Mumsnet
Follow this link for a summary of the framework explaining why customer-led success is so rare and the journey organisations go on to get there. Each story uses this framework so if you’re not familiar with it or you want a reminder, it’s worth reading this first to make sense of descriptions of terms like ‘Burningness’ and ‘Moments of Belief’ which are crucial.
There is a version of customer pioneering that starts before a business exists, one that creates a whole new approach rather than changing an existing one. It’s often triggered by a founder-to-be experiencing a need that no one seems to be meeting. Instead of moaning about what happened and wondering why someone doesn’t do something about it, they decide to tackle it. Will Shu did it with Deliveroo in a high-profile way. Martha Silcott is doing it with fablittlebag. And at the turn of the millennium, Justine Roberts did it too, with Mumsnet.
It’s a source of personal burningness, the fuel we found to be essential in creating a successful customer-led organisation. And with the Mumsnet story Roberts experienced burningness three times over - as a customer, as a woman in business and as Mumsnet’s co-founder.