Social network for motherhood, expands to include women trying to conceive

Now not only soon-to-be, but also hope-to-be moms have a place to connect. This week, Peanut (the app that helps women find new mom friends) has picked up $5 million in fresh funding to expand its community to women who are trying to conceive.

"We want to shine a light on an often silent struggle," Co-founder & CEO Michelle Kennedy said in a statement. "What has always been Peanut's point of difference is enabling conversations women feel unable to have on any other platform. Providing a safe, inclusive space for women to discuss fertility is a natural progression for our brand as we continue to support women throughout each life stage. No woman should ever feel lonely, isolated or muted on such an important issue."

The idea for Peanut arose from co-founder Michelle Kennedy’s personal understanding of how difficult it was to forge female friendships after motherhood. As the former deputy CEO at dating app Badoo and an inaugural board member at Bumble, she initially saw the potential for Peanut as a friendship-focused matching app with swipe mechanisms similar to popular dating apps.

Over the past couple of years, however, Kennedy realized that what women needed was more of a community space. The team then built out the app’s features accordingly, with the launch of its Q&A forums, Peanut Pages, last year, and more recently, with Peanut Groups. The latter has now become Peanut’s main use case, with 60% of users taking advantage of the app’s community features and just 40% using the friend-finding functions.