Pod Insights Equity Podcast Yeah, but is that venture backable? About this episode This week, Alex and Mary Ann had Sara Mauskopf on the show, the CEO and co-founder of the childcare marketplace, Winnie, and a former Postmates and Twitter denizen. Here’s what we got into:
The progress of Winnie over time, and how it found its niche in the childcare market
The state of care as a venture-backable category, and where startups can find the most impact and business results
The reported issues at Papa and the pressures of fundraising-driven growth in care-oriented markets
And, of course, why care work is not given its full due and value in our society.
We had a blast with this one. Thank you for sticking with Equity for all these years. We’ll see you live at Disrupt!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
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Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
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Transcript 0:11 Speaker 00 Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups where we unpack the numbers and the nuance behind the headlines. My name is Alex and this is our Wednesday show where we sit down with a guest, think about their work and unpack the rest. Before I introduce our guest for today, however, I am here with my dear friend, Marian Azabete. Marian, how are you?
0:30 Speaker 01 I'm doing great, Alex. How are you?
0:32 Speaker 00 I'm hanging in there because I've been dealing with a week of not having childcare, which is very apropos to our current conversation. Today on the podcast, we are bringing on someone that we've both known for quite a long time. We're going to talk about her company. We're going to talk about its focus and then we're going to talk about the larger care space and ask the question, can you build a care oriented company in the startup space? Is that venture backable? And what are the tensions that come with building something that's safe and scales? So please welcome to the show. We have Sarah Moskoff, the CEO and co-founder of Winnie. Sarah, I've known you for a long time, too. How are you doing? And welcome to the show.
1:06 Speaker 02 I'm doing great. I'm about to get my new Kelly Green Eagles jersey. I'm sure you probably already have one.
1:13 Speaker 00 You should see my Philadelphia sports fan group chat was blowing up about that. I have been in pre-travel stress mode, so I have not gone out to buy New Jersey, but I'm excited about that. And I have to ask, because I'm asking everybody, are you watching the World Cup?
1:28 Speaker 02 I am, yes. I have been actually really enjoying it. I'm not much of a soccer fan, but I've gotten really into it. And I love that there's moms on the women's US soccer team. So that's, you know, got my, my personal interest.
1:44 Speaker 01 Love it.
1:45 Speaker 00 All right. If you don't know Sarah, she has a long and illustrious work history. She was at, I think YouTube back in the day. She worked at Twitter for a bit. I got to know her when she was at Postmates. And since I think 2016, you've been the founder, co-founder of Winnie?
1:57 Speaker 02 That's right.
1:58 Speaker 00 All right. So Marian, I'm going to do a little bit of a history dive. And I'm going to hand you the baton when we get to the 2019 story. So I'll take the first couple of bits and then I'll pass it over. Winnie started its life as a way to find kid-friendly places back in 2016. TechCrunch called it a directory that provides information from the perspective of parents on nearby restaurants, parks, schools, and other points of interest. Then the company in 2018 shifted a little bit and became a little bit more of a Yelp for parents where there were discussions and conversations. And then Mary Ann, when the company raised a series A, you talked to Sarah. What happened then?
2:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, that was back in 2019 and the company had evolved into more of a marketplace, trying to help parents learn more about their options for childcare and provide details like tuition information, the licensing status, parent reviews, that sort of thing, all of which are very important factors to consider when looking for childcare. Also was trying to work with childcare providers so that they had a way to also reach more parents and fill some of their open slots. So the company, when it started making money by giving those providers a chance to advertise and let's get more exposure on its app. So it evolved into this marketplace model.
3:01 Speaker 00 Yes, and then Sarah, you know, in 2022, we talked to you about how you were expanding into the SaaS space, providing tools for childcare providers in the form of a Winnie Pro offering. But just as a little bit of context for folks, what happened to the childcare market during COVID? I actually have no idea because I was just sitting on my couch.
3:18 Speaker 02 Yeah, so wow, I was like cringing hearing the whole history of Winnie because it's hard to hear about what we had built before we kind of found ourselves as a childcare marketplace, helping parents find daycare and preschool. We spent a long time not having product market fit and building other things. So I'm glad we eventually landed in childcare. But yeah, COVID was a tough time for lots of businesses, including childcare businesses. I think one of the kind of misconceptions is that all childcare businesses kind of shut down during COVID like schools did, but actually many of them, while they had to shut down temporarily, they opened back up pretty quickly because they don't make any money and they don't have funding if they don't operate.
4:02 Speaker 02 So that was, you know, kind of good for Winnie in the sense that these childcare businesses still needed to operate. They needed to find families, in many cases, new families. And that's really what Winnie is in the business of doing, helping these childcare businesses fill their open spaces. So it was a scary time for a few months when our kind of parent traffic fell off a cliff and no one was searching for childcare, but then everything really kind of came back pretty quickly, which was good.
4:29 Speaker 00 Did it come back at full strength, if that makes sense? Did it come back to the same level afterwards?
4:36 Speaker 02 So for us, because we make our money from the childcare providers who need to fill open spaces, our business really took off during COVID. They all needed to fill their spaces with new families. They needed to advertise online because a lot of the in-person stuff wasn't happening. And we were kind of there as that marketplace where they could claim their free page on Winnie and then start advertising. And that was kind of right around the time we also launched our self-serve product where they could just sign up without even speaking to a human. So that was very good for our business. For their businesses, though, yes, I mean, it was tough. A lot of families were reluctant to return to childcare right away.
5:17 Speaker 02 And so there was kind of this slower uptick of parents utilizing childcare. A lot of them, you know, attempted to work from home and watch kids at the same time. And we've all heard those stories.
5:31 Speaker 02 But I think overall, it was actually good for the ecosystem because first of all, a lot of these processes moved online, which they continue to be today, which is just more efficient. You don't necessarily have to tour in person anymore, which is great for everyone. And I think everyone sort of realized the value of childcare. You kind of spend a few months at home trying to work and watch your kids. And you realize pretty quickly that childcare is this amazing essential service.
6:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, I think obviously all of us parents during COVID were kind of reeling from trying to juggle. And one good thing that came out of that is that it just kind of humanized all of us. And then all of a sudden, we were all on the same sort of playing field, I think. I remember interviewing VCs with their kids in the background and their kitchens and stuff like that. And it really, it was humbling and kind of cool in a way. But I do think you brought up an interesting point is all of a sudden, everything was online. So previously, I think with childcare, even when I was looking for childcare, I was driving around, I would see what was close by to me, go tour, take a visit. But you know, everything was digitized. So I think people looking online, obviously that was up. So demand, it would make sense that demand for what Wendy was offering would also go up.
6:43 Speaker 02 That's right. And a lot of people moved around to, you know, moved out of
6:46 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah.
6:47 Speaker 02 urban areas or they utilized the childcare provider near their office. And now suddenly they weren't commuting to the office and they wanted something closer to home. So there was a lot of kind of churn in the system, which meant a lot of people looking for new childcare options for various reasons, which was also good for an online marketplace.
7:05 Speaker 00 Because we're pushing this conversation over time towards the broader care market, I want to ask,
7:10 Speaker 02 Yes.
7:10 Speaker 00 what is it like to be a founder who's been working at your company for, I guess, four years at that point, four years and change, and then to notice that suddenly there's a tailwind behind you and you have the right product at the right moment in time with the right customer base? Like, can you notice that like instantly? Or does it kind of build over time until you realize that suddenly, oh, we're doing this at the right time?
7:32 Speaker 02 We didn't realize it until after, like, we had kind of, the tailwind had already started. So I think in retrospect, I would have been way more ready to onboard lots of providers onto our platform and really capitalize. But it really took us by surprise. I mean, COVID sort of happened and we thought, oh my gosh, everything's shutting down. We're really going to have to hunker down and not spend any money and just be really careful so we can survive this COVID thing, which we thought would just be, you know, a few months long. Also, my co-founder and I at the time had just had new babies. We both gave birth in March 2020.
8:11 Speaker 01 Oh, wow.
8:12 Speaker 00 Oh, wow.
8:13 Speaker 01 What timing.
8:13 Speaker 02 We were both like, we're gonna take, before COVID happened, we were both like, we're gonna take parental leave and, you know, we have great people in charge and it's gonna be fine. And then COVID happened and, you know, I was back to work the next day I gave birth. There was no parental leave for me. We had to kind of steer our company through this storm. So I think we didn't take, you know, advantage, raise a massive round, do any of that. And I'm kind of actually grateful in retrospect, because we didn't have that sort of crazy valuation to grow into. I think if we would have taken it out to the market and been like, look, providers are adopting us and it's wild and crazy and, you know, give us lots of money. We might have been able to raise a lot of money then,
8:57 Speaker 02 but we would now probably be in a position where we had some kind of insane valuation to grow into, or maybe we would have hired lots of employees and then, you know, had to do a massive layoff or something like that.
9:10 Speaker 00 Yes. So one thing that I was thinking about, because I was looking into honor and popular companies, we'll get into in a little bit. And I was very surprised at how much money they had raised, like hundreds of millions of dollars. And then I was going back and prepping about winning. And I'm like, okay, two and a half million dollar seed, four million dollar seed, nine million dollar series A, nothing for four years. So either you guys are like, super lean, or you've just been growing like hell. So I'm kind of curious, like, how have you managed to avoid what we might call the fundraising and valuation trap that was so attractive to a lot of companies in the care space during COVID?
9:41 Speaker 02 So I wish I could say, you know, we were so smart to avoid that trap. But actually, like, it has been very challenging for us to fundraise. I think the environment, the business we're operating is not super sexy. We're not kind of doing the sexy thing of creating supply out of nothing and turn your neighbor into an amazing caregiver, which is that model that appeals to VCs. We're doing the kind of different thing of strengthen the existing industry and the existing industry is not sexy. So we have not been able to raise those massive sums of money. So it's forced us, yes, we are very lean. Yes, we have to be profitable. We can really only
10:21 Speaker 02 rely on ourselves. And, you know, we have found a few great, amazing investors along the way. So I won't say we've bootstrapped this. We have some awesome backers who have given us money, but we haven't raised those massive sums. But I think it's made us build a more sustainable, stronger business in the end.
10:38 Speaker 01 I mean, I think in general, though, it does frustrate me a little bit because these are what I call kind of like real world problems. And it frustrates me that sometimes I'll see companies that are doing things that, you know, honestly, just don't seem that vitally important to the whole human race. Raising, you know, tons of cash in which I probably know in the back of my head, okay, who knows if this company is even going to be around in a few years. But then I see companies like Winnie and others trying to, to really just help with very, very real world problems, struggling to raise. And that, that frustrates me now, not to say that, and you're right, it probably worked out the best for you that you didn't raise a lot of money during that time. And you're having to feel the pressures that go along with that.
11:20 Speaker 01 But overall, this idea that caregiving or helping people find care is not sexy is just a little bit annoying.
11:27 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think also when raising venture capital, there's this expectation of this really rapid up into the right growth. And to achieve that, you know, there are some companies that can do that, you know, year after year and keep raising these rounds. But then there's a lot more companies that are doing it by exaggerating their numbers or using completely fraudulent numbers or using questionable business practices. And that has just never been something we've been willing to do. We, you know, have always been super authentic, I think to a fault. We're very honest about our numbers and we lay all our cards out on the table. And, you know, we found some amazing long-term investors as a result of that.
12:11 Speaker 02 But I think, you know, to raise those mass evaluations, sometimes it's not all based on reality.
12:18 Speaker 00 And you guys raised partially from Homebrew, which is Hunter Walks firm. I hear if you take Hunter and turn him upside down and shake vigorously, money falls out. So you should just do that every time you need to fundraise, just like invite him out for lunch and flip him over.
12:29 Speaker 02 I know. I, I think I've shaken all the money out that I can get.
12:34 Speaker 00 Come on Hunter. Alright, so I want to talk about some numbers here. So the childcare market, I was doing some research and in the US, the childcare market, it depends on who you look at, but it's like 60, 70 billion dollars a year. And that is a lot of, that's a lot of money. It's a lot of TAM, as you might say. And then there's also the elderly care market, kind of on the other end of the human life spectrum, you know, kids and then our seniors. And it's very hard to figure out how big that market is because everyone counts differently. I saw numbers from like 2 billion to like 770 billion. So I'm going to go ahead and say caring for our elderly family and friends is a huge market. And we've seen a lot of other companies in that space take it on. And there seems to be a couple of different ways to do this. There's a number of startups that are working on
13:18 Speaker 00 supporting caregivers, companies like Helpful, Wealthy, I think it's called Iana Care, Aidly. Those are focused on the actual like family members who might be supporting someone who's elderly and needs more help. Then there are some companies that want to bring individual carers to one's house. The most famous one is called Papa Care, raised a bunch of money, including from 776, and has run into some issues. I'm just kind of curious though, Sarah, why do you think that the elderly care space has been so successful at fundraising so much? Whereas when I look for like winning competitors, it's pretty much nobody. I was just shocked at the discrepancy and like, they're both big markets, and yet one has tons of activity. And then there's money, kind of seemingly by itself.
13:59 Speaker 02 Yes. I think childcare and children in this country are an incredibly overlooked population. It's amazing to me. I mean, there's been more funding, not even thinking about elder care, but more funding for apps that care for your pets. And, you know, I know we're all animal lovers here and we, we love our pets. But, I mean, these are human children. This is the next generation of our future as a society. And there is less funding for these human children than for your, you know, pet children from venture capitalists. So I think it's, you know, I can't explain it. So incredibly overlooked and underfunded population.
14:44 Speaker 01 Gosh, I'm just gonna have to word this delicately. I think a lot of the people who would be investing maybe don't struggle in the same ways that the everyday person does in terms of trying to find childcare because they're often more affluent, they have more resources, they're more able to do things like hire, you know, nannies around the clock even. So having, maybe don't struggle quite in the same way as, and maybe, I don't mean to sound reverse, not like a reverse snob here, but that's just one thing that pops to mind.
15:14 Speaker 02 No, it, I mean, this is invisible labor that historically has fallen on women and it's not valued. There's, you know, no monetary value assigned to this labor. And so if we don't assign value to it, of course, we're not willing to pay for it and fund it. And I think that's obviously starting to change. And I think that's wonderful, but you know, historically, this labor had no value ascribed to it at all.
15:37 Speaker 00 Now, one thing that I'm very curious about is balancing safety and scale, kind of security and growth, and how companies in the larger care space can be secure for their customers, clients, whatever they're taking care of, and also build a business that is attractive, growing and profitable, and perhaps even venture backable. Talk about that in just one second, but first, a short break.
16:01 Speaker 00 Now, when it comes to Papa, this company that I think kind of kicked off this conversation between the three of us originally, there was a story written in Bloomberg about how some of the providers that Papa had used or employed or gigged up perhaps to go do individual tasks and help care for seniors were perhaps under-vetted, and I'm going to go with some allegedly's here so we don't get sued. There were a number of stories that I think we can all agree were pretty horrific. And they were, it kind of broke down along two lines. One was people from Papa perhaps behaving poorly or illegally or criminally. And then there was some senior citizens who also were not on their best behavior, perhaps due to mental health issues or just other perhaps cultural, time, generational changes.
16:41 Speaker 00 And it seems that they had tried to scale their ability to provide services to seniors perhaps more quickly than made sense. They raised a lot of money, so the valuation they were trying to defend or grow into was probably quite large. I wonder if there was just pressures on the business side that led to decisions on the operations side, Sarah, that were not the best. And I'm curious if you have run into perhaps similar issues on the childcare side and how you've balanced safety versus growth.
17:10 Speaker 02 Yes. So I think, you know, with any venture funded business, there's this tension where you have to grow really, really quickly. And that's often at odds with how it actually works to build a business. I mean, businesses aren't just up and to the right. You have to iterate, you have to figure things out, you have to pivot. But then especially when you look at caregiving, be it, you know, elder care or childcare, it's not a service that you can just pour money in and scale it. There's specialized skills required. There's, you know, this really important focus on safety that has to happen. And it's really hard to do this in the way that venture style growth kind of requires, especially if you're
17:55 Speaker 02 raising hundreds of millions of dollars at a, you know, 1.4 billion dollar valuation, you know, weighed in advance, I'm sure of their revenues. So they had a, just a massive valuation to grow into. So I think that, you know, makes it especially problematic. There are some businesses where you can take a bunch of cash and pour the cash in and then grow the business super rapidly, kind of in line with that cash. But I think caregiving is particularly challenging to do that with.
18:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
18:24 Speaker 02 Because of the specialized skills and safety and all the other nuances of this kind of work.
18:30 Speaker 01 Yes. I mean, I think it's been proven that, like, for example, a lot of nursing homes that are owned by private equity are not doing well for this very reason. And as a person who is a caregiver for my elderly mother, I've seen firsthand the different types of entities that can help provide care for elderly people. For example, she was in a skilled nursing facility last year that was owned by one of these larger nursing homes that was supposed to be one of the best in the city, and they were horribly negligent. And she ended up with Uh, blood clots in both of her lungs, my mother did in COVID, and it was just a terrible, terrible experience. And looking for care for her since she's been home, I've found
19:10 Speaker 01 the best luck with a small, a small little company or agency. It was owned by a married couple and they had their, their personal lives were invested in their business. So they seem to take great care in hiring and making sure they're doing background checks and personally coming to the house to make sure that the caregivers and my mother were comfortable with each other. So that's the kind of thing that I don't know if you see with a company like Papa, right? Because there's not that personal investment in it. Now, I also feel like I'm being contradictory because I'm sitting here whining about the fact there's not enough venture money going into this space. But then I'm saying, well, a venture backed business is not going to have the same sort of heart in it. So I think
19:51 Speaker 01 it can be done if it's run properly. But one has to wonder, in the case of Papa, after reading these horrific stories, if it's being done properly, for example.
20:01 Speaker 00 I think that's the kind of the core question that I wanted to get the answer, well, not the answer to you, but to talk about is can you actually scale care oriented businesses in a manner that is venture backable, period? And can you do so in a way that is responsible? I know that childcare and eldercare are different. I understand that. But I mean, it does seem that if you focus on supporting existing businesses in the market that are doing the work versus trying to replicate the actual caregiving process, it can scale better. Sarah, is that a fair way to think about it?
20:35 Speaker 01 That's exactly how we think about it at Winnie. I mean, we see this $60 billion plus industry in the US alone. And we're like, that's actually a huge market. How can we strengthen it instead of trying to reinvent it from scratch with these unvetted people that we're gonna, you know, pour money into to try to scale it? How about we just make this already existing industry with licensed vetted providers actually work better and be more profitable? And I think there's a lot of examples in other industries about how if you can strengthen the businesses within the industry and be, you know, the provider, the marketplace, or the service that does that, you can actually really improve
21:18 Speaker 01 an industry without needing to go throw away all the amazing people doing this work and start over from scratch.
21:27 Speaker 00 I'm just kind of sitting here perplexed by the situation that we're talking about because what does the venture world tend to back? Software, what are they like marketplaces and SaaS? Why would companies that wanted to staff up on the actual provider side be so attractive to investors and founders too? Because when I'm now thinking about it, and I didn't have this thought before, so sorry to gas you up, Sarah, but it does seem like Winnie has taken the picks shovel slash software approach to this problem, which is much more in the startup domain than actually trying to
21:58 Speaker 01 Be the caregiver model.
22:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think there was a lot of appeal of like the Airbnb for childcare, the Uber for childcare. That was always what, you know, investors were wanting to make us into or were interested in funding. And I think that's actually changing now. I think people are getting it.
22:20 Speaker 00 Interested.
22:20 Speaker 02 That to build a real sustainable business, you want to back the businesses that have have figured out how to do that and not the ones just taking this like sexy Uber for X approach to childcare. So I think it is changing. I think, you know, this sort of downturn that we just went through has helped kind of separate the really sexy companies that aren't going to actually be scalable from real businesses that maybe are less sexy and have a less cute tagline, but you actually would want to back if you're trying to get returns.
22:58 Speaker 01 Yeah, I recently covered a startup called Wealthy that is doing what we talked about, that they're aimed at helping caregivers be more equipped to deal with with a lot of the things that they're dealing with, not to provide them with actual caregivers. So this this falls right in line to what we're we're speaking of. They recently raised $25 million. So I think, yeah, it's not, not bad at all, especially in this environment.
23:21 Speaker 02 Yeah, we share, Wealthy and Winnie share an investor, probably more, but we share Rethink Impact, which is an amazing. Women run firm that invests for returns, but also for social impact. And I think it is something to consider that a lot of these companies that do have a social impact angle are perhaps building things in a bit more of a sustainable way and have some other goals in mind beyond just like make lots of money at all costs. We're also trying to do good in the world and hopefully that will mean we we actually build lasting businesses.
23:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think one of the things that I was intrigued by Wealthy's model was that they started actually working with companies and providing like helping provide this as a benefit to employees. So so if they needed help as caregivers, then it would be covered as a benefit. So it's pretty unique and I think a really great way to approach this.
24:14 Speaker 02 Yeah, there's definitely been a number of companies, both on the elder care side and the childcare side that have sold to employers. We have not at Winnie and personally, I would like childcare to be something you can get regardless of your employment status. I also think it's it's particularly challenging for children if their kind of care and education hinges on where their parents are employed.
24:41 Speaker 01 Great point.
24:41 Speaker 02 It can just make the situation really challenging and and not in their best interest. So I don't love that as a model. It's certainly a model that's worked for companies just to sell to employers. There's lots of money there, but we're really trying to offer, you know, make childcare and education more accessible regardless of where you work.
25:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, and I love that. I think with children in particular, it's so important because you don't want to have to, oh, I've got to take you out of this school that you've just finally started getting used to and after crying for two weeks and now you love it and I have to take you out because I'm changing jobs. So I totally get that.
25:16 Speaker 00 Yeah. So when I was reading about the Papa situation, it did seem that there was not just a large market at play, like elder care being a large space where money is spent, but also that there was some government money floating through this via Medicare, Medicaid, I forget exactly which one it was. And I wonder if that revenue source was also a potential driver in kind of interest in companies that were working in the elder care space. Is there a similar font of cash from the government in the childcare space that is related or similar?
25:46 Speaker 02 Absolutely not. It's really
25:48 Speaker 00 And see, that that blows my frickin' mind.
25:51 Speaker 01 Unbelievable.
25:52 Speaker 02 There is, there is funding for like head start programs and other subsidized programs. So basically, you know, you can get money from the federal government if you operate a head start, or sometimes from local governments, if you operate subsidized programs. So that's a funding source that providers themselves can tap into. It's not really for like startups in the space to tap into, though certainly for us at Winnie, like some of those head start providers are actually great customers of Winnie. So we kind of do, I guess, tap into it that way because these head start businesses also need to find families to fill their open spaces, or they lose their funding.
26:35 Speaker 02 They need to find staff for their programs, or they can't operate and they lose their funding. So they need to advertise and market their business online as well. But, you know, I can't, as a for-profit business in the childcare space, like, apply for any kind of grant or head start funding, really.
26:52 Speaker 00 Just the two things I hear about childcare, and I'm sure you've heard these till you want to scream, is, one, you can't get in anywhere. And two, if you can, it costs an arm, a leg, and a kidney each and every month. To me, it's kind of crazy that we're talking about, on a global basis, falling fertility rates and people not having children because they feel like they can't afford them. And then everywhere that I look, it seems like everything's getting worse and we're doing nothing to make it better. It just, it's a head scratcher to me that our domestic priorities here in this nation seem to be so unaligned with what might help people have more kids. Because I think Mary Ann hit on a really good point earlier that, you know, we can't let this just become only for the affluent. And it feels a little bit like having kids is now sufficiently expensive that most folks can't afford it. It's just
27:37 Speaker 01 Well, I mean,
27:38 Speaker 00 It makes me want to cry.
27:39 Speaker 01 That's why a lot of people, I know a lot of women, for example, who, who had to stop working because childcare ended up costing more than what they would have made, and it wasn't, wasn't even worth it until their kids were a little older. I mean, it's just reality, sadly.
27:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, when we started Winnie and kind of were figuring out what problems to solve and eventually landed in childcare. I mean, one of the things that drew us to childcare was it was predominantly women who dropped out of the workplace when childcare was hard to come by. Whether it was because it was not affordable or they couldn't find open spaces. It was, you know, women that were being impacted the most. And now, you know, post COVID, that feels like kind of an obvious statement. But at the time, I think, you know, people didn't really believe like, oh, is this really impacting women more than men? Or, you know, is that just assumption people are making? But it really is. And that also keeping women in the workforce is a big driving factor behind why we get up every day and continue to work on Winnie.
28:37 Speaker 00 And I want to say that that's the same thing that we see in the elder care space. And it's often falls on the shoulders of women. Like, I mean, Mary Ann mentioned earlier that she's a caregiver. And I mean, by national standards, that's not a surprise.
28:47 Speaker 01 Part of another way that COVID, I think, helped transform this sector is that more people started working remotely. So a lot of people who maybe couldn't work because they didn't have childcare and couldn't go to an office, for example, but were working remotely, did all of a sudden have need for childcare. Would you agree that that was part of this increase in demand, Sarah? Or was it just a temporary thing?
29:10 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, remote work has been super interesting and it's still, you know, the case today that it's really changed what people are searching for when it comes to childcare. I think more people are searching for more flexible options, less like nine to five, five days a week. And also a factor of the economy, people are trying to make do with less. And so if they are working from home, they're using that flexibility to try to purchase slightly less childcare. It also makes the equation more affordable and work out for some families. So we're definitely seeing that shift, which is interesting because not a lot of providers offer that flexibility. So there's, there's this kind of mismatch in supply and demand.
29:50 Speaker 00 You know, one thing that I've been thinking a lot about is the graying of societies around the world. I mean, I mentioned birth rates and so forth a little bit ago, but one thing that Redpoint Ventures wrote, I was reading a Medium post from Redpoint on the elder care space. And they said that not only is this a multi-billion dollar market, but also the senior population is growing 20% every 10 years. So I feel like the issues that we've talked about as they relate to childcare, finding enough providers, paying for it and doing it intelligently and carefully, are going to apply to the senior and elder care market. But more and more and more and more and more, like it's going to become an enormous problem. And so I'm hoping, Sarah, that we can see more companies take a winy-ish approach to that. Because I don't think we're at all ready on a societal, let alone national level,
30:33 Speaker 00 to care for as many people as we're going to need to as life expectancies go up and our social safety net doesn't do as good of a job as it might to provide for them. And I'm just hoping that we don't have more stories of what we saw from Papa in that context and more victories. But I'm not, I'm not super optimistic that we have the right models in place to do that yet. And I'm just worried.
30:55 Speaker 02 And not to pull an Elon Musk here, but I'm going to sound like him when I say, if we don't invest in allowing people to have children.
31:03 Speaker 00 Yes, okay, yes.
31:04 Speaker 02 You know, replace the, you know, have younger people to be able to care for this elder population. Because we make it so impossible to afford childcare and to raise kids and have a family in this country, then we're going to be in big trouble when it comes to all of us aging and then not having, you know, the younger population to be able to care for us. There's just a limit to how much labor people can do, regardless of what kind of great tech systems you have in place. So we do need to make it possible for people to have kids.
31:38 Speaker 00 I am seeing a little bit of, I know that I live in a very rarefied corner of the labor market with my spouse, but I am seeing some positive signs that I want to bring up because I think they're slightly encouraging. The field of medicine my spouse works in, it's mostly women that are the doctors. And so I know a lot of husbands in my local area who have what I'm going to just call high-power spouses, because I'm very proud of them. And it's funny, like, some of them are, like, working part-time now, these husbands, and like, they're really shaking up how they're approaching life to have kids while supporting their wives' careers. So at least in my little, I know, specialized part of the world, we are seeing changes on approaches to childcare and so forth, and I think that's very helpful. I don't know how that might manifest later on in the elder care space, but it does seem we're making slow progress, and I'm happy about that. I know we have so much more work to do. But last question before you start, before we let you go.
32:23 Speaker 00 Once Winnie does eventually go public, because we're going to hold you to that, are you going to feel vindicated on the early thesis of the company? And do you think it'll be a proof point that it is possible to build startups that are venture-backed in a space that's care-oriented and still stick true to taking care of people while also making a lot of money?
32:39 Speaker 02 Yes, so I don't think we need to go public to prove that. I think we're actually already proving it by being around still where all these other companies have folded or, you know, downsized. We are, you know, growing based on our own profits, and that feels really good. We're making an impact for parents and for childcare providers, which is how I measure success. And, you know, we are able to employ people and provide them with what I think is a great quality of life, and hopefully more people one day. So I think on all those measures, we are already making it. And certainly, you know, we still have tons of work to do, and I'll probably be working on this for the rest of my life or the rest of my working years.
33:21 Speaker 02 But I think we are already kind of showing all the haters that there is a model for success that isn't just raising tons of cash and blowing up.
33:28 Speaker 00 Well, I just heard Winnie IPO Q1 2025, so everyone mark your calendars. I'm very excited. I'm very excited about that. Marian, before we let Sarah go, anything else from you?
33:37 Speaker 01 No, I just, I just want to applaud you, Sarah, for what you're doing. I think you're doing a great service for parents and obviously helping the childcare providers as well. And then as long as- They have the help they need and they can stay in business and focus on caring for our kids. So, so thank you. I wish there were more companies out there doing similar things for both children and elders because it's a huge, huge issue. And I think all of us could use more help in these areas, at least, you know, not everybody may be dealing with all these things, but those of us who are, are grateful for people and companies like yours.
34:09 Speaker 02 Thank you.
34:10 Speaker 00 All right. Sarah, before we sign off, where can people find you on the great wide internet?
34:14 Speaker 02 Oh, gosh. I don't know anymore because I would have said Twitter, but there's no Twitter. There's just X. So I'm at SM on X, I guess. I don't know. I'm, you know, winnie.com. Just go to winnie.com.
34:28 Speaker 00 There you go. And then click on the team page, scroll down and you'll, you'll see her there. But because Equity is a podcast, we do have to share where we are on the internet and we are on Twitter and threads under the handle EquityPod and we are Equity on Blue Sky. And we will be back no later than Monday. I think we have something else kind of planned for Friday of this week. And thank you all very much. Sarah, as always, an absolute treat. Mary Ann, you're the best. And we'll talk to you all soon. Goodbye.
34:51 Speaker 01 Bye.
34:53 Speaker 00 Equity is hosted by myself, editor in chief of TechCrunch Plus, Alex Wilhelm, and TechCrunch senior reporter, Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Teresa Locan Solo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our illustrator. And a big thank you to the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch Audio Products. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.
Previous Equity Monday: Twitter's rebrand is a go, and we're Blazing Our Collective Glory Next Chain Reaction: Ripple’s chief legal officer talks SEC lawsuit, XRP ‘win’ and future regulation (w/ Stu Alderoty) Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
