Grandnanny prides itself on being a matchmaker – linking stressed out working parents with willing and experienced babysitters.
Parents’ needs have changed greatly in the past fifty years. On average, both parents work, and trying to balance work and family live isn’t easy. Often parents need part-time child care, someone to do the school run and to look after their children while they are still at work.
The solution to this problem is Grandnanny, a digital service connecting older neighbours with working parents.
Online, the parents and the prospective nannies fill out profiles, and then Grandnanny makes a match.
It’s a win-win solution – this social enterprise not only benefits the parents but also the older person, who often has a background in childcare or has raised a family of their own. As business director Sarah Vick explains, “we bring these two groups of people together to provide people with rewarding work and to provide working parents with childcare.”
The training provided by AAL2Buiness has been extremely valuable to the success of Grandnanny. The goal of AAL2Business is to help beneficiaries of the Active Assisted Living Programme (AAL). AAL is an EU-funded programme that aims to improve quality of life through leveraging digital technology and innovation.
Grandnanny decided to avail of the Go-to-Market Launchpad, one of the training courses provided by AAL2Buisness, run by META Group and APRE.
Thanks to the course Sarah and her team at Grandnanny learned how to pitch, how to approach going to market, and how to better describe their business in a simple, easy-to-understand way.
“When we are in the business every day we are in the detail and it’s quite difficult to step back and just explain what the business does, being on the programme really helped us to do that,” she says. This is a common finding among entrepreneurs, according to Marco Franchin, who is coordinating the project on META’s side.
“Being able to capture the attention of an audience of investors and explain why it is worthwhile to invest in your business in a presentation that is only a few minutes long is a tough job. What we are trying to achieve with this course is to provide the entrepreneurs like Sara with the right toolset to get this job done as effectively as possible,” says Marco.
When they gave their pitch, the questions the investors asked were quite probing, which was very helpful for Grandnanny as it prepared them to raise their first round of investment. “They were real investors!” Sarah says.
The pitching event was an eye-opener for Sarah and her team, and they made some important contacts. One person asked for a copy of their pitch and they were introduced to a potential partner in a different country, a result which, according to Sarah, is “actually fantastic, couldn’t have asked for more.”
Sarah would highly recommend Go- to -Market Launchpad. They found the mentorship of a single coach really beneficial. This approach differed from other programmes that they had taken part in previously, which had consisted of loads of different people giving different advice. This can be overloading and confusing for a participant.
“Having a single coach taking us from the beginning to the end of the pitch process [as was the case in AAL2Business] was a great experience. He could take the time to understand our business and give us more detailed feedback so that was just excellent for us,” says Sarah.
Taking part in the training programme was fundamentally important for the future success of Grandnanny. They now can explain their business in a clear and concise way; they have received valuable guidance from one to one coach and investors and they also have an opportunity to expand their business. Thanks to AAL2Business, Grandnanny has a sustainable economic future, so that this great platform that not only helps parents find child care but also benefits older people can continue into the future.
Watch the video interview with Grandnanny:
