Start up life and Little Birdie

A number of people have asked me about Little Birdie lately and what I'm up to (probably because I keep pushing it on social media channels and I'm quite excited about its potential).

In short Little Birdie was hatched to solve the problems many of us face staying on top of a growing list of subscriptions and regular contract payments - you know the kind of stuff many of us signed up to during the pandemic like Peloton subscriptions, Harry's Razors, Hello Fresh or just the regular pay tv, music streaming or mobile phone contracts. Never mind all your utilities, or financial products.

There is so much money wasted because we forget to check contract end dates, cancel those we don't need, accept in-contract price rises or don't have the time to search for better value. We've all been there and Nat West claim ￡25 billion a year is wasted in the UK every year on unwanted or unused subscriptions. https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-7934637/How-25bn-year-wasted-subscriptions-Britons-dont-use.html Yes, price comparison sites help but you still have to do a lot of the work.

So, a couple of ex colleagues, a few willing friends and like minded contacts from our network thought it would be a good idea to find a solution in the form of an app that sorted this out for you - wouldn't it be great if an app could show you all your subscriptions and recurring payments in a neat interface, remind you of key moments like a price rise or contract end date, alert you to better value, help you switch and even help you cancel or better still, sort the cancellation (look out for "click to cancel" coming soon) without the need to write a letter or phone a call centre. Imagine having your own 'personal subscription and bill manager' - a kind of digital version of Martin Lewis in the palm of your hand, alway looking out for you and taking action.

It seemed like a good idea - all it needed was a business plan, a few hundred thousand pounds (which in turn needed a pitch deck and lots of presentations to potential investors), a company established, a brand (and a trademark lawyer), a website, an open banking partner, an FCA licence, some commercial partnerships, an app developer, some data science, some product folk, a cloud based tech stack, a crm system, some analytics software, a marketing plan etc etc - just a few pieces of the jigsaw but you get the drift.

Anyhow, wind forward a few months and Little Birdie is live ( a proud moment for all involved to see it in app stores and download it), the Version 1.0 (Beta or MVP) works and we have real customers. We even had some good PR in the Sunday Mail Money section!

https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-mail-on-sunday/20220918/284773520185185

All achieved on budget and with a team who never once met in person prior to launch ( proving a phrase we used a lot in Salesforce - you can have "success from anywhere" in the digital ecosystem). Not without a few bumps in the road for sure but life would be dull without challenges and obstacles like your app developer pulling the plug three quarters of the way through the build, but thats for another story!

We are under no illusion, there is still plenty to do - we are only at first base and in dangerous start up territory. We need more cash (so if you have any spare and fancy investing early we'd love to hear from you), we need to accelerate our product development, improve some of the UX, based on early feedback and work hard to acquire more customers.

But, there is a great marketing plan in place and a wonderful team involved; hard working, talented, fun, writing their own rules and shaping their culture. It's not like corporate life and it doesn't come with all the benefit trappings and safety net but its amazingly refreshing, fulfilling; it's hard work but it's fun.

So, thats what I'm up to for now - working hard on an agenda we control and having fun with some cool and super smart people. I loved much of corporate life and am very grateful for the experience and learnings but its time to put some of that to use with Little Birdie and see what this next chapter throws up!

If you got this far, thanks for reading. If you like the sound of Little Birdie, please download the app, have a play and give us some feedback. I was serious about the investment point too if thats of interest and finally if you find yourself in a similar boat with a good idea or not sure how to take it forward give me a shout - I'd be very happy to share more of this story or help if I can.

You can find out more at www.Littlebirdie.co.uk