When you think of the typical tech CEO, perhaps Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey or Elon Musk spring to mind.
But right here in Australia, Zsofi Paterson, whose life and career has taken her between Sydney, Melbourne, and Los Angeles, wakes up at 6am each day to run an ASX-listed Tinybeans from her home on Sydney’s northern beaches.
Tinybeans is one of the cutest “social media” platforms in the business, where parents privately & safely share photos of their babies and kids with close knit, carefully curated pods of 15 to 20 followers.
Zsofi Paterson began her journey with Tinybeans (TNY:ASX) as a user of the private family photo sharing platform (she and her husband share two young daughters) before stepping up to the CEO plate in July 2023.
As one of just 9 percent of women CEOs running an ASX-listed company, Zsofi shares some wisdom on how she’s transitioned to running a public company for the latest installment of Missing Perspectives’ female founders series.
Natasha Gillezeau: Hi Zsofi. Thank you for doing this. What does your role involve as CEO of Tinybeans?
Zsofi Paterson: It’s leading the entire company strategy and the P&L - this includes strategic, financial and operational leadership, and also stakeholder management and all the things that are required for a public business. This includes public company responsibilities like leading investor relations and market reporting.
You worked in private companies before Tinybeans. There are very different demands running a publicly listed company. What are some learnings from the first year in the role that you’ve gained from that contrast?
The reporting requirements are quite extensive for a company that is really small, and relatively lightly staffed. Because we’re not yet a profitable business, we have to report quarterly to the market, and then do all the half yearlies, and annual reports.
We also have obligations of continuous disclosure, so anything we might be doing that might be price sensitive, you’ve got obligations to make sure the market is kept up to date with those things. That puts a different lens on things where you’re trying to grow a business and “test and learn.”
There are also more people involved, for example, we have a company secretary. I’ve worked with boards in the past, but we’ve got a more structured and rigorous board cadence and reporting cycle.
And of course, we’ve got a stock price, which is somewhat in our control, but also somewhat out of our control.
Definitely a lot of different dynamics coming into play. How did you develop the skills needed to be ready to lead a listed company? And what are the combination of skills and experiences that you feel have really set you up for the role right now?
I’m still learning! I wouldn’t say I’m nailing being a public company CEO yet. It’s all a journey, and seeing everything as a learning opportunity.
I think one of the benefits was I felt very capable of the operational aspects of this company, and the strategic aspects, because I’d done that in the past running a consumer subscription business (popular health app “Centr by Chris Hemsworth”). For me, I was able to hit the ground running on that, while building my knowledge and skillsets in the other domains.
I also have a very good female chair (Chantale Millard). Interestingly, Tinybeans is one of the only ASX-listed companies with a female CEO AND a female chair. She’s been very helpful as a mentor and rolling up her sleeves and helping me understand the reporting cycles.
I’m a lawyer by background, so I understand some of The Corporations Act, and at a high level, some of the regulatory requirements around running a public company.
Did you find being a Tinybeans “power user” helped?
Absolutely. I have intimate knowledge of the product, I read the content. Any time there is a bug, any time we’re rolling out something new — I’m the first to be using it.
And who are Tinybeans' users and customers?
They’re essentially me - mid 30s, urban, working parents! We acquire 70 per cent of our subscribers when people - typically mothers - are becoming parents for the first time.
We find that the most prime time to be meeting these people is those very early months before practices and habits are established in terms of sharing photos with family and/or on social media. Once people engage and use Tinybeans, they use it for years and years with their subsequent children, and they might have, for example, their brother following their kid’s journey, who will then go and set it up when he has a family.
And that’s what we’re focused on now - the company was launched in 2012, listed in 2017, and spent a lot more time focused on the US market. We’ve got a great product, and we’re increasingly relevant today with the dangers and risks of sharing kids’ lives on social media.
What are the benefits of making a Tinybeans account versus making a Facebook account or sharing images via WhatsApp?
It does everything that you want in one platform that is specifically catering to family sharing. Even on my Instagram, I’ve culled and culled my followers to 600 people, but it’s still like, who are these people? On average, our Tinybeans families have around 15-20 family members and friends. So rather than these huge follower counts, it’s these really tight circles of people that you feel deeply connected to and that you trust with your kids’ content.
The Tinybeans’ use case is quite different - firstly, it’s a small and intimate family and friends circle who really want the day to day of your kids’ journey. Secondly, it aggregates all the photos in one beautiful place. Thirdly, I don’t have fifteen different chat messages with my family, my husband’s family, my friend’s family, wanting to see different photos. And fourthly, you can print the photos at the end of the year into a beautiful album.
There are lots reasons why people would use it - but we need to do a better job of educating people around the benefits because that is the question that comes up - why would I use Tinybeans instead of Facebook?
I think people maybe feel a bit of fear or trepidation about social media in a general sense, but don’t necessarily know how the tech is built or what features product managers at these companies prioritise. Is there anything that your team has bright lines around what you will and won’t do? Or is the product basically built? Do you still iterate on the product?
Firstly, families can feel confident knowing that their personal photos and information are protected from unauthorised access and misuse, and are always owned by the user. The platform is built with privacy and security at the forefront, with strong encryption, secure authentication and regular third party audits. The product is ‘built’, but of course we’re continuing to iterate on it, and we’ll continue to think about the other benefits that we can offer families once they’re in it. At the moment, it’s designed for daily habitual use, and designed for multigenerational families.
Zsofi's favourite Tinybeans feature? The calendar view.
There are lots of debates in the social media space. Jonathan Haidt, for example, author of The Coddling of the American Mind is on a bit of a campaign right now to delay children’s tech use. On this more general debate around tech use and screen time with kids, where do you stand on this as a tech CEO?
We’ve spoken to the people leading the 36 months campaign, which is dealing with a similar thing. I don’t think that anyone truly knows what the risks and ramifications are. I think all the signals are showing that social media - as a whole - is not positive and especially for children.
It’s one thing to say we need to raise the age for children to be online, but if you’ve got parents that have been sharing photos of their kids online since they were born, I think we do play a role in this as well.
As parents, don’t let that be a situation where your kid at 12 is saying: “well you’re telling me not to be on social media, but you’ve been on social media and proliferated all these photos of me, and I didn’t give you that consent”.
As a mother of young girls, I’m terrified as well. I’m like, at least I have a few years to work out how we’re going to deal with this, and see if regulation does start to change, which will hopefully help our cause as well.
Who are your mentors? You mentioned the Tinybeans’ Chair - do you have other mentors or peers who are really instrumental in your development as an entrepreneur and as an operator?
I go to different people for different things. I have a few key relationships, mostly people that I’ve worked for in the past, that I’ll call when I’ve got major decisions or problems I want to talk through or workshop.
I have a lot of friends doing very interesting things that are true experts at what they do. So if it’s a functional area I need help in, there are a range of people I’ll call from my time in Los Angeles, my time at Nine, to my time running Centr. I learn from people!
Where are you hoping to take Tinybeans in the next 3-5 years?
I think Tinybeans is a real solution to an ongoing problem. I’d like to see 50 per cent of families that have young children use Tinybeans as their solution. I’m excited thinking about the product beyond photo sharing, but there’s a lot we can do in the photo sharing space before we need to really think about true product innovation.
Tinybeans is pre-profit, which is fairly normal for a social media or tech company finding its way. How do you think about the commercial side of the business?
I believe very strongly in the value creation available if we can execute a strong subscription strategy. Our company provides high lifetime value for our customers. Once we acquire them, we keep them highly engaged for a long time.
We make our revenue from advertising, brand partnerships, and subscription revenue. All are important to the company, but I’d like to do more to grow the subscription revenue.
What do you think is the best and most ethical business model for social media platforms?
I can’t think of any that aren’t advertising based… I don’t know that we’ve found the most ethical business model for social media yet.
What subscriptions do you use in your own life that have become sticky for you?
Ooh, Spotify has stuck in there. I flick back and forth between the various video streaming services depending on what I want to watch. And of course, Tinybeans.
Zsofi Paterson on ... the 3 Tinybeans' features she loves the most
The calendar feature
"The calendar feature gives me the most beautiful snapshot of my month and is loved by Tinybeans families of my month and is loved by Tinybeans families and is one of the key differentiators. Next month as my oldest daughter turns 4, it will be my 48th month of daily use, so scrolling through the aggregated calendar view is just delightful!"Love heart reactions
"There's a tiny little animated heart that gives you little streamers when you 'love' a photo. It's so cute. And it's funny, because one of our engineers made it without really thinking about it."Flashbacks
"In the Tinybeans home feed or a daily view, the 'flashback' feature surfaces random photos of some dates. When it crops up, it always take me down a memory train."