Her Million Dollar My$tery: Episode 003 – Laura Borsky & Francie Ruppert, SaferSit

What could be better than a partnership between a stay-at-home mom who needs intermittent childcare and an enterprising high school student at an all girls’ high school?

That’s how SaferSit got started! Think “Rover.com” but for little people instead of pets! All background-checked and cleared for sitting. No worries for mom, and safe environments for the sitters.

Laura Borsky was at home with her young children and found it difficult to find safe, reliable childcare since she wasn’t looking to hire a full-time nanny. In comes Francie Ruppert, a high school student with a “Babysitters R Us” business through which she frequently delegated her extra jobs to her friends at school. The idea percolated between these two amazing women to join forces and formalize Francie’s lunch table business into an actual start-up.

Now SaferSit has over 700 high school and college girls who love kids and want to make some extra money in three different regional markets. Laura and Francie know that the secret to success will be the mobile app they are working to build. It will be direct from your phone and customized to the market and needs of the customer and suppliers (sitters!) They know it needs to be fully automated, because with this much business they obviously can’t book all these sitting gigs by hand! The challenge – finding good, affordable tech support to build out the app. Doesn’t seem like that should be a problem, but more and more we are hearing of great technology that never gets off the block because talent is hard to come by. Staying local limits the talent; going national or to the coasts increases cost and risk substantially. The answer? We need more women in tech who want to work in their own markets and can price themselves competitively.

Laura’s dream for SaferSit is to see what life is like with the SaferSit app. She knows what she went through trying to juggle small children and multiple phone calls & texts to find sitters. Full time moms (or dads) need breaks, and when their spouse comes home after a long day of work, watching the kiddos for a couple hours doesn’t always work out so well.

When asked what apps THEY would put on their phones in addition to SaferSit, Francie would have her 3 go tos: GroupMe to stay up with her 700 friends who babysit, The Hopper because she has the travel bug, and the PostIt app – she is obviously an organizer! Laura on the other hand, in a different stage of life, likes Venmo – because that’s how SaferSit gets paid, and Amazon Whole Foods app for the deals and extra 10% off, and her Mind Body app because moms need to practice self care for sure!

I loved talking to these two inspirational ladies who came through Aviatra EXPLORE® just 4 years ago! You will love hearing their stories on Episode #003 of Her Million Dollar My$tery!

Listen to the podcast here!