It’s been one month since Anansi launched… and I’m tired. Not for the reasons you might think, though. Over the last month, I’ve only had one day of full childcare. Over this time, the following happened:
My beautifully strong-willed 5-year-old daughter decided she was done with preschool.
Our nanny for our 1-year-old had a 10-day vacation.
We went on our first family camping trip during the week of the 4th.
My father is in poor health, and I wrote this after spending the day with him in health consultations and planning with his care team.
I did still manage to make some updates, which I’ll talk about below, but leading with those updates wouldn’t be an accurate reflection of the last month. Instead, I want to talk a little about being a mom while trying to run a company. It’s not glamorous, but I’m hoping other Mompreneurs (and other caregivers founding companies1) might find solace in this note. If you’re struggling, I see you. (I was just talking about this on Twitter and was surprised at how much that experience resonated with people.).

The last month, I’ve had ~1 hr during the day and ~3 hrs at night to do dedicated work (after the kids go to bed). I’ve also gotten really good at writing while swinging a swing, thinking about marketing while cooking dinner, and negotiating contracts while pushing a stroller. I feel both present and incredibly distracted. It’s not easy to celebrate wins or to unplug.
At the same time, I couldn’t be prouder of my husband and me for showing up. When our eldest was struggling at preschool, we banded together and spent *hours* coaching our daughter. Was it perfect? Absolutely not. But is she back at preschool, connecting with her emotions and understanding the importance of routine: Yes. And I feel proud of how I’m showing up for my parents, too.
Being a mom, caregiver, and solo entrepreneur gives me so much more flexibility to decide exactly what is the most important thing to focus on, but not without cost. Each role could take up most of my time, so I have to intentionally drop balls to maintain my sanity. My self-esteem is pretty low, and so are my emotional reserves. It’s hard to gain perspective when I don’t have any time to zoom out.
We’re back to full-time child care this week, and I’m hoping to make some larger and more frequent updates to Anansi. But for me, the biggest success of the last month has been: I survived. I also grew and learned. I hope to look back at this time as a time when I did the right thing: showed up for my family when they needed me.
So… how is Anansi doing?
It’s been a slow burn (by design) since launch. I wanted to use this time to learn and improve, and I’ll add more gasoline when I feel like I’m ready.
I’ve been focusing on two things: 1) rolling out Trial Stories, so folks can experience the magic of Anansi without a credit card and 2) refining my target audience and value proposition.
I rolled out Trial Stories because not enough people were using the free coupon I was offering to get Custom Stories (personalized and longer). When I realized that my bandaid wasn’t big enough to get users to their first magic moment, I bit the bullet and implemented a free trial system. In turn, this allows me to really start testing my conversion funnel. 🤞
Refining my target audience and value proposition was both necessary and serendipitous. I have always been excited about Anansi’s potential, but it’s also important to make sure it isn’t just interesting technology in search of a problem. My first “aha!” moment was when a friend’s child with ADHD spent an hour reading with his dad on Father’s Day. It really got me thinking about who would get the most from Anansi.
I also started to talk to friends about how I used Anansi with my 5-year-old and some of them reflected back value propositions like learning about your child based on their choices (e.g., They never want to run away from the dragon, or they always go for the sparkly gem). I even DMed some Reddit moderators about Montessori compatibility, and they introduced me to relevant terms like “child-led” and “open-ended”. I hired a Fiverr Seller to create a UGC TikTok, and damn, she taught me some ways to talk about Anansi.
The next step is to put some of these value propositions into practice with some ad experiments. After years of working on Google Analytics and Conversation Tracking, it’s fun (and daunting) to be on the other side.
Some vanity metrics
I have about 200 user accounts.
I have 2 Premium subscribers. 🎉
I have at least 5+ users who have told me that their child had an hour-long session using Anansi, and a couple of users said their kids were asking for Anansi for bedtime. 🥰
Where can you help
I’m trying to get the word out organically. Please let me know if you could make a connection to anyone with the following:
Podcast hosts/newsletters looking to talk to AI or female entrepreneurs
Parents of children with ADHD
Parents of children in Montessori schools
Parents of children who need to spend a lot of time away from home
Parents of children who don’t have a lot of representation in books
Any school leader who might be open to doing a free-trial promotion
Influencers of parent-flavored content (blogs, Instagram, etc.)
I’d still love to talk to educators for feedback; if you know anyone, I’d love an intro.
If you’re a current Anansi user, I’d love your 1-2 sentence testimonial!
Thanks so much to the folks who offered marketing advice last newsletter! I’ve acted on some of it, but looking forward to continued action in the coming month 🙏😀
Info Diet
AI Specific Resources
How to create your own API for Midjourney (with code examples)
Quick news update2: Midjourney launched v5.2 with zoom out, OpenAI announced general availability for GPT-4 API and GPT-3.5 got function calling and a 16K context window, Anthropic’s Claude announced a 100K context window, and Google’s Bard launched a bunch of new features including image prompting.
Marketing + copy inspiration
A thread about The Hustle founder’s advice for viral content
I got curious about the machine behind Sell Like Crazy, and it’s fascinating to be on their marketing lists and observe the tactics
On Parenting and Managing Big Feelings
I feel like it's time for a more inclusive term here. Ping me if you have ideas. “Carepreneurs” might be misinterpreted.
There's SO much going on, but these were the big ones that crossed my path over the last month.
Kudos to you and all mompreneurs for working so hard! It's not easy with one kid, let alone two! Also, kudos to all dads / husbands who support us and make it a little more doable. I'm so sorry that you are tired and feel burned out, I hope it gets better now that the nanny is back.