Care.com makes caregiver search easier; Announces funding
By Vivek | May 8th, 2007 at 10:21 pm ET
Launched today, Care.com takes on a niche spot not covered explicitly by any startup - vertical classifieds+search service that helps people find care givers. Care.com’s caregivers definition includes - Child Care, Tutoring, PetCare, Senior Care. First thoughts in your mind might be - naa that will never work. Even I had thought in that direction with arguments like - care givers are not tech savvy, don’t we already have Craigslist to place ads for free, all I need is 1 baby sitter….. You know what, Sheila Marcelo and her team are not without a plan and not without answers for these questions. Backed by $3.5 million in funding from Matrix Partners, the VC firm where Sheila was entrepreneur-in-residence, founders of Care.com are going to use their past experience at Upromise.com to deliver a dynamic platform that in fact will be very useful.
The issue around care givers are those unexpected situations that spring-up on you without a notice. Your kid’s baby-sitter has to go on a leave, or day care for your kid has been shutdown for couple of days for xyz reason, or you are moving to a new place, or one of the many things that can disrupt your daily schedule and require immediate search and replace operation. Care.com fits this space perfectly by providing a platform where care givers list the services they can offer and all you need to do is search according to your requirements in your Zip Code to get connected with the right caregivers. The service provides options for you to further refine your results by setting filters for experience, availability, hourly rate, gender, provider age, and few more options around the care giver. To maintain a fresh platform, all service provider listings at Care.com would be archived if caregivers don’t sign into their account every 30 days. I did try few searches for my zip and Care.com is already coming out with good results containing just the right kind of metadata I was looking for.
Eventually everything depends on how any startup plans to monetize it’s service. In Care.com’s case the platform will be free for caregivers to come and list their service, while families and individuals will have to pay a tiny free of $10/month for access that among other things would let them ability to search and run free background checks. Sounds like plan to me since you never really know when you might have to look for a new and verified caregiver.
On the whole a very smart observation by Care.com team that delivers a solution falling somewhere between Craigslists, vFlyers, Eons, Famsters of the world.
Links:
Care.com
