How following your curiosity can lead the way to startup success
Many business owners and entrepreneurs are likely to cite their parents as the inspirational force behind their career path, but for myself and Mirthy Co-Founder Dhruv Haria, it was a specific and pivotal point in our parents’ lives that provided the inspiration for the business – retirement.
Re-imagining retirement
Both Dhruv and I witnessed the effects retirement was having on our parents and, in particular, how their well-being was being affected by their decreasing social circles and the increasing inactive free time they had alone. We decided to use our backgrounds in technology and our experience in start-ups to bring a better solution to this problem to our parent's lives and millions of others.
This is a hugely underserved demographic, who are feeling increasingly disenfranchised from society. There are more than 13 million 60-80 year olds living in the UK currently and by 2035 1 in 4 people will be over 65. Yet while dialogue around an ageing population focuses on the growing burden on health services, my experience sees a generation of people with more energy, desire for life and time than ever before.
The research we conducted prior to launching Mirthy in 2020 debunked another myth around ageing – that those of retirement age and beyond are not digitally savvy and don’t feel comfortable interacting online. In reality, this demographic has seen the largest increase in recent internet use, from 52% in 2011 to 83% in 2019, and this has been further accelerated throughout the pandemic.
Our vision for Mirthy is to reimagine what it means to be retired. We’re starting with the discovery of new opportunities for learning and connecting through events, and the ambition is to evolve this into a game changing proposition once you’re no longer in full time work. Mirthy offers a comprehensive programme of events and content library, designed to bring like-minded people together to share interests and experiences, learn new things and make new connections.
Driven by curiosity
The philosophy behind the platform is very similar to our approach to running the business, it’s all about embracing curiosity. In the same way we encourage our users to indulge their curiosity through Mirthy by attending a variety of talks and trying out new activities, we also encourage our team and each other to stay curious and be open to new ideas as the business evolves.
I believe we’re a naturally curious bunch, always asking questions, testing what works and striving to learn and get better. Like most start-ups we’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way and I’m sure there will be many more to come, but what’s important is that we learn from those mistakes fast and make adjustments.
Whilst our vision for the business has never changed, we went through several iterations of the model in the first year at Mirthy, and then COVID struck and we had to pivot again from an offline model to fully online. If you are not prepared to be flexible, you will struggle to break through those early days as an entrepreneur.
For us, curiosity and a desire to learn more about our users and our target market has also been critical to the success of Mirthy in our early stages. With the majority of our core team being outside this target market (i.e. not retired) we’ve had to work twice as hard to make sure we really understand what it is they need and want from the platform. We’re constantly asking for feedback and input from our 30,000+ users to help us improve and move forward.
Don’t expect to do it alone
As critical as choosing the right person or persons to co-found and run your business with, is being open to partnerships with other businesses or organisations that can help you to achieve your goals faster, better or even inspire you to consider new goals or a new direction. There can be a tendency to want to keep your cards close to your chest as a start-up founder and a reluctance to share your idea or your journey with others for fear of potential loss of control or criticism.
My experience at Mirthy has shown me that the right partner (much like the right co-founder) with similar values and goals can be a huge asset in the initial phase of growth and development. We’ve been lucky enough to partner with some fantastic organisations so far including the NHS Retirement Fellowship, Age UK and McCarthy Stone. They’ve each provided valuable insight and support for the business and share our belief that curiosity and continual learning are a fundamental part of success.
The whole team at Mirthy are excited to see where our curiosity will lead us next…
