The Peanut app: It’s like a dating app for moms
Feb 28, 2017, 2:28 PM | Updated: Oct 11, 2024, 9:52 am
Peanut CEO Michelle Kennedy (photo courtesy of Peanut)
(photo courtesy of Peanut)
Are you the only one of your friends with a baby? Or maybe all your baby having friends live out of town? Or they’re too busy working and raising kids to hang out as much as you’d like? Well, the new Peanut app wants to hook you up with other like-minded mamas.
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The Peanut app’s CEO and co-founder, Michelle Kennedy, is mother to 3-year-old Finn, whose nickname has been “Peanut” since he was in the womb.
“It’s quite isolating, a brand new experience, when you become a mother,” Kennedy said. “I didn’t really have any girlfriends who were doing it at the same time as me. All of a sudden, I realized I actually kind of needed to have some friends who understood that one minute you can be having a normal conversation and then you can be distracted for two seconds while you have to deal with your little one. So it felt obvious to me, given the background I’d been working in, to build something that was representative of modern motherhood.”
The Peanut app for moms
Kennedy’s background is in dating apps.
“I was deputy CEO and then I was integral to the launch of Bumble,” Kennedy said. “I really felt like there’s so many smart ways we can use the algorithms that we usually use to connect people romantically. And think about using that to make platonic connections, platonic friendships”
“So the way you join the app is you connect through Facebook,” she said. “That is a really important feature for us because it also gives us a safety element. It means we can do some additional safety checks.”
Plus, you can see if you have any real-life friends in common. To set up your profile, you pick three things you’re interested in and have the option to write out a little bio.
Manhattan’s Jamie Kolnick has been using the Peanut app for about a month.
“My three interests are Mom Boss, since I’m a working mom, Fashion Killa, since I like fashion, and Fitness because I love to work out,” Kolnick said. “My bio says, ‘Hi all, I’m a mama of a one year old boy. I love adventuring around the city, theater, movies, music, museums, shopping and foodie fun. I’m big into fitness and cooking new, healthy recipes. All about that work/life balance.'”
Kolnick said she has lots of friends scattered around the city, but no one who lives in her neighborhood for easy meet ups.
“There’s mom groups, there’s music classes, there’s support groups, there’s breastfeeding support groups and all these opportunities to find new people,” Kolnick said. “But the problem is that not everybody is there to make new friends always. You know that with the app people are there to make friends. They’re all looking for the same thing.”
How you use the Peanut app is up to you. You can seek out moms who want to get your kids together for a play date, moms who want to hang out without the kids, or a combination of both.
“I’ve always wanted to be on Tinder, but I’ve been married for four years!” Kolnick said with a laugh. “So I never got to go through that, and I’ve been with my husband 10 years. I’m like, it’s kind of like Tinder for mom friends!”
Kennedy says the more you use the app, the easier it is for them to connect you with people who share your interests and have the attributes you are looking for.
And Kennedy is not just the CEO, she’s also a user. She has her first mom date coming up this week.
“You can never have too many women in you life,” Kennedy said. “That’s how I feel. I don’t know whether I always used to feel like that when I was younger. Now I feel like the more women in my life, the better it is. I’m always excited to meet new women and hear their perspectives.”
