A Chicago startup wants to match busy parents with the right nannies to drive and take care of their children.
GoNanny, founded by a former child care professional, connects parents to people who can help with kids from 8 months to 16 years old. Parents use the service to book a nanny who can give rides for their children, as well as offer other care, such as homework help, meal preparation and assistance in the morning or evening.
Founder Patrice Darby sees GoNanny as a key service for parents. “We’re a support system for the family,” she said.
GoNanny joined 1871 as part of the spring 2017 cohort of WiSTEM, an accelerator that supports businesses with women founders. The company soft-launched the service in June and since then has served a small group of families and child-care workers. GoNanny says it has brought 40 families and 14 independent child care providers on the platform, and about 110 families in Chicago and nearby suburbs are currently on its waitlist.
Parents on the platform book nannies in advance down to 15-minute increments; so far, parents have booked the service for an average of about two hours, four days a week, Darby said. GoNanny child care providers typically keep working with the same families they’re matched with. Once they’ve become members, they can also book emergency rides in less than 30 minutes.
To use the web-based service, parents pay $300 per year, which covers the nanny screening costs, then pay each time they book a nanny. Other Chicago-area nanny agencies charge between $300 and $800 for background checks and consultations.
GoNanny child care providers undergo a 22-point screening process, during which candidates are screened for up to seven years of their criminal history, their driver competence and social media presence, Darby said. Beginning Dec. 9, the startup plans to roll out GoNanny Bootcamp, a three-hour program during which GoNanny will assess how applicants will perform in everyday situations.
Before matching parents with a provider, parents also complete a screening process that assesses traits like children’s personalities or families’ lifestyle choices, and then matches them with providers.
Similar services centered around transporting kids include Zūm and HopSkipDrive, both of which only operate in California at the moment. A company called Shuddle shut down in 2016. Chicago-based Sittercity, an app- and web-based platform for people to book child care, has an on-demand offering called Chime.
Darby founded GoNanny after working in child care for 10 years, during which she recognized problems within the industry, including the lack of flexibility and job security for nannies. With no credit to obtain a business loan, Darby founded GoNanny with $20,000 in savings. When her savings ran out, she moved in with one of her sisters and sold most of her possessions, including some clothes, a TV and furniture, to invest another $3,500 into the business.
“It was either sell everything to keep the vision, and keep the mission of the company, or quit,” Darby said.
GoNanny recently closed a $25,000 deal with Pipeline Angels, a New York-based investment firm which recruits and trains cohorts of women and non-binary femme investors and funds startups founded by cis women, transgender women, and gender non-binary femme entrepreneurs.
The funding will help the startup finish the mobile GoNanny app, which should be completed in three or four months after the funding round closes, Darby said. It will also enable the company to improve recruitment, operations and business development.
Darby is the only full-time employee, but she also works with an independent contractor. Her mother and one of her sisters, who also have backgrounds in child care, helped shape the company and also step in to help. She hopes the company’s fundraising efforts will help bring in full-time employees.
Though Darby said she has had trouble tapping into existing investor networks in Chicago, Kristina Francis, a member of Pipeline Angels who led the GoNanny investment in her cohort, said services like GoNanny would have helped her and the other working moms as they built their careers, Francis said.
“Many of us in our cohort are moms and, at some point or another, wished that we had someone who could pick the kids up,” Francis said. Though GoNanny currently has a business-to-consumer model, she said, “I’d love to see more companies use services like hers as a benefit to parents, not just moms but dads as well.”
For Darby, founding GoNanny was not only about continuing a family tradition of working in child care, but also about helping families balance both work and home.
“Success isn’t in the company itself; it’s in the impact,” Darby said. “We have been able to impact families, and that’s the No. 1 goal that my parents instilled in me. … At the end of the day, I sold everything to build a legacy and to build impact.”
Tatiana Walk-Morris is a freelance writer.
Twitter @Tati_WM
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