Eggy app founders Kate Morgan and for NRL hardman Kirk Reynoldson are on a US road trip

Former NRL second-rower Kirk Reynoldson and his family are on a road trip across the US promoting their innovative productivity app Eggy.

Kate Morgan and husband, former NRL second-rower Kirk Reynoldson, label it the “Bluey versus Shark Tank” challenge – a road trip across the US with their three young kids in an RV promoting their productivity app to the world’s most lucrative market.

The couple devised the Eggy app from their Gold Coast home and what started as a humble life admin app for personal use, with calendars and to do lists, has evolved into a sophisticated, phone based intranet for businesses, aimed at helping employees stay organised at work and home, and ultimately, maintain a healthy work life balance.

“When we first talked about what we wanted to call it, we kept coming back to the fact that life is a big scrambled mess – we all need something to unscramble it and that’s Eggy,” Ms Morgan said.

In the crowded organisation app market Eggy’s main point of difference is its mobile first, Eggy Spaces feature, which separates worktech tools into categories – or Spaces – for workforces that are rarely at a desk and often ‘on the road’, such as payroll, learning systems, compliance and culture.

It also increases engagement with employees by only sending them the information they

need through targeted communications.

Users then have the option of adding personal Spaces next to their professional ones, like

school, children’s sport and play dates, family functions and bills.

The company is valued at $7m and since officially launching in 2022, 40,000 people have downloaded the app.

Former NRL hardman Kirk Reynoldson, wife Kate Morgan and children Loralie, Mac and Reggie before travelling to the US.

Ms Morgan said the US trip has been an adventure, with their children aged between two and seven, in the RV coping with an Arctic blast of cold weather.

“That’s why we’re calling it the ‘Bluey vs Shark Tank’ challenge,” she said.

“Trying to keep three kids happy, stay married, keep driving the Eggy business as well as driving the Eggy bus, all while filming content for an upcoming Eggy docuseries has been more challenging.”

Just three days before leaving for the US the couple partnered up with Australian HR platform Prosper EX which has some 100,000 individual users.

The partnership was forged after they received feedback from HR executives, who were using Eggy for personal use, that the app would be a great fit for businesses wanting to centralise all their worktech tools and communications.

“Prosper EX were introduced to us via a mutual business connection who could see that we would be a good pairing. We soon learnt that most of their customers were experiencing the same problems that we could solve regarding worktech centralisation and segmented communications for deskless workforces,” Ms Morgan said.

The trip is not a hard launch into the US market but a fact-finding mission.

“We wanted to understand the market better, leverage our connections, identify potential partners, and to firm up our US go-to-market,” Ms Morgan said.

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

“We estimate there’s potentially 20 million businesses in the US that need phone based intranets, like Eggy, and at roughly $7500 per business per year, that’s a $150bn market that we’d like to tap into.

“We’ll also definitely take Eggy to the UK and beyond as the problems we’re solving for busy families and businesses with deskless workforces are global.”

The family returns to the Gold Coast in the middle of February after almost three months travelling around the US.

Kirk Reynoldson at a training session when he was with the Newcastle Knights.

The Eggy app had its genesis in 1996 when the couple first met at Schoolies on the Gold Coast. Over the years they married and pursued their respective careers – Ms Morgan was a corporate dietitian earning a PhD in health professional education and being on the faculty of Health Sciences & Medicine at Bond University on the Gold Coast.

Mr Reynoldson, who was renowned for his trademark long scraggly bushranger-style beard retired from the NRL in 2008 after 125 matches and later completed an economics degree.

Ms Morgan said Eggy was realised after having children and their “life admin exploded”.

“We couldn’t find a solution that brought everything together and made it easy for busy households to manage all the essential info they needed for everyday activities – like paying bills, storing documents, managing appointments and keeping ‘to do’ lists,” she said.

“Kirk also copped a $1000 fine for getting to renew his car registration, it was an oversight, but that was a light bulb moment for us.”

Having no technical experience, one of their first tasks was to assemble an advisory board of experienced tech founders. They then did their research, built a team, raised funds and over time reiterated the product.

Ms Morgan said they made plenty of mistakes before the official launch of Eggy which was mostly boot strapped funding from family, friends and their own professional networks. The couple currently own 60 per cent of the business.

“We’ve sold almost everything we own and invested our life savings into Eggy,” Ms Morgan said.

“Eggy is our sole focus. We both work full time on Eggy and have done over the last few years while raising our three young kids – we’re all in.”