Justine Roberts CBE Reveals the Untold Truth About Building a Business That Lasts

This exclusive interview with Justine Roberts CBE was conducted by Megan Lupton of The Motivational Speakers Agency.

Few entrepreneurs have transformed online communities quite like Justine Roberts CBE, the trailblazing founder and CEO of Mumsnet — the UK’s most influential digital platform for parents. Recognised as one of Britain’s most successful female entrepreneurs, she has built a business that reshaped how millions of women connect, share advice, and drive social change.

From the early days of launching Mumsnet before the dot-com boom to leading one of the most trusted digital brands in the country, Justine’s journey has become a masterclass in resilience, innovation, and purpose-driven leadership. Her voice carries particular weight in discussions around flexible work, female empowerment, and building companies that align with real human needs.

In this exclusive interview with the Female Motivational Speakers Agency, Justine reflects on the lessons learned from her career, the challenges of scaling with integrity, and why she believes authenticity remains the most powerful currency in business.

Q: Successful entrepreneurs often turn personal frustration into opportunity. From your experience, what’s the smartest way to identify a genuine gap in the market?

Justine Roberts CBE: “I think very often with entrepreneurs what they do is fulfil their own need really. So certainly, true in my case with Mumsnet that I needed… I was a new parent of young twins, and I needed all the advice and help I could get, and my immediate circle didn’t quite have all the answers for me. So, I wanted to expand that and tap into the wisdom of millions of other people via this wonderful thing called the internet.

“And I think that’s often where people get their inspiration from. They find a gap in the market because it’s not because they need that product or service really badly for their own life. And the great thing is, if you are constructing something to meet your own needs, you’re very clear on what you actually want and how it should work.

“And it gets harder as you grow and you get more and more divorced from the original target market. So, in my case now, I’m sort of slightly outside the target market for Mumsnet, so I have to work really hard about staying in touch.

“But originally, for the ideas, I think it’s: find something where you would like to make the world a better place, because you know what that product or service should be from your own experience.”

Q: In such competitive times, what can founders do to make their brand stand out in a crowded marketplace?

Justine Roberts CBE: “I think the key to standing out is really fulfilling whatever the consumer is—your customer’s job to be done. So, I don’t think you’re going to stand out if you just produce a generic product the same as everyone else because you make a big noise about it.

“What you really want is people to be talking about the product themselves because it’s doing something better. Either it’s your service that’s better, or it’s the product itself that’s better, or it’s a different price point.

“So, to be honest, I think that you have to be different, you have to have a USP. You can’t really expect, unless I guess you’re Amazon and you have millions and millions of pounds of data and customers already and a lot of trust… If you’re new into a field, then I think you have to do something different, and you have to make the customers’ lives easier in some way.”

Q: You’ve worked in traditionally male-dominated sectors. What would you say to women navigating those same environments today?

Justine Roberts CBE: “Well, I’ve worked in two very male-dominated working environments. I worked in the City of London initially on the Stock Exchange floor, where I was one of two women and hundreds of men. And then I became a football and cricket journalist.

“I think the world’s moved on a bit because, you know, it’s not so normal to be in such a minority. But I think generally what I found was you’ve got to be as good as—actually, in fact, better than—the guys around you. And it’s not always fair, but there’s no point moaning about it. You’ve just got to get on and really address that sort of conscious and unconscious bias by proving people wrong.

“So, I think that’s number one. I think, as I say, nowadays it’s a bit better. What I would always suggest you do is find your network—particularly as women—make sure you’re supporting each other, because the guys will definitely be supporting each other.

“So yeah, work hard, find your network, and don’t get downhearted, because the only way we change things is by buckling down and getting to the top. Then it’s easier to make a difference.”

Q: The balance between career and family remains one of the hardest leadership challenges. From your perspective, how can organisations better support working parents?

Justine Roberts CBE: “The number one thing I think parents want from business and from their employer is flexibility, and all our surveys with Mumsnet say that actually it’s more important than anything else.

“The flexibility to be able to be honest and say, actually, you know what, my family comes first—and yes, I love my job, but it’s always going to take second place to my family. When I started Mumsnet, I literally started it because I felt I wasn’t able to be honest in the previous careers I’d had, and the women I worked with who were mothers—I saw them pretending their kids didn’t exist.

“So I think allowing that sort of level of honesty, and then really focusing on flexibility and walking in the shoes of the people you’re trying to support—whether that’s your employees who are going off on parental leave, making sure that they feel confident when they come back because they’ve been kept in touch with things and not everything has completely transformed while they’ve been away; or whether it’s understanding that if you’ve got people working part-time or flexibly, schedule the meetings in the middle of the day or when they’re around.

“Don’t schedule meetings when they’re not around. Try not to make everything about what happens in the pub after work, because parents have to go back and do bedtime.

“So, some basic stuff, but it’s really no more different than putting yourself in the shoes of your colleagues and trying to show some basic understanding. That, plus flexibility, is what parents really need.”

Q: Mumsnet is one of the UK’s most recognisable online communities. What can business leaders learn from your journey in building it?

Justine Roberts CBE: “Well, Mumsnet in many ways was founded at completely the wrong time. We came about sort of five or six years before Twitter and Facebook, and the business model wasn’t really ready for the business. So, we had to go very slowly on a shoestring budget, build the community by word of mouth, and wait for the business model to materialise.

“So, we got a very large community before we could really generate any revenue out of it. And I think there’s a lesson in that—had I raised a lot of money and hired a lot of people, it would have been just at the time of the dotcom crash, and I would have had to fire a lot of people, and we probably would have gone out of business.

“So, I think the lesson really is that you need to adapt the pace at which you go according to the market. Then when the time becomes right, you can go all gun’s blazing—raise money, hire people, really go for growth. But growth isn’t always the right model. Sometimes the right model is easy does it, build your brand, build your trust, and wait for the economics to come right for you.”