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.