 This episode of the podcast is supported by Audible. You can download and listen to the world's best storytelling. I use it all the time to and from work. You can listen to audiobooks, original series and more on their free app to get your free 30 day subscription, which includes a free book. Click on the link in our show notes and enjoy. Hey folks, welcome to the podcast. Today I had one of my friends, Hannah Feldman come in to speak and she is the co-founder of a wonderful app called Kidaddle. And Kidaddle is an app and on the website as well that you use to work out what you're gonna do with your children today, tomorrow, next week or whenever you wanna do something fun with your kids. So really cool. And she had a prior career as a lawyer, a private banker and she's done some amazing things and we hear about why she decided to throw all that in and start a startup in a tech firm. And she met a co-founder and we hear about the story and the journey and all the troubles and the difficulties and the challenges that one goes through starting a business and starting to scale it. Really, really interesting and hope you enjoy it. Hey, it's Lewis, welcome to the podcast. Enjoy our conversations anytime, anywhere. Hannah, thank you finally for coming in. We made it, we made it. Thanks for having me. Pleasure, pleasure, pleasure. So we've known each other for almost 20 years, probably. How can that be when I'm only 21? That is true, I'm probably dreaming about it. So what is Kedaddle? So Kedaddle is the marketplace platform for family leisure where parents can discover, book and pay for the best experiences, events and activities to enjoy with their kids. Nice, so basically if I'm at a loss as to what to do with my kids, go and Kedaddle, check it out, see what's going on and I can book stuff through there. We're completely end to end which means you can discover, book and pay for everything that we feature and we really originated from the desire to help families find a place that where technology worked for them where they could actually find and book things that were curated and personalized to their family, their kids' interests, ages, their budget and location in a few taps while they're on the go. Nice, how did it come about? Came about because when I started the business my twins were kind of midway through their toddler years. And I had- Much better behavior now, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. And I have been absolutely struck by the fact that I found every night when we had free time whether it was weekends, holidays, days off nursery I couldn't find things online to suit my family in terms of the ages and interests of my kids, my budget and location. I just found online was very much not user friendly for family leisure. I met my co-founder at kind of a similar point and she had an older kid and had moved to a different area with her child and couldn't believe when she didn't know anyone in a given area, she couldn't find things to do easily, let alone book them on an online interface. And because of that, we came together with a shared driver to wanna solve a problem that we had felt as parents but for other parents all over the world. And we came together, she has an entrepreneurial background, I have a corporate background and we came together to solve the very problem we felt ourselves. Nice, and you started it in London. So it's London- We are London and the Southeast at the moment. And the vision is very much one that could serve families in major cities around the world. Okay, so you're gonna expand into other cities and... Yeah, that's the aim. Very cool, very cool. How did you both meet? So my cousin, who I'd not grown up with, she's slightly older than me, decided after I think just under 20 years to get married to her boyfriend and the father of her two children. And at the hemp party, she had a gathering of all her old friends and family and I got to meet some of her friends and Sophie, my co-founder, was one of her best friends and Sophie had built a very large successful conference business and I at the time was selling companies. So she thought if I sat, she sat Sophie next to me, I could find a deal and Sophie could find a good corporate financier. Nice, it's kind of like a blind date. It was like a blind date where, yeah, she'd set us up effectively and Sophie very much after 10 minutes of the conversation said, that company, I don't run it anymore, I'm the chair, you know, it's not for sale, but I've got a vision and she started talking to me through the vision she had for Cadadol. She showed me an early prototype she'd built on her phone and I said to her, if that existed, it would change my life. So she'd like a programmer, developer? I mean, she'd used a program where you can prototype a product without doing the tech behind it. So you can see on your phone what the app would be and you don't realise actually when you see the prototype, how hard it then is to build but she had built the very front end that she had visualised. She was missing. And then I came into the picture and talked through how I thought my pain points could be solved with younger children and we iterated and built our first product together. Nice. And so why did you want to start a business? Because I know you've done a lot of other things which would be great to hear about. What got you to that point? I think I knew throughout my corporate career that I was a square peg in a round hole in terms of the fact that I always wanted to be somewhere quicker, faster, in a different way to the way that it was expected, perhaps in some of the more dry jobs that I'd done. But equally I got incredible experience, especially in the law and banking parts of my career. So for me, I think it was always the desire to have the creative journey mixed with business at its best which is going out where something doesn't exist and building something to make that very thing exist. And I always knew that I had to do that in my life but it always had to be something that I felt the passion to do. So I was offered, lucky enough to be offered, many opportunities to come into businesses or to co-found businesses that weren't my passion but you don't give up a comfortable day job to do it unless you really feel it. Yeah, yeah, that's true. What were you doing before? So my last job to meeting Sophie was I was doing corporate finance on the sale side which is I was selling UK SMEs to a global market and I was originating deals to sell those companies across the UK landscape but previous to that I was in banking, law and advertising. Crazy. Yeah. Very different from law. Yeah. How have you found it? Starting a business and... I have found it the highest of highs, the most exciting of journeys, the biggest rush that, you know, for me, this is absolute living. I absolutely love it day in, day out but there's also of course, crushing lows because sometimes it's just really, really hard to build the very thing you envisage and there's always roadblocks along the way. So my attitude has been pushed to the limits in terms of keeping that drive, keeping that resolve, keeping going and going through all the humps because it's not a plain straight road like other careers perhaps I've had have been. Yeah, yeah, no true. It's probably just, yeah. I mean, you're trained to be a lawyer, you kind of like you do your thing, you get work, you crack on with it. Absolutely. Whereas here, anything can happen. Anything can happen and you know, I sometimes say at the end of the week it's 10 steps forward, seven steps back. It's not just two. You know, you're moving forward all the time at a rapid rate but there are always setbacks and Sophie, my co-founder, describes the biggest skill set you can have as being a problem solver. You know, when the problems come, look them in the face and solve them and deal with them and move on. Don't find a million ways to ignore them because problem solving is how you build a business and she's done it before. And you found the mindset part has been really key. Just dealing with the ups and downs, playing the game, being positive. Mindset has been everything but I didn't know at the start that that was a needed thing. I didn't know that you had to work on your mindset. I didn't know that actually the way you look at things can directly frame how you feel on a given day. I didn't realise that sometimes you have to take a step back from the here and now to actually be in the moment and think, you know what, I've done this before, I've seen this before, I've experienced this. It will be okay. I didn't, I've had to really learn fast. Yeah, that's definitely the most challenging bit. Because things happen in life and you end up, you choose how you respond to it and if you choose to respond positively, you have a great day, a great week, if you go down this negative thinking spiral, it can affect everything, day, week, year. Yes, and sometimes the easy thing in a job when you're working for others is they kind of inform your perception of yourself, whether through appraisals or whether through feedback or whether through having colleagues. When you're founding or co-founding a business, you don't get that sense check. So you very much are left within your own head sometimes. Yeah, that's true. And how's it been working with a co-founder? Unbelievable. I mean, people ask that as if there's a choice. To me, there isn't a choice because to me, I have got such pronounced skills in very clear areas and I found a co-founder who has very complimentary skills. I think to build a business single-handedly can push some people beyond the brink because actually you can't be everything to everyone all the time. And the loneliness for me has been completely abated by having somebody on the journey with me being there by my side with the same skin in the game as me. I don't think for me I'd do it another way but that's because I know how hard it's been with a co-founder. Yeah, you're lucky because it's like, you met the person for a few hours maybe, a few days and you end up deciding to spend more time with them than your family. Absolutely. And because Sophie was effectively family through Juliet, my cousin, it was a lot easier to sense check the fact that she was a really decent person with someone who'd known her for over 25 years. It would have been harder to pick a person off the street and I find these accelerators and these incubators that put you together with potential co-founders in weeks, it's a whole different proposition to what I was in. Yeah, it takes your ages to decide whether you want to get married to someone, whether you want, yeah, it's crazy, crazy. And also to recognise the value of people that are different to yourself. Yeah, and it's always, if you're meeting someone so quickly, it's really hard to get under the skin and to understand what their skills are. I remember I didn't quit my day job quite some time after the idea was presented to me because you have to do your due diligence. Absolutely, no massively. What's been the main challenge you faced? So has you got the mindset and... I mean a year ago I would have said raising money as two female founders in London, you've got less than 1% chance of venture funding in this country and that's not me, that's the statistics. Right, so a 1% chance of... Two female founders raising venture capital in the UK based on the recent report that Diversity VC shared based on the British Business Bank's findings. So that's a 2019 report and everyone should have a look at because a lot needs to be done by both women and men to address that balance. We'll put it in the show notes. Absolutely, it's really fascinating and in law and banking I'd seen perhaps attitudes that were exactly gender neutral but actually compared to law and banking I think the startup world's got a look further to go when it comes to addressing that balance. So what you found that the investors, you found it hard to get money from the investors because you're two female? I think we are two women solving a problem that obviously parents are men and women but that women relate to hugely and actually our user base is very evenly split but we are solving a problem around family life, a problem around the whole institution of having a family and for us it's about making the memories that childhood's all about. So it's not a FinTech problem and it's not a PropTech problem, it's a family tech problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So why has that made it difficult to get money? Luckily this year we've had traction, we've got incredible feedback on the product and we've raised money very quickly but last year or in 2017 when we didn't have a product, when you had a vision I'd say you have to really run a process that is very, very tight and when you're first raising money you don't know how to run that process because you don't realise how many people you have to meet and how long it takes. So for warned is for armed and when I went back out this year it was a completely different proposition. I'd say other challenges are around the fact that building anything that doesn't exist is never as clear cut as you think and the various cogs that go into what somebody sees as a very simple and easy to use product the simpler it looks the harder it is. Yeah, no tree. And that's a big journey in itself and learning about breaking down the stages of iterating and producing a product and everything that has to go into it and how getting it right or close to right when you're working with limited budgets is so important. So most of the investors wanted it like the proof of concept or actually working before they would start to commit money. They, I mean, we had some incredible early investors like Martin Lewis, a money-saving expert and a cohort around him of phenomenal people. They saw the opportunity. Yeah. But now it is much easier to have a conversation when you've got a scalable platform across web at newsletter, blog and people are using it in their droves. That is very different to a vision on a piece of paper or on a prototype. Yeah, no true. So how long have you been going for now? So we launched last year. Yeah. And we launched our website in July this year. Awesome. So last year we were app only and this year we are web and app. And most people using the app? The app is great because it offers the real kind of personalization and curation of your of the product and you very much can use it on the go. Yeah. But the website came from a demand from our customers who we call Cadadlers. Cadadlers wanted to be able to plan based on their laptops or their home desktop. So it wasn't just the booking. Sometimes the planning people like to do on desktop. So that's why the website exists. So maybe at work or home? They're at work or they haven't spoken to their partner or they're thinking about a coming holiday. The app is great when you're on the go ready to book. So we've seen both products have different use cases. Interesting. And also it's great when we're working with people who really advocates for Cadadler. The website is a very open access interface to give people a touch point. Yeah. And are you on Android and? Yes. And what did you start on? We started on both. You just start on both? Yeah. We very much have always seen that even though Android has a more growing user base in terms of our demographic people are producing some incredible phones and people want that technology in their hands. So they should have Cadadler on it. Absolutely. I use my Android. It's great. There you go. How do you manage your time? I know you've got kids and husbands and all that stuff. Yes. And you're founder of a company. Yes. So how do you organize your day? How do you structure it? I've obviously got a lot better at it than beforehand because when, again, when you work for someone else, you turn up at nine, you leave it, well, if you're a lawyer, different times. Five then. But yeah, you leave at a certain time. And especially as a lawyer, you're being billable hours. So it's very clear who you're working for and what you're doing. And you're kind of given that work, usually by senior partners. And off you go. As a founder, the hardest thing is that there's a million things you could be doing every day. And it's so difficult to manage how to spread your time. And I really often think about doing what is important, not what's urgent, because everything seems urgent. But I try and do things at least for half my day that move the dial for the business, whether that's coming and speaking on fantastic podcasts like this, whether that's fronting to the press, whether that's seeing investors, whether that's planning the next quarter of activity. It's trying to balance being involved in the day-to-day and being strategic whilst we're in growth mode, because it's a real product with real people and a real team. And I don't have, I'm not a creature that goes with the kind of at 5 a.m. I do yoga and at 8 a.m. I go and lie down in a crypto. You don't pray, grab your exercises. I am, my personality thrives in the moment. So I am iterative. I don't have a set-set routine. But bringing exercise into my life, even in a moderate way, has massively helped me feel a sense of balance, because otherwise it felt like I was just working ridiculous hours. And I was also very, very pressured during kind of the trying to fit in quality time in my family. And my mindset has changed by having that outlet. Exercise is so important. I actually diarise my exercise. So it's so important. Yeah, also my mindset, my mental health, it's much better when I'm running or in the gym and stuff like that. Yeah, so for me, that was a revelation very much that it's for the mind as a leading thing, if you've got a very cluttered mind in a lot going on. But I work around my children as well. So it's really important to me to be there in the evenings to have that connection with them, to do story time, to do bedtime, bath time and have time to talk about the day. And I'm happy to then work for quite a few hours going on after that. I'm not one of those people that feels they have to leave the office and have their work done. I don't think it's realistic as a start-up. No, that's true. How do you split the tasks between you and your co-founder? She very much manages product, finance, operations. She's grown and scaled a large conference and event business globally. So she's very much got a huge track record in actually building and scaling, operating businesses that are profitable. And I very much manage the kind of marketing content and then outbound side of the business. So we are, we're very synergistic in that respect. That's really cool. And where are you based now? London Bridge. Nice. It's a cool loft style. Yeah, we literally- Barista coffee. Yeah, it's really become like that. We moved last year from Waterloo and it is super cool by Shad Thames where we are. And every day just to look at our bridge as you arrive at the office is quite inspiring. Yeah. So amazing work spaces now. Yeah. I mean, I love it. Yeah. Bit far from North London. So where do you commute to from Finchley? Yeah. Nice. It's not too bad. You know what? At least it's one train all the way. So I get to read the papers, get to do my work, get a seat. Perfect. Perfect. And what is the plan for the future for Cadadol now? So Cadadol now is really about cementing our foothold amongst the community of London parents. So in terms of we've never marketed the product with grown entirely organically. So now we're going to start marketing to widen our user base. And this is what some of the money you've raised is going to go towards. Absolutely. It's the first time we've ever spent money on marketing. Wow, it's amazing. Yeah. So we only started that last month. And really we want to be, you know, the unquestionable go-to platform in London for families looking to get out, make those childhood memories with their kids and actually use their leisure time to, you know, go see and do the best things that are on for them. So that's the short-term goal. And then it's all about scaling the business to go into other locations, both around the UK and then further afield and build something that parents can use whether at home or abroad. Amazing. Are there any locations that you want to do first? Yes. We haven't decided yet. No, we've decided. I'm not going to quite share it yet. I don't share it yet. Because we're just scoping out kind of potential investment partners in different locations. Oh, brilliant. It's always a factor of, you know, push and pull factors with any business scaling decision. But at the moment, for the foreseeable short-term, it's all about London because we need to finish London in the way we want to finish London before we spread ourselves. And London's pretty big. Yes. So how did you do it? Have you done it without spending money on marketing? It's been social media, Facebook, all of these kind of channels. We started with an online community before we launched the product. And that was more about the fact we wanted to see what people actually were interested in seeing and doing. You know, regardless of our solution, you know, where were the pain points for other people that weren't us? And that community has been hugely supportive both in terms of becoming customers of Kidaddle and also referring Kidaddle to their friends. And within that community, we have a separate community of brand ambassadors who we send to review events and activities all across London because peer recommendations are so critical for making parents believe that their children or their family unit would enjoy a given event. And really that has been a huge kind of trigger to our growth. I think there isn't a brand in this space that is positive, aspirational and talks to parents as parents, not parents as parents of children, you know, talking to the actual parent. So Kidaddle feels avoid in the brand space. And we have tried to make the simplest and easiest to use product for parents on the go. So product-wise, once you discover it, it's very simple to mention it to your friends because it's helping you live a more meaningful life. No, it's great. Is there might have been much support for being a founder of a tech firm? So has the government offered support? Has there been any like, whatever you like sought out kind of help? I mean, we're on the London and Partners global growth scheme. So London and Partners, you know, is the promotion agency for London and you know, supported by the mayor of London. And we were on their business growth scheme because somebody had identified us as a prospect for a high growth business coming out of London. And now we've moved on to their global growth scheme which is all about kind of catapulting outside of the UK. And they're incredible in terms of the resources they offer companies very much. It's not a paid thing. We don't pay for it. It's part of actually an EU kind of initiative. And the people they have working there are really high caliber people that are all about opening your company up to wider networks and investors and connections and collaborators. Other than that, I would say we haven't really done anything else formal. All our investors have been either self-made or from the VC community. So they're not through government schemes or grants or anything like that. Amazing. Yeah. Well, thank you for coming and chatting. Thank you for having me. For a good luck with everything. And how can people find you? Well, they can find me. I'm on all the social channels. So I'm on Instagram at Hannah Cadaddle. I'm on Twitter at Hannah Cadaddle. And our company, Facebook, Page as Cadaddle, our company, Instagram, which is really active with all our promotions and deals as Cadaddle. And if you're into the business side, then follow us on LinkedIn. Amazing. Thank you very much. Thanks so much. Hey, folks, thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe in all the usual places. Thank you.