All You Got: CEO, Founder On Creating The Relationship App Everyone Needs

Lesley Eccles is the founder and CEO of Hello Relish.

Lesley Eccles does not gamble and is not particularly fond of sports.

ThIs may not seem remarkable for the CEO and Founder of Hello Relish, a relationship coaching company with a self-care and relationship app. But considering that Eccles and her husband, Nigel, were the co-founders of Fan Duel, the billion-dollar fantasy sports betting startup, it says a lot about her ability to separate work innovation from her personal life.

“@Lesleyeccles is the founder and CEO of @HelloRelish, a relationship coaching company with a #selfcare and #relationship app. #femalefounded #startup”

This is as her new company is all about combining the two—making an intimate partner relationship the center of her business success.  

Born in a small town on the east coast of Scotland, Eccles attended the University of St. Andrews, where she met her husband and graduated in 1996 with a degree in modern languages.

The school “is known for the golf course,” she says slyly. When her career adviser told her that her “pretty useless degree” would help her land a job as a teacher, translator or interpreter, she decided to prove them wrong.

“I moved to London and got a temp job in management consultancy,” Eccles says.

After maternity leave and the birth of her first two children, she and her husband founded the company that became Fan Duel in 2008. The rest is buyout history that she would rather not discuss, but it recently changed hands again for $4 billion.

In 2015, the family of five (her children are now 16, 13 and 7) moved to the U.S., and she began to think of what startup to launch next.

“You can imagine any experience as a roller coaster. You’re building a company from the ground up with your husband over 10 years, raising money, running out of money, hyper growth period, legal wrangling. It’s a lot of strain to put on a relationship,” Eccles says. “So after a lot of self-reflection after Fan Duel, I came back to the strength of relationships on the team we had. Those relationships kept us sane and lucid through the whole experience.”

The idea for Relish was born. “I wanted this company to be as impactful as Fan Duel because we changed the way people view sports in America. I knew what we would do next I wanted to be mission-driven,” Eccles says. “How can I leave a mark and somehow make the world better?”

The company launched in September 2019 and was expanding in the U.S., backed by $7.2 million in funding.

According to the Relish website, “Life isn’t about money or career or the number of likes we get. Relationships. That’s what really matters. With our partner, our kids, our parents, friends, colleagues.”

“According to the @HelloRelish website, “Life isn’t about money or career or the number of likes we get. Relationships. That’s what really matters. With our partner, our kids, our parents, friends, colleagues.” #femaleentrepreneur”

The site continues, “So much advice available on the subject comes from unsolicited sources, isn’t backed up by science, or hard to implement in our day to day lives. It comes in the form of (often cheesy) self-help books or really inaccessible scientific tomes.”

Mobile apps are a good bet. Consumers spent $143 billion on mobile apps in 2020, an increase of 20% from 2019, according to App Annie, the mobile data and analytics company in its The State of Mobile 2021 report.

“In the U.S., Gen Z, Millennials and Gen X/ Baby Boomers spent 16%, 18% and 30% more time per user in 2020 than the year before in their most-used apps,” according to PR Newswire.

According to Crunchbase, nearly 10,000 startups have at least one female founder.

In her startup, Eccles wanted to do something different. Not trained as a psychologist or therapist, Eccles says she researched and discussed with psychology professors what they witnessed about relationships. Then she set on using “technology combined with human coaches to change the script from fixing a relationship to focusing on relationship health.”

“In her #startup,@Lesleyeccles wanted to do something different. So she set on using “technology combined with human coaches to change the script from fixing a relationship to focusing on #relationship health.” ”

Since COVID-19 forced millions of Americans into lockdown and spending more time than ever with partners, the interest for Relish has also grown, with 250,000 downloads for adults over 18 in the U.S. and the U.K. with global expansion in the plans.

“Certainly relationships which had cracks in them before COVID, it was make or break,” Eccles says. “And it was a pressure cooker.”

““Certainly relationships which had cracks in them before #COVID, it was make or break,” @Lesleyeccles says. “And it was a pressure cooker.” #mentalhealth #femalefounded @HelloRelish”

In Relish’s first Relationship Health report in late 2020, surveying 1,736 adults based across the U.S., 41% of respondents say their relationship is better this year, while 30% say it’s worse.

Close to 60% of respondents said the biggest impact they have experienced this year as a result of COVID was on their mental health. Close to two-thirds, or 68% of respondents who broke up this year believe it might have been due to COVID-19.

“According to a report by @HelloRelish, a relationship #health #app founded by @Lesleyeccles, 68% of respondents who broke up this year believe it might have been due to #COVID19. #mentalhealth”

As evidenced in so many other studies, working women with children have seen the most negative impact. The study shows 41% of working mothers have either quit their jobs, considered quitting or asked for less responsibility at work, compared to only 24% of working fathers.

Eccles was expecting the demographics to have a gender divide that was predominantly female with customers in their 30s and 40s. But the data shows subscribers are 60% identifying as female, 40% identifying as male with all ages represented.

“One of the most important things for us was getting enough data to say if this is working for people,” says Eccles, who uses the app with her husband every Sunday on Relish night. “And the data we pulled showed if you use this, it will work. It was a great moment for our team.”

The lessons Eccles has learned from launching two startups are both personal and professional. “I lost my mom a few years ago and I see how life is short so we must do everything we can.”

“The lessons @Lesleyeccles has learned from launching two #startups are both personal and professional. “I lost my mom a few years ago and I see how life is short so we must do everything we can.” #inspiringwomen”

Connect. “When you’re moving quickly, you are very focused on what is the goal and doing more, more, more. I am more cognizant of what you need to do to connect on a human level and how that will resonate. It is very easy to be too busy to have those conversations. So we are more focused on pastoral care than we were pre-COVID.”

No silver bullet. “Whenever you set out to build a company you are always looking for that silver bullet. In the early days of Fan Duel, we asked can we get more traffic, is there a tack to turn on, what if I do a partnership? What we learned with Relish is there is not ever going to be a silver bullet. Success looks like a million things and more things going right than wrong.”

Celebrate successes. “Again it has to do with speed. You’re moving very quickly and it is easy not to celebrate successes and to focus on the things going wrong. But for everyone’s mental health, you need to celebrate the highs as much as you can because the lows will be awful.”

“Celebrate successes. “For everyone’s mental health, you need to celebrate the highs as much as you can because the lows will be awful.”—@Lesleyeccles #startup #wellbeing

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What Eccles has done to change sports participation and fandom in this country, she hopes to change for intimate partner relationships across the globe.

“What @Lesleyeccles has done to change sports participation and fandom in this country, she hopes to change for intimate partner relationships across the globe @HelloRelish. #female #entrepreneur”

“When we started out we wondered how do we get people to invest in their relationship early to prevent so many problems later on. More people nowadays are meeting on Hinge and Tinder and it’s not happy ever after.”

She so has a recommendation. “Whenever you delete the dating app, this is the point you download Relish, that is your commitment.”