Sittereco: A Startup Journey Built Upon Being Resourceful

Hi there, I’m Mana, founder of Sittereco (as in Sitter + Recommendations)…think LinkedIn for babysitting. And I, like many of my founder friends, navigated my startup journey by seeking advice from anyone I met who had done it before. Of all the entrepreneurs I met, there is one piece of advice that has remained consistent no matter their journey: “Just start. Progress is key…you’ll figure the rest out along the way.” Before I tell you what that meant for me, here’s a bit of context on my background…

After I graduated from business school in Chicago in 2010, I moved to Minneapolis to work in Marketing at General Mills. My goal was to learn as much as I could about building brands and businesses across markets. Five years and many experiences later, I resigned in late 2015 to jump back into the world of entrepreneurship. I knew I wanted to build a startup focused on parents and women, as a new mother of two kiddos myself…that’s pretty much all I knew. So, I leaned into my consumer-driven background to interview 100 parents and sitters, drive survey data, and pilot a test across both segments pre-product development. Six months later, I was ready to engage a technical team.

Then, I crossed paths with Jeff Lin, CEO of Bust Out Solutions. Not only was he a fellow parent of the first daycare our eldest kids attended, but ironically, he and I also shared a babysitter. After running into him at a local startup event, I shared my story with him. We were both really excited about a tech product that could connect and empower parents and babysitters. However, even with our shared enthusiasm for what this idea could be, I knew with a bootstrapped budget, I was not going to be able to build a prototype from his dev shop with its industry standard rates.

Or so I thought. One month later, I received a call from none other than Jeff Lin. He began telling me about an opportunity to hire a talented designer and developer intern duo from Carleton College and Macalester College, respectively, under the leadership of Paul Cantrell, an amazing senior developer, and now one of my dearest friends.

Within a week, we kicked off development of the first version of Sittereco, and within 3 months, we built our beta. On a shoestring budget, we built a product that was ready for testing and learning with our consumer segments. Over a few months, we learned exactly where there were product gaps based on user feedback. Together, Paul and I worked to optimize the product across those key development areas…and by Feb 2017, we were ready to launch in the App and Play stores!

Between February and May, we drove initial user acquisition, market penetration, and began transition into a more in-depth product/market fit research phase. After a year of working with the Bust Out team, we launched into summer 2017 continuing our initial intentions: leveraging the smarts of interns from University of Minnesota, Carleton College, and Macalester College, and partnering on the learning and discovery process of the product/market fit journey across Sittereco and another Bust Out startup, Pearl.

Over 10 weeks, we’ve engaged the talents and strengths of these 3 bright, curious, and can-do-anything college students who have the fundamental skills to be great marketers and saleswomen, analytic thinkers, and brand builders.

And while I started as a startup founder who had just an idea and a bootstrapped budget, we’ve been able to build a product, plan, business, and story because opportunity met the willingness to try, which led to resourcefulness, and ultimately, progress.

While I am proud of my initiative and willingness to take risk, I’m most proud of this team of doers, shakers, and can-do-attitude talent across ages and spectrums, who took an idea, and helped us turn it into a product that has now engaged almost 1,000 people…we’ve even been selected as a finalist in MN Business Magazine for a startup “Most Likely To Succeed” in the tech category!

Though every story has it’s own journey, you can’t create yours until you start. So start, somewhere, anywhere. Go ahead: put your idea on paper, keep an open mind, be resourceful, and enjoy the ride.