The Entrepreneur Experiment

Michelle Kennedy was told to build another dating app.

She knew dating. She had worked at Badoo and Bumble. It was the obvious move.

Instead, she built Peanut.

Michelle created Peanut after becoming a mother and experiencing first hand how isolating that transition could be. What began as the product she wished existed has grown into a global community connecting women through motherhood, fertility, menopause and some of the most important stages of their lives.

But the journey started unusually.

Michelle raised investment before she had a product or a team. At that point, she essentially had herself, an idea and a deck.

She then made another unconventional decision. Rather than slowly expanding from London across the UK, she went directly after the US market, launching into cities including New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

In this episode, we unpack how she did it.

Michelle explains why she deliberately targeted America, what she would do differently if she were raising money today, and why taking institutional investment so early created lessons she only understood later.

We also explore one of the most important but least discussed advantages in business: your network.

Michelle openly admits that she spent much of her early career without understanding networking at all. She explains how she eventually realised that relationships were driving opportunities all around her, and how founders can build a network intentionally rather than simply collecting contacts.

We discuss the difficult balance between founder instinct and data, why listening to every piece of advice can damage a company, and how Michelle learned to distinguish useful feedback from pressure to follow trends.

Michelle also explains why she believes great consumer founders need taste, why experimentation is fundamental to building products, and why a catastrophically bad experiment can sometimes teach you far more than a small improvement.

We explore Peanut's mission beyond technology and why Michelle believes real world human connection will become even more valuable as AI becomes more powerful.

Michelle also shares Peanut's work around matrescence, the biological, psychological and emotional transition into motherhood, and the company's wider mission to make women's experiences better understood.

And finally, Michelle shares the three qualities she believes have been most important to her success as an entrepreneur: grit, passion and team.

• Why Michelle built Peanut after becoming a mother

• Why people encouraged her to build another dating app instead

• Raising VC funding before having a product or team

• Why Peanut attacked the US market from the beginning

• What Michelle would change about her fundraising strategy today

• The funding challenges still facing female founders

• Why founders need to filter advice

• The danger of following trends instead of your customer

• How Michelle learned the importance of building a network

• Why relationships can become a hidden advantage in business

• Combining founder instinct with data

• Why great consumer founders need taste

• How to run experiments that actually teach you something

• Why a dramatically unsuccessful experiment can still be valuable

• AI and the increasing importance of real human connection

• Peanut's work around matrescence

• The Village Fund and helping mothers connect in real life

• Michelle's three ingredients for entrepreneurial success: grit, passion and team

Michelle Kennedy is the founder and CEO of Peanut, a platform designed to connect women through different stages of life including fertility, pregnancy, motherhood and menopause.

Before founding Peanut, Michelle worked in the dating industry at Badoo and was involved in the early development of Bumble.

She launched Peanut in 2017 after experiencing first hand the need for better connection and community following the birth of her first child.

Peanut
https://www.peanut-app.io/

Download Peanut through the Apple App Store or Google Play.

The Village Fund
https://www.peanut-app.io/village-fund

Peanut and Coterie have created a six figure fund designed to help mothers turn online connections into real world meetups and communities.

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth
https://www.angeladuckworth.com/grit/

Michelle describes Grit as a phenomenal book and recommends it for founders. The book explores Angela Duckworth's research into why sustained passion and perseverance can matter more to long-term achievement than talent alone.

Mark Hughes started Solidroad in Dublin in 2023 with his co founder Patrick Finlay.

There was just one problem.

They did not actually know what they were going to build.

Three years later, Solidroad has gone through Y Combinator, built offices in Dublin and San Francisco, landed major enterprise customers and raised a $25 million Series A.

In this episode of The Entrepreneur Experiment, Mark breaks down exactly how it happened.

We go inside the early search for product market fit, how they got their first customers, founder led sales, getting into Y Combinator after multiple attempts, moving his life to San Francisco and the extraordinary speed at which Silicon Valley operates.

Mark also tells the story of meeting First Round Capital on a Saturday, meeting the partnership on Sunday and effectively having the investment agreed by Monday.

We then get into AI.

Mark explains how AI has completely changed the way he works as a CEO, why he believes repetitive work is most at risk, why customer support will remain a combination of humans and AI, and how he is effectively building an AI powered operating system around his company.

Finally, we talk about the biggest mistake he has made building Solidroad and the lesson he would give his younger founder self:

Move faster.

A fascinating conversation about ambition, fundraising, sales, AI, Silicon Valley and what it really takes to build a venture scale company.
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CHAPTERS

00:00 Meet Mark Hughes and Solidroad

01:52 From Dublin startup to a $25M Series A

03:09 Why Mark became a second time founder

04:30 Starting a company without knowing what to build

06:01 How they searched for the right problem

07:49 The moment they realised they had something

09:09 Funding the company before Y Combinator

11:39 Revenue as the North Star

15:01 Why timing matters in startups

17:00 How Solidroad found its first customers

19:37 Mark's founder led sales playbook

24:28 Why moving to San Francisco changed everything

24:59 What Y Combinator actually does

26:33 Inside a typical week at YC

28:31 Getting into YC after multiple attempts

31:24 The personal cost of moving to San Francisco

34:38 What happens after Y Combinator

36:22 Inside YC Demo Day

37:27 Meeting First Round Capital

38:50 Saturday meeting, Monday money

39:53 Building a $6.5M seed round

42:10 Landing major enterprise customers

42:49 Why money raised is the wrong success metric

43:10 Why Solidroad raised again

44:56 Will AI take our jobs?

46:30 Why customer service will remain human

48:56 The jobs most exposed to AI

49:40 How an AI powered CEO works

52:42 Has Claude overtaken ChatGPT?

54:04 Raising the $25M Series A

59:05 Mark's advice for founders raising money

1:00:41 Dublin versus San Francisco

1:02:52 What comes next for Solidroad

1:03:59 Mark's biggest mistake

1:07:02 Quick fire

1:10:22 Why face to face sales will win in an AI world

1:13:37 The advice Mark wishes he had earlier

1:14:08 Speed is everything

Sara Davies built the business that changed her life.

Then she had to fight to save it.

In this episode of The Entrepreneur Experiment, Sara tells the story of what happened when Crafter’s Companion, the company she founded from her bedroom, ran into serious trouble and ultimately entered administration.

She talks candidly about buying the business back, the brutal 18 months that followed, and what it feels like when the company that has defined so much of your life suddenly becomes the source of enormous pressure.

This is not simply a story about business recovery.

We talk about the decisions and warning signs that founders can miss when a company is growing, including the uncomfortable reality of doing around £20 million in revenue while struggling for cash.

Sara also opens up about stepping away from Dragons’ Den, the pressure of trying to be a founder, investor, television personality and mother at the same time, and reaching the point where she knew something had to change.

We explore ADHD, hyperfocus, motherhood, guilt, resilience, investing and the psychology that has allowed Sara to keep moving forward through some of the most difficult periods of her career.

In this conversation:

• What really happened inside Crafter’s Companion

• How a business can generate huge revenue and still run into cash problems

• Why Sara decided to buy her company back

• The toughest 18 months of her business career

• The founder mistakes she can now see more clearly

• Why she stepped back from Dragons’ Den

• The pressure of combining ambition, business and family

• Sara’s experience of ADHD and hyperfocus

• How she evaluates entrepreneurs and investments

• What difficult periods have taught her about resilience

This is a very different side of Sara Davies.

It is a conversation about what happens when success becomes complicated, when the business you built needs saving, and how you rebuild both the company and the founder behind it.

The Entrepreneur Experiment is about one central idea:

Build a better founder, not just a better business.

—-

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James Haskell has spent most of his life performing under pressure.

He won 77 caps for England, toured with the British & Irish Lions, played professional rugby around the world and then had to figure out who he was when the game stopped.

Today, James is an entrepreneur, broadcaster, author, DJ and co-host of The Good, The Bad & The Rugby. He’s also building Blackeye Spirits alongside Mike Tindall and Alex Payne.

But this isn’t really an episode about rugby.

It’s about building a better founder, not just a better business.

We talk about why self-awareness may be the ultimate competitive advantage, how elite sport teaches you to handle brutal feedback, why ambitious people struggle to recognise when enough is enough, and how James rebuilt his identity after rugby.

We also get into focus, saying no, buying back your time, therapy, accountability, personal branding, choosing business opportunities, the creator economy, why information is becoming free and why implementation is becoming more valuable.

James is candid, funny and completely unfiltered throughout.

If you’re ambitious, stretched across too many things, or trying to work out what success actually means to you, there’s a lot in this one.

We cover:

• What professional sport teaches you about business
• Why “you can lie to everyone else, but you can’t lie to yourself”
• How to receive feedback without letting your ego get in the way
• The four things James believes you can actually control
• Why achievement can leave high performers permanently unfulfilled
• The difference between chasing outcomes and mastering process
• What Eddie Jones taught him about excellence
• Reinventing yourself when your first career ends
• Why James started preparing for life after rugby at 20
• Learning to say no to opportunities
• How he decides which businesses and projects deserve his time
• Why he refuses most equity-only deals
• Authenticity, personal branding and protecting audience trust
• Why information is becoming free but implementation will remain valuable
• Therapy, mental performance and changing your emotional state
• His approach to focus, batching and avoiding distraction
• Why even a former professional athlete pays someone to keep him accountable
• Buying back your time
• Defining how much money is actually “enough”
• Turning The Good, The Bad & The Rugby from a podcast into a media business
• Why modern podcasts need to think beyond audio
• Building Blackeye Spirits and the mission behind the Blackeye Rugby Fund

Links & Resources

James Haskell: official site covering his rugby, books, music and other projects. James Haskell official website (https://jameshaskell.com/)

The Good, The Bad & The Rugby: James hosts alongside Mike Tindall and Alex Payne; the show describes itself as the world’s biggest rugby podcast. The Good, The Bad & The Rugby (https://goodbadrugby.com/)

Blackeye Spirits: James, Mike Tindall and Alex Payne’s spirits business. The brand says its Rugby Fund aims to eventually invest £1 million annually supporting injured players, research, risk reduction and recovery.
Blackeye Spirits (https://blackeyespirits.com/

James’s books: What A Flanker, Ruck Me and Approach (With)out Caution are all featured on his official site.

This is one of the most personal founder stories we’ve recorded on The Entrepreneur Experiment.

Danny Buckley is the co-founder of ADHD Now and a 2026 EY Entrepreneur of the Year finalist.

But the company exists because of a far more personal story.

Danny spent much of his life struggling with distraction, emotional dysregulation, anxiety and a lack of structure without understanding why.

His wife Simone believed he had ADHD. Danny dismissed it.

Then life changed completely.

After years of serious health challenges, Simone became critically ill. The day before she died, she told Danny that life was short, that he needed to stop inflicting suffering on himself, get help for his ADHD, understand who he was and back himself.

Danny eventually followed her advice.

His diagnosis at 32 gave him a new understanding of himself, but getting there exposed another problem: accessing ADHD assessment and support was extraordinarily difficult.

Danny saw an opportunity to change that.

Together with his co-founders, he built ADHD Now around a simple idea: people should be able to get answers in weeks rather than wait years.

We unpack how they found clinical capacity, built the technology and processes, generated demand, scaled the team and created a service that expects to see 13,000 patients in 2026.

But this conversation goes far beyond business.

Danny speaks openly about grief, becoming emotionally available for his son, sobriety, faith, asking for help and learning to live with structure and discipline.

We also explore why ADHD appears so frequently among entrepreneurs, how hyperfocus can become both an advantage and a liability, and why Danny eventually had to recognise that not every exciting business opportunity deserved his attention.

His personal framework is beautifully simple: desire, hard work and help.

And each morning, he returns to his Three Cs:

Connection. Compassion. Contribution.

This is a story about what happens when you finally understand yourself, accept what you cannot control and put your energy into what you can.

As Danny puts it:

“Life is short. Enjoy the life you’ve left.”

Danny’s experience of living with undiagnosed ADHD

The final conversation with his wife Simone that changed the direction of his life

Why he travelled to the UK to receive his ADHD diagnosis

How diagnosis brought structure, discipline and emotional awareness into his life

Why getting a diagnosis is only the beginning

Turning his own experience into the idea for ADHD Now

The stranger Danny met outside the hospital who would later back the business

How ADHD Now went from idea to launch in a matter of months

Recruiting clinicians when the healthcare system was already at capacity

Using technology and systems to reduce friction for patients

Why private providers may form part of the solution to healthcare waiting lists

The relationship between ADHD, hyperfocus and entrepreneurship

Why Danny bought two bakeries while scaling a healthcare company

Learning when ADHD-driven curiosity becomes distraction

Danny’s formula of desire, hard work and help

His Three Cs: Connection, Compassion and Contribution

The moment at EY Entrepreneur of the Year when Danny finally felt proud of himself

Why he rejects the idea that founders have to be miserable to succeed

Faith, fatherhood and redefining what success means

Why “action removes anxiety”


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🔗 Links & Resources:

ADHD Now: https://adhdnow.com/ie

Danny Buckley on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danibuckley90

Danny Buckley on LinkedIn: https://ie.linkedin.com/in/danny-buckley-84840b2a0

Book recommendation – Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss: https://amzn.to/4dshO2a

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Building a trusted brand rarely comes from one viral moment. It comes from showing up consistently, solving real problems and earning people’s attention over time.

In this Mentor Moment, Laura Dowling shares how she built credibility by making complex health information easier to understand and creating content that genuinely helped her audience.

It’s a valuable lesson for any founder or creator trying to grow a brand: trust compounds, consistency matters and meaningful impact will always outlast a temporary spike in views.

🎧 Listen back to Laura’s full conversation in Episode 466 of The Entrepreneur Experiment for more on her journey from pharmacist to educator, entrepreneur and trusted voice in women’s health.

Follow and subscribe so you never miss a Mentor Moment.

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In this episode of The Entrepreneur Experiment, Gary Fox sits down with professional heavyweight boxer and Thirst co-founder Thomas Carty to unpack how he built one of Ireland’s fastest-growing hydration brands while pursuing a career in professional boxing.

The idea began with Thomas’s own search for a convenient electrolyte product to support his training. When the brand he relied on stopped shipping to Ireland, he decided to create his own. Within just ten weeks, Thomas and his business partner had developed and self-funded their first 300 boxes—but producing the product was only the beginning.

After pharmacies, health shops and supplement stores refused to stock them, Thomas loaded the boxes into his car and began selling them one at a time to coffee shops and saunas across Dublin. Today, Thirst works with more than 20 distributors and is stocked across Ireland in hundreds of cafés, vending machines, gyms, forecourts and major retail groups.

Thomas shares the reality behind that growth: the uncomfortable early sales, the importance of moving quickly, how founder-led content helped build trust and why the right business partner allowed him to balance building Thirst with training up to 11 times a week.

If you have an idea you’ve been waiting to launch, this episode is a practical masterclass in product development, distribution, founder-led marketing and getting started before everything is perfect.

🎧 Show Notes:

In this episode, we cover:

🥊 How Thomas’s Olympic ambitions led him into professional boxing
💡 The sauna conversation that sparked the idea for Thirst
🤝 Finding a business partner with complementary skills
⚡ Developing and self-funding the first product in just ten weeks
📦 Starting with 300 boxes across three flavours
🚪 What happened when pharmacies and supplement stores refused to stock the brand
☕ Creating a new route to market through coffee shops and saunas
🚗 Driving across Dublin to sell one box at a time
📱 Using social proof and founder-led content to build trust
🎙️ The podcast appearance that created a major spike in sales
📈 Growing from one distributor to more than 20
🛒 Designing packaging specifically for convenience and retail
🏪 Expanding into hundreds of cafés and vending machines across Ireland
⏱️ Why speed has become one of Thirst’s greatest advantages
🧠 Balancing a growing company with 11 boxing and training sessions each week
📓 The physical diary Thomas relies on to manage his life and workload
🌍 Why export—not launching a canned drink—is the next priority
📣 Why social media remains the most powerful free tool available to founders
🚀 What Thomas would do differently if he were launching Thirst again
🔥 Why blind faith and hard work form his personal formula for success

💬 “The secret sauce is graft. There’s no secret.” – Thomas Carty

🔗 Links & Resources:

Thirst: https://thirstlife.com
Thirst on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thirst.life
Thomas Carty on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_thomascarty
Thomas Carty on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-carty-775516162
Book recommendation – Relentless by Tim Grover: https://timgrover.com/relentless/

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The biggest opportunities in your career rarely arrive with a perfect plan.

In this Mentor Moment, Mark Breen, founder of Safe Events Global, shares how saying yes, staying open to unexpected opportunities and being willing to follow where the work led helped shape his career.

It’s a powerful reminder that progress is not always linear. Sometimes, the next step only becomes clear after you take it.

🎧 Listen back to Mark’s full conversation in Episode 463 of The Entrepreneur Experiment for more on his journey, the growth of Safe Events Global and the lessons he has learned along the way.

Follow and subscribe so you never miss a Mentor Moment.

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In this episode of The Entrepreneur Experiment, Gary Fox sits down with Jeff Dodds, CEO of Formula E, the electric motorsport championship that has grown from no established fan base to more than 400 million fans worldwide.

Jeff takes us inside the rapidly expanding business of global sport and explains how Formula E is combining close-combat racing, world-famous manufacturers, sustainability, social media and entertainment to build the next generation of motorsport.

He shares the unconventional story of how he moved from leading Virgin Media O2 into Formula E, what he discovered during his first month as CEO, and why he keeps a game of Snakes and Ladders behind his desk as a reminder of the realities of running a scale-up.

Jeff also reveals the leadership principles that shape Formula E’s culture, including the three qualities he looks for in every team member: energy, optimism and accountability. He explains how obsessive behaviour can become a competitive advantage, why leaders must focus on what they can control, and how Formula E uses immediate post-race debriefs to turn lessons into action.

From managing his energy while travelling for six months of the year to balancing competition, training and recovery, this is a fascinating conversation about leadership, performance and building a global sports platform.

For founders, CEOs and anyone trying to scale an ambitious organisation, this episode is packed with practical insights.

Show Notes

In this episode, we cover:

🏎️ How Formula E grew to more than 400 million fans worldwide

💰 How the business of global sport actually makes money

📱 The role of creators, social media and entertainment in growing a sport

🔥 Why obsessiveness can become a competitive advantage

🪜 Jeff’s “Snakes and Ladders” approach to leading a scale-up

⚡ The three traits behind high-performing teams: energy, optimism and accountability

📝 Formula E’s “I like, I wonder” post-race debrief system

🔋 How Jeff manages energy, travel and recovery as a global CEO

🚀 Why first-mover advantage still matters in business

Links and Resources

• Formula E official website (https://www.fiaformulae.com/)
• Formula E on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/formula-e/)
• Jeff Dodds on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jedodds/)
• Formula E on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fiaformulae/?hl=en
• https://www.youtube.com/@FIAFormulaE

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ou don’t need a huge budget to prove that an idea can work. You need creativity, resourcefulness and the willingness to start.

In this Mentor Moment, Ryan Casey, founder of C11 Recovery, shares how he began building the brand with limited resources by creating recovery boxes, tapping into his network and finding smart ways to test demand before scaling.

It’s a practical lesson in building momentum without waiting for perfect conditions, using partnerships to create opportunities and proving the concept before making bigger investments.

🎧 Listen back to Ryan’s full conversation in Episode 462 of The Entrepreneur Experiment for more on the story behind C11 Recovery and the lessons he has learned building the business.

Follow and subscribe so you never miss a Mentor Moment.

*Our Sponsors *
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