Matrescence: The Science Behind Why Motherhood Might Make You a Better Founder ft. Michelle Battersby

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0:28Jasmine:Hey, business besties. Welcome back to Female Founder World. It's Jasmine. I'm the host of the show and the creator of Female Founder World. Today, I'm chatting with Michelle Battersby, who is the former founder and were you CEO? CMO. CMO at Sunroom, which was acquired by FanFix last year. You're now the president at Peanut. You are just this incredible, I think, role model, actually, for women who want to be building businesses, balancing ambition and motherhood, and living big lives. When you look back at all of the things that you've done in your career, what do you point to and think, that is my superpower, that is the thing that I bring to the table that no one else can do?

1:09Oh, I think it's changed actually throughout my career. Like I think what my superpower is now is different to what it was back in 2016 when I took that first job at Bumble.

1:26Jasmine:Yeah. So I guess how it all started probably was just not being afraid to challenge the status quo and maybe take the opportunities that I think on paper other people probably wouldn't have taken. So in 2016, when I was hired at Bumble, none of my friends had ever heard of the company. I'd never heard of the brand. I was one of the first employees globally, the first in Australia. And I took it because at that point I was hating my job. I was working in HR, in investment banks. And I was 25, I had nothing to lose. And this opportunity essentially fell on my lap and I thought, okay, I'll take this.

2:07And my first task was to hire a team. So just to paint a picture of what it was like back then, all the people I was speaking to were saying no, no one wanted to do it with me. And I think that shows that other people couldn't see the potential of it. I took it because I felt, I just had this huge gut feeling that it was going to be huge and it was going to change my life. That was literally my inner thought process as I took that job. And so I guess maybe that was a bit of a superpower. I think I am pretty good at spotting opportunities maybe before other people see them. And that has been proven out to me with Bumble and then also proven out to me with my own company, Sunroom.

2:50But I think as my career has evolved, something that's become a bit of a superpower might actually be my personal brand. I think stepping into this role at Peanut and also when I started my business Sunroom, it is such an advantage to have a bit of an audience at your fingertips that trust you and are really interested in your career and what you're working on and to be able to involve them in your decision making and ask them questions, but then also to be able to do press and be a spokesperson, not everyone who has the skillset can also bring that. And that's actually uncomfortable to say out loud because I worry, I sound arrogant, but evolving that skillset was deeply uncomfortable.

3:46And when I stepped into the job at Bumble, it was never be a spokesperson for the brand, it ended up evolving into that. And I get very anxious to public speak and I get very scared to go on TV, but I was always so committed to the growth of the brand. I recognize pretty quickly, oh, I am also a marketing tool. And if I use myself and like, almost like I'm a puppeteering myself to, you know, put on a bit of a performance, If I can perform well in this role to the public, I will be able to convince people to download this product, which makes me look even better at my job. And so I guess I've thought of myself as just like another marketing lever I can pull at time to time.

4:36It's so interesting that you say that because we are constantly having this conversation in the female founder world community where I think a lot of us are building businesses that are solving a problem that we have in our lives and therefore we embody

4:52Jasmine:our customer. And what a superpower that you have as a founder who is so close to your customer and can embody them through content, through the way that you show up online, press the way that you speak to your product. What a superpower that you have that perhaps some of the bigger companies that you're going up against just can't compete with. But we always hear people say, I'm not comfortable on camera. I don't know what to post. I don't know what to show. And I'm fascinated that you said that you're not comfortable with that because you are so natural. I want to know how you honed that skill where you could be this forward-facing founder when it didn't come naturally to you.

5:30I think I'm pretty good at faking it, like fake it till you make it. And I have always been good under pressure. So I guess because I also had like an athlete background, I have been in positions over and over where the stakes are really high. I feel very anxious and I do a lot of inner self-talk where I would just lie to myself. Before I used to do big races, I would sit at the start line and say, you've done it before, you can do it again. You've done it before, you can do it again. I say that to myself all the time. Yeah, even when I've never done it before. And I would just like lie, lie, lie, you know, like you, you can do this.

6:06And so there's definitely some of that. I also, from a young age with butterflies, like, you know, butterflies in your stomach, when you get really scared, I, anytime those kick in, I just say to myself, uh, you've got these because this matters and it's good that it matters to you and your body is preparing you for something big. If you didn't have butterflies, it would be weird. And I try to just trick myself into like the pumping of your heartbeat in the chest and feeling kind of sick is just your body preparing you for something big. So I suppose those little mindset shifts help. But I also did media training at Bumble over and over where I would go to a journalist's house actually in this suburb and she would interview me on camera.

6:55I would do it once a year. and so I would go to her house, her husband was a producer, and he would film and she would just come at me with some of the most like brutal interview questions or a journalist that maybe is trying to trick you or a topic that might be hard to speak to like safety or violence or yeah, legal struggles, those sorts of things. And so I would then watch myself back on camera, respond to all of these questions. And I would say that I would do certain things when I was nervous or I picked up how my voice would change if I was hesitant. And so I guess I went through training in a sense to be a spokesperson, but I still don't nail it.

7:42Like I will do interviews all the time and I'll listen to myself back thinking, oh, that response sucked or like, I could have done that so much better or I wish I prepared for that one differently. I definitely am not perfect with it. But I also just will tell myself, you're being asked about these sorts of things because you're the expert on it. You are always going to know more about this topic than the person on the other side. So you can operate from a point of confidence, I suppose. But what you were saying about when you embody the consumer, like you are the audience, that is also such an X Factor.

8:24Like I have held these marketing roles in multiple companies now. I never studied marketing. I couldn't really tell you what the theory behind marketing is or what's in a textbook, but I have always been the demographic that the product is trying to target in every single one of my roles. And I have always applied lived experience to it. And that was also part of our training at Bumble.

8:51Jasmine:I want to go back to the media training. Do you think that media training with a journalist is helpful when you're showing up on the internet and on your own channels? Has that helped you as a content? You're not a content creator. I mean, I guess you kind of were when you were doing Sunroom because you were earning an income from the content you were creating there. But do you think that it's helped you in the way that you have shaped the narratives of your content online? Or is it just a confidence thing where you feel like you can handle what's going to come at you from being more visible? I would actually put them in two completely separate buckets, to be honest, because being media trained to be a spokesperson for a brand is very much about ensuring you know how to deliver the key messages over and over and over and how when you're actually asked a question from a journalist, you don't really need to answer that exact question.

9:37You can kind of take the conversation wherever you want to ensure that you've left the audience, whatever, with whatever the main messages you're trying to get across. Whereas on your own socials, I think it's much better to come across as really unpolished and off the cuff and the way that the algorithm responds to the scrappiest video that you could have possibly shot these days with a line that is a bit of a mess, you know, and people can kind of tell when it's been rehearsed. whereas it's just your most authentic self coming across. I think, I don't know, I think I've toot and froed in my mind.

10:23I don't think everyone should or can actually do that and not everyone needs to be able to do that. I don't know if being like coming across as an authentic, organic creator is something that just comes naturally to everyone. And I think you can tell when someone's really trying to do it and they're not quite landing it. Do you feel that way?

10:52Jasmine:I mean, look, I think that I can tell when someone is trying to be something that they're not authentically. And I think that's what comes across. I think that it's not like some people are just born entertainers. I've got Natalie on my team is my right hand in everything. And when she does a video, she's just like, she just is that girl. Like she's charismatic. She's funny. She just like comes alive on the camera. I am not someone who feels super comfortable doing like skits or dancing or being like that kind of person on camera. And when I do it, I feel like you can tell that it's not me and it feels forced.

11:28Jasmine:And I think that you can tell that when you're looking at people's content. Whereas I just think people need to like lean more into who they authentically are and the way that they show up. Yeah, I totally agree. And I also think for people that are founders, there is that pressure of a founder driven brand and putting content out there. But I also think in today's world, it doesn't need to be video. So if you are the person that you maybe don't have that conviction when you show up face to camera, then do like choose Substack, choose LinkedIn. Like I still think you'd be sitting on really amazing insides and you can choose the medium in terms of which you're going to go for.

12:10I do love that about the world at the moment. Like I love how much Substack is blowing up. I really think LinkedIn is a gold mine. There's not enough people creating content on LinkedIn. And so if you can get on there and do it well, you will. It has legs.

12:25Jasmine:You've had a really close proximity with some really incredible people. And I feel like that has really shaped who you've become and the leader that you've become. And I want to pull out some of the things that you've learned from those people. So Whitney Wolford, you worked really close with her. You were the seventh employee at Bumble. She is this incredible female founder. And then your own parents. I was listening to you tell the story about how you grew up in this household with really high achieving athlete parents. Did one of your parents win an Olympic medal or something wild like that?

12:53Jasmine:Yeah. Well, both of them kind of. My dad has an Olympic medal and like multiple world championships. And my mum also has world championships. Okay. Casual. You came from a very normal household. I want to understand a little bit more about how that has informed the way that you show up as a leader. You know, you're not building a business right now, but you are still very much entrepreneurial within another company. I'm curious about how that's shaped the way that you show up. You spoke about that self-talk and I think that that is really interesting and something that obviously has been ingrained in you from really young.

13:27Yeah. I mean, Whitney was a big one. I think it was just so fortunate in my career that that was my first experience. I mean, I also really don't take for granted working in investment banks and seeing how these huge global organizations operate. I think that that's a really good lesson as well when you are surrounded by the red tape and the processes and the policies. And especially from an HR background, you get firsthand experience into what can happen when you don't treat people well. And when you don't speak to people respectfully in the workplace and when you don't performance manage someone correctly.

14:05And yeah, all of that kind of stuff. It was a really like it was a great way to start my career. And then with Whitney, it was just, she from the get-go just wanted every country lead to succeed. So I was originally hired as the country lead for Australia and my task was to launch Bumble into the Australian market. And then I ended up launching it into like five different other countries in APAC. I hired the team out here and like built it from the ground up basically. You were 25? 25. The best thing about her was that from the moment she hired me, she basically said, you know, the Australian consumer far better than I do.

14:44Here's what's worked in the US. Take it and just go and do whatever you want with it. And so I got handed this playbook and I really just had to apply it to an Australian market. But she just trusted me wholeheartedly from the moment that it kicked off. Like I was very much left alone and I had the resources and I had the support when I needed it, but I could try and fail and try again. And it didn't matter. The culture at Bumble was very much about do things, do things quickly. Doesn't matter if it doesn't work. Just don't try that again and on to the next. And so I built a lot of confidence in my intuition.

15:28That was the big thing that happened with me at Bumble because I didn't know what I was doing at all, but I was the demographic and I did think I could figure out how to speak to them and present the brand to them in a way that landed. and to be able to take, you know, like take the resources and the backing from Bumble and go and do that allowed me to believe in myself because it just grew from the moment that we started and just everything that we did worked and it just kept working and it was really this rocket ship and it ended up going from this brand I'd never heard of to this multi-billion dollar unicorn by the time that I left and she really wanted me to be the face and be front and centre.

16:16And I remember at the Melbourne Cup one year, there was an interview and a journalist wanted to speak to her and she was like, no, it's not me, it's Michelle. She did this, speak to her. They're like, we don't want to speak to Michelle. They're like, well, she was like, well, if you don't get the interview. And she was very much like that. I would describe her as a very egoless leader and she really listened to everyone around her and she gave a lot of us autonomy. And one of Bumble's slogans at that time was be the CEO. And if you were a country lead, there were a few of us. There was one in France, one in London, one in Germany and me.

16:55And if you were a country lead, you really were like a mini CEO in the company running your region and being able to make all the decisions. And so I think that was an incredible lesson because I felt how it feels when you are trusted and you can just run with it. And I had never felt so free and I, it's so overused these days, but the word, you know, empowered, I'd never felt so free and empowered to just be able to make decision after decision and keep going. And that was very motivating and led to a lot of momentum. And that is actually the feeling that I've chased in my career ever since. It's not been about titles.

17:43It's been about feeling very free. And like, I don't know what day of the week it is. Like, I don't know when it's Saturday or Sunday. I don't, because I don't mind having to work on every single day of the week if I need to. I'm not dreading showing up at my desk on a Monday. I'm not waiting for the clock to strike five. so I can get up and leave. Like that is the worst feeling to me of working. And so Bumble completely changed that. And it was a big part of it was Whitney's leadership and how trusted we all were.

18:15Jasmine:Something that I really respect about you. And one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you and have you on the show is just, you seem like someone who is really unafraid of backing themselves. And I look at your career and you left really big jobs, really great jobs to start your own business. And we constantly hear in this community, how do I know when to go full time? When's the right moment to leave my job? It feels really scary. And the further you go in your career, I feel like it can feel like you've got more to lose. And so it can be harder to make those big choices and big pivots, even though you know in your gut that that's what you want to do.

18:51Jasmine:Talk to me through the early days of starting Sunroom and how you knew that was an opportunity you wanted to pursue and why you didn't just start something small on the side while you kept your other, you know, big job? Why did you make that decision? So when I started working on Sign Room, it was the end of 2020 lockdown. And I think in 2020, most people got taken to a dark place. I had just come off this absolute rollercoaster of bumble. One year I didn't even rent a house. I was traveling so much, just doing so many amazing, yeah it just was the most fulfilling role ever and then I took a job at another startup because I felt like I chose to leave Bumble because I could tell it was becoming a bit corporate to be honest and it was getting ready to IPO and I loved that place and I wanted to make sure I left loving it I wanted that like magic and the sparkles and so I feel like I just left at the best time.

19:49And I had considered starting my own company. But one thing I didn't get exposure to at Bumble was because I was based in Australia. I wasn't at HQ. I never worked much with the product team. I'd never really worked with engineers. And so I felt like I needed to get a few more notches under my belt if I was going to go and start my own company. So I went and worked at another startup, which was an Australian app where I could work at HQ. I could get my hands on the product, I could build out that skillset. But I probably worked there for two months when we went into lockdown. And that just like kind of sucked the life out of me, to be honest.

20:30And I started really thinking about, I think I had forgotten something in terms of what I, where my passion stems from. Definitely it's women. Like my purpose in life is to build products that better the lives of women. But there's a second piece to that in that I like things that are controversial. One thing I liked about Bumble was I would find myself having arguments with random men in bars about why women should make the first move. And then I went and worked for another women founded startup, but it was in the health and wellness space where you don't really have to convince people that exercise is good for them, you know?

21:14Still a lot of meaning and a lot of purpose, but it wasn't really like lighting that fire in me. And so I ended up in lockdown. I met the woman who became my co-founder, Lucy Mort. She approached me and started speaking about OnlyFans and the creator economy. And I had never really, I think I was missing that really big feeling. Like when I was at Bumble, everything felt really big and global and like we could come out and make huge statements and really change the world. And I was really craving that energy again. And speaking to Lucy, she just had really big ambitions and big dreams. And it didn't even really matter at that point what she was talking about.

22:03I just thought you are someone I need to work with. You're the sort of person I need to be around every single day. and I didn't know much about OnlyFans and I didn't know much about the creator economy, but I started looking into it and it was feeling controversial. It was feeling a bit scary. And I started speaking to mentors about going into that space and a lot of people were telling me not to, and that was just lighting the fire even more. And I started to think about, okay, people seem very scared of the idea of an OnlyFans type competitor. What if I could find a way to position this brand that like got all of those like naysayers on side you know that could be quite powerful and maybe this is a branding exercise and it's really about the positioning of this space and it needs to be presented in a way where people don't associate it with OnlyFans but it still allows women to be free and exploratory and build their confidence in a way that Instagram and TikTok, you know, on the other side of the fence doesn't.

23:06And so I began thinking about it and it was just something I could not get out of my head. And I think it was really short. It was a really short timeframe, but for me it was very long because I normally make decisions quite quickly. I think I sat on the idea of doing something with Lucy for about six weeks and I started speaking to like every creator I'd ever worked with in behind the scenes saying, have you thought about going on OnlyFans? Have you thought about going on Patreon? And literally all of them were saying yes. And that was like the green light for me where I just thought, okay, all of these people are saying they would want to go on a platform like this, but they don't want people to assume they're doing porn or like they don't want to be judged.

23:51that's telling me that something else needs to exist here. And so it was really that validation from them that led to me going all in. So I quit my job and started working on my visa like immediately. This was probably in November of 2020. And I think by January, we had raised like a few million dollars. So from that point, it all kind of moved very quickly. So you built and sold this business within what, four and a half years-ish?

24:24Jasmine:Yeah. Yeah, nearly five years. Nearly five years. And I know that you put together a bit of a doc around things that you learned building that business. What are those takeaways for those of us who are in the trenches, we're building businesses right now. What are those takeaways that you want every single woman who's building a business right now to know before she experiences it for herself? I think the first big one is Lucy and I were so on the right track with speaking to people that would have been our consumers. Like we start, our whole company was informed by what creators were telling us they wanted or needed.

25:01And that was absolutely the right way to start. What happened was we then got very tied to a certain vision that we had for the brand and the product. And that led to us building a very full feature set and coming out with a product that was not an MVP whatsoever. so ever. So you really do need to be coming out with a minimum viable product and an app is not an MVP under any circumstances. We should have started with a website. We shouldn't have just gone all out with an app. We also built and innovated, we patented a certain kind of technology which allowed for anti-screenshot and we went out and told all of our creators that we were building anti-screenshot technology, but then it took us a year to build.

25:53So we had a lot of setbacks along the way. We chewed through a lot of our early investments because our app took a year to build. So I would say that's the biggest, one of the biggest lessons was what an MVP actually is and not getting carried away and making sure that you are running validation exercises, like running surveys, asking whoever you're interviewing to intro you to 15 other people. So you get further and further away from people that know you and might be too polite in the responses that they're getting. Another big one we should have done more of is we should have just got straight on socials and built in public from the get go.