Lynn Perkins started UrbanSitter—a platform for on demand childcare–in 2010 as an answer to the question, “Why is it harder to find a babysitter than it is to find a reservation?” “Everyone was always asking if your babysitter had a friend,” she recalls. Yet these moms were willing take advice from strangers on mom listservs.
When she saw trends emerging with peer-to-peer services, and people using trust, through Facebook or other groups online, to recommend products and services she thought, “there’s a better way to use people’s social networks to connect to sitters your friends and family have used.
That’s when the “Opentable for childcare” idea was born. As mom of twin boys under two she said, “Part of it was a big opportunity and part of it was sort of self-fulfilling.” For $14.95/month, UrbanSitter uses a parent’s Facebook connections as well as information on their neighborhood, their kids’ schools, and local groups to match them with babysitters.
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