Podcast
You have to have so much belief in what you’re doing: Melanie Corlett, Founder of Mumli
Mel joined Steve on the latest episode of Give It A Nudge to talk about her investment banking background, love for fitness, and what inspired her to launch Mumli.
About the guest
Melanie Corlett
Founder & CEO at Mumli
Melanie Corlett is the founder and CEO of Mumli, a mobile-first platform for motherhood. She studied finance and accounting in Montreal, started a fitness business training women at university, worked in investment banking during the financial crisis, moved to Australia, ran a women’s gym for four years, then sold it at the start of COVID and turned her focus entirely to the gap she kept seeing: mothers are chronically underserved by technology.
Episode overview
Melanie Corlett is the founder of Mumli, an app that helps mothers navigate the overwhelming information landscape of modern parenthood. The product personalises content, products, and services based on a mother’s stage, location, interests, and values. But Mel’s story isn’t really about an app. It’s about a decade of building adjacent skills, noticing a gap that nobody was filling, and then throwing herself into the problem with enough conviction to get engineers, advisors, and users on board before she had the funding to pay for most of it.
In this conversation, Mel walks Steve through her journey from investment banking during the 2008 financial crisis to running a women’s gym in Sydney to building a tech startup. She talks about what it actually takes to get a team behind an idea when you have no budget, why user expectations for apps have never been higher, and what the second phase of Mumli’s product will unlock for the 85 percent of household purchases that women are already making.
You have to have so much belief it becomes contagious
Mel’s most important early challenge was getting people to work with her. Engineers, agencies, advisors. None of them needed to say yes and none of them would if she wasn’t completely convincing. She describes belief as a kind of currency: you have to have so much of it that people want to be a part of what you’re building. It worked. She found engineers during COVID who were on reduced hours and looking for side projects, and they have stayed through the entire build.
“You have to have so much belief in what you’re doing that people just want to be a part of it. Convincing people that your idea is worth their time was the hardest and the most rewarding bit.”
Melanie Corlett 13:00
Why mums have been the most underserved tech market
Women make 85 percent of household purchasing decisions in the US. Mothers are responsible not just for nappies and prams but for cars, home insurance, wills, cleaners, accountants, sleep consultants, and doulas. Yet no technology has been built to help them do any of those jobs more efficiently. Mel frames mothers as CEOs of the family unit, operating without any of the tools that every other professional role has.
“When you look at moms as CEOs and you ask yourself what are the jobs that need to be done, you realize they have just been slugging it with no help. In every other industry there is a piece of tech that helps people get their jobs done, but when you look at moms there’s absolutely nothing.”
Melanie Corlett 26:00
The lean startup model no longer works for consumer apps
Mel makes a point that Steve notes no other guest has raised in nearly 90 episodes: user expectations for apps have never been higher. People are benchmarking new apps against Instagram, which has thousands of engineers. A minimum viable product that was acceptable in 2012 will be deleted in 10 seconds in 2022. Mel says she ships things at 80 percent while in closed beta but everything has to be perfect once she goes for growth.
“The lean startup model was an amazing concept 10 years ago when smartphones were just becoming freely used and apps were the coolest thing. Now the problem is users’ experiences and their standards are so high. Your product has to be perfect.”
Melanie Corlett 22:00
Phase two: making Mumli a decision-making platform
Phase one is personalised content discovery. Phase two connects mothers to the services and businesses that match their needs, with social proof from other mothers, location-based recommendations, and a full path from discovery to booking. Mel’s vision is that Mumli becomes the place where a new mother can find a sleep consultant, book them, read reviews from other mothers at the same stage, and complete the whole journey without touching Google.
Key takeaways
Chapters
00:00Introduction and what Mumli does02:00Mel’s background: investment banking, fitness, and Australia07:00Running a women’s gym and noticing the postpartum gap10:00The Mumli name and working with a branding agency13:00The hardest part: getting people to believe in the idea16:00Finding engineers during COVID and building the team19:00Current product: personalised content in closed beta22:00Why the lean startup model no longer applies25:00Phase two: connecting mums to services and decisions29:00Why mums are the CEO of the family unit33:00Why join Mumli and what comes next
Mentioned in this episode
Frequently asked questions
What is Mumli and who is it for?
Mumli is a mobile-first platform for motherhood. It helps mothers personalise their experience by serving them relevant content, products, and services based on their stage of motherhood, location, interests, and parenting values. The platform is currently in closed beta, gradually onboarding users to test specific features before a broader launch.
How did Melanie Corlett come up with the idea for Mumli?
Mel ran a women’s gym in Sydney for four years and worked extensively with postpartum clients. She kept seeing how hard it was for mothers to find relevant resources for things like pelvic floor recovery, safe pregnancy training, sleep consultants, and breastfeeding support. Focus groups confirmed the problem was far wider than postpartum fitness, and she eventually sold the gym to focus entirely on building the platform.
What is Mumli’s product roadmap?
Phase one is personalised content: the app learns each mother’s stage, location, and values and serves her relevant information from native and third-party sources, curated by what other mothers at the same stage have found valuable. Phase two adds service discovery and connections, allowing mothers to find and book practitioners like sleep consultants and doulas, with social proof from other users.
Why does Melanie Corlett say the lean startup model no longer works?
User expectations for mobile apps have risen dramatically. People benchmark new apps against the experience of products like Instagram, which has thousands of engineers. If an app doesn’t deliver clear value within 10 to 15 seconds, users close it and don’t return. Mel believes you can ship at 80 percent quality during closed beta for feedback, but everything must be at a high standard before you try to scale.
What does Mel mean when she says mums are CEOs of the family unit?
Women make approximately 85 percent of household purchasing decisions. Mothers manage not just baby-related decisions but also cars, insurance, wills, domestic services, childcare, and healthcare. Yet there is almost no technology built to help them do those jobs more efficiently. Mel’s argument is that this gap, the absence of purpose-built tools for the person making most of the family’s decisions, is one of the largest unaddressed opportunities in consumer tech.
Topics discussed
Full transcript
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Show full transcript (39 minutes, 7 sections)
00:00 Introduction and what Mumli does
Melanie Corlett joins Steve Grace to introduce Mumli, a mobile-first platform for motherhood. The app helps mothers personalise their experience with content, products, services, and community. Mel explains the vision at a high level before the conversation moves into her background.
02:00 Mel’s background and why she ended up in tech
Mel studied finance and accounting in Montreal and wanted to go into investment banking. To pay for university she started training women out of the university gym, discovering a passion for fitness and women’s health. After starting at an investment bank during the 2008 financial crisis, she got depressed, quit, broke up with her boyfriend, and moved to Australia for what was meant to be six months. She never left.
07:00 Running a women’s gym and finding the problem
Mel opened a women’s-focused gym in Sydney and ran it for four years, selling it right at the start of COVID. Through that gym she worked with hundreds of postpartum women and kept seeing that relevant information and resources were almost impossible to find. Focus groups revealed the problem was much bigger than postpartum fitness: sleep, breastfeeding, pelvic floor, birth prep, and general life decisions were all pain points with no good solutions.
13:00 Getting people on board without a budget
Mel describes getting the first team together as the hardest and most rewarding part of the journey. She had to sell people on the dream when she couldn’t pay them market rates. Engineers, advisors, and agency partners all needed to believe in what she was building. She found engineers during COVID who were on reduced hours and looking for meaningful side projects, and their product-focused mindset has been integral to the build.
19:00 Current product: closed beta and content personalisation
Mumli is currently in a controlled closed beta. Users join a waitlist, get invited in batches to test specific features, and provide feedback on individual parts of the product before broader release. The current focus is on personalised content: the app learns each mother’s stage and values and serves them relevant information, cutting through the overwhelming and impersonal results of standard search.
25:00 Phase two: service discovery and the mum-as-CEO opportunity
Mel outlines phase two of the product: going beyond content to connect mothers to services, practitioners, and businesses with social proof and location filtering. She introduces the mum-as-CEO framing: women make 85 percent of household purchases, and mothers are responsible for virtually every major decision and logistics task in the family, yet almost no technology exists to help them do it. That gap is Mumli’s entire second-act opportunity.
33:00 Why join Mumli
Mel says the mission is what attracts people: helping make motherhood less overwhelming and more joyful, which has a direct effect on the next generation. She notes that 40 percent of women in the US experience some form of postnatal depression or anxiety, and that reducing information overload and isolation is part of addressing that. The product is mission-driven in a way people can feel immediately.
About the host
Steve Grace is the founder and CEO of The Nudge Group, a technology-focused recruitment and advisory business. He has built and scaled companies across Australia and the US, and hosts Give It A Nudge to spotlight founders and operators building something meaningful.
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