Trusted is expanding beyond the San Francisco Bay Area, bringing its on-demand child care service to the New York City market. The company also launched a program aimed at addressing the lack of available child care in the workplace, allowing employees to use it as a corporate benefit.
Started by Anand Iyer and Vivian Chan in 2015, Trusted can be thought of as the Uber for babysitting. However, rather than getting just any person to watch your kids, the company uses background and DMV checks, along with reviews of terrorist and sex offender registries, to ensure that the right people are selected to take care of your loved ones. As the company told VentureBeat when it launched, the idea is simple: Find someone reliable and safe to watch your children when you need them. Trusted is going to be the intermediary to help arrange everything.
Trusted is now available in Manhattan and Brooklyn, with specific neighborhoods including the Upper West Side, Lincoln Square, Clinton, Hell’s Kitchen, Chelsea, Murray Hill, Tribeca, Downtown Brooklyn, Cobble Hill, Williamsburg, Financial District, DUMBO, Greenwich Village, the East Village, and SoHo. The addition of these two boroughs gives the company two of the largest markets in the United States.
“My team and I are so excited to bring Trusted to New York City — one of the greatest, and busiest, cities in the world. We can’t wait to work hand-in-hand with the City’s vast pool of talented providers to help parents feel at ease leaving their children, whether they are going to the office or simply want an evening out,” Iyer said in a statement.
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In addition to the expansion, Trusted is launching a program that would allow working parents to use the service as part of their employee benefits. It offers backup or emergency child care in case of a sick child or when school is closed, regular or part-time care, and pickups and drop-offs. Eventually, the company plans on expanding the service to include on-site child care in the workplace.
The idea behind Trusted at Work is to provide peace of mind not only to employers, but employees. With the former, the program could minimize the amount of time a parent is away from the office because of family issues while also providing a good recruitment tool showing that they care about their employees’ families — an issue that Apple is finding itself facing criticism about. Parents and prospective parents will feel happier about their job knowing their employer cares about families, likely reducing stress around productivity and life in general.
Trusted has raised $1.1 million in seed funding, but just added another million to that round from investors like Naval Ravikant and CrunchFund.
