My First Five Years: Marvel in the moments

Jennie Johnson, MBE, has had over 20 years operating in the childcare sector. After selling Kids Allowed two years ago, she is now embarking on a new venture, My First Five Years. Here, she tells NMT about her new passion for supporting early years.

It has been an incredibly challenging couple of years for the sector. Can you tell us more about the past two years for you since selling Kids Allowed?

I sold Kids Allowed just before the pandemic hit, very lucky timing, but of course nobody saw Covid-19 coming. The acquisition of Kids Allowed has still been positive and successful. At the time I had made the conscious decision to retire, and I did take a full year out which was amazing. Obviously, we were right in the thick of the pandemic, but it gave me the opportunity to just focus on my family and health.

I was also able to give support to my colleagues in the sector, because it has been the toughest time for operators, whether you’re a single setting nursery, childminder or group, the challenges have been unprecedented. So being a phone call away, listening and helping where I could was important.

I do feel lucky not to have had to operate during this time because I can’t imagine the mental toll it has taken on many in the sector.

That being said, a year in, I basically had a eureka moment about this new business. A friend sent across a video of her child doing something and what I saw was a key development milestone taking place. I rang her up and told her how amazing this skill was and she had no idea but it gave her comfort to know.

That’s when I thought, this could be achieved in an app. When I was looking at what was available I wasn’t overly enamoured by what I was seeing. What I know term as ‘ages and stages’ was very prevalent in all apps and that means that the apps were saying to parents that at a certain number of weeks your child should be doing this. Now when I spoke to parents, they said thy were drawn to the apps but they were driving anxiety because they got worried that there child wasn’t reaching a certain by the apps age guide.

So, my co-founder, early years expert, Alistair Bryce-Clegg and I developed a different idea that recognised the little milestones along the way that are often missed while waiting for the ‘bigger ones’.

It was good timing for us as well, as in pre-pandemic time we probably wouldn’t have had the time or as much need for it.

How did it become an app?

It was a steep learning curve, but I did have some advantages. As a second time founder, I had a lot of experience and a community of experts that I had known over the past 20 years. I had created a regional network of founders and people in the childcare sector and so I had people to call up and get advice and this is why I think I was able to accelerate.

When I first started Kids Allowed, it took a long time to get the banks and others to listen to me because I had no standing. This time it was a lot easier and within 24hrs of having the idea, I had already spoken to people in app development, branding and social media.

The network around me was crucial for getting the right advice and support. Halfway through last year we started the first funding round to get money put into the business. We raised £200,000 and that kept the lights on and then at the end of last year we had a product that people could download and test for us. We got over 1,000 parents to do that with us which was fantastic and they gave us great feedback. We then raised a further £1.4 million and completed that round earlier this year so we enter into this year with enough money to take us through the launch and hopefully through to breaking even and then profitability.

Tell us more about the Tech Nation’s Rising Stars competition

So that was a different journey as well. As we said earlier, I’ve never created an app so that’s where I needed to fill that knowledge gap.

I joined a tech accelerator programme, and we were lucky to get into the programme. It gave us access to experts and get checks on what we were doing. It was them that suggested we apply for their awards programme. We got shortlisted and are semi-finalists and there’s still more to come on that.

So, can you give us an overview of the app and its key features?

Earlier, I spoke about ages and stages, we moved from that and have identified six streams of learning and it’s easy to follow those. We’ve broken down all of the skills that children go through from birth up to 5/6 years old because we want to marvel in the moments and not just the milestones. Parents know the big milestones like walking and crawling but they don’t always acknowledge the little things that get the children to the milestones and so they are often rushing to get to the bigger ones. We want them to ‘marvel in those moments.’

When they create an account, the point in the app journey will depend on the age of the child, so if it’s a new born they will start at the very beginning. If the child is older, we will ask some questions to help us understand where the child is in development. That helps us anchor children into the six streams because every child is unique and develop at their own stage. We really wanted to change the narrative and let parents enjoy the journey.

The app takes them on this development journey and can identify what is likely to be next in the six streams and how the parents can support the next moments. Once a child masters a skill or moment, the child moves along the streams at their own pace. Every skill we identify, we give some information about it in the app and it is all backed by scientific research that parents can then access to find out more.

We’ve got 14 colleagues and they all at least have a degree if not a masters and very grounded in early years so we want parents to know that they can trust us and this app.

Does the parental community narrative need to change and what has been the response?

Our community of over 1000 testers have loved the app but it’s also fair to say that many of them are hooked on the idea of knowing when their child will achieve a milestone and what we want them now to do is focus more on the smaller steps that each child takes at their own pace.

We recognise that parents need reassurance. So, there are key points in the journey where the parent can check in and see how their child is doing. Now it’s not as clear cut to say that at 12 weeks your child should be doing this but there are some typical range of dates that can be observed and if a child is out of range then we can do a check in.

Ultimately, if a child needs extra support, then that early recognition is really important and so we have enabled check ins on the app.

When a child masters a skill, the parent can add it to an online scrapbook and that keeps them aware of how they are doing and anything can be put in there.

The other thing we have is a section that shows relevant information for each parent depending on their child’s unique journey. It could be research or backed up blogs that can give extra advice and knowledge.

We also have a lot of free content. Alistair and I have done social media lives on various different topics to help parents on some strategies on key topics.

The app is for parents but we have had a lot of interest from childminders because you can set up on each account up to six children so childminders can set up the children they look after on the app. That has opened up a whole new market opportunity. To use it in nurseries, we’d have to set up My First Five Years professional and we might head down that road but for now its possible for childminders and nannies.

The childminders love the idea of the parents understanding more about early years as it also takes additional pressure off them as the parents become more aware of how children really learn and develop.

Downloading the app and what’s next?

The app is on the apple store at the moment and will be on android very soon as well. There’s a 14-day free trial and use the full functionality of the app. Then after the free trial, parents can subscribe at our introductory level which is £1.99 a month and after those three months its £9.99 a month.

We are hoping that in the next six months we will have 2,000 paying subscribers and another six months after aiming for 40,000 subscribers and launching internationally. Then we can start to watch the impact on a greater scale but its very exciting and we can’t wait to see where it goes.


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