It was on a family holiday-gone-wrong to Florida that triggered a business idea that would change her life. With their resort failing to live up to its ‘family-friendly’ reputation, Roberts found herself wishing she had a place to read up such a situation before making a booking. After a lot of planning and positive discussions with other mothers, her small idea suddenly became an elaborate business plan and the website launched in 2000.
Mumsnet is now a heavily relied upon source of information for over 14 million parents and parents-to-be, the site has 128 million page views, making it one of the county’s most influential websites. Due to the success of her initial site, Justine also went on to launch Gransnet in 2011 which offers tips and tricks to grandparents on how to entertain the grandchildren as well as life advice such as pensions and making a will.
The nation loved website is now over 18 years old. Roberts’ has established herself as a world-renowned entrepreneur with her name listed in The Guardian’s 2010 Power 100 and the seventh most powerful women in the UK by BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. She was also awarded CBE in the 2017 New Years Honours for her efforts towards the economy.
A motivating and empowering speaker, Justine Roberts is an influential public figure to both women and aspiring entrepreneurs across the world. With resilience, she managed to build a huge space on the internet when most were peaking and crashing during the burst of the dot-com bubble.
She now combines her experience within business as well her admirable traits that helped her to succeed, to bring motivational speeches to audiences of large corporations at events and conferences. She refers to tough times in her career to explain how you can go from good to great with a little bit of drive, determination and resilience.