Joanna McFarland obtained the thought for HopSkipDrive in 2014 as a result of she wanted an answer to an issue that many working dad and mom like herself face: How do you constantly get your youngsters the place they should be on time?
The thought was sparked at a party she attended with one among her youngsters. The subject of transferring youngsters round got here up and each mother there had their very own story of a scenario the place they felt they needed to let their baby down as a result of that they had no technique to get them to regardless of the vacation spot was.
McFarland launched HopSkipDrive with Carolyn Yashari Becher and Janelle McGlothlin — the three have eight youngsters amongst them — as a technique to attempt to safely deal with this situation by hiring protected third-party drivers to get their youngsters round.
HopSkipDrive didn’t know on the time that it was coming into an area the place there would quickly be fairly a number of startups elevating enterprise capital to attempt to deal with the issue, too. Newton, Massachusetts-based Sheprd seemed to unravel the issue by carting kiddos round in tricked-out Land Rovers geared up with snacks and iPads. Los Angeles-based Shuddle seemed to be extra of an Uber for youths by providing on-demand rides.
Lots of these startups have since gone out of enterprise. HopSkipDrive hasn’t. Why? As a result of an early pivot away from simply specializing in dad and mom as the only clients opened up a brand new income stream and set the corporate as much as progress previous lots of the corporations that failed.
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