NatWest Back Her Business has provided £5,000 of match funding
Parentally: expert help is at hand
London, England, United Kingdom
Aim
Connecting parents with trusted and vetted baby & child experts to help families live healthy, happy, stress-free lives.
Raising children is one of life's great joys. It is also a journey of ups and downs - and sometimes parents and guardians need a helping hand.
We are building a trusted and vetted online directory of baby and child experts enabling families to get the help they need, when they need it.
We have spoken to hundreds of parents, developed our business plan and designed our site. We are now looking to raise £10,000 to develop our website, launch our business and start to help thousands of families across the UK.
Who are we?
We are three mothers, working together to provide a solution to help parents on their parenting journey. Together we have 5 children under the age of 7 and Sophie has another one on the way! We know that being a parent is wonderful. But, it can be challenging. Whether you've got a newborn struggling to latch, a toddler who won’t sleep at night or an apprehensive teen, sometimes you just need that extra support.
We found that there was no reliable source that we could turn to for support or to find trusted experts for our children. This is how we came up with the idea of Parentally.
How we developed our idea and why we need funds
Over the last year we have dedicated our spare time to bringing Parentally to life. We’ve performed extensive market research and have spoken to over 600 parents and experts who have encouraged us to make our idea a reality. We have developed our business plan, website architecture, design and brand. We are now raising funds to build our website. We have a developer ready to start.
What will Parentally do?
Parentally will be a trusted and vetted online directory of baby and child experts, created by parents for parents.
There are thousands of baby and child experts in the UK including sleep trainers, maternity nurses, mental health professionals, speech therapists, paediatric physios, 11+ tutors and many more.
Parentally will allow parents and guardians to find their local experts in one place, read reviews from other parents and book an appointment directly at a convenient time.
The website will support both parents and experts. It will provide:
- parents with the confidence that they are engaging a trusted, high quality expert for their child; the reassurance that they are making an informed decision; and the convenience of booking an appointment or making an enquiry instantly online; and
- experts with access to parents looking for their services (free marketing); a system to help manage their bookings; more business and less downtime; increased revenue potential; and a greater opportunity to help (the reason most of them got into their professions in the first place!)
What is the opportunity?
There are over 8 million families in the UK with children under 16.
81% of parents & guardians would consider using experts to assist their parenting journeys.
But, only 38% actually have (...and only 18% found it easy).
Our data shows that there are 6.5 million families who might engage experts if a resource like Parentally existed.
Who is in the team?
Antonia Burridge: works in a fundraising team helping tech scale-up businesses secure their Series A and B fundraising rounds to support their growth. Also a trained accountant having spent ten years in deals helping companies of all sizes to forecast, plan and report.
Isobel Burlington: works in investment finance, backing small companies and helping management teams deliver their business plans. Isobel trained at a Big Four accountancy firm and worked in the deals team before moving into industry.
Sophie Blythe: a marketer with 13 years’ experience building brands and running marketing and communications programmes for companies ranging from global blue-chips to start-ups.
David Hicks and Chris Allen: a powerful duo who run a creative agency and bring years of branding and marketing expertise to the team. With a proven track record of launching and reinvigorating brands and helping them grow, David and Chris’ success stories range from a £9bn Forex brand relaunch to the highly successful kids snacks brand, Kiddylicious.
What is Parentally’s vision?
Parentally’s mission is to help families live healthy, happy, stress-free lives by connecting parents and guardians with the highest quality, most trusted experts in all areas of their children's care.
What we need is your support to help us build the site and ensure our research, time, work and dream can become a reality. We want parents, guardians and families everywhere to have the support they deserve - only made possible with a trusted, easy to use resource like Parentally.
This project successfully funded on 26th August 2020