when I was going into this been really helped by the fact that we have my.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: Both my co founders are technical, so I've got a chief product officer, who's amazing, and a tech partner who's our CTO, who's also amazing.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: So they have certainly helped get me there.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: So someone's listened to this and they think, gosh, I'm just not technical, but I've got a business idea would work really well on a website or whatever.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: What would be your advice to them?
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: How easy is it to get into tech?
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: I think you have to start by networking and finding people in technology who are looking to partner with someone to build a business.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: You know there's.
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: I think it's quite hard to be a you can't do everything yourself so the best I think the best way to build a business is find people who you work well with, who have complementary skill sets, and build it together, because then you're covering a lot more bases and you're going to find, you know, people who are amazing at building tech products, but perhaps they're, you know, not so strong in marketing or sales or business development or you know whatever it is, and I think it's really important to go out and just speak to anyone and everyone who will?
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: listen to see if you can find someone who you know might want to build something with you, because there's a lot of people who are really talented but they haven't found you know a big idea that they want to work on yet and they would love to partner with someone who's got a great idea, who perhaps doesn't have the technical capabilities of building whatever it is that they they're thinking about.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: So I think it's just going out and speaking to as many people as you can and understanding you know what is it that I actually need to build to get this out to the market, and there's also a lot you can do without building anything.
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: You know you can still validate ideas.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: I think you could.
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, essentially, aside from building a tech product, you could go to market with nearly everything by just talking to people and understanding.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: You know would you use this, how much would you pay for it, and you know how would you use it.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: You know what other ways you think something could be used and you could really, you know, validate and do the research bit, and from that you'd learn exactly what you need to build to get there, and you would learn a lot yourself then, and then you could then find someone who could, you know, build it for you.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: And there's also lots.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: If you're thinking about tech businesses, there's tons of no and low code platforms that are out at the moment that are, you know, built for non techie people Exactly, and they're very user friendly and they're great.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: We just happened to be able to build a tech product from scratch, so we didn't use those, but there's tons of platforms where really you could you could build a lot of stuff.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, mine's built on WordPress, which is a learning curve, but again, you don't need coding and you can sort of teach yourself how to use it.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah exactly.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: And how have you split the roles then between you?
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: So you've said you've got a technology partner, you've got sorry, was it a product person?
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, lovely.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: And then what do you do in the business?
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: I'm the.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: CEO and I guess I'm probably more the face of the business.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: I'm the one who's out there fundraising, who's on the soapbox of all the parks, playgrounds and up and down the high streets with kidsy flyers trying to get users onto the platform and spread the word.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: So I'd say that everything on the more outward side of the business is run by me and on the now investor fundraising is mine.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: But I think we all we all get involved in things like you know, a green strategy for the business and agreeing, you know, go to market and and all of like the strategic stuff were very collaborative about what the business should look like.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: And then my tech partner it's his tech team that builds the product.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: And then we've got a chief product and growth officer and his he oversees the product and how we can grow the product in the market and how you know what the product should look like based on how it's used by our users.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: So we're constantly developing and reiterating and listening to our users just to make sure that we're building something and we've got something in the market that people actually want to use.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: Oh.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: It sounds fascinating.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: I wish you the very best of luck with kidsy and the fundraising and your job as well.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: I'm so delighted that it's working really well for you and QT partners.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: Where can people find you, connect with you, learn more about you, qt and kidsy?
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: Yes, and so LinkedIn is probably the best place to find me, either, by sort of change, Jennifer Matheson at QT or kidsy Anyone can, you know, reach out and say hi if you have any questions on, you know, female founder networks because you're interested in building a business and sending you through any information that was helpful to me and it still is helpful to me because I am in the thick of it and learning as I go, and then you know anyone who is interested in, you know, perhaps thinking around having a working for a company that really promotes hybrid working and flexibility and working from anywhere.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: You know, feel free to drop me a line.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: We were a small team of eight in London at the QT, but we've got a board out of a wider business called Stanton House, which is a specialized recruitment business that helps organizations in UK, North America, innovate and grow by matching them with exceptional specialist talent.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: So it's wider recruitment business and same ethos as a QT.
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: We're part of Stanton House.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: We've won some amazing awards for our customer and offering and constantly looking for great talent in the market, whether it's full time, part time or flexible.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: So do yeah feel, if you are listening and you want to have a chat around any of that stuff.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: Reach out and I can always come back myself or point you in the right direction.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: Brilliant, well, thank you so so much for chatting with me today.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: We'll put all those links in the show notes.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: It's been an absolute pleasure to learn more about you and your experiences and all the amazing things you've been doing as well.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: So thank you so so much for your time today.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: Thank you, thanks, liz.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to another episode of the Work it Like A Mon podcast.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review and subscribe, and don't forget to share the link with a friend.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: If you're on LinkedIn, please send me a connection request at Elizabeth Willett and let me know your thoughts on this week's episode.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: You can also follow my recruitment site, investing in Women on LinkedIn, facebook and Instagram.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: Until next time, keep on chasing your big stream.