- San Francisco-based online service UrbanSitter has acquired Techstars grad Sitter.
- The terms of the deal were undisclosed
- Sitter will continue to operate out of its headquarters in Colorado
UrbanSitter, a San Francisco-based online service that enables parents and caregivers to connect through people they know, has purchased Boulder, Colorado-based Sitter — which is a Techstars startup accelerator grad that helps users find babysitters, daycares, nannies, and childcare.
With the acquisition, UrbanSitter expands its umbrella of childcare services to include Sitter Pro, a B2B solution designed to address the operational needs of thousands of sitter and nanny agencies across the country.
“We realize that families today have a wide range of childcare needs and preferences,” said UrbanSitter co-founder and CEO Lynn Perkins. “Our acquisition of the Sitter Pro product allows us to service a broad spectrum of the childcare marketplace that includes parents and caregivers, as well as local childcare agencies.”
Local childcare agencies are able to provide consumers with highly vetted networks of childcare providers, but they often suffer from operational inefficiencies and antiquated technology, causing poor experiences for caregivers and families.
And by completely automating job management from request through payment with very little to no involvement from agency staff, Sitter Pro’s highly customizable suite of business tools help agencies manage their workforces and automate the fulfillment of bookings. Plus it also makes user experiences more efficient for the agencies’ clients and their care providers via an app.
Sitter Pro offers the best business management and client facing tools for its clients and caregivers while UrbanSitter offers the most innovative tools and services for parents and sitters.
“We recognized that agencies were in need of an integrated solution to manage and grow their businesses. Sitter Pro is the only comprehensive, easy to use platform created specifically with the needs of childcare agencies and their clients in mind,” added former CEO of Sitter and current VP of Enterprise at UrbanSitter Kristen Stiles. “We are excited for this opportunity to not only deliver more childcare options to parents, but to also enable nanny agencies to grow their businesses.”
Ever since UrbanSitter launched in 2011, the company expanded to serve more than 1 million members in 50 cities. And the company has facilitated millions of hours of babysitting jobs, of which the majority receive a response in under 10 minutes. Sitter Pro is going to continue to operate under its brand and the company’s employees will continue to work out of its headquarters in Colorado.
