My wife, daughter and I are huddled together in front of the fireplace as it rains outside. We have been in quarantine for ~2 weeks now. I didn’t even realize it was the weekend— weekdays and weekends have sort of melded together. As we head into week 3, we are starting to get accustomed to practices that could be our new reality. Some practices are just for the foreseeable future, some permanently.
Just a few weeks before the “stay at home” orders, I’d taken my daughter to her Muay Thai class. During a break, she was waiting in line with…
One of the many advantages of a managed marketplace, that can offer real benefits to both sides, is the ability to enforce policies that would otherwise be left to each party to figure out. Cancellation is one such policy.
Let’s say you find a great dog walker or babysitter through a Nextdoor recommendation, but the person cancels — who do you hold accountable?
Some of the fun of running a managed marketplace is thinking though these situations, implementing policies and providing the guardrails necessary to enforce such policies.
For example, Uber’s and Lyft’s cancellation policy for riders is straight forward-there…
On a recent trip, I experienced something on the Uber app that I don’t recall seeing in recent times. After a minute or so of waiting, I saw this on the app:
My assumption is that in a high density area like Boston, it is quite rare that Uber is unable to match a rider with a driver. And with incentives like Surge Pricing, it is a matter of time and the right surge incentive to get a driver to accept the ride (I eventually was able to get a ride for ~$90!)
“Search to Fill” (or “Fill Ratio”) is…
I am thrilled to announce that Care.com has acquired Trusted! Trusted and Care.com share the same vision, mission, values and goals. Care.com is a mission-driven technology company that has been working on this space for over a decade, and we couldn’t be more excited to be joining them on this journey. Care.com loves Trusted for the same reason that all of you do — we provide access to wonderful caregivers on demand when families need them — and we will continue to do this.
What’s Next?
In the last 3 years, we have done some incredible things: we launched 3 additional markets…
Do you remember what you were doing when you heard the news about Sandy Hook? My wife was 5 months pregnant with Ava at the time. I remember seeing the unfortunate news flash by. I watched all of about 5 minutes of the news before I had to shut it off. I hugged Shreya tight that night. How does a parent come to terms with the fact that they have lost their child? How is a parent to cope with such loss?
Since that incident, more than 400 people have been shot in over 200 school shootings. …
We’re thrilled to announce that Trusted has expanded its services to the Los Angeles area!
Trusted enables parents to secure quality child care, including same day, at the tap of a button. Through the app, parents pick the date and time care is needed, view available providers, and book! Parents can message their provider, monitor their provider’s location during a booking, and view a live video stream. Payments are handled through the app.
All Trusted child care providers are W-2 employed, thoroughly vetted, and continuously trained. …
We were about an hour into the board meeting and one of the board members looked right at me and asked me a question— I tried my best to focus and say something, but the lights in the room were getting unmanageably bright. My head was hurting uncontrollably. I felt very nauseous, so I excused myself and ran to the bathroom. I tried my best to throw up, but the more I would try, the more my head would hurt. Eventually I gave up, told the board and my coworkers that I had to go home.
About 4 weeks before…
We have enhanced our profile pages to better display a sitter’s skills and verifications, so that you can find the perfect provider for your family. At a glance, you can now see the languages a provider speaks (or writes), if they have teaching credentials or if they are a tutor, if they have a car, if they are a parent and much more.
Here’s what the new profile page looks like:
Here are just some of the badges you can expect to see on a sitter’s profile page:
Many parents join Trusted because they hear about us through our existing users. But for those who don’t hear about us through their friends, they often wonder how Trusted is different. While there are many great companies in this space, what sets Trusted apart is our focus on delivering high quality child care by ensuring trust on both sides of the marketplace.
To explain this better, we decided to build an infographic to help us explain our differences:
Trusted’s provider rates start at $15/hr — to see babysitters or nannies in your area, sign up here: https://usetrusted.com or shoot us a note if you have any questions: support@usetrusted.com
Some of you may be too young to remember, but the physical Yellow Pages was one of the main ways you could find local businesses. Those meaty books were a mainstay and saw frequent usage in many many households around the world. But since the late 90s and early part of the 2000s, for good measure, the books have been disappearing. Google had a big part to play in that.
Google is the de facto search engine of choice. But there was space for better discovery of local services. So Angie’s List, HomeAdvisor, Yelp and others were born.
Going beyond discovery
To start…
Anand Iyer
ceo & founder @usetrusted. cofounded @avaiyer with @shreyac http://about.me/ai
