Louise Hill: Founder of GoHenry

0:00Saturday, September 26th, two of combat sports' most dangerous strikers collide. Bare Knuckle. Liverpool's own Darren the Gorilla Till goes to war with Cuban powerhouse Yoel Soldier of God Romero. Plus, the Bare Knuckle Middleweight Championship of the World is on the line when the reigning champ Dave the Redneck Mundell defends against undefeated British challenger Jack the Meek Cleaver Colon. BKFC 94. Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com. Welcome to the Jazz Shapers podcast from Mishkondorea. What you're about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM. However, the music has been cut due to rights issues.

0:42This is Jazz Shapers with Elliot Moss on Jazz FM. In partnership with Mishkondorea. It's business, but it's personal.

0:55Listen in colour. Welcome. It's the brand new season of Jazz Shapers with me, Elliot Moss. I'm very pleased you've joined me. Jazz Shapers is where I bring you to the pioneers, the risk takers and problem solvers shaping the business world, together with the musicians shaping the worlds of jazz, soul and blues as well. My guest today, kicking off the season in fine fashion, is Louise Hill. I've been stalking her for a while, nicely of course. Founder of GoHenry, the money app helping kids learn to earn, save, spend and invest. And all my children have used it through the years, all four of them.

1:26Realising her children were downloading music on iTunes without understanding its value, Louise started sharing the iTunes invoices with them and deducting the costs from their pocket money. Tough love. When friends told her horror stories of their children's online shopping through eBay and gaming platforms, Louise, with a small founding team, two fellow parents from school, set out to find a way to improve children's financial literacy, to give them the joy of independence while shopping more safely online. With the backing of Visa, GoHenry, named after its first child customer, was launched in 2012 with the prepaid debit card and money management app going on to break an equity crowdfunding world record as well.

2:02We'll be talking about that shortly. And having acquired French team banking app PixPay, GoHenry was itself acquired by Acorns, a US-based savings and investing startup in 2023. My guest today is Louise Hill, the founder of GoHenry, which is famous in my house. It is though, I'm not even kidding. It's a bit of a godsend. Well, thank you. That was the aim when I very first set it up was really to solve my personal problem. That sounds very weird, doesn't it, at home? But to solve the fact that my kids were spending all my money on iTunes and the more parents I spoke to, the more parents were having similar problems.

2:40Basically, kids where they'd given them access to services with the parent's credit card attached and kids were shopping online, spending money without a care in the world and definitely not understanding that money has to be earned before it can be spent, not understanding the value of money. And bizarrely, when we started to look around, there was nothing out there, you know, in the world, there was nothing out there that let parents give children access to money in a safe way with limits that worked for the parents and for the child. I get that intellectually. And obviously, we all as parents and as adults, we look at things and go, well, that's not right.

3:19We should fix that. what made you actually, what motivated you to actually do something about it? It surprises me often when I meet people sitting, I'm very lucky, I meet lots of people who do amazing things, but I go, but why did you bother? Because I love a challenge. I love a challenge. You know, I've been asked over the years, what makes somebody an entrepreneur or what makes them jump off the edge and start a business? And if I think back to growing up, I've always been doing that sort of thing. You know, I used to bake cakes and sell them at school. My brother and I, I grew up in Lower Stoft on the East Coast, and my brother and I used to make kites when we were in the sixth form and sell them on the beach to the holiday makers.

4:00And then I came to university in London. I made clothes and sold them. At one point in my career, I set up an e-com business with an ex-colleague. Manners. Yes, Manners. I read about Manners. You have done your research. Apparently. Sometimes. Sometimes it happens. Suddenly they go, what about? I mentioned Manners, 1998. Yeah. Yeah, 1998. I was very pregnant with my first child. So I used to make my business partner go into the rooms to pitch for investment first. Good old sexism, eh? Yeah, hide behind her as she walked in and obviously and then say, yeah, I am pregnant but I do still have a brain.

4:36But all those things, is the buzz the fixing of it? Is the buzz the making of it? Is the buzz, where does the buzz lie for Louise? it's solving problems building things i i think that's that's what's driven me for a long time um my i'll give you an example my ex-husband sometimes when we'd be let's say we were stood in a cafe somewhere and the queue system was messed up and he'd just look across at me and and sort of glare and i'd say what here we go and yeah he'd be like i can hear your brain working I'm like, yes, but if they put the cake things over there and then... Yeah, I guess it's just part of who I am.

5:21I like to solve a problem. I like to build things. I love building teams, and that was something I've been lucky enough to do earlier in my career, and you can really make things happen. So this jumping off a cliff thing and the way that the world views generally jumping off cliffs, which is it's dangerous and risky, not for you. tell me a bit about why jumping for cliff is more of a calculated risk take than it is something crazy yeah i think if you're so for one it wasn't my first business yeah i'd had a home shopping e-commerce business from 1998 to 2002 for two i was confident that i could see a way to make this work.

6:07And I guess I've always been up for taking a calculated risk. And it's interesting, you know, thinking back to why and why some people do that and some people don't. My parents were very, very good. My dad in particular, when we were growing up, there were three of us, three siblings in the family. He would always say, what's the worst that can happen? Whatever harebrained scheme we came to him with whether we were kids or a little bit older he would say well yeah try it what's the worst that can happen why do you think he was like that well because he wasn't an entrepreneur no he wasn't no worked for the same company from office boy when he started to uh ended up as managing director did did well for himself but calm calm man very calm man but understood how business worked and believed in, I suppose, people seizing an opportunity and having a go.

7:03And as a result, I talk a lot about having a go. And that's where the go in Go Henry comes from. Oh, okay. I just thought it meant like you could propel your children forward. But no, it's a bit bigger than that. And when you were growing up, because again, I've read that you had a pretty, you talked about a regular, nice family upbringing. Sometimes people talk about, and I've met, If I was a psychologist, I'd be very wealthy at this point because I go, I've met lots of people who've got father complexes, lots of people who've had very difficult siblings, lots of people with really heavy stuff who fight against the system, quote unquote, and go, but you didn't.

7:37You didn't have any of that. Really happy childhood, really supportive parents. So it's genetic, is it? I don't know. I don't know. It works for me. It's something I thrive on. You know, I could even look now and I'm 62 now. And so I think it's another one of those dividing points in your life. I have lots of friends who are retiring and disappearing off to play golf or go traveling or whatever. And some of them say to me, you know, you're going to slow down. No way. I'm having way too much fun. I'm learning new stuff every day. I thrive on that. And I suppose that's part of also what drives you to try something new.

8:18But 13, 14 years ago, you set this business up with a couple of other people who left the business quite quickly afterwards. And was that, I mean, was it clear that idea was nice, but execution, very different thing? Is that kind of what happens in those situations? Do you know, two different reasons. One, one of the guys that I started the company with left immediately, we raised the, what I now know is called pre-seed funding. So the money we needed to start the business. Wasn't interested in getting involved in delivering it and doing it. And I guess we always knew he would leave at that point.

8:49The other one stayed for two, two and a half years. And then, you know, we were still a small business. We were still struggling to keep the funding coming in the door so that we could grow the business. That was quite stressful. We were not able to pay ourselves a lot of money. And he and his family needed to go back to a more comfortable corporate existence. We're still on very good terms. He left then. um i sometimes joke i'm the only man left standing um as the only female founder out of the three of us yeah but yeah but that's where it's at and on that is it has it been lonely or were you very quick to surround yourself with fabulous people uh no it's no not lonely it's um that's something that's talked about a lot i think in the entrepreneur journey but if i look at the difference from 14 years ago when i started the business to now and all the networks that there are out there to support entrepreneurs and the understanding of both the psychology and support networks that are needed there's so much more available now no i i you know set out to hire in people who knew all the stuff that i didn't know because i don't come from a banking background or financial services i don't come from a background where i knew how to go and find funding and all those sort of things but um hired in some brilliant people and they did know those things and and we worked together as a team and do you think actually that worked for you i mean do you think it was the natural thing that you were you had kind of um agency to do those things without being because sometimes people say i loved having co-founders around me and actually what you're saying is it was okay being the person that to make the decisions yes absolutely yeah it really was because i like working with teams i like said that earlier i like building teams and if you really to use the buzzword empower those individuals to do what they're good at and take the decisions that they are the experts in then you propel your business faster um you support yourself in in doing that as well and um you have colleagues to lean on i'm going to pick up on single points of failure as well in a bit because i really like that when Louise Hill's my business shaper.

11:07She knows what I'm talking about. You will soon. She's the founder of GoHenry and she's going to be with me for a while longer, so don't go anywhere. She's coming back in a couple of minutes. Right now, we're going to hear a taster from the Mishcon Innovation Series, which you can find on all the major podcast platforms. Business founders share their practical advice and industry insights for those of you thinking about starting your very own thing. In this clip, we hear from Ethan Frankel, co-founder and CEO of ProGrad, a UK fintech platform aiming to empower Gen Z to earn side income and improve their financial future.

11:35The Mishcon Innovation Series. Inspiration from founders of cutting-edge businesses. In association with Jazz Shapers with Mishcon Derea. And what advice would you give to anybody about to embark on an accelerator program? So I'd say be sure that it's a good accelerator program because there's a lot of them out there. A lot of them that you can just end up giving a lot of equity out and get very little in return or a lot of promises. And that's very dangerous because you don't understand a lot about your business initially and you end up giving 5, 10, 15, 20 percent equity, 50 percent equity for someone or a company that will promise some sort of help.

12:16So be sure that it's a good accelerator. What I mean by this, look at previous companies who have gone through this accelerator program. How many are unicorns? How many companies have raced? How many companies have raced within which speed of leaving the accelerator? Speak to some of these companies that have gone through Accelerator, not just the companies that the Accelerator will put you in front, but try to LinkedIn them, try to reach out. Some of the founders speak to 5, 10, 20 of these companies. Make your own due diligence before deciding whether this is really worth it. And don't just get excited by the hype of, oh, I'm going through an Accelerator, I've got accepted, I need to do it and I need to give up equity.

12:52There's a lot of other resources out there that will allow you to retain a bigger chunk of your business. the mishcon innovation series in association with jazz shapers with mishcon d 'orea jazz shapers on jazz fm in partnership with mishcon d 'orea it's business but it's personal you can enjoy all our former business shapers on the jazz shapers podcast and you can hear this very program again if you pop jazz shapers into your podcast platform of choice my guest today is louise hill founder of GoHenryTheMoney app and prepaid debit card aiming to improve children's financial literacy. I mentioned, I think it's called Single Points of Failure.

13:32I read it and thought that's kind of cool. Just explain what that is. Single Points of Failure, it's a solution to a problem that I realised I'd created without realising it. Until you realised it. Yeah, and there were a lot of realises in that sentence. So probably about, I'm trying to think how many years ago, it's probably seven or eight years ago now we got to a point where we were growing really really quickly we were hiring a lot of new people I was probably feeling slightly smug I thought I delegated well that you know I talked earlier about empowering teams and letting the smart people you've hired take the decisions I thought I'd done that fairly well but I suddenly realized I was completely underwater.

14:18I was absolutely drowning, even if I was working, still trying to clear emails at midnight, you know, and then up again the next morning. I was not keeping on top of what I was trying to do and trying to work out why. What was going wrong? Was it just the workload? And what I realized was, although I'd kind of delegated authority and the heads of all the teams were taking the decisions too many people had to come to me to it could be something as stupid as get the login to a system we were using or ask who the key person was at one of our critical partners or why we did something and that was taking up a huge amount of time and so I've always loved the concept of a campaign I think if you give something a name and sort of give it almost a physical presence.

15:12You get far more attention paid to it. So rather than just saying, oh, we need to do this better, set up a campaign called Single Points of Failure. Somebody asked me the other day, did we build software? No, it was, I think at the time, it was an Excel spreadsheet. It is now a Google spreadsheet. But literally asked every team to write down on the spreadsheet all the things where only one person in the company knew how to do it. And it's amazing how many of those there were. It's embarrassing how many of them have my name against them. So, yeah, that was the single points of failure campaign.

15:50My name appeared on it more than anybody else's. But actually, great discipline to have gone through to beef up the resilience of the business. And we set about trying to solve all of those, make sure there were at least two people who could log into everything. The joke I've made a couple of times is, one, we failed on. and that is our BT corporate login is still my email address. Although somebody else might know the password to that particular one now. Hopefully. But that's actually, it's kind of, it's dealing intentionally with the challenge of growing. Yes, yeah, it is. And, you know, when you are growing at huge pace.

16:31Yeah, you can't stop because you're so busy growing that the thing almost lags behind, the systems and the processes lag behind. And finding the time to step back and say, okay, what's going right, great, leave it alone. And you did that yourself, though, because often people bring in consultants, they bring in third parties, there's someone from another... Yeah, we were not at a stage where we had enough money to do that, frankly. You know, we were still pouring every penny that we had into acquisition and growth and improving the product, improving the services that we were offering. So, no, that was homeschooled.

17:05single points of success it becomes now. Well done. That's my new name for your campaign. Louisa was my business shaper, my pioneering, innovating, she's laughing, person. Well, you did invent a category. I mean, truthfully, Go Henry did not exist. It's really hard to start something anew. Just cast your mind back. How did you even cross that rubicon of getting people to believe that this was going to be a trustworthy thing? Do you know, in the really early days, in terms of getting belief from people, it came down to did they have kids or not. There was a really clear divide. You know, if I was talking to potential investors and they didn't have kids, often the response was, well, why on earth would an eight-year-old need a debit card?

17:51And then you turn to somebody else who had an eight-year-old and a 10-year-old and they're like, oh my God, let me tell you why they need a debit card. Because, yeah. So, you know, it really did boil down to that. And in the consumer world though, how about them? because surely again, even though there's a problem, someone might say, yeah, hold on a minute, I don't know if I want to give my kid a credit card. Yeah, no, it was... I think one of the challenges of being first in the category is you have this nanosecond of a person's attention and you've got to tell them not only what you are but why they need you because they're not already familiar with the concept and therefore why the need is there.

18:28And that was really challenging. How did you do that? Because again... We tried everything. Tried all sorts of things. you know going going through schools I spent and the team spent a ridiculous amount of time standing in places where parents were with their kids that might be a a football tournament or the front of a cinema complex or a Saturday morning in a shopping mall was there a silver bullet did anything work those things didn't work at all no what did work guess what when parents are out with their kids they want to spend time with their kids they definitely he didn't want to talk to us about.

19:02Leave me alone. And so what was the thing, do you think, that convinced people? Initially, Facebook, social media, helped us start to get an audience. And then the power of advocacy. So literally one parent telling another parent, telling another parent that this was working for them. And to this day, you know, we now refer to it as advocacy. We obviously have a refer-a-friend scheme. where one parent can refer another family and we give a bonus to each family if the new family subscribes. But when we talk to customers who haven't come in on one of those refer-a-friend promo codes and ask them how they heard about us, it's incredible how often it's another parent told them.

19:51Okay. Or the kid came home from school saying that three other children in the class have got a GoHenry card and can they have one. It's really interesting, isn't it? So it's not sort of the traditional advertising route at all. No. Proper person-to-person advocacy, real belief. And at the same time, though, because I'm just thinking about your mission, which we will talk more about around financial education for kids. Sometimes there's a show-not-tell thing that works much better. The showing of this is to actually give a kid a debit card and talk to them about money rather than explaining why it's important they should think about money.

20:24Has that been your way through this? yeah I think fundamental to it from day one I was adamant that the way to learn about money was by doing learning by doing the the analogy I've used hundreds of times is it's a life skill so it's a bit like swimming and you can teach a child the theory of swimming but they're never going to learn to swim until they get into the water and actually try it for themselves and money's the same you can teach the theory but until you have some money and you use it and you go through that process of understanding once it's gone it's gone there's so many old sayings that come into play here money doesn't grow on trees you have to earn it before you can spend it such a shame it's not true though i mean i would really like a tree if you louise for your next business if you could make a tree that grows money i'll work on it final chat and the tree that grows money coming up from my business shapers, Louise Hill.

21:21She's founder of GoHenry and she'll be back. We've also got some Jalen and Gonda for you too. That's in just a moment. Don't go anywhere. Jazz Shapers on Jazz FM. In partnership with Mishkondorea. It's business, but it's personal. I'm with Louise for a little while longer. Louise Hill, founder of GoHenry. We've talked a lot about the business. I've talked a lot about it. You've done the usual. I mean, I say you've done the usual. You've done the unusual, created a new category, built it. sold it, as it were. You're transitioning, you've transitioned out of a, from a role where you were hands-on every minute of the day to an exec chair and founder, kind of proper founder or founder at large role, which must be brilliant, but also the space to focus on the passion that's informed this, which is financial literacy for kids.

22:07Just give me a sense of where we are at as a country in terms of our policies. So in terms of where the UK is when it compares itself to other nations. People always said to me as I was building GoHenry, I can't believe they don't teach this stuff in school. And, you know, it is mind-blowing that we were not teaching this stuff in school. It's such a fundamental life skill. And so about five years ago, we decided our mission statement for many years has been to make every kid smart with money. Very aware we're a paid-for service, it's a subscription service, and therefore we're never going to reach every kid in the UK.

22:47So what's the best place to reach them? School. You know, you'll never get 100 % of children, but you'll get probably 98 % of children if something is compulsory and taught in school. So, again, with no knowledge of public affairs or how to approach government... Hasn't stopped me before. I'm going to say, why would that be a blocker? We set about trying to talk to politicians, talk to policymakers, makers. How did you do that though? Joking aside, what did you, what's the first step when you don't know about public affairs and there is a way of doing things? How did you engage? Do you remember?

23:21Hire a public affairs consultant to advise because I really didn't have a clue. And then I think one of the things that gave us great strength in doing that is of course we had a huge amount of data in terms of how children are using money in the UK, how different ages are using money, And how a lot of the behavioral nudges and education and our money missions, which are little in-app gamified money lessons that are built into the GoHenry app, how all of those change behavior. Because obviously we can see how it changes behavior and how kids use money differently as they go through that process.

24:03And we were able to supply all of that to government. How long ago did you start engaging government? We started five years ago. Okay. So we were obviously sort of in the lead up to the change from the Conservative to the Labour government. We felt it was fairly obvious that was going to happen. So we started engaging with the Labour MPs and policymakers, shadow policymakers. And shortly after, we gave evidence to the, there was an education select committee set up to investigate financial education in schools. we were invited to give evidence I think as one of only two commercial organisations that were invited to give evidence to that committee.

24:46They came out with a fabulous report that really reinforced a lot of the things we were asking for and then as the new government came into post we started working with them and lobbying there and basically talking to anyone who would listen and they set up a curriculum and assessment review which we also gave evidence to gave them all of our data. It's a short road, isn't it? No, it's not a short road. But the most amazing result because we set up campaigns. I've missed all of that out. We set up lobbying campaigns. I can't imagine. It's a lot of work. Worked with a lot of the organisations, charities that work in this space.

25:25And in November last year, fantastic news that the curriculum and assessment review report was issued and the government endorsed the report which is the important bit because that means the report will actually be put into place and financial education is going to be made a mandatory part of the school curriculum starting in primary school which was a major thrust of our campaign because it really is important financial habits are set not just begun but set incredibly young so it's really important to get in primary school so that was fantastic news and that starts September 2028? It starts in September 2028.

26:05So we have obviously now moved into looking to work with the Department for Education to support whatever information data we can give them to really make sure that when this goes into the curriculum, it's done in an impactful way, in a way that children want to learn. We set up a kids financial education advisory board, where some of our GoHenry kids are happy to speak to policy makers and lobby themselves for what they want to learn in school and why it's important to them. And we've also recently released all of the videos for our money missions, which are the in-app gamified lessons, released that on YouTube free of charge so that any family or school or child in the UK can access those and kick off the learning themselves.

26:52Just imagine if you'd have been focused. I mean, really, what could you have achieved? It's extraordinary, isn't it? because we started talking and it's been brilliant to chat to you. We're going to draw things to a close, but GoHenry is one thing, it's a commercial endeavour, but underpinning it was always this thing of, hold on a minute, kids really ought to know how to work with money and behave with money. And here we are now, you've manifested and in 2028, something magical happens and it's brilliant that you've done well commercially, but I'm sure as you get older, you will go, that's the thing.

27:19Yeah, already, that's the thing that counts. It's been fabulous talking to you, a real privilege. Thank you, Louise. just before I let you disappear to go and do more things, I'm sure, probably by lunchtime. What's your song choice and why have you chosen it? It is Midnight Rambler from The Rolling Stones. When I was, gosh, 13 or 14 and in my bedroom in Lower Stoft, a friend introduced me to The Rolling Stones and I got really into their very, very early stuff. It was very heavily blues influenced and really, really loved it. and Midnight Rambler was one of those records that I played on the old vinyl discs on repeat many many times.