Episode 3 - Meet the Founder: Nick's journey to building Spoony

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Transcript

Maddy: This podcast is recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nations. We pay our respects to the traditional custodians of this country and elders, past and present. We extend our respects to any First Nations, Aboriginal, and Torres Strait Islander people joining us today.

Welcome to today's episode of No Spoons to Give, the podcast where we explore life's ups and downs with neurodivergence, chronic illness, and disability, and chat to the voices that make our community so fantastic. So, Larissa, how are you going today?

Larissa: I'm good, Maddy. A little bit of brain fog, but I'm soldiering on. How are you?

Maddy: Good on you. I'm good. Struggling with the brain fog too, but we're kicking on.

Larissa: Hopefully, our brain cells can just merge together and create one mega brain cell.

Maddy: I'm hoping for that.

Larissa: Have you got a recommendation for me this week?

Maddy: I do. It's a book that I'd like to recommend to you. It's called Late Bloomer by Clem Bastow, and it's a warm and witty coming-of-age memoir that reflects on the author's experiences as an undiagnosed autistic child and as a young adult. It's really quite fantastic.

Larissa: That sounds super interesting. I can definitely relate to that, having a late diagnosis in life.

Maddy: Yeah. What about you? You've got a recommendation?

Larissa: Yeah. I've got a podcast episode for you today. So it's with Fern Brady who is a Scottish comedian, who's absolutely hilarious. Definitely check her out.

Maddy: Oh, I have to.

Larissa: But she did an episode with The Imperfects, on their podcast, and it was called Autistic in a Non-Autistic World, and she talks about her experience in a world that is essentially not designed for her. But the way she describes it is just super relatable, super witty, super funny. Yeah, definitely recommend you check it out.

Maddy: Okay, thank you. I definitely will have to.

Larissa: Today, on the show, we're bringing you the two marvellous brains behind Spoony, co-founders Nicholas Carlton and Kenneth Liang, or as we know them, Nick and Kenneth. Nick is a CEO of Spoony, and Kenneth is our CTO, so our chief technology officer. And we thought what a way to start off our show then getting them both away from their busy schedules to chat all things Spoony. Welcome, Nick and Kenneth, how are you both?

Nick: Good, thank you. Thanks for having us.

Larissa: Thanks for coming on.

Kenneth: Thanks for having us.

Maddy: So, Nick, please tell us all about Spoony. Where did the idea come from?

Nick: Spoony stems from a really personal experience for me. A few years ago, my whole life got turned upside down when I became chronically ill. I went from travelling around the country half the year for work, leading a really busy life that so many 30-something-year-olds live to suddenly not being able to get out of bed. And I found myself experiencing the really profound social isolation that people with chronic illness and disability and neurodivergence experience on a day-to-day basis.

And it always stuck with me as a problem that urgently needed solving because it's a problem that if we can solve it, it can transform the lives of millions, maybe billions of people around the world. It completely changed the course of my life. I never thought that I would be doing this kind of work. I had very little to do with the disability community before becoming sick myself. So often with things in your life that are negative, sometimes something really good can come out of something really bad.

And I'm really thankful that I get to work on Spoony every day because this has really become my life's work and I'm so passionate about solving the social isolation that this community faces. And it gets me out of bed every day, well, metaphorically. Sometimes I can't get out of bed still. But yeah, it really drives me every day. And yeah, I love the community, I love working on Spoony, I love working with you guys.

Larissa: We love working with you.

Maddy: Yeah, we love working with you.

Larissa: Once you came up with the initial idea of Spoony, what was your next step? Obviously, you don't have a tech background. How did you find someone to build it or find Kenneth?

Nick: Yeah, so my background is as a creative director, so really working more in the design and branding space. And I'd always had an interest in tech and I did actually code through high school, but I never took it any further.

I'm not a coder in any great sense. I did very, very rudimentary basic things. When I started Spoony, I started in a space that I knew best, which was social media and communications. So I worked with you, Larissa. We put out some TikToks.

Larissa: We did.

Nick: We put up a website that I built in 15 minutes just to gauge interest in the concept and very quickly became clear when those waitlist registrations started pinging.

Larissa: Just coming through.

Nick: Yeah, just started coming through. It became clear that the idea really resonated with people and that we were onto something. So then the next challenge was how do we actually build this thing? Because at that point, it was just a website. It was just smoke and mirrors. So I knew I had to find a technical co-founder, a software engineer that could really bring this vision to life.

And that's where I connected with Kenneth. Kenneth was working as a software engineer in the same space. And Kenneth can tell us a little bit more about his previous work, but Kenneth really connected with the project. And yeah, we started working on it and we put a team together to start actually building the apps. And it took us a few months, it took us a while to actually get the apps to market, but that was the start of it.

Larissa: Hey, Maddy, do you want to know what one of my favourite profile features is on Spoony?

Maddy: That you can use it to post more photos of your dog?

Larissa: I'll take any opportunity I can to post dog pics, but no. Did you know that Spoony allows you to share your support needs on your profile so that your new friends can understand you a bit better? On mine, I've got routines, quiet spaces, energy conservation, and visual schedules because we all know how much I love mind maps and naps.

Maddy: That's so cool. Can I put energy conservation there? I have to pace my energy or else I get really exhausted?

Larissa: You absolutely can. There's so many cool profile features that make Spoony unique to any other social platform. You can also display your conditions or illnesses, share your interests, and let people know how your energy levels are tracking by using our signature Spoon Status. I'd really encourage people to check it out for themselves. You can sign up for free using the link in this podcast, or you can find us in the App Store or Google Play.

Maddy: So, Kenneth, what was your experience and background before joining Spoony and what made you so excited to join the team?

Kenneth: Before joining Spoony, I worked for Mable. Mable is an online marketplace for people looking for disability service and connect them with support workers. And before Mable, I was working with Shippit and various startups. That's where I got taught how to build scalable solution and build innovative products.

Maddy: Fantastic.

Larissa: Awesome. Last year was a huge year for all of us. You came up with the idea for Spoony. We started a waitlist. We started developing Spoony. We launched on iOS and Android. Nick, you also became a dad. How did you go managing all of that while still being chronically ill?

Maddy: Wow.

Larissa: Yeah, it's a lot.

Nick: Yeah, it was a wild ride. It's got its ups and downs, right? Some days are easier than others and some days are really hard. Building a startup is hard at the best of times and it's hard for anyone, and then as you said, you factor in the chronic illness and it does make it doubly hard, I would say. Sometimes it feels like there's a weight that's just weighing me down or I'm stuck in superglue and it just makes everything just a little bit harder to do. And I still have flares that do send me to bed.

But as I said, the work and the mission is so important to me and it's the most motivating thing to get to go to work and to try to solve a problem that is really, really deeply meaningful to me. It's the most motivating thing. If I had lost the use of my legs, you learn to adapt. So as with so many disabilities, you do learn to adapt over time and you learn to live your life within the new limitations. I was bedridden for two years and I wasn't able to work for two years. So to be in this position now where I get to go to work and work on something that is so exciting, and it is fun as well. We have a lot of fun.

Maddy: We do.

Nick: It's the best.

Maddy: We have the most amazing, supportive, and vibrant community at Spoony. From reporting bugs to offering suggestions and feedback, our community has been with us from the very start. What do you think is your favourite thing about the Spoony community?

Nick: My favourite thing has been, as you just said, just how engaged the community is and how excited they are about Spoony and about the community that we're creating. I really think that we co-designed the app with the community. At every step of the way, we asked people what they wanted to see in the app, what were the ideas that they liked, what don't they like? And it's meant that the entire community has really had a vested interest in the outcome.

In startups, we talk about building something that people want. I think we've done that. We've built something that people want, but also, we've gone way beyond that. We're building something that people love and just that level of excitement and how engaged people are in everything that we do has been the most exciting part because at the end of the day, when you're building a product, all you want is for people to actually want it and-

Larissa: Yeah, for people to love it.

Nick: ... for people to like it and people to use it. So that's been the most rewarding part, just seeing how excited people are and how much it's already changing lives. And people have shared the most amazing, incredible stories about how they've finally found the support network that they always wanted but never had, or they've finally connected with a friend that understands them or they finally feel safe enough to share things about themselves that they've never been able to share with other people before or in any other spaces.

Larissa: Last year was a huge year for us at Spoony. What's on the roadmap for this year?

Kenneth: This year, we have lots of exciting things lined up, especially Match and personalised feed. So Match is connecting people with the right people and also with personalised feed, they can control what they want to see in their feed wall.

Maddy: That's fantastic. I think you're absolutely addressing the things that the community has been asking for, and I know they're going to be so thrilled to have those.

Larissa: For sure. I feel like my feed's going to end up just being all dogs and horses.

Maddy: Yeah, I feel the same.

Larissa: In the best way possible. That's probably a good place to wrap up today. Thank you both for coming in and joining us and chatting all things Spoony. We really appreciate you both coming in and joining us.

Nick: You're welcome. Thanks for having us on the show, and thank you both for all the amazing work you do. You're both building an incredible community and I think everyone is really grateful for everything that you do.

Larissa: Thank you.

Maddy: Thank you so much.

Larissa: Thanks so much for listening, everyone. We'll catch you next time.

Maddy: This podcast is brought to you by Spoony, a safe space for neurodivergent, chronically ill, and disabled people to make friends and find support. Spoony is the world's very first social app designed with accessibility at its core.

If you liked this episode, it would mean the absolute world to us if you could hit subscribe or share it with a friend. If you'd like to join our Spoony community, you can download the app on the App Store or via Google Play. And if you'd like to keep up to date with us on social media, you can follow us via the links in the show notes.