An app that meets the needs of parents today, Winnie, has now raised $ 4 million in additional seed funding as part of a round led by Reach Capital. Other investors in the new round include Rethink Impact, Homebrew, Ludlow Ventures, Afore Capital and BBG Ventures, among others. With the new funds, Winnie has raised $ 6.5 million so far.
The San Francisco-based start-up, which began life as a repertoire of child-friendly venues largely meeting the needs of new parents, has since expanded to become a larger platform for children. parents.
Winnie was founded by Bay Area technologists, Sara Mauskopf, who spent time at Postmates, Twitter, YouTube and Google, and Anne Halsall, also of Postmates and Google, as well as Quora and Inkling.
As new parents, they created for Winnie a personal need to find the kind of information parents need – details that you can not easily find in Google Maps or Yelp.
For example, you can use Winnie to find child-friendly destinations such as museums or parks, as well as those that accommodate children with features such as changing tables in the washroom, wide aisles in the stores for strollers, other things.
Winnie is a good example of what investing in women can achieve. In one way or another, 20-year-old men who receive the lion's share of CR funding have never imagined the idea of an app that helps new parents to navigate the world. (I know, shocking, is not it?) And yet, the kind of questions Winnie tries to answer are those that all parents, at one point, are curious about.
The data on Winnie come from the crowd, with details, ratings and comments from other real parents. Registrations in San Francisco can be more elaborate than elsewhere because that is where Winnie started. However, the app is now available in 10,000 cities across the United States, and has just exceeded more than one million users.
In recent months, Winnie has been striving to expand her role of "Yelp for Parents" and now offers an online community where parents can ask questions and participate in discussions.
"The outsourced family-friendly business directory is still an important part of what we do … and it has exceeded 2 million seats in the US," notes Sara Mauskopf, co-founder and CEO. from Winnie. "But we also have these real-time answers to any parenting questions from this genuine and supportive community," she says, referring to Winnie's online discussions.
The idea is that parents will look for answers to questions about toddler sleep issues or about good preschools or breastfeeding help, and Winnie's answers. will appear in search results like Quora or Yahoo Answers.
"Many young millennials are turning to Google for answers to these questions," adds Anne Halsall, co-founder of Winnie and CPO Assistant. "So we want to have the answer to these questions and we want to have the best page.It is an example of something that generates a lot of traffic for us, just because no one else had these data before Winnie, "she says.
In connection with this expansion, Winnie also serves this data on all platforms, including – of course – the web, in addition to its native application on iOS and Android. The hope is that with growth, business owners will also come to claim their pages on Winnie.com, and update their information.
In the short term, the founders say that they will use the funding to build more customization features.
"A s a Technology Undertaking We to have a single occasion to to give you this truly tailor made experience that grows with your family more time [s] o that your ] were were older and are you entering [1945] 9011] new phases of development phase nos products adapting and putting in relation information in in front of from you, "says Halsall.
Data on businesses that meet the needs of parents of older children – such as summer camps or driving courses, for example – are the kinds of things Winnie will focus on. include more information for parents. young children and babies.
Winnie will also use the funds to hire other engineers to help her evolve her platform.
Esteban Sosnik of Reach Capital joined Homebrew's Hunter Walk on the Winnie board as a result of funding.
The application is a free download for iOS and Android, and is available on the web at Winnie.com.