The Difference Engine | B2B Category Design | Private Equity | Venture Capital
Jun 11, 2025 · 52 min · 12 segments
Welcome to the fourth in a series of interviews with European tech leaders brought to you in association with Boardwave. The Boardwave network is a powerful community of Founders, CEOs, Chairs…
Amber VodegelGuest
Paul MaherHost
Jonathan SimnettHost
One of the things which struck us when we were taught before is that you famously bootstrapped Pregnancy Plus.
So how did you survive in those early days? And talk us through why you did that rather than seeking external funds and going for a very, very rapid build.
And I just thought I need to be profitable as quickly as possible and really thought long and hard about that.
I can't afford marketing, so how can we find other ways to get the app to number one, which takes just a lot of thinking work and looking at algorithms.
And then I just earned money, put it back in the company, earned some more, put it back in.
I did it pretty old school because I didn't know that at the time you could just walk into a VC and pitch your ideas.
And still you decided to go with a new, once you had a bit of success, as you said, you fed it back in.
And you experimented with all of these other things, like you just couldn't stop.
So I thought I'd just make more of the same and then they could live next to each other.
But because my apps kind of were so high quality compared to the rest, I was actually eating into my own companies.
So what do you think it was that made Pregnancy Plus so successful and the category definer? What was it that was special about that particular app?
So Baby Center, what to expect, they just had all these advertising models because they copied what they had on web.
And I also thought a lot about, I was obsessed about users and how they would feel.
One of the things which struck us when we were taught before is that you famously bootstrapped Pregnancy Plus.
So how did you survive in those early days? And talk us through why you did that rather than seeking external funds and going for a very, very rapid build.
And I just thought I need to be profitable as quickly as possible and really thought long and hard about that.
I can't afford marketing, so how can we find other ways to get the app to number one, which takes just a lot of thinking work and looking at algorithms.
And then I just earned money, put it back in the company, earned some more, put it back in.
I did it pretty old school because I didn't know that at the time you could just walk into a VC and pitch your ideas.
And still you decided to go with a new, once you had a bit of success, as you said, you fed it back in.
And you experimented with all of these other things, like you just couldn't stop.
So I thought I'd just make more of the same and then they could live next to each other.
But because my apps kind of were so high quality compared to the rest, I was actually eating into my own companies.
So what do you think it was that made Pregnancy Plus so successful and the category definer? What was it that was special about that particular app?
So Baby Center, what to expect, they just had all these advertising models because they copied what they had on web.
And I also thought a lot about, I was obsessed about users and how they would feel.
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