User:Jointandem/sandbox

Tandem is located in Columbus, Ohio, founded in September of 2019 by three women, Olivia Weinstock, CEO and Co-Founder, Natalie Amling, Co-Founder, and McKenzie Kennelly, Co-Founder. Tandem operates under the common goal of providing the easiest and most reliable connections between families and child care providers. Tandem is a completely free connection platform for parents to find sitters, nannies, tutors, educators, and child care providers to find jobs. Providing flexibility for both parents and child care providers. Open, easy communication before and after jobs, connecting trusted parties based on matched needs.

CEO and co-founder Olivia Weinstock has been connecting families and babysitters for quite some time. In 2010, at the age of 11, Olivia started a summer camp for kids in her backyard. By the end of high school, Kiddie Kamp was a huge interconnected network of 100 kids and their parents, and Olivia started helping these families find babysitters in Columbus, Ohio. In 2019, she would take this knowledge (and network) and turn it into Tandem. With the help of technical co-founders McKenzie Kennelly and Natalie Amling, the three of them would launch the first free (yes, entirely free) marketplace for child care.

Tandem is helping families connect with pre-vetted child care providers. Unlike care.com and other service marketplaces, Tandem is completely free and founded on the basis of trust. Unlike Fiverr or other traditional marketplaces, parents send a job request to Tandem, whether it’s for a recurring job or a one-off gig. Tandem sends that request to the best-suited child care providers based on age, experience, pay rate, or whatever else the family has requested.

All the child care providers on the platform go through background checks, and families have a chance to get to talk with the child care providers beforehand to make sure they’re a good fit. The matching experience is highly curated. Once the matchmaking is done, it’s up to the parents and child care providers to work out the details by chatting on the platform. After the job is done, parents receive a notification to confirm payment. Babysitters, nannies, educators, and tutors then receive their money immediately.

Tandem operates on an alternative revenue model. Instead of charging parents subscription or booking fees or taking a portion of the child care providers’ earnings, revenue comes from debit card interchange. They issue all of their child care providers debit cards on which they can spend their earnings. When a child care provider spends money, there is a transaction fee, called the interchange fee, that the merchant must pay to the cardholder's bank, which in this case, will be Tandem. So, Tandem makes that small percentage from the child care providers’ card transactions. This model has started to take off in the past few years. Companies like Venmo, Apple, etc. are all coming out with their own debit and credit cards. When Olivia first started, the VC firm suggested this business model after seeing early success with it in other industries within their portfolio.

While the company of course is looking to grow their revenue under this model, they’re also in the process of growing their team. As they build their product and their team, they also hope to build their reach. They plan to be in other cities within the next five years and hope to provide services in other industries too: housekeeping, pet care, senior care, to name a few. The Tandem founders are always focused on building strong relationships. After all, strong connections and relationships are how this idea started. But what’s even more important is the relationships that parents foster with their child care providers.

These kinds of relationships also formed when Tandem began offering free child care to first responders. At the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak and the stay-at-home orders that followed, Tandem found that no one had open jobs on the platform anymore. But they knew that their babysitters, nannies, tutors, and educators still needed work as many had lost their other jobs, so Olivia, Natalie, and McKenzie thought about who still needed those services: first responders. To make sure that the child care providers still got paid, Tandem hosted a fundraiser through family, friends, and users. They also made a company donation, and all of this helped provide first responders with free child care for six weeks. One of the hospitals they partnered with continues to fund the care for their employees enrolled in the program.

As things begin to slowly open back up, Tandem has definitely seen an increase in child care demand. Stay-at-home orders are lifted, people are starting to solidify their future plans, or go back to work, and they need babysitters, nannies, tutors, and educators again. Tandem also launched their successful enterprise model to central Ohio businesses offering child care to their employees. Tandem’s services are offered to businesses for free as a benefit for their employees. Employers agree to pay for a predetermined amount of eligible employees' child care, and Tandem does all of the heavy liftings. Once a business has set the enterprise model through Tandem, they provide your employees with free connections to pre-vetted providers (babysitters, nannies, tutors, and educators). Employees easily sign up for Tandem under their business’ account, and we will handle the payment, subsidization, or split pay!

Parents working from home have benefited from Tandem's services as parents can focus on their jobs and meetings while the child care providers take over entertaining, tutoring, and playing with the kids. It has been said that in-home child care is the future of child care and Tandem's growth this past year is a prime example of that.