Working parents, rejoice: Kinside acquires LegUp to create the most robust child care marketplace
By Kinside
If you’ve been following Kinside, you know we’ve been making big moves to transform the child care ecosystem for the benefit of parents, providers, and employers. With $16 million in venture capital from leading Silicon Valley investors and a team of mission-oriented changemakers, we’ve been hard at work to make quality child care accessible for every working parent. And today, we’re announcing our next big step in realizing that mission: we’re acquiring LegUp!
The LegUp platform is the first universal child care enrollment system, making child care more accessible by simplifying the enrollment process for providers and families. Long story short: LegUp is the missing piece of the puzzle for helping solve structural challenges in the child care ecosystem while reducing friction for providers and families. Together we have the most robust data on every part of the child care ecosystem. And with this data, we’re on our way to solving systemic issues in child care: accessibility and affordability.
Here’s how—with our powers and data combined—Kinside and LegUp are creating the single most robust and reliable child care marketplace.
Combining our superpowers to deliver value
If you want to fix the broken child care industry, you need to address the needs of the three primary stakeholders of the child care ecosystem:
- Providers
- Parents
- Employers
And these needs should be met in an environment of supportive public policies and productive relationships with state and local child care agencies.
That’s why Kinside and LegUp are joining forces to transform the child care industry into one that works for everyone—because our combined strengths reach every part of the ecosystem. Here’s how LegUp will help Kinside do even more.
Value for providers
From staffing and funding shortages to the challenges of filling open spots, child care providers have struggled to bounce back from the pandemic. Now that Kinside and LegUp are joining up, providers have even more resources across our platforms to:
- Stabilize their businesses
- Increase revenue
- Save time on administrative tasks.
LegUp helps providers improve their businesses and maintain full enrollment through tools for posting and filling seats, managing waitlists, scheduling tours, communicating with parents, managing and receiving payments, and more. Providers save hours each week with LegUp’s easy, streamlined functionality that lets them manage their business all on one platform—allowing providers to focus on delivering exceptional care. As Kinside and LegUp combine, providers will be able to manage their business and get connected with families looking for child care.
Value for families
Finding and securing child care is ridiculously difficult—and we’re fixing that. With Kinside and LegUp working together, families looking for care can:
- Discover child care providers with customized search and filter options
- Ensure the right fit with information on a program’s hours, learning style, cost, and more
- Communicate directly with the provider
- Schedule tours
- See real-time availability for spots
- Join a waitlist
- Apply and enroll.
Together, we’re helping meet the needs of working parents by removing the hurdles to accessing the child care they need.
Value for employers
For employers trying to attract and retain the talent they need to run their organizations, child care is absolutely a business issue. Employers know that if working parents can’t obtain the care they need, they can’t work. So making sure Junior has reliable, affordable child care is just as much of an issue for HR as it is for Junior’s parents. As Kinside and LegUp come together, employers can expect:
- Deeper and more broad-reaching data on their employees’ child care needs, the market, and costs
- Actionable insights and reports for allocating resources to drive retention and productivity
- An enhanced online experience for parents to enroll in care and utilize benefits.
We’re excited to join our two tech companies into one powerful force for good—transforming the child care ecosystem with a comprehensive platform and insightful data to move the needle for working parents, child care providers, and employers.
Want to see what we’re up to next? Follow Kinside on Linkedin.
