Watching a pregnant woman posting flyers on the Boston College campus that said she was looking for a baby-sitter, Genevieve Thiers got the idea that would launch her post-college career.
As the eldest of seven children, Thiers was no stranger to baby-sitting. She also baby-sat to earn income during college.
But when she decided to create a Web site that would match baby-sitters and parents, the college senior, a music major, didn’t exactly bowl over the financial community. “I pitched some VCs [venture capitalists] on the idea, but nobody thought it would work,” Thiers recalls. “I never got funded.”
Undaunted, she used her own money to pay two college friends to design a Web site, sittercity.com.
That was in 2001. Today, Thiers’ company employs 20 workers at its River North headquarters and lists about 200,000 active baby-sitters in its matching service. Parents who sign up for the service pay $95 per year for a subscription (or $40 for the first month and $10 monthly after that) that lists sitters with references who pass a background check. Parents also give feedback about sitters, and users have access to those comments.
Thiers expects 2007 sales in the range of $3 million to $5 million.
With the baby-sitting information service up and running, Thiers is now turning her attention to new sources of revenue.
She’s launching matching services for pet sitters, elder care providers, tutors, house sitters and nannies. In addition, she launched last year a corporate program, where employers sign up for the service and provide access to the site for staff members looking for back-up daycare.
The corporate program began with a call from an Atlanta health-care provider, which inquired whether Sittercity had a corporate program.
“When I said no, they said ‘you’re about to,’
” Thiers said. A nursing shortage led the health-care provider to seek back-up day-care options for its workforce as a corporate benefit.
The usual fare of offering referrals was perceived as little more help than phone-book listings, Thiers said. “I originally thought the workplace care market was saturated, but when I started researching the idea I realized that at company after company, the day-care benefits weren’t working well,” she said.
While the corporate program hasn’t started adding a lot to the bottom line yet, Thiers thinks it has big potential.
“You start with one great idea, then put your ear to the ground and customers will tell you what to do next,” she said.
