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Jo Goodall_Problem Solving to Serve Needed Audiences
24 May 202336 min

Problem Solving to Serve Needed Audiences

with Jo Goodall, Luna
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Contents:

Entrepreneurs are problem solvers, and Jo Goodall is using her problem-solving skills to achieve her goal of improving access to healthcare education! In this episode, Jo shares the story of how her company, Luna, came into being, how they have leaned heavily on their community to turn Luna into the invaluable resource it is today, the importance of being open to continuous evolution as a business owner, and some of the lessons she didn’t learn in business school!

About Jo Goodall:
Jo is the co-founder of Luna, the UK’s first health and wellbeing app specifically for girls and non-binary teens aged 11-17 years old. Prior to founding Luna, she was a Management Consultant at Deloitte and Strategy Manager at the fashion retailer Boden. Fun fact: she cycled solo from Yorkshire to Vienna (over 1000 miles) in two weeks!

Jo’s best advice for entrepreneurs:

“As the business grows, you have to extend your horizons and reach as an entrepreneur.” (20:49)

Episode highlights:

  • Being an entrepreneur gives you the opportunity to solve problems. Jo and her co-founder realized that kids are often left to their own devices (literally and figuratively) when it comes to learning about health-related issues, and they decided to do something to change that. A good place to start your entrepreneurial journey is with a problem that you feel passionate about solving! (02:06)
  • The people in your community are your greatest teachers! Let their feedback guide you to create the version of your product or service that best suits their needs. (11:58)
  • The world is constantly evolving, and so should you and your business! As an entrepreneur, it’s important to be continuously learning and growing alongside your business so that it doesn’t fade into obscurity. (20:22)
  • Watch your numbers closely! Business school doesn’t teach you how to manage your finances. Check your bank account, don’t overhire, and make sure you have enough cash flow to keep going – you have a real responsibility to real people when you are running a business in the real world (24:14)
Connect with Jo:

Transcript

[00:00:35] A.J. Lawrence: Hey everyone! Welcome back to another episode. I have Jo Goodall, the Co-Founder of Luna, here which is this really cool app for teenage, women, and people who identify as female. And it was really cool because [it’s] one of the few times in my life where I get to actually talk to my teenage daughter and have her go, "Oh, I know that company" when I have someone on the show. So if nothing else, this is props that I am actually relevant to my teenager’s life in this conversation.

[00:01:06] But Jo, I really like your background. Having seen that you’ve gone through the consulting world at Deloitte, you went off to be a strategy manager at Boden, then went and worked on your MBA. I would love to kind of learn more of, was this something that you were doing at Oxford? Was this a project? Did this come up?

[00:01:27] A.J. Lawrence: I love the strategy background. I have many friends who’ve done that path, McKinsey, Bain, Boston Consulting, and it’s always to me, it is that such that logical, "this is how you grow in business". As me who’s been sort of a jack of all trades all over the place, I always find it very interesting.

[00:01:45] But how did you come to Luna? Where did that come from and what was this sort of movement?

[00:01:52] Jo Goodall: So firstly, just wanna say a massive thank you for having me on today as well. Super happy to be here. And yeah, I can give you sort of a whistle-stop tour I suppose of how Luna came about. And exactly your point, we started Luna as a project whilst we were at Oxford.

[00:02:10] So I met Jaz, my Co-Founder, on the MBA. Interestingly, we had both worked as Deloitte consultants at the same time in the same building for many years, but we never actually met. And we’re pretty sure we probably were in the lift together at one point, but we never actually formally met until we both started at Oxford to do our MBA.

[00:02:30] And that was where the sort of seed of the idea of the Luna came from, which was a project, and it was called the Entrepreneurial Project where basically you had a term and the tutors said, Go away. Think of an idea, form a team, come back at the end of term and pitch it to some real investors and get their feedback.

[00:02:50] And so that’s what we did. And as a group of five women who were from all around the world, we were talking one night mostly to do with female health issues that either we were experiencing or our friends were experiencing. And at the time, we were all in our late 20s.

[00:03:07] There were some sorts of comments, there were some phrases that we just didn’t even know what they meant ourselves as late women in their late 20s. And it seemed crazy to think that we had friends who were being diagnosed with things such as PCOS or endometriosis, and we all looked at each other and said, does anyone know what the symptoms are of that? Does anyone know what that is like or what that experience is?

[00:03:35] And it was kind of a resounding sort of No. And it was shocking really to realize that as women in our late 20s, we actually didn’t really understand our bodies really in every way, and we hadn’t really been taught it. And that was where the idea came from. Because we assumed that the education that girls now receive in schools sort of 15 years later after we had left would’ve been up to date, relevant, moved with the times, etc. But it was when we went back to schools and spoke to teenagers and said, how’s the health education that you’ve received today? How’s like mental health education? How is all of that relationship education? They just said it’s in some cases pretty much non-existent and sort of left to your own devices.

[00:04:20] Unfortunately in this day and age, being left your own devices quite literally means that. And they go to TikTok and they go to Google, which when Jaz and I were teenagers, obviously TikTok wasn’t a thing. We didn’t have that as an outlet. And there are people on there who create videos that are inaccurate information, but in a lot of cases dangerous in terms of videos to say how you can stop your period and how you can lose weight really quickly, which at 13-14 years old, they do believe. And they want to try these hacks, shall we say, which end up in many cases being potentially quite dangerous. So that was really where the idea came from. We just thought, this can’t be.

[00:05:02] TikTok cannot be the way that our next generation of women are learning about their health, their body, like body image, and just positivity. There has to be a safer space, I suppose, for them to do that, and a verified space because anyone can be anyone on TikTok.

[00:05:19] A.J. Lawrence: I remember in my twenties, so I have a younger sister and I was dating someone and she was talking to my sister and she was like, do you know about this? And so this woman I was dating bought my sister, Our Bodies, Ourselves from the late sixties. And it’s funny, looking at Luna, I was like, wow, that looks like a modern live version of that. But I remember how my sister, and my sister and I have jokingly talked about it since, none of her friends had ever heard of it.

[00:05:52] This was such great information yet no one knew about it, and it’s sad. You’ve created this great resource, and that is what I think is so cool. So you created this out of the program, you launch it, where are you now? Sort of both with Luna but then as yourself, from that sort of startup entrepreneur. I mean obviously still early stages for you, but where do you see yourself as an entrepreneur nowadays?

[00:06:21] Jo Goodall: Yeah, it’s a great question because I feel like we’ve been through and we are still going through the whole process of, from literally the seed of an idea where it was Jaz and I working out of a hotel lobby because we couldn’t afford an office space.

[00:06:38] So back in the day when we first started, which was September 2021, it was like I say, it was Jaz and I, we were working hotel lobbies for free wifi. And it was very much, building this from the ground up. And it took us a year to actually launch the app on the App Store. So neither of us have a technical background, so we couldn’t actually code it or build it ourselves.

[00:07:04] So we had to obviously raise investment from investors to kind of be able to afford very expensive tech people, who have amazing skills to be able to build these apps. So that obviously took us a few months to actually create like a prototype and launch it with a few hundred users who were kind of willing to be sort of testers for us.

[00:07:25] And then once we actually raised our pre-seed round, we were able then to hire some developers, build out the team, etc, and so the process of that has sort of happened over the last year, so 2022. And I think personally to see our growth as well from when it was just the two of us, now we’re a team of six soon to be seven, and just constantly growing the business.

[00:07:47] We actually launched on the app store officially in November last year. So we’ve only really been live on the App Store for about four months now. Coming up. Yeah, four and a half months. So yeah, it’s all still very new and all still growing. But definitely in the space of 18 months that we’ve kind of been working on this, as entrepreneurs we’ve obviously definitely grown and grown our team but grown the remit as well of Luna and what we do.

[00:08:15] A.J. Lawrence: So you decided that you wanna do this, you wanna kinda come through, from the project, did the end of the term like the investor pool you pitched, was there any traction there or was it just like they had put some people together? Because I’ve been in these two.

[00:08:30] I am an investor. I’m an LP in some angel funds, so sometimes in universities. And then you hear the pitches and you’re like, okay, I’m not even relevant to anything.

[00:08:38] Jo Goodall: Yeah.

[00:08:39] A.J. Lawrence: It was like, great, you’ve given someone a check once. I would love to know sort of like, what was that experience? But then when you do decide to go out to the angel, and go find your pre-seed, how was that a different experience? How did that differ from sort of that pitch?

[00:08:56] Jo Goodall: Yeah. So the pitch at the end of term was in May 2021, so we were obviously still on the course. And interestingly, it was the three investors there that actually turned around and said, this is actually a really good idea guys. Like, who is taking this forward? Is anyone taking it forward? And at the time, none of us were actually. So the three of the women on the project had all secured jobs for after graduation. Jaz was interested in going into VC, and I wanted to do something entrepreneurial. But I’d never really thought that it could be this.

[00:09:31] So they planted the seed and then I convinced Jaz over the summer that we should try it. And then when we actually then went back to raise our pre-seed round, which was in March 2022, so a year ago, we went back to those investors and we said, we’ve actually done it. We’ve done what you said, we’ve built a product. Are you gonna put your money where your mouth is? You said it was a great idea. And they did.

[00:09:56] And they are now investors. So one of our biggest investors is Octopus Ventures and they were on the panel and then also then went to invest in us in our pre-seed round. So it was really great because it sort of came full circle. It wasn’t just them saying, oh this is a great idea, and then nothing else happened. They actually did go on to invest.

[00:10:17] But the rest of our pre-seed round was angels and that was obviously a different process as well. Finding angels is very difficult. To anyone out there who’s currently looking for Angels, I feel for you. I know how hard it is to kind of get in front of them. You have to send a lot of emails and a lot of cold LinkedIn messages and sometimes they land, but more often than not, they don’t really. But we did end up pre-seed on £600,000.

[00:10:43] So we were really pleased with it. And it was a mixture of angels and then a couple of VCs as well. So it was an interesting process. Obviously having never raised any kind of capital before, how we actually went about the process, we would probably do it different if we were doing it again now, which we are. We’re doing it again, raising our seed round at the moment.

[00:11:03] But yeah, super interesting process and very, very hard. But I think we sort of knew that to begin with. But once we’ve kind of secured those first checks, it really did help with the momentum and the fact that Octopus were in was also a great sales for investors as well.

[00:11:18] A.J. Lawrence: Yeah, I think we’re connected through Dominnique Karetsos of Amboy Street Ventures, Healthy Pleasure Group. She’s been on the show. They do an investment fund for women-led tech and women physical and women pleasure tech. So I thought we were. If not, I will do the introduction on that.

[00:11:39] Jo Goodall: Yeah, that would be fun.

[00:11:40] A.J. Lawrence: Yeah. That’s the fun part of this. You talked about, you found a group of, young people to be on the app, how are you going about developing your audience here on the app? And then I would love to know how you got that first audience and how you’re developing your audience now.

[00:11:56] Jo Goodall: Yeah, definitely. Our community are super important to us. They become our advocates really, and they help spread the word. So our first initial users came from school visits that we did very early on.

[00:12:11] So we had a few connections into schools, either like family and family friends who were teachers. And so we could go into schools and speak to the users. And from all of those school visits, we would always pick up some really key interested users, which was great because they then became our sort of super user group. And literally from the word go when we were building this, they’ve been involved the whole time.

[00:12:36] So everything from helping us choose the colors of the branding, choosing even down to the layouts and what features we include. Because obviously, Jaz and I are not teenagers anymore, and our teenage life was very different to what teenagers are experiencing now, especially as the majority have smartphones. Majority are on social media.

[00:12:58] And so nurturing that community is really important to us. And I think the one thing about Luna that is a really great differentiator is that it’s not a social media platform. So we don’t have anywhere on there that our users can talk to each other or send messages to each other, anything like that. They can only communicate with Luna essentially.

[00:13:20] That’s really important to us because we wanna make sure it’s a safe space for everyone. It’s a positive space for everyone. And so we know that the sort of communications that we put out are safe. All of our content is created by medics so it’s all factually accurate. It’s all verified. It’s all anonymous as well.

[00:13:38] So we have a function called Ask Luna, which is where our users can submit an anonymous question to Luna, and it will be answered by our medical professionals. And having it as anonymous has been a really great feature that they really do like, because I think even though there is no space for chatting or sending messages, it still does foster a sense of community because they can see what other questions people are asking.

[00:14:05] They dunno who they’ve come from. They’ve got no name, no age or anything attached to them. But they can just scroll through literally thousands of questions and know that they’re not alone, that they feel safe, like they’re not the only ones thinking these questions if they think they are embarrassing or awkward or weird, then it still has that sense of community about it.

[00:14:26] So, we continue to visit schools as well because obviously every teenager has to go to school. So it’s a great kind of place to introduce them to the app. And the schools are also super grateful for the resource as well because personal and social health education in the UK is very stretched.

[00:14:44] Like teachers have a lot on their plates and that’s like one other topic area that they’ve got to think about. And I think they really appreciate having an extra resource to help with that.

[00:14:53] A.J. Lawrence: No, and my youngest is 12 and any sort of help or guidance I try and give them is immediately like, no. Get away. Just stay away. But it is very interesting watching they’ve been trying to understand themselves and figuring out and trying to communicate how they identify themselves. And trying to push them towards resources like this is very important because there is that easy access, and I don’t wanna say it’s just TikTok or whatever because that gets over, but at times it does seem like the more easily available, easily digestible information becomes what the prevailing thought process for them is.

[00:15:43] And so it’s like, oh, check this out. And I do notice there are times I get it right and they love it. But then there are times where it’s like, it doesn’t fit how they look at the world or doesn’t speak to them directly. So something like Luna is really great because it is created by, created with, and for, so it’s really cool to see that.

[00:16:06] As you’re growing, are you finding out that every good product when you launch it, you think it’ll be used one way? Or the type of information that your community will be using, are you finding it different or changing or evolving in ways that you weren’t really expecting?

[00:16:25] Jo Goodall: Yeah, so it is interesting cuz when we launched, we obviously launched the kind of basic version should we say, and since then we’ve been adding new features. Most of them based on feature requests that the users have sent in themselves, which is great that we kind of have this channel with them as well where they can suggest new features and new ideas.

[00:16:46] And I think from our data and from just our hunch, we all thought that the Ask Luna section would be the most popular and that would be the one that they all use, which they definitely do because our content lead Ursula who deals with all of the Ask Luna questions is bombarded with them daily. Like literally hundreds every day.

[00:17:06] And so we all just assumed, oh, they just go straight to Ask Luna and ask a question, you know, don’t really look up much else on the app. But then we dig deeper into the data, sent out surveys as well and spoke to the users and said, what are your favorite features on the app? And it was amazing to see that actually all the big features- so Luna Learns, which is the content piece where we have very short articles and very short videos on all of these topics, which are created by our medics.

[00:17:31] Then we’ve got Ask Luna, and then we’ve also got a period and emotion tracker, which is super, super simple. Really doesn’t ask many questions at all. It’s literally four things that you can log every day. And we assumed, and we thought that actually the ask section would be way more popular than the other two. But it turned out that actually pretty much third, third, third in terms of which one was their favorite feature and how they’re using it. So that’s been really positive and really great to see.

[00:18:00] And as we just add new features and new things into the app, we’re just keeping an eye on that to kind of see. We obviously don’t wanna be overloading the app with features that no one really uses, but it’s been really positive in the sense, and also that they’ve been sharing it with their friends.

[00:18:15] So everyone has their own unique referral link in the app, and then referring a friend gets you 10 points and 100 points gets you a Luna Tote bag. And they’ve been referring their friends as well, which is just great to see. That they’re sharing and they’re wanting to share this information amongst their peers, which is traditionally seen as quite awkward.

[00:18:38] Even within friendship groups we get so many questions saying like, oh, I don’t know how to talk about my period with my friends. Or I haven’t started yet and the rest of my friends have and I feel really left out, what should I do? But they are sort of referring their friends onto the platform, which is great. And that’s obviously helped our growth massively cuz we haven’t been having to go to schools to do that. It’s just organic within itself.

[00:19:03] A.J. Lawrence: As this grows as you move forward, what are you seeing as where you wanna develop as an entrepreneur to help this grow?

[00:19:11] Jo Goodall: Yeah, so for me, like growth is definitely on our radar and we really do think that Luna has worldwide potential. There are teenagers across the globe who are all and will all experience puberty at some stage throughout their teenage years and they all seem to have similar questions, similar worries, especially if they are connected to the internet in some way.

[00:19:36] They have found information that is inaccurate and unreliable to an extent, which makes them worried and anxious. So we definitely see that growth is on our roadmap massively. And we would love to obviously conquer like the UK and Ireland first before we kind of look overseas and further abroad to continue to grow.

[00:19:54] But for me, as an entrepreneur, it’s really exciting. This is the kind of thing I’ve always wanted to do, but never thought had the idea that was good enough to do, and to be able to kind of follow that sort of trajectory of when we launched, it was very much London centric. We know now it’s spread further outside of the UK. We want to then extend our reach across the UK this year and then, like I said, overseas and internationally next year.

[00:20:21] And this is just super exciting for me because as a ex-consultant as you mentioned at the start, being able to plan all of these out and really work through the strategy and how we’re gonna do it and linking it back to where’s the funding coming from, where’s the revenue coming from, how’s that all gonna work, is something that I’m enjoying but also still learning lots about every day.

[00:20:42] And I think you just will continue to do so as an entrepreneur. Because you’re constantly growing with the business and as the business grows, you kind of have to extend your horizons and reach as an entrepreneur as well.

[00:20:54] A.J. Lawrence: Two things you said really made sense. I mean, because my daughter was until last year, my teenage, was in British school in Spain. When we were living in Spain, she was going to a British school. The fact that her friends would know about this makes sense because many of her friends were British and even though the Spanish and Scandinavian, even Japanese of all things, that’s the love of expat schools.

[00:21:19] But it’s funny that that network of like, oh, we’re in UK. But then, it’s starting to scatter throughout and just hearing about it, knowing that my child heard about it even though we’re here now in the US. That’s an interesting kind of network.

[00:21:34] I like how you’re also talking about watching it from your experience as a consultant and then just from business school. I do remember there were things I learned in business school that you say yes to when you kind of read them, but they hit completely different when they actually happened in business.

[00:21:52] And I’d be curious to see how that’s happening for you. Like all of a sudden things like, oh yes, you’ll see this, or distribution of this, and it’s like, oh yeah, that’s how. But like, Oh, that’s what the burn rate feels like.

[00:22:07] Jo Goodall: Yeah.

[00:22:08] A.J. Lawrence: For me, it’s like how things felt. Things that I never thought would actually be moments of actual feeling from things I learned or things I experienced while working when I had my own business. Are you finding like that type of emotional impact is completely not what you expected?

[00:22:26] Jo Goodall: Yes.

[00:22:26] A.J. Lawrence: Sorry, I was leading the witness.

[00:22:27] Jo Goodall: Yeah, no, I mean definitely the emotional rollercoaster of being an entrepreneur is very real. But it is interesting what you said about business school and what you learn in, I suppose, a classroom setting and the sort of level of practicality that goes with it is perhaps reading about a case study that’s been put together and kind of talking about a case study.

[00:22:48] Usually, all the ones I mostly came across, were big established businesses and how are they implementing marketing strategies with big multimillion pound marketing budgets. Where would you spend the money? That kind of thing. And it’s very interesting when you then go out and sort of apply that in the real world with a marketing budget of say £10,000 or £5,000, that’s when it’s sort of it hits you that actually there’s definitely the level of the practical and the more practical side of business school is missing.

[00:23:20] But I do think the fact that we got to do the entrepreneurial project was kind of a nice taster of what that entrepreneurial life would be. And it gave us time to really think about market research, loads of desk research, going out and speaking to users. Actually I do think there’s perhaps, and some startups and businesses that might actually even skip that step, they’re just like, I know I’ve got this great idea. It’s gonna work. I’m just gonna go for it. Whereas we definitely had the luxury of time to really think about the idea and kind of go through that process of researching and speaking to users, etc.

[00:23:53] I’m so glad we did because they were the ones that kind of gave us more ideas for different topics that they wanted included on the app and things like that. So yeah, it’s very different to obviously sitting at a desk in a lecture theater and hearing some of the sort of best of business brains kind of talk you through these case studies to actually being in real life in the trenches, like you say, checking the burn rate.

[00:24:14] I check the bank account every day. I mean, every day. I just check the bank account. I know how much money’s gonna be there, but you just have to be so like, check the bank account, check the download numbers. Like these are the things that nobody mentions at business school, that these were actually on a day-to-day basis you’ll be doing.

[00:24:31] A.J. Lawrence: That bank account one is definite and it’s the weirdest one. I am so happy, I did, definitely in my last business. But there does come a point in your growth and it’s probably one, changes in your business model, revenue, and funding sources and all that. I was bootstrapped, so a little different, but I knew any given day, I always knew the bills in my head and I always knew the cash on hand and I always had that kind of concept of what was generally out there.

[00:25:01] And that was great until such point as we got bigger and the fluctuations, I still had a very strong understanding, but when I finally brought in a fractional CFO and realizing like, okay, I was getting a little off of my estimates and getting a little more exact by working with this. We were able to better plan.

[00:25:24] But yeah, I agree. That early stage, it is so important and it’s never heard of business professor and the same thing. It’s like strategy and it’s like living the numbers. You hear about using numbers to tell a story, but what you don’t hear is how you have to live those numbers to be able to tell that story.

[00:25:48] By seeing those numbers every day and seeing how they fluctuate – what’s our burn? What’s this? How does this change?- you can inherently tell that story better than someone who looks at a report and then says, oh, well what’s happening there?

[00:26:03] Jo Goodall: And as you grow as well, this is what we found, as you grow and hire people and pay their salaries, pay their pension, you have a real responsibility then because you are paying someone’s mortgage or rent. And keeping an eye on that cash flow and the bank account to ensure that you can make payroll at the end of the month and you can keep all these people in work.

[00:26:27] It’s very, very emotional and again, not taught at business school. Don’t overhire, don’t get in too many people at once cuz actually their costs do add up, you know?

[00:26:37] A.J. Lawrence: Oh yeah. When I went to school, we had a week of entrepreneurism as part of our overall strategy. So when I got my MBA in International Business, there was one week during the strategies semester that we talked about entrepreneurism and there was only two of us idiots who’s raised their hands and said we wanted be entrepreneurs. So it has changed from the early nineties to now.

[00:27:01] I’ve seen whole programs based on it, but its so funny, like making payroll, doing payroll and accounting. Had operational, I had it in my finance, but never had the concept of making payroll. Did you have much of an impact? I would assume not anything on a structural, but like over the weekend was one of the strangest weekends with what happened in Silicon Valley Bank. Because I knew almost no one other than some funds that I was an LP that had money with them.

[00:27:32] I have friends who have companies who missed payroll on Friday because of what happened. I try not to go into current events that much because this is about where you are, but did you see anything happening about that over the weekends for you guys? In sort of the startup community?

[00:27:49] Jo Goodall: Yeah, very much so. The UK startup community was definitely hit very, very hard I would say on Friday, definitely Saturday there was a lot of of chats. So I’m in quite a few different WhatsApp groups for different angel communities, different incubator groups who had startups who had their money with SVB. Some of them had all of their money in there. They didn’t have it in multiple accounts.

[00:28:16] Luckily for us, we weren’t affected in any way. But we were observing in these community, all of these chats. People just saying, what do we do? Do we take our money out? How do we go about this? What’s the best course of action? Amazingly over the weekend, HSBC and the UK government stepped in as well, which has obviously helped massively.

[00:28:36] But yeah, it was a sort of like big sort of shock event I suppose, that we’ve experienced as entrepreneurs and being in that ecosystem. And I’m so glad, we didn’t have to kind of panic, get our money out and try and put it somewhere else or anything like that.

[00:28:49] But observing other founders from the sidelines and being a part of those communities that many people were affected, it was very hard. Very hard to see, and very hard to sit back and just, watch kind of unfold because you just never know of these things. Like it really could have gone the worst way possible then I think a lot of startups would’ve been completely under the water, shall we say. So thankfully that’s kind of resolved to some extent now. But yeah, very, very interesting that it sort of unfolded so quickly.

[00:29:19] A.J. Lawrence: Yeah, I think there will be ongoing. It is interesting, it’s a type of risk. Even after playing in crypto and having been involved, I saw people who make their living by talking about the startup community.

[00:29:30] It’s like of all the bingos of blacks swung, of like the possible things, it’s like would anyone would have said a bank failure non-related to crypto, non-related to fraud, non-related from interest rate changes. So it is an interesting, how does that change. And this is for much later, too early to know, but like as an entrepreneur, we’re constantly having to do risk assessment. Do we now have to add financial resources? Not even just our own burn rate but our own financial partner risk assessment? Talking about adding complexity.

[00:30:09] Jo Goodall: Exactly, and it’s so scary when you think about it like that. And the fact that even if you do spread your risk and spread your money over multiple bank accounts, like all it takes is for one of them to kind of come down, to crumble. And you’ve lost a portion of your cash.

[00:30:28] And when you are a startup and cash is so tight and cash is not easy to come by. Then it’s very scary. And like I said, we’re going out now to do our seed round and I know it’s not gonna be easy. These things never are. And it’s just like you would hate to be in the position where you’ve also then lost a portion of your cash through no fault of your own, and then also trying to figure out more funding as well.

[00:30:52] A.J. Lawrence: I am glad you brought it up. It was very nice last night to see all the backstopping. First, I think, as you said, I think HSBC. The UK government made the deal with HSBC and then the US government a few hours later, and I’m saying government, but the specific agencies then kind of said they would backstop. It was good to see that.

[00:31:12] In looking forward, I can see very much sort of the value proposition you are generating with Luna. I can see the value you will be growing, if for no other reason then I see the value for my own children, but like how are you looking as you move forward what success is going to mean for you as an entrepreneur separate from Luna. How do you define it and how do you go about evaluating that for yourself?

[00:31:40] Jo Goodall: Yeah, so success for me personally, I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I’ve always wanted to build a business and always wanted to have something that I can say, I’ve built that. I’ve built that from the ground up kind of thing.

[00:31:53] But alongside that, I’ve always wanted to do something that helps others as well. And I feel like success for me with Luna, yes, obviously we would love kind of great valuations when we go to the funding round and build ourselves some wealth from it. Because obviously being a startup founder, if you don’t make any money really at all, so you know, having that kind of in the future would be nice.

[00:32:14] But more importantly is that impact. And the social impact I think, having now spent so much time with our users and seeing how Luna and everything that we do affects them and their lives, it is about making a difference to people’s lives. And we get messages every single day saying, how grateful they are for Luna as a resource and how much it’s helping them.

[00:32:40] And I just think that, I’m sure I can speak for Jaz as well, for us to say, we can look back on this time and actually see that we’ve made a difference in the future of a generation, more than one generation of women, and that they are grateful and they turn around and say, actually Luna was the app that got me through puberty. Luna was the app that got me through my teenage years.

[00:33:01] For me that is definitely what success looks like and I can rest easy then I suppose, and kind of feel that actually I have done some good in the world, which I know obviously lots of people aspire to do. And I just think through Luna, we will be able to do that.

[00:33:16] A.J. Lawrence: Very cool. Well, other than if you have teenagers and pushing them to go check out weareluna.app, how else can anyone engage with you? What would be helpful for you from the audience?

[00:33:30] Jo Goodall: Ooh, so many things. Like I’ve mentioned a few times, we are doing our seed rounds, so any investors, angels out there who are interested in this space, then absolutely like please do get in touch. I’m easily findable on LinkedIn and always open to kind of those conversations.

[00:33:48] And like I said, we are mainly focused on the UK and Ireland at the moment, but we would love to hear from people in overseas and other countries of how health education is different in their country. And even if they have teenage daughters, it would be brilliant to hear from parents to say, ask for how they are dealing with it and what their school provides or doesn’t provide. All this information is so, so useful for us.

[00:34:13] So definitely intros to investors, VCs, angels, parents, even doctors. We have a huge team now of medics, who like I say, create the content and answer questions, but we’re always looking to grow the team. We never have enough, we could always do with more doctors to answer questions. So definitely those as well.

[00:34:34] A.J. Lawrence: Oh, cool. We’ll make sure we have all that. We’ll have the links and we’ll put this into the show notes. We’ll put it into our socials and on the newsletter for this. I’m really excited to see where you go with this. Because like I said, this is something I am, as a parent, trying to learn and support and grow.

[00:34:56] This is a type of thing I think, many people in our audience can see the need for their own children. So I really cannot wait to see all things you do with this.

[00:35:06] Jo Goodall: Thank you.

[00:35:06] A.J. Lawrence: Thank you so much for coming on the show today. I’ll have to have you come back down the road.

[00:35:09] Jo Goodall: Yeah, definitely. Tell you all about progress and definitely when we launch in the US then, we’d love to come back and tell you all about that as well. So, no, thank you so much for having me today.

[00:35:23] A.J. Lawrence: No, thank you Jo. Everyone, please go check out weareluna if you have children and teenagers who could use it. And as always, please go to beyond8figures.com and sign up for our newsletter so that way whenever we have amazing guests like Jo coming on the show, you’ll be the first to know. I’ll be talking to everyone soon. Thank you.

[00:35:50] This episode of Beyond 8 Figures is over, but your journey as an entrepreneur continues. So if we can help you with anything, please just let us know. And if you liked this episode, please share it with someone who might learn from it. Until next time, keep growing and find the joy in your journey. This is A.J., and I’ll be talking to you soon. Bye-bye.