Brittany Bloomer, co-founder of Villagehood, on learning from your customers firsthand.

Three lessons in building with your customers.

1. 01Put it in customers’ hands before launch. A beta app let Villagehood onboard mums early and give them the real experience of what had been built, long before the public launch.
2. 02One customer’s view isn’t enough. As a mum herself, Brittany could tell her brother and co-founder how the app would help her. But that was just one mum. They wanted feedback from all the mums.
3. 03Act on feedback, visibly. When mums asked for things like classes in their area, the team took it on, responded and implemented it. That’s how so much of the app ended up built by the mums.

Full transcript

Lightly edited for readability.

Jess Wilson: …you also did it, I think, the best way possible from a founder’s perspective, in that you learnt from your customers and the mums firsthand as you were building, and they had quite a bit to do with actually building the features that you rolled out. Is that right? Love that.

Brittany: Yes. So prior to launch, we had the beta app, and that was really wonderful, to onboard mums and provide them with the experience of what we had built.