The image of life as a successful American family with children has been perpetuated for a long time thanks to relentless marketing and Hollywood glamor.
The most incessantly chosen image is a beautiful house. But in fact there are hearty but balanced family meals and a lifestyle that features vacations, birthday parties, clan visits, soccer teams, music lessons… the list goes on.
While the so-called American Dream has its charm, keeping it together could be exhausting. And while tech startups have long provided employees with productivity tools, families don’t have many dedicated offerings tailored to their needs.
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Increasingly, budding entrepreneurs and investors are tackling this gap inside a growing sector generally known as famtech. Think about digital tools to manage household chores, keep track of what your kids are doing, find childcare, and even liberate some personal time.
Often, founders create the tools and applications they dreamed of.
“I have the impression that the modern family is currently demanding the impossible,” she said Yoky Matsuokafounder and CEO of the company JanAND Panasonicsupported start-up offering a service to help families outsource or streamline more routine tasks and projects.
As a parent of 4 children and ex Nest CTO, Matsuoka, talks from his own experience about the time-pressured lifestyle of balancing a full-time family life and a demanding skilled profession. He believes that, especially for those that don’t have a large local support network, dedicated technology can go a great distance in relieving on a regular basis stresses.
Large, wide open space
Looking at recent funding statistics, famtech actually looks like a growing space. To get an idea of where the money is going, we used Crunchbase data to create a sample list of 25 U.S. corporations that raised funding in the last yr or so.
This varies widely, from transportation to care search platforms to tools for tracking to-do lists. It is also quite well-funded, with list members having raised a total of over $600 million to date.
Probably the most recognizable brand in our sample is HopSkipDrive, a Los Angeles-based startup that gives vetted drivers to get kids to school and activities. The eight-year-old startup has raised about $124 million to date, including a $37 million Series D round in September.
Yumi, a provider of organic meals and snacks for babies and toddlers, was one other major recipient of funds, with $99 million in funding since its founding a decade ago. While it’s unclear whether Yumi qualifies as famtech, we included this information because the company focuses on saving time with online meal planning and direct shipping.
Meanwhile, among earlier-stage corporations, one company quickly climbing the ladder is based in New York Otter. The two-year-old startup that connects parents in need of kid care with caregivers in their communities has raised $30.8 million to date, thanks to Capital of Sequoia AND Andreessen Horowitz as predominant sponsors.
Start-up investors also consider famtech as an area of interest. Among them is Halogen ventures, a Santa Monica company that invests in women-led consumer technology startups and lists parenting tech as a key industry. In a recent issue on famtech questionnairethe company said “solving child care” is the biggest untapped business opportunity in 2022 arising from the pandemic.
A village equipped with technology is needed
Despite parents’ strong demand for life-saving options, building the family technology market may involve changing some of our ideas about how and where to get help.
Matsuoko Yohany points to the old proverb about the way it takes a village to raise a child. While there is truth to this, the reality is also harsh: many working parents have no family support network nearby, let alone a village where they will share childcare and household responsibilities.
Matsuoko said that for some families, a more viable option is to pay for services to help with every day duties, comparable to making doctor’s appointments, hiring a plumber or organizing birthday parties. That’s the premise of her startup Yohana, which is able to launch nationwide later this yr with a subscription service aimed at freeing up parents’ time.
Families may have to get used to the idea of adding one other device or two to their lives. So it is Monica PlathCEO and founding father of the company Little birdhopes to launch an internet-enabled device that can sell location- and well-being-tracking wristbands for young children, in addition to a paired app.
Plath has stated that she is inspired by the notion that even when parents are not there for their children, they still spend an inordinate period of time worrying about their well-being. “I just tried to worry a little less,” she said.
Ultimately, plainly what famtech entrepreneurs are selling greater than the rest is a tech-centric path to what everyone wants: a little more free time and a lot less worry.
As the market matures, we are going to higher understand two big unknowns: whether startup-based technology can deliver these goals and, if so, whether consumers shall be willing to pay for it.