If you have been inducted into the messy and wonderful world of motherhood in the past few years, chances are high you've heard of Peanut, a social networking app for mothers. This app has grown from 20 downloads when it was first launched in 2017 to one million active moms today. Like most startups that find success, Peanut was born out of a need for something that didn't exist.
"I couldn't go within the group and say with no reference: 'can we go for a coffee'? That would be weird," she says. "I felt most predominantly that the brand narrative around motherhood didn't feel like me as a mother. My journey felt different. And the more women I spoke to, the more common it was." With that in mind, Peanut was born.
"Motherhood is an absolutely seismic life change and there is no product out there that helps [women] deal with that from an emotional perspective," says Kennedy. "And every woman I spoke to and gave that pitch to said that makes sense." And raising money was done with a very intentional strategy. "It was a real learning curve in terms of choosing an investor," she says. "In the early days when I would pitch to a man, he'd say, 'I am going to ask my wife, or my daughter, or my assistant,' and that was frustrating."As Kennedy puts it, starting a business is like having another baby: It's all-consuming, it's all you can think about, and it requires sacrifices.