‘Solving a massive problem’: Life admin app Eggy’s journey as a $7m startup

Motivated to develop a reliable “life admin” app after receiving a $1,000 fine for forgetting to renew a car registration, Gold Coast couple Kate Morgan and Kirk Reynoldson are now sitting on a $7 million tech company that is expanding its consumer-facing product to target the corporate sector.

Their Eggy app, a mobile-first platform, was originally designed to help families manage the grind of paying bills on time, renewing insurance policies and accessing important documents required to run a household.

Reynoldson, a former NRL star who played for Melbourne, Newcastle and St George-Illawarra, and Morgan, a PhD graduate and a former assistant professor in nutrition and dietetics at Bond University, founded Eggy in 2019.

The couple devised the app from their Gold Coast home after Reynoldson received a $1,000 fine for forgetting to pay his car registration. The app was initially developed to manage a range of day-to-day household functions from bills reminders to creating a “to do” list for a broad range of family activities.

Eggy has since evolved into a sophisticated phone-based intranet for SMEs and large corporations, with the app even incorporating parameters for employers around the “right to disconnect” law passed earlier this year.

“We always knew we were solving what was a massive problem for us personally when we started the Eggy crusade,” Reynoldson tells Business News Australia.

“We actually started serving consumers who were HR professionals and leaders in their organisations, so it was a natural product progression for us into business.”

For a business that the couple concede in its formative years kept them looking for reasons why it wouldn’t work, Eggy has managed to secure the backing of venture capitalist Blackbird.

But Eggy has taken a capital light approach to funding its growth, with the latest raising of $300,000 valuing the business at $7 million.

“Our share registry is wrapped with quality high-net-worth investors who have industry experience – and we have (deliberately) stepped away from the VC landscape,” says Reynoldson.

Blackbird is the only venture capital firm in Eggy’s shareholder base.

“For anyone who has started a tech business, it is never going fast enough for you and that is what keeps driving us,” says Reynoldson, adding that Eggy has made a determined move to expand into the US.

“But to see what we have been able to achieve over the past three to four years has been pretty remarkable.

“Katie and I had no prior tech experience before we entered the field. Everyone laughed at us.

“But we now have a product on the consumer front and next financial year, with Eggy Business, we are really looking to not only leverage that but launch globally as well.”

With plans to explore opportunities in the US last year, Morgan and Reynoldson loaded up the family for an epic road trip earlier this year – a trip that Reynoldson says amounted to “70 nights in a campervan with three kids”.

But just days before heading for the US, the couple were buoyed by a deal they locked in with Sydney-based culture tech platform Prosper EX that could potentially be worth $2 million to Eggy over the next 12 months.

Prosper EX is a fast-growing human resources platform that integrates performance management, employee engagement and development. It counts Applejack Hospitality, RD Jones Group and Bridgestone Tyres among its clients.

“There are some 32 million businesses in the US - the vast majority of which aren’t using any HR software yet, but that is increasing, and fast,” says Reynoldson.

“We estimate there’s potentially 20 million businesses in the US that need phone-based intranets, like Eggy, and at roughly $7,500 per business per year, that’s a $150 billion market that we’d like to tap into.”

'A unique way to penetrate the market'

The Eggy founders had three objectives as they headed to the US on their exploratory mission, including aims to build content and “develop a unique way to penetrate the market”.

“We want to run a docuseries about an Aussie family that has put it all on the line to make this business a success,” says Reynoldson.

“We got a heap of content around that, and we’ve had a lot of interest in putting that together.”

The second objective was to catch up with prospective channel partners, such as payroll companies, and to learn more about the environment in the US.

“That was incredible, and we made contact with a heap of potential partners there,” says Reynoldson.

“The other thing was to meet customers face to face and see what the sentiment is around the technology.

“What we really learned was that we need to focus on one or two states initially – and not to spread ourselves too thin. There’s also a positive approach to Australian companies in some states, so that knowledge is invaluable.”

Reynoldson sees Eggy Business as a key area of future growth for the scale-up journey.

“Our mission has always been ‘life’s info in one place working for you’, and if you look at the natural progression of our product, we have gone into consumer land and from there realised that the individual user is just like a small business unit.

“You have bills, expenses and income and you need to organise that for all the different stakeholders in your life. Naturally we found that work is a massive part of the day for people and their lives.”

Among the main features found on the platform is Eggy Spaces, where users can separate all the areas of their life, such as work, school, sport and business.

“As a mobile first platform we really found a niche within the young deskless workforce who just want a personalised experience on their mobile phone,” says Reynoldson.

“That’s the sweet spot that we saw in the market. Everyone has login and password fatigue, so there were some good use cases around the integration of Eggy into the existing work environment where we could solve some problems.

“Eggy Business is really created for deskless workforce. A lot of work-tech is created on the PC. We call it automation with personalisation. We offer an automated way to keep personal in Eggy.

“With the right to disconnect, for example, we have that written into our infrastructure so that employers don’t communicate with specified users outside of their work hours.”

Eggy generates revenue through a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, with the consumer version offering free access, with limited file uploads permitted, and a premium option that allows users to create Spaces.

Eggy Pro is dedicated to business users, offering features that allow users to build Spaces and have unlimited data and storage with the app.

“We turned on consumer subscriptions at the beginning of last financial year and we have had 350 per cent growth so far this year,” says Reynoldson.

“That’s purely Eggy Consumer. With Eggy Business, through our partnership with Prosper EX, they now have about 100,000 Eggy users and we’re looking to leverage that this financial year.

“We’re also talking to a couple of payroll companies with 800,000 to one million end users, that could lead to partnerships.

“So, we see a really good opportunity for revenue and scaling the business.”