Everyone Told Her Not to Build Peanut. She Did It Anyway | Michelle Kennedy

I launched Peanut at a time when no one wanted to talk about motherhood, let alone fertility, let alone menopause. I mean, that was not being done. I allowed so many people to pick my brains, I'm not sure if I had any brains left after year one.

[laughs]

If it catastrophically or really to the negative of the business impacts your data, then you know that that's, that's either the thing you shouldn't touch or it's the very thing that you could amp. Go and build your network. Start today. Don't wait. Do not skip a beat. Listen to this, and go and do that exercise of what do I need my network to do for me, and how am I gonna action it?

Michelle, welcome to the pod.

Thanks so much for having me.

We did a pod within a pod there.

We did.

We chatted away, so I think-

[laughs]

... the chemistry is there. What do you do?

What do I do? I am the CEO of Peanut, which is a social network which connects women across different life stages. So if you're going through a fertility journey, uh, if you're pregnant, a new mom, mom of tweens, um, it's a place where you can come, connect, ask questions, share stories, laugh, vent. Um, we always say there's nothing too gross on Peanut. You can say whatever you want, within reason, um, about the realities of being a woman and being a mother.

Hmm. And where did that idea come from?

I didn't have that platform. I became a mom. I was the first in my friendship group to have, um, a child, and I really didn't expect a lot of what came with it. I had the stuff. I had the gear.

Hmm.

I knew about everything I needed to buy, but when it came to the me part, I didn't know that I was gonna change. I didn't know that I would feel, um, differently than I'd expected to feel. And really, really what I needed were other women who were going through the same thing as me, and that's never changed. That's always been there throughout. You know, my kids are older now, and I still feel it. Um, and so I think I'd built the platform I wish existed, and then when I had my daughter, I used the platform that then did exist. So it's, it's, it's for that reason.

You solved your own problem.

I think so, yeah.

Uh, it, it's a really powerful thing to do because I think sometimes founders build products and then find the problem. They go searching for a problem-

That's right

... whereas it rarely works. It always has to come from a pain. I was ta- and a friend of mine yesterday, they're building a new product, and I was like, "Right, there's a massive pain point there." He goes, "Honestly, Gary, people are crying on the customer discovery calls because they're in s- literal pain."

Yeah.

It's, it's so beautiful when you see a product like yours that just has a ripple effect.

Yeah.

The f- funny, it's in my head 'cause the previous guest was talking about just the ripple effect of doing good things.

Mm.

And, like, when you think about the ripple effect of Peanut, it is quite large.

I always say to the team, and we, we really revel in it, we are one of the very, like, we're in a really rarefied position where we get to go into work every day and leave the world a little bit better than we found it because the only thing that we are focused on is, is she feeling heard? Is her