When I was expecting my first baby, my plan was to adapt our life to the new arrival and continue much as before. How hard could it be … right?
Healthy pregnancy, smooth delivery, all was looking good. Until it wasn’t. I nearly lost my son at five days old, to a medical emergency which had been silently unfolding since his delivery. Taking time out to support his recovery led me to engage more fully than I was expecting with the “new parent” universe: participating in local mum groups, taking stroller walks with neighbours whose infants were a similar age, and consuming all the resources I could find for new parents.
I was surprised by how we all seemed to be “flying blind”, even in the “normal” tasks and challenges of new parenthood. Surely, since around 80% of adults become parents, there could be better resources for new families by now. Beyond that, from the stresses of my own child’s medical journey to stories I heard about issues with reproductive health, missed developmental milestones, maternal mental health battles, or difficulties with returning to work, some experiences sounded unique. But I soon came to reflect on how these stories must, in fact, also be shared by millions of families.
The gap between necessity and invention
Usually, when there’s a challenge faced by many people, there’s a product or service to help. But this didn’t seem to be as true of challenges facing parents. As an MBA graduate with a background in strategy consulting, working at an early-stage startup in San Francisco, I felt acutely aware of the potential for better tools – whether physical or digital – to help parents deal with so many of the sharp edges of uncertainty, frustrations and isolation. The options for seeking out expert guidance, or coordinating care, seemed patchy and basic in comparison to the slick, modern offerings in other sectors.
I found myself ruminating on ideas for apps or gadgets that might help address some of the specific daily tasks of parental life, which could grant parents more, truly undistracted, time with their children. We’ve heard that necessity is the mother of invention – so why were there so few inventions addressing the necessities of mothers? New parents are bombarded with marketing for “baby stuff”, but it’s so often cutesy and not what they really need.
Still, I thought, there must be examples of parents successfully creating solutions themselves, extrapolating from their nuanced understanding of their personal experience to address the needs of other new families. I found that these parents did indeed exist, but they often struggled to get their solutions to market. While investor dollars would pour into the latest buzzword sectors, like AI, crypto, or Enterprise SaaS, there had historically been little interest in parent founders – who are disproportionately likely to be women, solo, and suburb-residing, and whose ideas often fall between traditional categories.
Inspiration and support for ParentTech founders
I created Parenthood Ventures to address this challenge. We enable founders of “ParentTech” startups to find and support one another, and be inspired by the successes of others. Since our launch, Parenthood Ventures has welcomed founders from almost 700 startups, of which more than 80% have at least one parent founder.
SimpliFed
Take, for example, Andrea Ippolito. As a new mum she struggled with breastfeeding, and was frustrated by the challenges of accessing support, despite being entitled to it in the USA under the Affordable Care Act. With a background in health, telehealth and entrepreneurship, Andrea founded SimpliFed, which provides virtual support for breastfeeding and baby feeding, covered by US health plans at no cost to families, from pregnancy through to weaning.
Ello
Elizabeth Adams’ daughter struggled with learning to read. The apps she could find were either noneducational, too game-like, or too difficult. With a background in clinical psychology, and together with her co-founders, she created Ello, which leverages voice-recognition technology to help early readers gain confidence, at a fraction of the cost of traditional tutoring.
Solobo Toys
Courtney and Daniel Peebles were familiar with neurodivergence from their own life experiences, and then had challenges finding suitable toys for their children. Their startup, Solobo Toys, offers toy options which can support children in understanding and expressing emotions, a particular challenge for children with autism.
Coral Care
Jen Wirt’s startup, Coral Care, was inspired by her struggle to navigate long waiting lists and limited in-network options while seeking therapy to support her child’s developmental needs. One in six children in the USA has a developmental delay or disability, yet access to care remains fragmented. Public programmes are overstretched, private clinics are full, and many therapists work independently without operational support. Coral Care is a platform that connects families with local, insurance-covered therapists and equips providers with the infrastructure to focus more on care and less on paperwork.
Happity
In the UK, Sara Tateno had found local playgroups and classes to be her lifeline, but noticed how hard they were to find online; Emily Tredget had experienced postnatal depression and found maternity leave to be isolating and lonely. Together they built Happity, which has supported over 2 million parents in the past year to find under-5s classes and activities near them.
Xploro
When Dom Raban’s daughter was fighting Ewing’s sarcoma, an aggressive form of cancer, she struggled with a lack of age-appropriate information. This inspired Dom, a designer, to build Xploro to help parents and children better understand their healthcare journey. Xploro creates content with interactivity and immersive storytelling, where children can explore an MRI machine and hear its sounds, or complete “missions” linked to following their discharge instructions. By offering child-friendly education and making it fun, better outcomes can be achieved with less anxiety for the whole family.
While bigger systemic issues remain, the beauty of these enterprises is that parents are inspired to redesign how other caregivers tackle everyday challenges, to help ease the load. The more founders who joined the Parenthood Ventures platform, the more expansive I realised “ParentTech” is.
Founders like these had the odds against them. Happily, that is starting to change. The rise of women leaders and hands-on dads in venture capital has expanded the audience of investors. Funds such as Halogen Ventures, Magnify Ventures, Ingeborg Ventures and Mother Ventures include the challenges of parenthood as a core area of focus.
The normalisation of remote work, and the rollout of user-friendly startup tools, are lowering the barriers to building startups from home, or the need for external funding at all.
With greater recognition and support, the future has the potential to be bright for parent innovators, and for a new generation of innovations to improve parental wellbeing, created by those who understand it best.
