Helping people find beautiful gifts – meet Cat and Little Wishlist

In this week’s interview we talk to Cat Brandon – co-founder of Little Wishlist.

Gift giving goes back as far as human communication and is seen as a relationship strengthener – when you give a gift you are giving a bit of yourself. So if you’re buying a gift, you want to make sure it counts!

In this week’s member interview we speak to Cat Brandon about her company Little Wishlist – a site she co-founded helping parents set-up and manage a gift list so they can be gifted what they love and really need.

How did Little Wishlist start?

Cat started out as a chartered accountant in London. This gave her the business experience she needed to pursue her dream of starting and running her own company, as her parents had always done when she was growing up. Identifying a gap in the market and getting to a point where she had saved enough to start one, Cat set up her first business, Sama Sama (an Airbnb host management business), in Dubai in 2015.

After running the business successfully for a few years, Cat sold it to Airsorted (now Haust). She enjoyed having the business idea, building the business, running it and then selling with an uncomplicated cash buy-out but found running the business solo a challenge so wanted her next venture to be a partnership.

When back in the UK, Cat met with a friend who shared with her his wife Julia’s business idea: an online wishlist platform where you can create a gift list for any item from any store for children. Cat loved the idea so met with Julia to hear how her idea came to fruition.

As a new mum, Julia didn’t know what she needed or what to ask for and so received multiples of the same gift and items that would never be used. She wanted to create something that would help new parents as well as friends and family, and enable people to be more environmentally conscious gift-givers in the process. Cat joined Julie as Co-Founder, and Little Wishlist was born.

The funding journey

Like many Decksender members Little Wishlist was started through support from a friends and family round which has allowed the team to successfully launch. This, along with release of its MVP, a well-received soft launch and hugely successful attendance at a Baby Show has meant they’ve had plenty to celebrate.

The team joined Decksender to gain further investment to follow up this strong start with future money invested going toward enabling tech and its associated IP and marketing to be brought in-house.

The future

All being well, Cat sees little Wishlist developing into a mobile app that is available to everyone for all ages and all occasions – a company that brings the best attributes of Amazon, Instagram and Pinterest together.

With the opportunity to join the Decksender community and have support from investors and startups across the network, Cat would love to hear about different marketing techniques that have worked for companies. As well as skill sharing and access to funds, there is also a huge element of moral support you can receive from a group of people all running their own company and understanding the challenges that that entails.

‘As a business owner, your job is without limit. So everyday you need to pick what you will fail at!.’ It’s comforting being able to share the challenge with peers.