Turning the mental load into something manageable: The PAM Story

 

At The Art of the Possible in Aotearoa: Techweek26 Launch, Nicole Retter, founder of PAM, told a story many parents and caregivers recognised instantly.

Nicole’s background is in brand and marketing, not engineering. She described herself as non-technical in a way that was both honest and disarming. But her story was a powerful reminder that some of the most important tech problems are deeply human ones.

PAM exists to take on the mental load of family admin: the scattered emails, school newsletters, calendar invites, messages, reminders, and “don’t forget” moments that stack up every day. The idea is simple: bring it into one smart, shared family planner.

The reason it needed to exist was not abstract. It was personal.

The moment everything became too much

Nicole described experiencing a severe panic attack that lasted weeks. She ended up in hospital and was sedated because her body could not come down from the stress response.

When she tried to understand why, she realised most of the pressure wasn’t coming from her family relationships. It was coming from the relentless coordination work that sits behind daily life: school comms, sports changes, birthdays, forms, messages, and the constant stream of details that need attention.

So she went looking for a tool to help manage it. She couldn’t find one that solved the problem the way she needed.

That was the beginning of PAM.

Starting scrappy, proving the value

Nicole validated the problem before committing fully. She found that women are still overwhelmingly the primary coordinators of household life, and that many reported high levels of stress trying to manage work, parenting, and admin.

Then she made a decision that many founders will understand. Her family had funds set aside to build a second bathroom. Instead, she used that money to start the company.

The earliest version of PAM wasn’t even software. Nicole asked a stay-at-home mum friend to act as the product: three families would email everything in their lives each day, and her friend would read it all, pull out what mattered, and manually populate a calendar. The families saved 2–3 hours a week.

It was enough proof to keep going.

The “messy middle” and the turning point

Nicole described the hard stage clearly: early prototypes, money disappearing, and the stress of trying to build something large without the right technical support.

At one point, PAM used Zendesk as a backend. It worked, but it couldn’t scale.

Then came the turning point: bringing on a co-founder who could build quickly and deliver on the vision. PAM made it into the app stores, and real users started leaving real feedback.

Nicole shared that the first 114 reviews were five stars, a moment that made the journey feel real. PAM then raised funding in a tough environment and began to grow.

Today, Nicole shared milestones including:

• 30,000 downloads

• Hitting #1 in the App Store lifestyle category (twice)

• NPS of 64

• Reported stress reduction of 70–90% for a quarter of users

She also read out app store reviews that captured the real impact. For Nicole, that impact is the point. It’s the reason to keep building even when the founder journey is volatile.

Building tech that improves everyday wellbeing

PAM’s story fits Techweek’s theme because it shows the art of the possible in a very grounded way. It’s not about building for novelty. It’s about building for relief, stability, and agency in everyday life.

Nicole closed by sharing that a refreshed design and smarter UX was about to roll out, built on the same core promise: help families feel more in control, and reduce the invisible load that so often sits on parents and caregivers.