Peanut set out to embody the voice of modern, millennial moth-
erhood. The team wanted it to function as a friend—one who under-
stands that being a mom is a big part of a woman’s identity, but it’s not
her entire identity. They spent a lot of time defining its voice. Users,
for example, would be addressed as “Mama,” which tracks in both the
United Kingdom and the United States and has a playful edge.
In February 2017, just a few months after she shared her plans
with best friend Sulehria, Kennedy brought Peanut into the world,
launching in the U.K. and the U.S. A simple beta version allowed
women to create a profile, swipe to explore other women’s profiles—
like on a dating app—and chat.
The reaction was instantaneous. Thanks to some earlier-than-planned
press coverage from the London Evening Standard, thousands of women
flooded the beta offering, and Kennedy had fast validation. But the new
users also revealed a vulnerability. Much like with dating apps, where
happy couples no longer need the app, women were ditching Peanut
once they’d made a new friend. “And why wouldn’t they?” Kennedy says.
“You don’t need to make a new girlfriend every day—and in that case, you
maybe don’t need to continue using Peanut.”
This was a problem in need of solving. And as it turns out, users were
already proposing a solution. “A lot of our users were saying, ‘Wait; how
do I ask all the women on here a question? How do I share this arti-
cle with all the women in my neighborhood?’ ” Kennedy says. “We had
always planned to build community-based features, but our users let us
know that we’d have to build them a lot quicker than planned.”
So the team hustled to launch community-wide message boards
(called Peanut Pages) and group chats (Peanut Groups). Kennedy and
her team thought they knew exactly how women would use these fea-
tures; they expected to see chatter around the usual early- motherhood
pain points, like getting babies to sleep or working through pregnancy
discomfort. But they got something much different.
“Women were sharing about really intimate stuff: relationships,
love, sex, work, money, housing, social issues,” says Kennedy, whose
team kept an eye on developing conversations via a combination of
artificial intelligence and human monitoring of message boards. “We
had to stop and say, ‘Wait a minute. Why are these conversations hap-
pening on Peanut?’ And it’s because they just aren’t happening any-
where else—you’re not going to post on a local Yahoo message board
about postpartum sex or frustrations with your partner. This has to
exist in a private network.”
While some popular topics did prove to be playful (“boobs and
books”), the majority had a more solemn tone—and one in particular
was being discussed at a surprisingly high volume.
“So many women were talking about trying and struggling to
conceive baby number two,” says Kennedy. “Maybe they were going
through IVF, or had just suffered a loss, or found they were facing
infertility, or had been diagnosed with endometriosis or polycystic
ovary syndrome. Whatever it was, there was so much conversation.”
Kennedy immediately thought of her best friend, Sulehria. She
knew the facts were brutal: One in eight women will be affected
by fertility issues, and one in six will experience a miscarriage. She
also knew that the emotional burden was vast. “The most poignant
thing Soph ever said to me was, ‘You know, I could use someone
other than you to talk to,’ ” Kennedy says. “So now here we are with
Peanut, and if all these women are talking about their struggles to
conceive baby two or three, what about the women who haven’t had
a baby at all?”
Kennedy planned to serve this audience someday; after all, she’d
made a promise to her friend. But she thought it would be a long time
from now, and a small part of a much larger pie. Now, by following
her users’ lead, she realized she had it wrong. She needed to fulfill this
promise fast—and the opportunity could be very big.
Women who struggle with fertility issues have already given their
community a name: It’s TTC, for “trying to conceive.” Across the inter-
net, there’s evidence of these women craving connection. Search #TTC
on Instagram and you’ll find 1.4 million posts; #TTCcommunity has
more than half a million posts; #TTCaftermiscarriage has nearly
82,000.
But those makeshift communities, as the Peanut team saw it,
weren’t working. “These women are making use of existing social
networks, but they’re not finding a real community,” says Hannah
Hastings, Peanut’s head of growth and brand marketing. “Instagram
is a public space. If you choose to have a private profile, discovery is“ You’re not going to post on
a local Yahoo message board
about postpartum sex
or frustrations with your
partner. This has to exist
in a private network.”
42 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / March 2020