Carol is a free mobile app that connects and supports mums throughout their motherhood journey. Users can connect with likeminded mums who have children of the same age and live close by as well as create their own groups, join groups and build their mum community.
Users also have access to 100’s of expert-led resources across Pregnancy, Postpartum, Baby Sleep, Baby Feeding, Baby Development and The Early Years, all in one place which helps support them as they move through Motherhood. We believe that Connection and Support go hand-in-hand which is why they are both equally important aspects to Carol.
How did you come up with the idea for the company? What do you think makes this company unique?
When I was pregnant with my first child, I kept being told that ‘it takes a village to raise a baby’ but I knew this wasn’t going to be a reality for me. My mum passed away when I was 17 and I had no real support system or family living close by in London and when our son was 1, my partner’s mum tragically passed away, so we really had no ‘village’ to rely upon.
There was nowhere for me to meet mums who could relate to our position of raising our son without a support system, or a ‘village’ as some refer to it, and therefore Carol was born!
We wanted to create a place where mums could find their community, have honest conversations, make friends and get advice all in one place. It was important for us to create an app that not only connected mums, but also supported them with answers to the most frequently asked questions in one place. Scrolling the internet trying to find the answer to even the simplest of questions isn’t ideal with a screaming baby!
We couldn’t find an app that not only connected mums but supported them, particularly with things like going back to work after having a baby and maternal wellbeing, so we built it! We found the few Apps that were available only tackled half the problem and missed a key element of the Motherhood journey – support.
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How has the company evolved over the last couple of years?
From the initial idea to market research and through to development, we have been working on building our pre-launch waitlist, partnering with brands to offer our users an exclusive discount and getting the app ready to launch into the market!
From our market research we found that a huge barrier to entry for mums when using Apps such as ours, is that the sign up process takes far too long. The need to fill out an in-depth profile meant that there was a high drop off rate before they had even signed up to the app. This meant that when developing the app we added Social Sign Up to make it really easy for mums to use Carol, as well as enabling mums to use the App for the Resources without having to fill out their profile! We wanted to welcome as many mums as possible to Carol.
We therefore allow mums to simply browse the resources and become familiar with the App before inputting their information. Mums are also able to complete their full profile enabling the App to connect them with mums who live close by, have children of the same age and have similar interests!
We are very proud to have partnered with some really iconic brands within the Mother and Baby space offering our users discounts across a range of products. We have also been recognised by Employee Benefits companies to support Employees when they return to work following maternity leave, and having a confirmed launch date before we have the product in the market!
Creating our pre-launch waitlist has been really important to us to make sure that we have founding users who test the Beta version of the app, give their feedback and are already live on the App before we go live to the public on the App Store! Running Campaigns with Mumsnet as well as organic social media marketing and word of mouth has allowed us to build a great waitlist. We are very excited to launch Carol into the market and support as many mums as we can whilst they move through Motherhood so they know that they aren’t alone and there is a community for them.
What can we hope to see from the Carol app in the future?
We hope for Carol to become the go-to source for mums to meet friends, ask questions, get support and advice from Pregnancy through to The Early Years.
We aim to build out our Resources and Wellbeing section of the app, bringing our experts in-house and supporting mums worldwide. We also aim to work with Employers to best support their employees when they return to work from maternity leave…watch this space!!
