The founder of kids’ banking app GoHenry has urged would-be entrepreneurs across the globe to start a business, saying there is no better time to take the plunge than now, as AI can be used to bring ideas to market much quicker than ever before.
The advice comes from Louise Hill, a leading speaker with Champions Speakers, the UK’s premium keynote speakers agency who is also a former operations director of the Cotswold Company.
In an interview with Champions Speakers, she explained how she got the inspiration to develop GoHenry: "How long have you got? It started back in 2010 when my two kids were probably seven and nine, and they were spending all my money on iTunes. So, very simply speaking, if you cast your mind back to then, there were these tiny little iPods, and my brother had very kindly bought my two kids these little iPods for Christmas.
"I had an iTunes account with my credit card attached to it, and I had given the kids access to my iTunes account so that they could download music, and they were having a great time, and that’s really where the concept started.
"They were spending a lot of money every week, sometimes more than their pocket money, without a clue that it was actually spending money. So I was trying to figure out as a parent how to make them understand about spending money? How do I make them think twice before they click for the 27th time that week?"
She said she spoke to other parents and realised that it was not an issue confined to children’s use of iTunes: they were also spending on eBay and making in-app purchases when playing video games.
"One example, a friend of mine, her little girl had spent a couple of hundred pounds on hair scrunchies and hair bows for her little pony in some online game," she said. "And then of course the gaming stations, which were already in existence at that point in time.
"So that’s what I set about trying to fix, and if I do a whistlestop tour of GoHenry from launching in November 2012 to today, which is almost 14 years later, it took a long while to find enough funding to plug into all the banking systems to even get started.
"But we got started. We launched in 2012. Fairly slow start to start with. I was convinced that going to schools and reaching parents through schools would be a good route.
"It turned out it wasn’t at all, and it was only really when we started digital marketing and advertising directly to parents and trying to put across in that nanosecond that you have somebody’s attention, both what we were and why they needed us, that was when we started to grow."
Louise explained that she took on a couple of rounds of funding and raised a further $40 million in 2020, two years after launching in the USA.
The company bought a French firm in 2022, rolled out its service in Spain and Italy, merged with a US fintech in 2023 and this year announced that it has sold part of the UK business to Barclays.
Despite the success, she says she prefers not to think of herself as a female founder: "I’m a business founder, and if I’m standing in front of someone, I’m there to pitch my business, not to worry about whether I’m female or white or brown or green or you know anything else. I’m there to pitch my business.
"I do have to say I worry a little bit that the publicity around just how little venture capital funding goes to female founders, which is clearly something that needs to be addressed, but it might be having an unintended negative effect. There’s a real risk that female founders go into investment pitches already feeling that they’re at a disadvantage, and that can’t be good for their confidence.
"So my advice to anybody is: don’t think about gender or race or anything else. You go into that room. You pitch your business as a business founder.
"I think for anybody, if you have a strong business idea, go for it. There is absolutely no better time to start a business than now. If. Think about the AI tools that we have available to us now."
Louise said that if AI had been around when she launched GoHenry, she would have been able to launch the business without external assistance and promote it on social media.
"None of those things existed," she said. "Now all of those things are literally in people’s pockets, and so the time that’s needed, the expertise that is needed, and certainly the money that’s needed, is very much less than it was 10 or 15 years ago. So, it’s a brilliant time to start a business.
"Founding a business is the most fantastic experience, the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, I think, but by far the most rewarding. Fantastic experience. It’s never an overnight success. You read about these overnight successes in the news. It’s a long, hard slog, but so worth it.
"The best way we can help each other is to talk. So any type of entrepreneur community, any type of network, being part of that, being honest, sharing stories, asking for help. There will always be somebody there with ideas, support, and alternative points of view, and that’s what can make the difference in somebody who’s thinking about whether they are going to start a business or they have started it and are part way through their journey."
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