Business partners

What's it like to run a family AND a business together?

Good afternoon and welcome back to Creative Parenting Club. This is Matt from the CPC flight deck.

Whether you’re new to this newsletter or you’re a longtime subscriber, we’re happy you’re here!

It’s been a rough week at Creative Parenting HQ. After largely avoiding illness this winter, my whole family was sick at home together with the flu from Monday onward. The parenting part was manageable enough. But as someone with a constantly busy calendar and chronically long to-do list, the comprehensive physical ransom that the flu extracts from the human body has been especially hard for me to accept. Today is my first day trending a little bit back to normal, and it feels like there are a million things to catch up on.

During these chaotic years of early parenting, it never ceases to amaze me how one unexpected disruption can cause an entire week’s worth of well-laid plans to unravel.

I suppose just about every parent reading this can probably relate to the same feeling 😅

Which is a perfect transition to this week’s interview.

Working together

This week we’re pleased to welcome Lisa Hübner Moreno and Jeffrey Moreno: co-founders of Kietzee, a Berlin-based parenting platform whose mission is to make parenthood easier by connecting families with vetted resources, expert advice, and a supportive community.

What started as a personal spreadsheet to track local daycares (Kitas) has grown into a thriving business that serves thousands of families.

They also happen to be partners in both life and work, raising two kids while running a company together. We spoke with them about the joys and challenges of balancing parenthood and entrepreneurship, the unexpected ways creativity has shaped their lives, and what they’ve learned along the way.

We also addressed a topic that has long been important to us at CPC: the idea of entrepreneurship as its own creative pursuit.

Here are Lisa and Jeffrey to talk about it all.

CPC: Lisa and Jeffrey, thanks for joining us. Perhaps you could start by telling us more about who you are and what kind of work you do?

Lisa Hübner Moreno: I’m originally from Germany, but I’ve always wanted to live abroad. After high school, I went to Australia on a work and travel program — and that’s where I met Jeff.

Jeffrey Moreno: And I’m from the U.S. I studied liberal studies with a concentration in audio engineering and music, and during my last semester of college, I also traveled to Australia — where I met Lisa.

Lisa: We ended up doing long distance for a while before moving to London together so I could finish my studies. After that, we lived in New York City for six years. Then in 2017, we moved to Berlin. Our older daughter was born shortly after that, and have been here ever since.

Jeffrey: Over the years, our careers have shifted a lot. My background is in music and programming, while Lisa was working in marketing and PR. But now, we both work full-time on Kietzee, a platform we created to help international families navigate Berlin’s childcare system.

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CPC: You’re the second pair of parents we’ve had in the newsletter, but the first who work together! Tell us more about how you keep it all running.

Lisa: When we moved to Berlin, I was pregnant and had these rose-tinted glasses about how family-friendly Germany would be. And in many ways, it is. But in practice, navigating the system is really complicated.

From finding a midwife to securing a Kita spot, we realized there was so much information that wasn’t easily accessible. I had spent hours researching and compiled everything into a spreadsheet, which I eventually shared in a Facebook group for international parents. People loved it! They started asking if they could add their own experiences and expand it to other neighborhoods. That’s when we saw just how big the need was.

Jeffrey: Which is where I came in. I was working full-time as a programmer at the time, so I teamed up with a developer friend to build a simple website based on Lisa’s spreadsheet.

Lisa: At first, I was just working on Kietzee as a side project while also running my own business. But it became clear that if we wanted to really grow it, I needed to go all in. So I quit my other work and focused on Kietzee full-time. And then, just a few months ago, Jeff joined full-time as well.

Jeffrey: So now, for the first time, we’re both fully committed to running this business together — and it’s been amazing.

Lisa and Jeffrey in their founder element

CPC: Did you think before you had kids that you’d be running a business at this point in your lives?

Lisa: Honestly, no! Whether businesses, events, or systems, I had always been interested in learning how things work… but I never thought I’d start my own company.

I think what made the difference with Kietzee is that it came from a real need. Something we had struggled with ourselves and then realized thousands of other parents were struggling with too. Once we saw how much our experience could help others, it just made sense to turn it into something bigger.

Jeffrey: For me, entrepreneurship wasn’t on my radar when I was younger. But looking back, I can see the common thread. My family has always run small businesses, and my background in music and programming gave me the skills to build things from scratch.

At first, I just thought of coding as a practical skill, but the more I learned, the more I saw it as a creative tool — a way to make something real and useful in the world.

So when Kietzee started to grow, I realized this was my chance to bring all of that together — problem-solving, creativity, and building something meaningful.

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CPC: What’s been the hardest thing about being entrepreneurs and parents together at the same time?

Lisa: Our work and personal lives are completely intertwined. If things are going well with Kietzee, we’re in a great mood. But if we hit a rough patch, it affects us, and we have to be really intentional about not letting work stress bleed into family life.

That said, I love that we can lift each other up. If one of us is feeling discouraged, the other can step in with a fresh perspective.

Jeffrey: It’s definitely intense, but in some ways, it’s not so different from how families have worked for centuries. Mom-and-pop shops have always existed. So maybe what we’re doing is actually a throwback.

One thing that’s helped is being flexible. When we were both working full-time jobs, Lisa was carrying the bulk of the parenting duties. But once I joined Kietzee full-time, we were able to share responsibilities more evenly. That’s made a huge difference.

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CPC: Has parenthood inspired any other creative projects in your lives – apart from the business, of course?

Lisa: I used to think of myself as not a creative person. I don’t know if that was ever really true, but I never considered myself particularly artistic. My background is in marketing and PR, which, looking back, actually requires a lot of creativity. But I always associated “creativity” with things like painting, writing, or playing an instrument — things I never felt confident in.

Having kids has completely changed that. I’ve had to open myself up to so many things that I might have previously avoided — doodling, drawing, singing silly songs, dancing around the living room — because that’s what my kids love. And when you have kids, you just do these things without overthinking it. There’s no room for self-judgment when your toddler demands that you both pretend to be singing dinosaurs.

I think that’s what’s really shifted for me — losing the inhibition that used to hold me back. Before, I might have said, "Oh, I’m not good at drawing," but now, I just enjoy the process rather than worrying about the outcome. It’s made me realize that creativity isn’t about being “good” at something. It’s more about just being open to trying.

Jeffrey: My journey has been a little different. Creativity has always been a part of my life in some form: through music, audio engineering, and later, programming. When I first got into coding, I thought of it as purely technical, but I quickly realized that problem-solving itself is a creative process. And in many ways, Kietzee has become the perfect blend of all these things — technology, design, and community-building.

Parenting, too, has its own kind of creativity. You’re constantly problem-solving, improvising, adapting. What works for one child at one stage doesn’t necessarily work for another at the same age, and as your family grows, the dynamics keep shifting.

Something I’ve also noticed is how parenthood shifts your perspective on time — especially with creative projects. Before kids, I might have waited for the “right” time to make music or work on a passion project. Now, I don’t have that luxury. I’ve learned to seize creative moments when they come, even if it’s just ten minutes of playing guitar before bedtime or thinking of a fun game to make a boring task easier.

And honestly? Watching my kids explore the world so openly — without fear of messing up — has been a huge lesson for me. I think a lot of us, as adults, lose that creative freedom somewhere along the way. Parenthood, in a strange way, gives it back to you.

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CPC: What advice would you give to other parents thinking about starting a business?

Lisa: If you have an idea that you’re truly passionate about, go for it. There will be challenges—especially financially—but if you’re building something that genuinely helps people, it’s one of the most rewarding things you can do.

Jeffrey: Start small. Test your idea in the simplest way possible and see if it resonates. If the idea is strong enough, it doesn’t need to be perfect from day one.

And don’t be afraid to swing for the fences. I want my kids to see that we took a chance. Even if things don’t go exactly as planned, I’ll be proud to say we tried.

Thanks again to Lisa Hübner Moreno and Jeffrey Moreno for this week’s interview. Parent entrepreneurship is a regular topic we plan to keep revisiting here at CPC, so if you or anyone else you know would be interested in being featured, please feel free to get in contact.

And if you’re in Berlin, be sure to give Kietzee a try! You can check it out and learn more at https://www.kietzee.com/.

In case you haven’t seen this week’s Creative Parenting Chat, Diego has a new post up on the wonders of explaining time to small children. If you’ve got any tips for how to help answer perhaps the most legendary parenting question of them all, click the button below to join the conversation.

That’s all for this week. Have a great weekend everyone, and stay healthy out there!