A Pair Of Social Entrepreneurs Start To Win In The Daycare Disruption Space

For me, at least in this space, even from the beginning, I knew that parts of it were against the odds, and so, what I mean by that, is if you know the category that I’m working within is childcare, it’s already an inherently margin challenged kind of category. What I mean by that, what parents are willing and able to pay for this kind of work, and... See more

What we did with Poppy, the mission was to build the modern village. How I envisioned that was to find and vet really amazing childcare providers, and then connect them to families when they had gaps in childcare. We started that in my neighborhood in Seattle about three and a half years ago, grew it, and continued to build it out as kind of the te... See more

maybe we could do Poppy Pool, which is pair parents, or pair kids together and get a little bit of leverage out there, and make it cheaper. I thought we could use stay at home parents as another tier, because they’re people that live within the community, and so maybe you won’t see the same amount of turn. While I still had these experiments and hy... See more

The tech industry is built on the venture capital model where hockey stick growth and selling to a larger company or going public are markers of success. But the traditional VC model does not leave much room for startups that might not be the next unicorn but still generate revenue — just not the type of returns investors are looking for.

Most of us encounter steep learning curves as well as wobbly balancing acts as parents, but in recent decades, parents have been left to face those challenges with heavier career responsibilities and fewer support systems. Families with dual incomes and single-working parents are on the rise, mothers are the fastest growing segment of the workforce... See more

In the 1980s, a venture capitalist could truthfully say their investment was the difference between life or death for an important, generational technology company. Funding such companies, in this way, was absolutely a good quest. But today there are more people "helping the builders" than actually building, fighting one another in a zero-sum game

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The companies are all part of the rise of knowledge-sharing startups meant to make work more organized and collaborative — an area of particular interest for venture capitalists.