Why Mumsnet founder is suing Open AI for stealing

0:00So Justine, how do you feel about the future of AI? as it stands? Well, broadly speaking, I'm absolutely blown away by AI and think it will be an extraordinarily and is an extraordinarily transformative technology that will change everything. And it has the power to do tremendous good, but it also has the risk that it could do tremendous harm. So I'm sort of both um it all struck but nervous and i fear that regulators in particular are going to be way behind the curve and that once again big tech is going to be sort of making all the moves on this stuff and big tech is driven by profit yeah you know i don't think any of us we may have thought you know in rosy times a few years ago that was not the case and there were other motives at hand like do no evil and all this kind of stuff but actually they're just big companies that have a profit motive and therefore i think um it is dangerous um to let them waltz untrammeled over this ai environment and and it's it's so i'm i'm a bit nervous about it what's the most overrated business advice you've ever received okay this is going to be controversial but uh I think the most dangerous piece of advice business-wise I have received is this notion that you must always have a co-founder.

1:38Because I think actually what you must have is the right people around you and not necessarily a co-founder for a co-founder's sake. and I think that can if you if you don't choose that relationship very carefully it can spare you can spend years trying to unpick it and it can be an emotional drain on everyone I think it's like what top three reasons for companies failing yeah and yet a lot of vcs will say they'll oh they only like companies that have yeah you know more than one founder what it's worth I just asked how herman hauser uh his number one uh issue or red flag to founders to consider and his thing was co-founders yeah i mean so obvious right you can fall out with someone so easily start with a kind of shared vision don't have that much challenge on day one and then also people are amazing at planning on um ideas and opportunity and positivity people aren't good enough at creating scenarios yes you know what happens if if if you get married or you have kids or you end up in a divorce or you know your life life is the thing that happens to you over a 10-year period yeah so what happens to you in those scenarios when you just lose interest in the business but i've still got the passion exactly and sometimes those things also over correct like in different ways exactly and it's almost like you know you know people are very reluctant to do a prenup for obvious reasons because you don't want to imagine the worst and you don't want to spoil the magic but it is similar I think you need to do that prenup with your co-founders so you you have a kind of playbook for how to deal with it when when things happen when events happen which they probably will it's funny actually I know these are like quick questions but for the first time ever I think I've been on the other side of the co-founder thing where I have when I was younger been frustrated at older co-founders because their life got in the way of our business and now obviously because i'm going through ivf it's incredibly time consuming and i have a business with a younger business partner who's like 26 and he's just all in on the business and i can tell he's getting frustrated at me because my life's getting in the way whereas with you you're completely aware that life gets in the way yeah yeah it's quite nice to see that yeah our comms are quite different yeah you well i tell you that i can't make something and you're like i hope you're okay yeah yeah Yeah.

4:00Which is great. That's so true. Yeah. You have the slight experience that like, and also over time, you do genuinely, fortunately, most people, you do sort of get also the perspective of, it's just business. Like life is more important. Family is more important. Those things are more important. But it's not just that. I think there's other things, you know, is your co-founder someone who's going to grow with the business? You know, if you're in business a long time, you've got to adapt and change and grow. This is a great point. This is a great point. So, you know, like hiring anyone, really, you know, you want a growth mindset.

4:35But you don't think about things like that when you, particularly when, in my case, you know, I started something with very little, I thought, prospect of success. You know, it was more about going for the journey and having a good time and we'll see what happens. So you're not busy thinking, oh, has my co-founder got a growth mindset? Or indeed, all of the team at the beginning, we were very undiscerning about it. out. I think that's a really interesting point reflecting on it. In my journey with Heights, there was a period where Joel, my business partner he'd met, criticised me for exactly this stuff.

5:11And he was right. And actually, you know, he was like, I'm growing with the opportunity right now and you are not keeping pace with it because you're just like choosing basically not to face these challenges as head on as I am. And I think what's helpful in those moments is he was totally right. I didn't deny it. I felt like it was true. And you also get a sense, like you can sense if it's true as well. And I felt like I was stagnating a bit as a result of it. Maybe I'd got lazy or complacent. And therefore in a relationship as well, it's also about being able to be direct and honest with your partner.

5:42Because actually everyone's capable of having a growth mindset. It's literally just your attitude. I know some people are more naturally capable, but one way or another, you either rise to each challenge or you choose not to. And that is a choice at each stage and being able to have that direct confrontation with him I was like yeah you're totally right and raised again and did it and he was completely right to call me out and I'm in a much better place now so I think sometimes it's also about having conversations of conflict in a really direct way because you trust the person to be able to have an emotional conversation in a practical way yeah and making that part of your culture yeah and it's something we've had to work on quite hard at Mumstead because particularly you know we're dominated by women um the site is dominated by women the office is dominated by women the workforce the ownership everything and women in particular have a problem with you know speaking their mind and you know being labeled as domineering or bossy or whatever and we are taught from a very early age if you haven't got anything nice to say don't say it so overcoming that is a sort of cultural problem and that's all part of the conflict being straightforward giving feedback thing that is a big journey we've been going on to to try and actually get past this innate barrier that i feel is worse in mumsnet probably than other businesses what would you put in this theoretical co-founder prenup well i think i would put that you know that you have regular and i do by the way i think it works for marriages as well relationships generally is that you have set times where you have space and time to have honest conversations about how things are going where you take stock where you agree you know what each party is going to bring and then they're somehow they're held to account if they don't bring it there's opportunities for renegotiation of that contract because no one thinks of that you enter into a business with someone you really don't think of well in three years time should we be renegotiating if someone's actually doing one and a half day a week or they just haven't turned know it to be very good of what what they thought you thought they were going to be good at yeah um so i do all that kind of stuff i do and i you know as i say not a little bit flippantly but i know of one founder who has a quarterly check-in with a therapist and their partner where they literally discuss their marriage you know in a formal way it's every quarter um and you know i think it's the way that you you you do enforce conflict but in a sort of controlled way it's not just everyone flying off the handle yeah my wife and i do that monthly meetings monthly yeah do you have a do you have a process yeah you have a process but do you have a invigilator no we've tried that um didn't find it as helpful i think horses for courses like we just tried it and maybe it's the wrong one right and so that's the other thing but at the moment actually the thing for us is more that we're respecting the process so it's not just like i'm freely saying things and she you know it's like this is the pre-agreed language protocol like it would be in a business right you know these are the questions that we run through this is the feedback process one way or another right so it's not emotional it's just getting to the same goal you have been subject to one or two online trolls what's your approach to them uh well trolls in general um we work very hard at mumsnet um to weed them out we you know we We've always spent quite a lot on moderation, real human intelligent moderation, but we also employ machine learning tools.

9:18I'm not going to give away all the secrets, but in terms of me personally, people sort of, you know, having a go at me on Twitter or, you know, threatening to bomb my website or whatever it is. um what i suppose my approach is to generally take the view of well if it's someone on twitter i'll have a look at how many followers they've got and generally it's two or three and you've realized that they're quite sad so um i try not to rise to it better to ignore than to engage i think i think that's right timely advice completely yeah and eventually i actually think that they burn themselves out yeah especially if you don't give them any fuel yeah exactly there's a process in moderation known as hell burning where you um you someone you you show them continue to show them the exact same content so whatever it is they're looking at in our case a forum um and but their posts don't appear to anyone else so in other words they they keep posting can get no reaction um and that is the thing that trolls really don't like more than anything else and they will go away as in not getting a rise not getting a rise so that tells you don't feed the troll i mean that's great advice in life in general right yeah i suppose so but it's slightly different from this idea of having difficult conversations with your loved ones i suppose you shouldn't just ignore them it's interesting though because you you have it's interesting because you're arguably one of the most powerful women in Britain, but you actually don't have a huge social presence.

11:01And it feels like in like the conversation with trolls and stuff, is that a very conscious choice from you? I think I'm naturally quite a sort of private person. So I'm not very good at sort of doing that, you know, here I am, what's an all open stuff to the world. I don't really, I quite like to keep everything a bit private. so I think I'm not naturally suited to social media I feel sometimes I'm a bit hamstrung I don't really know what my identity is on social media other than I'll stick up for our users and I'll you know I've certainly campaigned on lots of causes but but you know the stuff about me personally I don't really know where I am I'm I'm like a fish out of water to be honest I might need some help What do you find the toughest aspect of being a female entrepreneur?

11:59Well I think it's a lot better than it was In the early days I think raising money was particularly difficult I think essentially you're still really raising money from men who are more sympathetic to investing in businesses that solve problems that they understand. And so it's not necessarily that they're biased. They just are not particularly interested in the problem you're trying to solve if your problem is all about women. I guess it's quite normal human behavior across the board, isn't it? Totally. If you had a load of money to invest, you're going to invest it in something where you think, oh yeah, I get that.

12:39I'd use that product. Like a lived experience. Yeah, exactly. So I think the problem is a lot of the money is in the hands of men. And so therefore, you know, there's a disproportionate negative reaction to female founded businesses there. There's probably also, if I'm honest, a bit of misogyny. And that can come from men and women about women's ability to grow and run a business. Not enough role models out there, I guess. The odd very bad role model as well. so um so i think that was pretty hard i think it's getting a bit easier but it was probably still not not an equal playing field a level playing field the the negative press that bad female entrepreneurs get is wild yes considering how many fuck-ups there are from male entrepreneurs all the time yeah the the the you know like elizabeth holmes is like world over famous and yeah her fuck-up was a big fuck up but i mean how many crypto fuck ups are there by guys all the time in a similar thing and i feel like the press is just so like pervasive on the on that um it is definitely a weird phenomenon you see it often yeah i mean it's not just about business either is it i mean i think it's probably true of female celebrities it's you know female presenters they just are more likely to female politicians more likely to get it in the neck if they make a mistake and is the question there because of who's reacting so i this is a genuine open questions i don't know so who are the people that they're writing for and reacting is it because women are harsher critics on women and therefore there's a bigger audience or is it because men are bigger critics uh well i would say misogyny as i kind of already alluded to i think it can exist in men and women um and i think we all need to sort of check our prejudices really um and i think you know there is a prejudice that women are less less likely to be successful entrepreneurs uh there probably is a prejudice that women are less likely to be effective leaders which is actually wrong according to the data yeah well so doesn't the data show that women actually make more profitable businesses than yeah it does yeah but then far fewer invested in you know per yeah per you know business plan presented definitely i mean it was wild the numbers other than this what's your most nerve-wracking media appearance definitely question time i'm sorry but you don't rank as scary as question time what were the audience like uh the audience were okay but i I mean, it's not really that the audience are hostile.

15:21It's just they really don't tell you the questions in advance. You have no idea. Wow. And it's live. And so there is a very high percentage you'll get a question that you haven't thought about. And they'll go, Justine Roberts. Really stupid. I mean, on the plus side, I think the audience is more generous to kind of randoms like me than they are to politicians. You don't have that tribal sort of antipathy towards you. but it is really nerve-wracking and you have to spend a lot of time preparing if you're going to do something like that. So Justine you're suing tech giants over AI what's at stake for Mumsnet but what's at stake for for businesses in general in what's happening with AI right now?

16:07Yeah okay so we are pursuing a legal claim against open AI specifically. First in the UK right? First in the UK for copyright, breach of copyright and various other kind of technical legal stuff that's around copyright. And this is because they have, we were aware that they have been crawling across our website and lifting the content and ingesting it into their models, which is the most famous of which is ChatGPT. And that is against our terms and conditions and it's against UK copyright law. um but they've been pretty out there as all the big tech um you know ai companies have been in saying that they need to ingest the contents of the web to build their models and um they don't feel they should have to pay for it um it's convenient yeah what a great line yeah um so so someone needs to really well they need to the the legal case needs to be proven because at the moment they're just riding rough roughshod over it and they're growing so fast they're raising so much money they're going as fast as they can they're just tying up any complainant in kind of legal knots um what's at stake i think is i mean we've all seen and you go to google now you'll see the ai overview at the top if you put something into google what's at stake is that if they're allowed to just lift content that creators are making and then they're allowed to put it into models that mean they can give the answers to the questions that people put into search or wherever it means that people won't need to go to those websites which are creating the content so ultimately they will die because you know obviously the reason people create content is to get view viewers and eyeballs so they can monetize them one way or another.

18:09So that they will dry up. Ultimately, you know, the large language models will, well, the irony is they need this content. So they really ought to find a way of paying for it, or at least licensing it in some way, or at least creating some kind of value exchange. So at the moment, we all let Google scrape us, right? Because we know Google will drive traffic to us when we're listed in their search results. But with AI, you don't get any of that benefit. They're not acknowledging you. They're not driving traffic to you. They're not paying for anything, except for a few big publishers who I presume have threatened legal action.

18:48But we don't know what they're paying. And it's not a widespread ecosystem to pay for content. So it's existential, I think, to a lot of smaller publishers. in a funny kind of way Mumsnet's in a better position than most because we're we offer more than just editorial content it's really human interaction you come to Mumsnet for but nonetheless it really pissed me off when I discovered that they were crawling us we actually entered into licensing talks with them and they they after some time thinking about it and we signed an NDA and we gave some data about what we had and stuff like that. They showed a lot of interest.

19:33They came back and said they were interested in less open sources of data, which I took to mean anything they couldn't steal. So that really pissed me off. Sorry, just for clarity, you were in negotiations with them to pay you? Yes, to license our content. There are lots of good reasons why I think the AI model, I've already said, I think AI is a tremendous technology. It's going to be a huge breakthrough. I mean, you probably use it as much as I do already. I use it several times a day, chat GPT. It's transformative, I think, in efficiency and all the rest of it. I think it's really important that female voices are reflected.

20:15There's a lot of examples of gender bias coming out of these models. so we were very we are very interested in the models ingesting what i think is six billion words of incredibly high quality conversational data by women the mums that's 98 percent written by women so there are lots of reasons why i would love them to ingest their models and it's not just about money it's about correcting gender bias um sorry to ingest our content um so yes we were in conversation we are also in conversation with a couple of others as well about that um but uh what what i don't think they should be doing is is just simply being able to because they're big tech you know do what they like and uh and steal content and ingest it and not pay for it you said earlier something that rang really true with me which is that we had this perception a while back 10 years ago 20 years ago that the people in silicon valley were somehow changing the world for better and that they were wearing jeans and t-shirts and they were cool because of it but at a fundamental level behind all these people sits companies that are you know ferocious about making profit and so that's exactly what's happening here is they're sort of it's masked in the excitement of chat gbt and and ai but a fundamental level they are seeking to monetize this thing and like you say like it becomes anti you know it becomes a not a positive for business yeah and i'm slightly worried that people can't separate those two things right the the excitement of the potential of ai with yes but we need a regulatory system that checks and balances this and also makes it fair for all the incumbents in the system um i'm slightly worried about noises coming out from you know the sort of tony blairs of this world who is you know basically come on the uk we've got to you know really clear the decks and get out of the way of big tech and the big ai companies or we'll lose a march and i worry that this message is what government is hearing um because i think you can have both you can have you can have the potential of this amazing technology but you can also have laws and governance around you know how it how it builds its models you know what what sort of checks there are in terms of you know what it's allowed to do into you know we're not far away from intelligent generative ai which is you know human brain level stuff plus all the processing power so you know then then it then then if you don't if you don't take on the mantle of okay yeah it's great but it needs some controls before we know it there'll be no way of controlling it and there'll be there'll be no reason for things like mumsnet to exist if all of that information can be digested and all you will get is a very cold version of what mumsnet is you will take away the human element of it yeah and you'll get you know all the answers that they never created themselves and it brings us to this question i think about content online right now which is you know sponsorship model you know paying for access to things because if the ai can go around the paywalls what's the point yeah it crushes creators it does i mean i do i take issue i do think there is reason for mumsnet to exist because i don't think people just come for information they come for support and they come for humor and observing the trolls yeah and you're not going to get um you know you don't ai is not going to help people out of domestic violence situations because they sit up all night and tell them you know what to do if you know and how to escape their violent partner but um but you're right in the sense that there are many content producers who will be put out of business by this if if ai is allowed to if these companies are allowed to just steal content and the the resulting output will be drier and yeah i don't what do you do about news so currently where the big tech companies stand is well we don't need to pay for news because as soon as a news article is published there are 20 versions which are immediately copied and made by other websites and we'll just scoop up those versions so you know that's a really difficult conundrum unless you in some way you know really think about it and create a copyright law that takes that into account on a practical level you know that these companies have endless money you know that you don't have endless money so how are you going to win how would you practically beat them do you think you've got a chance uh well i don't think we could do it alone i think but i think the publishing industry has has an absolute um you know existential threat here and ought to bandy together which is i think so far it's been a bit slow to do um so yeah you're absolutely right the playbook that I've seen happening in the US is they the big tech companies basically make these cases as big and as complex and as expensive as they possibly can and we're a relatively small business so we could not shoulder that alone you know we could not spend two and a half years in the high court and all the incumbent costs that that means so we will have to find a way of doing this that is you know where the burden is more shared i think it's so incredibly cynical isn't it because at some point you're just like they'd rather spend the money on their lawyers than just do the right thing net net well it's because they know that they can wrap you up in for two years totally they can blitz scale like they're doing right now and then companies like smaller companies and whatever just can't keep up it's just so cynical though it's so i mean it's to your point I mean, like, we think, we thought they were all really cool and trying to change the world and jeans and T-shirts, but actually they're just fundamentally making money.

26:13Yeah. And this is why you need government to get involved, because justice shouldn't just be available to those who can afford to pay for it. And if we've got a system where that is the case, then it needs to be corrected. So you're the founder of Mumsnet. Mumsnet influences UK politics. It's probably more powerful than most think tanks. so why is Mumsnet now so powerful? Well we've got nine million users and they are as I say mostly women and come election time that audience is very very valuable it's deemed to be very valuable because women are meant to be slightly less tribal so the vote is more floating so in its simplest terms there is a view that the mumsnet audience is politically influential when it comes to elections now of course i think that's so you're like the ultimate like the digital swing state digital swing state kingmaker the idea where where this where this falls apart this theory i think a little bit at least is the idea that all mumsnet users are going to vote the same way because they just don't, you know, 9 million people.

27:25We are very, very careful about not being of one political stance or another. You know, we've never backed anything that's overtly of one party versus the other. What about you personally? Do you go on record for your personal views and keep them separate to mum's neck? I try to keep them quiet. Yeah, sometimes it's quite hard. Yeah. And obviously, you know, I would personally, you know, in person, I'm probably not very quiet. I'm quite vocal, but I wouldn't really talk to the press about strong feelings about that. I will talk about issues, but they were not necessarily single party issues. And most of the things that you, on a personal level, are most of the things that you feel strongly about from a political point of view related to women's right and mum's net related topics?

28:16or are they completely broader because you're representing Justine the person versus Justine the Mumsnet founder? I would say they're broader but obviously they skew they skew yeah um but yeah absolutely broader and I'm reminded when I think it was Gordon Brown came in did a Mumsnet web chat and was insisting on telling um just shouting at his people actually saying tell them about child care tax credits but of course our users are you know they're women but they were interested in everything that people are interested in like the economy and like you know the situation in um in in foreign policy and all the rest of it so uh yeah it's a bit it's a bit narrowed and i think it's a mistake that politicians often make that um for some reason mums are only interested in mum's issues such a double-edged sword you can imagine being the politician who doesn't mention it as well and then everyone's like i didn't even bring up something really important to us there is a there is i agree in some ways you can never win yeah but i think but you know you have to beware pigeonholing and being patronizing yeah who's your favorite politician that you've had on and interviewed because you personally do these interviews as well right well now now we tend to do a format where we yeah we do a video interview where we take mums deck questions um i mean i don't know do i have a favorite sorry who did you hate the least i mean you know what it's like like a british person you know what it's like when you do an interview actually what you enjoy is someone who gives a good interview that's not necessarily someone it's someone who shows a bit of leg and you know is or even is just so ridiculous it makes it quite fun so i have to say boris yeah because you know it was it was such a car crash that it was i remember it going very viral on twitter yeah i mean i just couldn't believe some of the you know there are bits of it people that the thing that went viral was the opening question which was you know i was a user saying you know why should we trust a word you say when you've proven to be a habitual liar which was quite a punchy opening question he stuttered and whatever but the best bit if you go and watch that interview was when i asked him what children's stories bedtime stories he read to his kids so first of all i said do you read bedtime stories oh yes all the time all the time oh can you what's your favorite one there's a bit like you're doing to me now you know yeah um and and he just couldn't remember any and in the end had to say one which was clearly from his own childhood which was dr zeus because i just don't not sure he was being entirely accurate when he said which is harsh because actually one of my favorites is dr zeus and you'd be like wow i mean well it took him about five minutes to get there anyway it's it's funny um so i enjoyed it because it was because it was a car crash actually and it was bloody great publicity as well i mean mom's net was trending and also by the way i enjoyed it because he's good company now listen whatever you think of boris the politician i have very strong feelings about it but he's he's he used to be my next door neighbor actually and he is he is you know you would you would probably want to attend a dinner party with him and actually you could shout at him a lot and he'd give you stuff back so so it's entertaining he said that's why he's where you know that's why he became prime minister because he's entertaining how did you end up interviewing prime ministers how did this how does this originally come about well the first one was david cameron yeah and it was what just after he'd been made leader of the Tory party and I think he wanted to stamp himself as a modern different kind of leader very different Tory party very good at engaging absolutely across this was in 2006 so early days of the internet you know absolutely across this modern kind of form of technology so um his special advisor sought us out um but I think it was you know you always have to put it in the context of what do they want out of this and he wanted all the publicity that went with I did a Mumsnet web chat look how modern and cool I am and he did it very well actually he did performed well on that web chat because he was kind of slightly more modern and slightly cooler than what had come before and Mumsnet has been involved in changing laws and so can you tell us what makes an effective campaign yeah i mean for us the first stop is always something our users care a lot about so we don't sit and strategize and think let's let's change this it really has to bubble up from the conversation that's going on on the boards and you really want the users to be involved in it and writing to mps and doing all that stuff as well that's really helpful I think um having a clear ask you know it's a bit like setting a business target you need to know what the goal is you need to um have something that's winnable like there's no point saying I guess I want everyone to I don't know I wish it would was the case but everyone to be you know given a house tomorrow so we all lived you know in three bedrooms houses is the very minimum or whatever it is.

33:29So you've got to have something that you do feel is achievable. Having said that, there are some things that are just really important that for a long time didn't feel very achievable, like proper childcare funding and support. But it's just so fundamental to all kinds of things, you know, equality and children's benefit and the economy because women can stay in the workforce and all the rest of it, that it was worth banging on about it, I think, for 20 years. and we finally I think got somewhere with the last government. You've mentioned before the importance of anonymity on Monsnet so how do you balance out the you know the benefits that you get from anonymity but with also the accountability that people need to not be arseholes online?

34:17I think well I think anonymity is super important and I think the reason why we have such a useful forum is because people are able to speak the truth and they're able to speak the truth in both the questions they're asking but also the answers they're getting as well so the people who are responding are able to speak the truth it's very difficult to do that on most forms of social media where you're not anonymous so you can't really say you know i'm having a real tough time i don't like my child or my boss or my mother-in-law or whatever or on twitter where a lot of people do it pseudonymously as in they have a fake profile yeah um but you're not likely to get that in-depth answer from an expert who or someone who's been there and and and come out the other side so i think it is absolutely fundamental to why mum's debt is still here and why it's so useful um that basically it's more honest um obviously it can be taken advantage of because people are you know able to hide behind usernames i would say people although they have usernames and they're not necessarily tied to their real life personal personality they do they do get some kind of recognition and notoriety because you know it's a community so even though someone might be called i don't know three-legged dog three-legged dog is quite famous in mumsnet for you know um being an expert say on breastfeeding or or how to get your child to sleep through the night so there is there's kudos attached to these names they're not entirely anonymous but uh i think it is very important i think it's something that should for a long time social media companies were trying to argue that anonymity is the problem and it should be banned well i'll tell you what the trolling on twitter um and facebook is a hell of a lot worse than anything that gets to stand on Mumsnet and the moderation is an awful lot more effective and quick so I don't think it's anonymity that's the problem really I think it's the platforms and their willingness to actually invest and spend time in keeping the places civil.

36:35Mumsnet has evolved a lot since the beginning beyond just parenting topics so what you know platform uh what demographic specific platforms are you focused on now beyond the original topics well so we we don't really set the topics the users set the topics and you're absolutely right to say that um pregnancy and parenting is very very small part of what gets discussed on mums now i think pregnancy is our 10th busiest forum and parenting lower than that ahead of them come style and beauty property and diy uh relationships is huge um am i being unreasonable is our biggest forum by a long way so it's god people asking questions great fodder the the number one is am i being unreasonable is by far our busiest are people being unreasonable justine can you give us a couple of examples there are some are some aren't some yeah um i mean we there is vote you can vote so you can actually see whether you are being unreasonable or not and so this is predominantly uh what wives and mothers asking the question this happened in the household today this is what i said this is how it went down am i there's a lot of that there's a lot of i mean my favorite one ever was a woman who said i've got um a nine-year-old and 39 year olds they want to have a super soaker party in the park am i being unreasonable to let this happen the park's quite small and very busy and you know the the thread maxes out on mums day at a thousand posts thousand posts of people basically saying yes you're being i mean she just would not have it but no it's only water wow so but you can a lot of these dilemmas are very real people will ask genuine questions like i am i feel really strongly about the way my best friend is treating me am i being you know is this emotion valid or not and they get very good advice as a result of that so the way you decide to expand the business then is via the most important topics because you have things like Grandsnet I own an elder care business called Lottie and so I've looked at your sponsorship packages and stuff for and that's how I know about Grandsnet but how do you think about expanding the business is it conversation question driven yes I think so I mean from for us the magic in Mumsnet is the conversations it's the it's the threads and people lots of people come and they don't ask they never ask a question they're absolutely super users they come back several times a day and they're just reading the content, they're ingesting the content because it is such a great window on other people's lives and it's honest and truthful.

39:31So when you talk about what's the aha moment on Mumsnet and there's lots of great literature about how you drive people to the moment where they really see the value in a product, right? It's known as the aha moment. The aha moment on Mumsnet is when people realise there are so many great and interesting conversations here so that's really what where the magic lies we do something relationally voyeuristic for people yes voyeuristic sounds a bit weird and pervy but it's it's entertainment really observing um but it's it's entertainment really but it's entertainment with a touch of reality and real life and you can you can relate to it because oh god yeah i've been there too or that yeah I have this dilemma too and my husband is also a wanker because he leaves his towels on the bathroom every day I agree you're not being unreasonable here I was saying to you before the show my wife and I doing IVF at the moment and it has been an unbelievable resource for us especially at the beginning of the journey because there was a million questions we had that we had no answers to and although you can read although you can use chat gbt to get um the answer it's like a perfect example of why your business is so beyond just information is that we then obviously got so much more from Mumsnet and we got so much more from seeing other people's experiences the way that people deal with situations and the way that other people ingest information yeah and I think that's just so powerful for for your users I mean someone once described Mumsnet as having a million big sisters this is when it was only a million users now it's nine million there are nine million big sisters out there who you can ask that question to that you don't really want to ask anyone else you don't want it to be public you don't want it to be known you just want someone who's really wise been there and done that and actually can tell you all the nitty-gritty so not just where the best place to where the best clinic is or what how they rank but what the person is like you know what it's like in reception are they you know are they good doctors are the bad how considerate are they bedside manner yeah all that kind of stuff that's huge i guess it's a really interesting question for me um see we're all part of founders community and that is like the exact opposite in the sense of it's tiny by design super intimate very close get answers to any question very quickly close-knit all of the things um and mom's net therefore nine million bigger sisters So how do you manage and motivate intimacy in that kind of environment?

42:11Or is that where you think anonymity really plays? So we don't try to. So we did originally think about events, but the users actually organized their own and invited us along was how it kind of worked. We don't try and manufacture intimacy. What we try and do is keep civility. and what's interesting is founders is really interesting because in the same way as founders mumsteaders go out of their way to be helpful so you will find people giving breastfeeding advice in the middle of the night and literally hand-holding someone over a computer on how to latch on properly people do that and people do that under and then they're not getting any credit because they're anonymous they they get credit for their mumstead username but it's not like this that there's any other reason other than being a good citizen.

43:01And this is why I genuinely think it's an amazing place because, yes, you've got trolls. Yes, you've got angry people sometimes. But there are so many people who are just willing to give off their time and experience for nothing. And founders, I see that too. The difference in founders, we're all under our real names, right? So we do get a bit of kudos if we do it. But it really is heartwarming and makes you think society is actually kind of, there is such a thing as society and community people will do stuff for nothing um and you know and they don't we actually do do we don't do a like button because we didn't want mom's net to be a popularity contest it was very it was a very sort of overt just um slow decision we took about that but we do hidden gratitude so you can you can you can't see it you know it's not public but you can thank someone that's nice um and that you know i i was looking last week people sent 250 000 hidden gratitude thanks on mom's net so people were being thanked it's almost like not publicly it's almost like a nice analogy to one of the lesser known facts about social media generally which is that people think the most viral content on social media is negative but it isn't and the most viral content in the world is all positive yeah um people don't think of social media like that yeah in the same way as you know simple fact is the world is getting so much better there are less deaths there's more you know everything in the world is basically getting better 99 of things are getting better and better yeah but we don't think of it that way yeah and it's so interesting is it your point then well it's that rick gregman book isn't it utopia for utopia for realists i think oh i haven't read that one which is where there's a lot of stuff like that you know objectively the world is getting much much better but i think what social media brings us and i don't count mumsnet in this is is a lot more visibility of the bad stuff totally but that's the point right we talk about the trolls right basically even but even like when when researching mumsnet is so interesting when doing the research the the stuff about trolls comes up so prevalently yeah uh never heard about the hidden gratitude that's just a perfect example just in that it's just not something that you'd know about but you'd know about the trolls you'd know about the negative thing yeah um i'd love to ask about the business because you know we're a business show um and you know millions and you're personally interested and i am i am fascinated yeah i'm fascinated by like digital businesses product businesses how how attention is monetized in the right way i think all these questions are so like prevalent now um because like we were saying before i think that you had this swathe of technology things like facebook that taught us all that information is free and and it just doesn't work like that there has to be some some other uh way for that to work for other companies so can you tell us a bit about mumsnet from a business perspective it's a privately held company um from our research we found 2018 was making eight and a half million pounds a year am i right in my research revenue revenue not profit yeah yeah that was right i mean so we're not huge yeah but we've we have been profitable for i think probably since about 2006 i mean we and we never raised money so that we've never had a you know we've never had any funds to burn through really um so we we basically couldn't raise money at the beginning because it was right in the dot-com crash and then by the time the situation had got better which was probably you know 2007 6 7 when twitter and facebook arrived and people started talking about web 2.0 we that by that time we're just about generating enough to um to bootstrap it really so it's what was bootstrapped the whole way so um so you're 100 owner of mum's mat no i wish okay no i'm so that i've never raised money until 2018 when we did take on a small investor and also you know in those early days yeah it was yeah it was you didn't frame it that way no i i wish what was so what did i say that we should own the equity yeah of course oh well yeah it'd be nice it'd be nice yeah no the other bit that i'm coming on to was when you're an early day founder that doesn't necessarily believe that this thing's going to amount to anything you do tend to give away rather large chunks of equity to anyone who will do anything for free true um so that's where a fair chunk of the equity sits as well um right so how much does boris own um yeah no boris did did his appearances for other reasons um so yeah so the business so the business model so we've grown you know out of cash um and the business model is essentially advertising that's really what it is we do there is some affiliate business we do some insight work and then who knows where data licensing will take us.

48:14But it's really advertising in its many forms. But we've taken a very, I mean, I hope when you went on Mums Day you didn't think you were swamped by ads. It's not like going on the Daily Mirror's side. We believe it should be a long-term sustainable thing. We've turned away a lot of advertising that we don't believe in, that doesn't fit with our ethos, and we try to make the formats as uninvasive as possible. So ideally we work with brands who want to reach our audience to really bring their product to our users attention if it's the right product for our audience. Because obviously Heights is becoming a customer of Mumsnet or currently is in the process anyway.

48:57So you've got product licensing for rewards and things like that, right? So in this example, we're making a kid's product. the process is what the process is right which is we've got to provide our product yeah to the mumsnet community for testing yeah and then it's kind of basically a black box on my side which is how it should be yeah but it's a black box on like yeah you know we're saying this is the best but you're also like we're the fucking mumsnet community we'll tell you what's the best so we will we will yeah so months months later we find yeah genuinely months later you sort of find out like what the mumsnet community feel like but that's actually a really good transparent process but if but if they if you get the rating it's really worth something exactly and that more to the point our users really trust it so our users say they trust 95 of them so they trust recommendations on mumsnet yes and the process is what i just said right and the reason is because there's nothing i can do about it there's nothing you can do about it you will get some feedback so if if you don't get the rating and you don't win the endorsement and you don't have the badge um you will at least get some decent feedback on why not um but yes it is a bit of a risk for brands but then again it's really worth something yeah um so if you have something and that is you know there's an element that i think distinguishes mumsnet from other platforms it is trust and this is because you know it's a combination of what we've been talking about about anonymity about moderation about us not uh getting involved in the process to influence matters for commercial purposes so and it's not about the other thing we don't do is feed people content that we know they want to see so we don't we have strongly um i strongly believe that it's filter bubbles that have caused a lot of the polarization in the world so the fact that you just see yeah what you know opinions like yours and and everyone else has becomes more unlikely and less understandable so we absolutely don't do that we make sure that we allow differing opinions and that's quite hard it's quite hard in a world where you've got Israel and Palestine and Gaza and people who are having you know massively different opinions about things we're trying really hard to say this is a space where you can hold contrary opinions you just have to be civil um and we will facilitate that discussion and hopefully the net result is people see the other point of view or at least a little bit of the other or at least some human empathy for the other point of view and it's not everyone else everyone else isn't other and alien so and that and that's why i think it's trusted because we're not obviously pursuing clicks we're not obviously pursuing eyeballs and attention just for our own commercial gain and from a from a business perspective you obviously over the years would have considered it but were you ever close to thinking well the users actually asked us on many occasions to you know they wanted a product which allowed them not to see ads at all that's why i was sat there thinking the same yeah freemium and we do have we do have that product you have that right yeah um but did we want to put a paywall up a forced paywall so there's an option um we were always against that because i think there's something about it's user generated content mainly mumsnet putting a paywall in front of other people's generated content that's what you mean that's kind of different to the times it felt a bit different and plus a lot of people seek mumsnet when they are actually in in in distress or need of good advice um and we didn't want that to be only available on on the basis of your ability to pay so so i don't think we'd ever have a sort of forced paywall.

52:52I think it's when you said 9 million, I suddenly thought to myself, well, 12 pounds a year for 9 million makes yourself quite an appealing business. Yeah. But it won't be 9 million, will it? No, of course, of course. And the problem will be your demographics, right? Demographics will be so broadly representative of the UK, average. I suspect, though, that with a business with trust that high, you will get a lot of people who would pay for their past experience it's also a great business model to sue open ai so you probably never saw that one coming that might that might just be a very useful payday i mean we've experimented with proof and i think there is more we could do with um sort of membership so you get a load of benefits and you and you you do that value exchange really well and we haven't really pursued that route aggressively because for now advertising is very effective on Mumsday.

53:47It really works and it's you know, that's where we've invested and that's where we're currently pursuing alternative models of that more than the paperwork model. But it is fascinating as a Twitter user, we're both Twitter users because comment on Twitter quite often. Me as well. Yes, you're newer to Twitter. I am. Sorry, I guess what I mean is I'm a Twitter obsessive. It's my primary social media platform and I think it's yours other than Mumsnet. Yep. so um but i wouldn't call myself an obsessive no okay and i would um that's the only only platform yeah it's the only platform i'm unhealthy on um but you know the premium thing on twitter is really interesting because like many things that they used to say about twitter and then musk is kind of slowly but surely proving isn't true about it at all uh people like that that'll never work um and advertising is the only way and actually he just very quickly figured out these features are slightly better um not that much better but they're slightly better they're eight pound a month go fuck yourself everyone else who doesn't want to pay it no problem carry on on the free yeah i'm just going to make these ones slightly better for everyone that will pay a pound a month i think a lot of people like me were like whatever he's right okay eight pound a month whatever i don't pay do you not no yeah so but but my point isn't about who does and who doesn't the point is that there is an audience out there um who will do that maths and put it on their business i can't I can't wait to see the outcome of that because I think that is such a fascinating experiment because I paid and I'm not even a massive Twitter user, but I thought that the features better and I'm quite into social media, as it were.

55:20Yeah, your algorithm's better. You get an extra feed. You see less ads. There's less spam that you're not interested in. You see, the downside of it is I think I'm gradually weaning myself off Twitter because I'm getting such a shit experience. Yeah, you are. and I and frankly you know I'm given where Musk is and that's a good thing for me and given you know the at times unhealthy relationship I've had within it do you'm scrolling into the middle of the night you know I'm quite pleased that I'm now becoming to think that this is not this is pretty lousy that's a very mature response I see that I see that argument for sure we spoke before the show I think I can't remember what is the show not the show but before the show we were talking about you posting online and one of the things that I think struck me in this is I feel how inspirational you would be to entrepreneurs if you were to speak online more well that's very nice of you to say but I suppose you see I mean yeah I like what you were also saying when we spoke before that the bulk of people who you're advising on this particular subject with your business are women and and i think women are a bit unconfident about putting themselves out there partly because of the abuse they might get yeah and partly just because what right do i have to tell other onto you know that kind of impostory stuff that i think i mean you've got more of a right than most men that speak on social media we'll put it that way yeah well maybe maybe pms try and garner your approval yeah so it's very sweet of you to say but i think that you know I've got I'm battling against myself a little bit on this combined with my you know wanting to not necessarily be a public figure um that's that you know that that's that's what's holding me back but I think there's also a counter argument here that's super interesting which is um you know there's I can't remember it but there's a Bill Murray um quote sorry Bill Murray you know clip or someone asked him about you know what's it like being rich and famous you know I'd love to be rich and famous and he's like well why don't you do the first part and tell me if like you actually want the second part because it's really just all about the first part you know paraphrasing that's generally the idea and like the reality is um you know you've got a cbe so you're like you're not like you know that's as yeah it's one of the highest accolades you could possibly get in this country like recognized and respected you have all the power that you would want to hold reasonably on the basis of you know pms come to you asking if they if you can platform them and whatever right you have nine million users that you love respect you're still running that business you're the ceo so you have all of these factors about you and really none of the downsides that can come from the fame the like the extra notoriety the stuff that you know can be a poison chalice this is a really nor the upside no nor the upside but there's a it's a really delicate balance isn't it and that's kind of the thing the game between fame and fortune is a really or fame and power because actually a lot of the reason for fame is power and you also can lose a lot of power by having fame i agree i think i think it's it's a nuanced thing and you ought to be careful what you wish for and i'm amazed that so many people are so desperate to be influencers and I mean I know it's sort of I guess easy money but if it really is about being able to get the best table at a restaurant or I think you know I can do without that you're just gonna take away exactly I'll cook at home it's better for me um what is then the future of Mumsnet for you because you know we talked about you don't have the okay we've got investors in 2018 insanely powerful platform opportunities on monetization monetization ai etc in the future um also you've been doing this for a couple of decades now no yes um no i should think about hanging up my boots you're right well what does that look like well i you know i mean it's difficult isn't it because it's it's my baby um and you are a mom of four already so this is your fifth yeah and they've they're largely left the nest so you know that's the only one I've got left um so I mean I do think I think um it's also hard to imagine who else not not within my team my team's amazing and that's another reason actually why I'd find it difficult to leave right now so I've really got this amazing team in place that I love working with that I cut you know 10 years ago I wouldn't have said that so this is we've we've evolved so much I think we're really quite a crack team now and I you know as I say that that's not how I would have characterized it in earlier years so that's really good fun um but but you know I also do think I'm not really the demographic how long can I be a spokesperson you know so there are lots of lots of things at play and I suspect if I came back to secret leaders in five years time my hunch would be i would not be ceo of mom's net but you know i'm never saying never is there an obvious exit path for mom's net um well obvious i don't know what that might be i mean well you had to do a deck in 2018 and you had to show some slide with some exit thing on it so what did that look like well i didn't really no you show the gross side can't you yeah i didn't really have to talk about it so i mean we didn't sell to private excise okay look at the right we took on i guess i've always been showing too much too much lag in mine well i know but that you're probably looking at different types of investors so the you know the investor we took on is the very very patient capital and you know would be happy if we never exited as long as we kept growing um so that's the type of investor who you know i like who doesn't set time frames for for us because i think i want to keep doing what's right by the business what's right by the people involved in the business and what's right by the users so that for us to exit for me to exit i'd have to tick all three boxes and that's not easy and there's not enough role models out there like you in the world but certainly in the uk who will do something i think in decades like that yeah i mean you said you enjoy it i mean if you're enjoying it awesome yeah i mean i think that's she's enjoying it today look at her face she's enjoying it today yesterday yesterday was a shit show you know it is a bit like that isn't it you have a bad day and you think why the hell am i still doing yeah and there must be some pretty intense bad days at mumsnet there are some there are some days yeah you know um and and yeah and and it's another legal fight and have we really got you know the energy and am i the best person i mean that's the question you really have to ask yourself am I the best person to lead this company and as I say I've got an amazing team so I would be I would be very confident if I got out the way the mums that would continue to thrive so there's probably an exit route somewhere I just need to find the turn off you've spoken before about the challenges of being a female leader in tech and I think what we were just talking about there is interesting you know I would love to talk about these challenges but would you be an entrepreneur again do you feel like you would do this again afterwards because you said the world's changed a lot yes i mean i think i might if i if but it would all be about if there was something i got really excited about a problem that i really wanted to solve where i thought and so i you know immediately i think of things around women's health tech and stuff like that you know where where i just think the world has underserved this space there is a massive opportunity and but i'd probably do it differently i wouldn't bootstrap again i would go out and i would raise a lot of money and i'd use someone else's money to grow this business which would be a novel and different experience i'll tell you i my first business i grew from 21 to 30 years old and i bootstrapped it i sold it in 2021 and then my second business which is our elder care business which is now quite a big business but called lottie i've vc funded that one and we raised 30 million pounds and obviously when you get 30 million pounds you can move alarmingly quickly but you do have i when i think back to the first business experience it was very self-directed very fun you weren't you never had to chase things you you never chased the thing because you thought it would get you to pleasing the investors faster yeah whereas i feel like in the VC funded businesses you go into these rooms with super big names and you have to have answers to growth that you may not have in that moment yeah and so I don't know if I've I now run a self-funded business that I'd never intend to raise money for yes and and that obviously is the dream and I agree with you it's a great privilege in some ways not to have to be on anyone else's agenda totally but i also would quite like to feel that different kind of pressure um and i think i just know so much more about doing it now so i think i could probably do it better yeah right so if i mean god if that those that person who nearly gave me money in 2000 four and a half million quid um thank god he didn't do that because you know honestly i've spent the next 20 years making so many mistakes but now feel like and and it's a lot about the team i know the team now what was the equity you were giving away do you remember god i can't remember it but it was it valued the business i think the business was valued at something like 12 yeah i don't know i mean we we didn't really get that close fair enough um yeah and nor should we have well i think the issue is grass is always greener right so whichever business you're doing you always kind of imagine that the other one would always be a little bit better i don't think it would necessarily be better but i'm you know i'm keen i've probably got one go in me you want a different challenge different challenge yeah okay well justine whatever that next challenge is i hope that you've got prime ministers lining up at your door ready to uh to back you at least with enthusiasm if not their own capital thank you so much for joining us on secret leaders been pleasure thank you