UrbanSitter is a

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-based online service and mobile app that allows parents to search for, book, pay, review, and recommend babysitters and nannies. UrbanSitter integrates with

Facebook Connect The Facebook Platform is the set of services, tools, and products provided by the social networking service Facebook for third-party developers to create their own applications and services that access data in Facebook. The current Facebook ...

and an internal database, allowing parents to view babysitters hired and reviewed by their Facebook friends and parents from children's schools, sports teams, and local parenting organizations. The company's online booking technology lets parents search for babysitters by specific time and date and schedule a booking. Alternatively, parents can post a job to a virtual job board. To date the company has raised a total of $22.75 million in venture funding.

History

UrbanSitter's founders conceived of the idea for the service in order to create an easier, faster, more personal way to book childcare. CEO Lynn Perkins remarked in a

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article that "I just thought it was kind of ridiculous that you could go to OpenTable and book a restaurant, but when you actually go to find a sitter, it would take you hours and days." Perkins and three co-founders launched UrbanSitter in 2010 with services in the

Bay Area. The company raised a total of $7.75 million in seed and

Series A A series A round (also known as series A financing or series A investment) is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in exchan ...

funding between 2011 and 2012. Since founding, the service has grown to 12 cities throughout the

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, including, among others, San Francisco,

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Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, and

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

. UrbanSitter has approximately 170,000 babysitting jobs and a user base of 70,000 parents and 30,000 sitters as of February 2014. ''

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'' reported that UrbanSitter saw an "increase in clients and bookings of between 20% and 30% per month" throughout 2012 and 2013. In December 2013 the company announced that former

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executive Jessica Steel would become UrbanSitter's new president. In February 2014 UrbanSitter raised a $15 million

Series B A venture round is a type of funding round used for venture capital financing, by which startup companies obtain investment, generally from venture capitalists and other institutional investors. The availability of venture funding is among the ...

funding round. The investment was led by DBL Investors and included participation from Match Group, a division of IAC, Aspect Ventures, Canaan Partners,

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Menlo Ventures Menlo Ventures is a venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California with an additional office in San Francisco, California. The firm was founded as one of the earliest venture capital firms in Silicon Valley in 1976 and provides technology ...

, and Rustic Canyon Partners.

Services

Through its website and mobile application, UrbanSitter allows users to vet potential babysitters and nannies, establish regularly scheduled sittings, and find last-minute sitters. UrbanSitter leverages

social networks A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...

by allowing its software platform to search through a user's Facebook connections via Facebook connect and other local parenting organizations via an internal database, letting parents search for babysitters that have been reviewed by friends or connections within social circles. Transactions are processed in cash or by

credit card A credit card is a payment card issued to users (cardholders) to enable the cardholder to pay a merchant for goods and services based on the cardholder's accrued debt (i.e., promise to the card issuer to pay them for the amounts plus the o ...

, with UrbanSitter charging parents a transactional or membership fee in some areas.

Features

UrbanSitter allows both parents and babysitters to create user accounts for free. Parents can view sitter reviews, pictures, videos, availability, hourly rates, as well as how many repeat customers a sitter has had, then schedule interviews and jobs with sitters by paying a pay-as-you-go fee or by subscribing to a monthly or annual membership. Search results can be filtered by a sitter's desired skills, certifications (such as

CPR Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is an emergency procedure consisting of chest compressions often combined with artificial ventilation in an effort to manually preserve intact brain function until further measures are taken to restore sponta ...

certification), experience, educational background, and response time. Babysitters can find and accept jobs for free or subscribe to a monthly or annual membership to receive a background check as well as other features. Approximately 20% of UrbanSitter sitters undergo third-party

background check A background check is a process a person or company uses to verify that an individual is who they claim to be, and this provides an opportunity to check and confirm the validity of someone's criminal record, education, employment history, and oth ...

References

{{reflist, 2

External links

Urbansitter.com
Internet properties established in 2010 Companies based in San Francisco