Welcome WeeCare to the Equal Ventures Portfolio
by Richard Kerby, Co-Founder & GP @ Equal Ventures
At Equal, we have been following the challenging supply and demand dynamics within the $56B childcare industry since well before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The most critical driver of the U.S. child care crisis today is the lack of supply coupled with the already high and growing demand for childcare, which has led to long waitlists for care and increasingly expensive tuition rates. In October 2016, the Center for American Progress reported that 42% of American children under five years of age live in areas where there is an insufficient supply of child care centers, with the problem exacerbated for the low-middle class.
Not only is there not enough supply, but the supply that does exist also is not fully utilized. The current child care market in the U.S. is highly fragmented as ~60% of the ~800k existing daycares in the U.S. are in-home daycares, which are typically owner/operators. Given the high level of fragmentation coupled with the significant concentration within the SMB segment, matching capacity at daycare centers with busy parents looking for child care is challenging. A third of parents report difficulty in finding care and this has forced many parents (mostly women) out of the workforce, which reduces productivity for the nation as a whole.
WeeCare leverages its network of daycares, nannies, and babysitters to enable employers to provide childcare as a benefit to their employees. With the switch from in-person work to a more hybrid and flexible workforce, employees are no longer solely looking for childcare options that are near their place of work but are also actively seeking out more affordable childcare options. This is where WeeCare comes in and enables employers to give parents a plethora of childcare options, subsidize their employee’s childcare costs, and help them do so in a tax-efficient manner via the management of childcare FSAs.
When we first met Jessica, WeeCare’s CEO and co-founder, we were particularly impressed by the powerful founder-market-fit that she demonstrated. Not only is she a parent of two children, but she had previously run three preschools. Jessica has personally experienced the many pain points of every aspect of childcare and has enabled the WeeCare team to build a product tailor-made for the segment, evident through the stellar feedback from their employer and daycare customers. Thousands of daycares have joined the WeeCare network, which is the largest in the country. The addition of over 30K nannies and babysitters on the platform creates a unique supply network that employers are finding incredibly valuable.
Last year, we led a $2M round in WeeCare and we are excited to have M13 leading a $12M Series A to join the cap table alongside existing investors: Fika Ventures, Fuel Capital, Banana Capital, and others.
We are excited about the WeeCare mission as they seek to improve access to affordable childcare for parents everywhere! Feel free to go to WeeCare to find more information on the company!
