Sophie Goddard, founder of chip-in, is building a social organisation app designed to take the pain out of planning group events. After a decade in marketing, much of it unexpectedly spent in financial services, Sophie spotted a problem that many of us know far too well: organising birthdays, weddings, hen dos, stag dos, weekends away and group plans still tends to happen through chaotic WhatsApp chats. With chip-in, Sophie is creating an AI-powered way to streamline decisions, payments, dates and private conversations, helping people get together more easily and keeping group chats for the fun bits.
FC: Could you summarise your professional background and introduce your company?
Sophie: Of course. I have always been in marketing. I left Newcastle University with a business management degree and actually fell into marketing. I ended up being in marketing throughout my whole twenties and, weirdly, have always ended up in finance, which I did not expect to happen.
I started at Thomas Cook Money, and I was there when Thomas Cook went under, which was an interesting one. Then I moved on to an investment app, then a payments company, and I am now working for a wealth management business while setting up my own company. So I really weirdly fell into marketing and fell into finance, and I have basically done that for the last ten years.
That journey has somewhat inspired my idea.
I have been working on chip-in for the last three years, but the last year has been a lot more focused, and I have been stepping back from freelancing. My absolute target market for launch is essentially the social, millennial, London-centric individual like myself. It is people who are in a phase of life where there are lots of milestones: big birthdays, people moving in together, weddings, babies, stags, hen dos. We are super social, and trying to organise those events is incredibly challenging.
What we are using at the moment is WhatsApp group chats, because it is the most obvious forum and that is where we are already sitting. However, I am building chip-in to make it so much easier for people to organise things and basically get together more. Right now, I think we do not get together enough because it is such a nightmare.
Whether that is selecting dates, trying to get people to reply, sorting out payments, the list is endless. So what I am building is an app which uses AI to streamline that whole process. It removes the need for a group chat and instead contacts people privately via WhatsApp using AI. The organiser essentially manages everything through broadcast messaging, and then there is a two-way AI conversation going on to help make decisions a lot easier and quicker.
It also allows people to have private things going on. So if someone cannot afford something that month, and they are paying off an Airbnb for example, that can all be private. Basically, anything where you are in a group and you think, “Let’s create a WhatsApp group chat”, that is what I am trying to remove the need for. We can keep WhatsApp group chats for fun, and use chip-in for the actual organisation part.
FC: If you have had any, what fundraising challenges would you say you have faced, and how did you navigate them?
Sophie: My fundraising journey has been quite unique, and I feel very lucky that both of my investors actually came to me, which is very rare and I am very proud of that.
They are both people within my network who I know as friends. I had basically been speaking very informally about chip-in, both times on holiday, once in Ibiza and once in Bali. Separately, they both came to me and said, “I would love to give you some money.” So that part of it was bizarrely seamless.
Where I then struggled, and what was harder for me, was the conversations that followed. Deciding how much, how much equity, and valuing the business. I found that part very challenging.
I also think I was blessed that I raised money through friends, but with that comes difficult conversations. They are wanting a certain amount of the business, and I am pushing back. So for me, it was more about navigating the conversations that followed.
In terms of how I managed to overcome those conversations, honestly, the biggest thing has been leaning on my network. I ask people all the time. FounderCatalyst were really, really helpful. I had some conversations, mainly with Max, and watched a lot of the videos Sam has created. I also spoke to a lot of people who have done it and been there.
That helped me because I was completely clueless on what to do. There is a very fine balance in the early days, before proving concept, when it literally is just an idea in my head. I am asking people to give me money and buy a percentage of a business that I have completely made up.
I understand that. But it is also like, the early people do deserve more because they believed in me.
FC: Have you faced any barriers as a female founder?
Sophie: I do not know if I have yet experienced what I am going to experience, if that makes sense. My journey has very much been me in my bedroom, still freelancing, and it has literally just been me. I have not yet properly gone out and pitched or been out in the big bad world.
Right now, my journey so far has felt quite secluded and safe. Where you hear the classic stories of horrible boardroom experiences and meetings where you feel it more, I have not really experienced that.
What I would probably say I have experienced, and I think this is just a female thing, is the classic lack of self-belief. That is obviously a me thing, not to do with the outside world, but the questioning, the imposter syndrome, the days where I am just like, “What the hell am I doing?”
I was on track for quite a good job, I was paid well, and now currently I have very little money. So I do have days where I question the whole thing.
I think the fact that women are often more risk averse, and do not have as much of the natural confidence that I think men are blessed with, has probably impacted me. But in terms of my experience so far of the world as a female founder, I have actually been okay.
So far, my blockers are internal, not from the external world. I am very aware of all the problems, and I know the biggest problem women face is access to funding. If I look at what has worked for me, which is funding, I have had a good experience. My two investors are men, as are many of the people I work with. They have believed in me from the start, so my experience has been a very positive one.
This is also why I want to be quite vocal and document my journey. I have started TikTok, and I am going to really try to share as much as I can because we all need to be more honest, vulnerable, talk about it and support others. This journey has felt quite lonely. I want to expand my network more, come into London more, and do a lot more in-person stuff now that I have got some of the serious things done.
FC: Since joining FounderCatalyst, have there been any significant milestones that you have achieved or that you are working on currently?
Sophie: A big thing that I am working on now is trying to find the tech partner to build the app. My big thing was to get the SEIS off, which I did three weeks ago, so I hope to hear back soon.
The next thing was, right, I now need to find whoever is going to build this delightful app for me. This has been the hard thing. Where the funding was smoother for me, this has been my challenge.
Trying to find the right fit has been a journey. I have spoken to many technical people, and what I have been wanting and envisaging has not really presented itself to me. I did not really want to settle.
At the moment, I am going through the motions. I have got a couple of really strong options, and I am now in the process of trying to work out how I can create a world where I have both. Ideally, I would like to make that decision in the next week or two.
The biggest challenge for me right now is finding the right technical partner, ideally someone who will be part of the business for the long term. That makes the decision feel especially important.
Building a tech company without a technical background can be difficult because you are relying heavily on someone else’s expertise to shape a core part of the business. You have to place a great deal of trust in them, even when you do not fully understand the technical language or decisions being made. That can feel quite disempowering, particularly when the person may go on to have significant influence over the company.
So that is something I need to do. I need to learn more. I need to understand more about technical architecture, infrastructure and how it all works. Thank goodness I am building a business when there is AI, because I do not know what I would have done otherwise.
FC: Do you have any advice that you would give to female founders just starting out?
Sophie: I would actually say to be very selective with whose opinion you take seriously.
The thing that has probably derailed me the most along the journey is other people’s opinions. I can feel really headstrong, excited and into it, then I can have a conversation with someone who completely doubts the idea. That is completely fair enough, but it can completely knock me.
I would say take advice in a selective and intentional way. Be intentional with taking advice, and really seek it from those you respect and trust.
FC: Are there any other exciting projects or developments coming up that you can share with us?
Sophie: The next thing on the roadmap for me will be testing the MVP. If I find someone in the next couple of weeks, we will have it built over the summer, and I imagine that by the end of September it will go into full testing mode.
I want to test it with 100 people. My next thing is really recruiting the organisers of the world.
I did some research into this, and apparently the organiser types in groups are between 10% and 20% of a group. That does not surprise me, because in a group of 10, you often have one or two people who like to organise. Definitely not more.
It is those people in the world. The ones that create the group chats. The ones everything always falls on, but who also enjoy it. Those are the people I want to speak to, test with and learn from as chip-in moves into MVP testing.
A huge thank you to Sophie for sharing her journey so openly, from the realities of raising through her network, to navigating self-belief, technical uncertainty and the wonderfully chaotic world of group organising. We are excited to see chip-in move into MVP testing and help Sophie as she continues building a product that could make social planning a whole lot easier.
Website: https://chip-in.ai/
Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophie-goddard-8168b2100/
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thedailyginge
Author: Jen, Marketing Executive at FounderCatalyst
