four-week validation test

Avni Patel Thompson shares how she built Poppy, a childcare service connecting families with vetted caregivers, after experiencing gaps in her own childcare support. She describes testing the idea with a four-week, low-cost pilot using off-the-shelf tools, then finding a technical co-founder and using growth to secure funding. For the next stage, she focuses on building a team around commitment and mission, creating sustainable pricing, and communicating transparently with early users. She also discusses founder commitment, mentorship, investor updates, and self-care as part of building a company for the long term.

Avni Patel Thompson explains how her consumer research experience helped her spot problems people struggle to describe, and how talking with parents led her to identify childcare as a missing support network. After closing an earlier subscription box startup, she tested Poppy with simple tools, caregivers, and local parents, then used early bookings and steady growth to validate demand. She advises founders to run focused tests, learn from rejection, have honest conversations about career and family trade-offs, and start before an idea feels perfect. For venture-backed startups, she argues that founders should pursue a large, ambitious mission while solving the immediate problem in front of them.