#StartupsEverywhere Profile: Leslie Borrell, Founder & CEO, Carefully
This profile is part of #StartupsEverywhere, an ongoing series highlighting startup leaders in ecosystems across the country. This interview has been edited for length, content, and clarity.
Revolutionizing Childcare through the Development of Cooperative, Online Solutions
Carefully is a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based platform enabling parents to collectively share the responsibilities of childcare. We spoke to the Founder & CEO Leslie Borrell about how working as a single-mom inspired the creation of Carefully, why policymakers should prioritize solving the childcare crisis, and how founder support programs were critical to helping her build a startup.
Tell us about your background. What led you to create Carefully?
My background is in product and software development. I spent over 20 years building and leading software development teams at a range of different-sized companies, starting at Travelocity. I grew my team there from 20 engineers that I was managing, up to around 120. Eventually I decided I wanted to start working at startups. My journey involved a bunch of different startups at different phases and sizes. And along that journey, I had a kid and became a single mom. Working in New York—trying to survive and be a mom—is a challenge. As I was navigating my own working struggles, figuring out how to set up playdates when my son was old enough, and trying to find a bit of free time for myself all at the same time, I came up with the idea for Carefully. And because I had worked at scaling startups, I was excited to work on building out my own idea.
What does Carefully do?
Carefully is a platform that provides options for sharing care. I often describe it as mutual aid for childcare. As a user, you come onto Carefully and you create a network of people that you trust by adding them into or connecting with them on the platform. From there you can start to organize care within your network in a variety of ways—set up a playgroup for after school care with a few other families to rotate pickups, organize a care circle to swap babysitting with others in the circle, and organize play dates through the map based search. After that, the platform works via a system of karma care hours. When you watch somebody else's kids, you earn karma care hours, which can be used when you ask somebody else to watch your kids.
I initially created Carefully thinking parents wanted private networks to coordinate and organize childcare since having someone watch your child is such a personal thing. But we have learned along the way there are so many people that don't already have a network for childcare. So we've started to open the platform up and provide ways for parents to actually find community, connect with other parents, and then get to know them the same way you might get to know somebody at the park or the playground and build that trust. Right now, we're very much focused on ensuring parents have the tools through our platform to be able to share care, but we'd like to expand to allowing other caregivers, and being able to add your whole caregiving team, whether it's your parents or your spouse. Eventually, we’d also like to be able to provide similar offerings for elder care and other aspects of caregiving beyond childcare. We also support small businesses on the platform to grow their business and give back to the Carefully community through sharing events or deals that reward our members for participating as a caregiver on Carefully. The goal is that parents can have this single place where they can meet all their childcare needs.
What programs have been helpful in getting you through your early building stages? Are there specific policy solutions that would be helpful if they were more broadly implemented?
I've been pretty selective in the programs that I've applied for and have been lucky to have been accepted into all of them thus far. Start.coop was the first program I took part in, which was instrumental in getting me down the path of developing a cooperative (co-op) structured business. Currently, I’m participating in the City Fellowship, which is a public-private partnership between Company Ventures and New York City Economic Development Corporation, and it provides you with the opportunity to connect with various city agencies as well as providing other types of founder support. Finally, through that fellowship, I was connected to the Google for Startups program which accepted me to be a recipient of their Latino Founders Fund. That program has been amazing in terms of resources and support—which includes financial investment and access to the Google network.
As a startup, accessing, and being able to navigate finding government resources and programs is difficult, especially for a cooperatively-structured business like mine. I'm trying my best to create an accessible, inclusive platform that serves communities that don't have enough affordable caregiving options. And really in, I think, a user friendly way. But getting into government programs as a participant requires a full staff and all sorts of know-how that a bootstrapped startup doesn't have. Government should do better to be more accessible and provide opportunities for founders, like pilot programs, so startups can get feedback to improve eligibility for programs. I think that a lot of public-private partnership programs at different levels of government don’t have accessible on-ramps for founders, so you miss a lot of early and innovative solutions. I have to strategically choose where I spend my time. The way things are currently structured, and with the lack of help to navigate these processes, I could spend all my time just applying for government grants, but in the end I need to have time to focus on my product and my company.
In the startup ecosystem, we know that women founders are primarily the caregivers for their families. Since your business is childcare focused, how do you think policymakers can better support these founders? What policies would enable them to be able to build innovative businesses?
It's this constant tug of war to figure out how our society is making sure that we're supporting women (and caregivers) so that they can be successful and stay at work. The childcare crisis is real. A lot of people that were forced to leave work during the initial wave of the pandemic to provide childcare, still can't find childcare. I think that public-private partnerships are really critical to helping solve this issue because I don't think that the government alone can solve it. This is a collective problem we all have to work together to address because we've let it blow out of proportion for so many years.
New Mexico is a great example of how it has worked to address its childcare crisis. At one point, a bipartisan group of policymakers implemented an eight-year program to invest in a public-private collaboration to build out childcare programs in low income areas. The impact that the program had on the community was huge. And I think the outcomes that program showed can translate to any community. When you solve childcare problems, people become less stressed, and they can embark on the goals they have for their lives. They can build businesses, they can go to work, they live better and healthier lives. I don't think it's unique to the startup space, but solving this problem has major benefits for anyone looking to start a business who is also responsible for childcare.
Are there any local, state, or federal startup issues that you think should receive more attention from policymakers?
As I mentioned earlier, we’re a co-op platform, so it'll be owned by the community participants and by the company employees. I think the platform cooperative movement is definitely gaining momentum in the startup space. For me, I've worked for myself for a long time. I want to make sure what I'm building is something that's giving back. Now I'm at this point where we're getting traction and I can't do everything, but I still can't afford to hire people. It's so hard to build a company you have to bootstrap because there’s little investment interest in co-op platforms, unless they are impact investors. So I’m constantly thinking about how we can still grow without relying on investment capital that isn't fully aligned with our values and risks diverting our focus from our mission and vision. I think it would be helpful for policymakers to start recognizing the growing co-op business model and thinking about how public policy could support cooperatives, especially during early growth stages.
What are your goals for Carefully moving forward?
We've been a free platform up until now. Carefully is trying to support people through the pandemic and transition to whatever comes next. Our goal for the next six to 12 months is to drive revenue and accelerate user acquisition by going into employers, universities, hospitals, and institutions where they have larger parent communities to work on getting them to provide the platform as a benefit to their employees, members, etc.—while still at a low cost to these organizations. There is absolutely a need at these organizations for the community and connection to provide accessible, inclusive care options that they can organize for themselves, which drives increased employee productivity, reduced absenteeism, higher retention, and happier employees overall. Simultaneously, we are building out our small business network so that we provide more options for events and classes and paid care when free care isn't available. And because you've saved money on the free care through Carefully, then you can have some money for paid care when you need it.
All of the information in this profile was accurate at the date and time of publication.
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