January 19, 2022

Nigel Phan - Whirli - The Future of Toys and how a child develops through play.

55 minutes

I wanted to interview today's guest for quite some time.

Nigel Phan is the founder of Whirli - a toy subscription service.

My family is expecting our second daughter and all the clichés about parenthood are true: it changes your perspective on everything.

One thing that changes most dramatically is the number of toys around the house- I am terrified that child number 2 could lead to a doubling of the toy rate.

That's where Whirli comes in. When a child loses interest in a toy (which believe me can happen with surprising regularity) you can return it and swap it for a new one.

Whirli have raised a round of £5 million from this series' headline sponsors, The Octopus Group. The Octopus Group is a collection of 8 entrepreneurially minded businesses that look to back the people, ideas and industries that will change the world.

If you want to check out Whirli you can get a 30% discount by visiting https://whirli.com/offers/jimmysjobs or using referral code JIMMYSJOBS at the checkout.

We're not taking any commission from this link, we're just using it to test how many of you amazing listeners click through.

In this episode with Nigel we discuss:

Where he came up with the idea for Whirli despite not being a parent

Where the name Whirli came from

His career, including time as a partner at McKinsey

What did he hire his first employee to do?

How he chooses what toys go on the platform

How Whirli focuses on at-home education

How parents can use the Whirli subscription

What jobs he is hiring for (didn't we all want to work in a toy shop when we were younger?)

The most popular toys on the platform (not what you might expect)

How he approaches marketing to parents and building trust digitally

Why he is hiring for a Head of People and what that means

What the toys of the future are going to be

What adults can learn from playing with children's toys

Letting toys be toys- removing the gender bias that is prevalent in the industry

His favourite toy of all time

Future plans for Whirli including the plans for experiential events

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