Tandem

Connecting child care centers with staff

Unicorner Team
May 22, 2023

🦄 Unicorner Startup of the Week: Tandem

✍️ Notes from the Editors

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Connecting child care centers with staff

Tandem is building a platform that connects child care centers with child care providers. This allows centers (and families) to easily and quickly find substitute or permanent workers. On the flip side, it enables workers to find work opportunities and set their own schedules.

🔗 Check it out: join-tandem.com

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💰 Business Model

Tandem charges the businesses using its platform an associates fee on a weekly basis. It charges these companies a flat rate of 35% of workers’ wages. Families and child care providers on the platform pay no fees.

📈 Traction and Fundraising

Raised $5 million seed round from Ohio-based Drive Capital
Currently operating state-wide in Ohio, with 11,000+ users as of August 2022
Currently available on the iOS App Store and Google Play Store

👫 Founders

Olivia Weinstock, CEO: Previously Development Psychology Research Assistant @ University of Michigan, Biopsychology Cognitive Neuroscience @ University of Michigan
Natalie Amling, Technical Co-Founder: Computer Science and Engineering @ Ohio State University
McKenzie Kennelly, Technical Co-Founder: Computer Science and Engineering @ Ohio State University

📖 Founder Story

Tandem’s story begins in Columbus, Ohio. CEO and Co-Founder Olivia Weinstock began her first business at age 10 by turning her backyard into a yearly summer camp for neighborhood kids. Recognizing the value of word-of-mouth recommendations, she began linking families she knew with care providers that would match the parents’ needs. What began to be facilitated by hand then turned into the tech platform powered by Tandem.

💼 Opportunities

Full Stack Engineer

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🔮 Our Analysis

There are some important considerations child care centers and families look to make when hiring child care providers. Trust is a must—but so is finding people quickly. For providers, setting pay rates and work schedules is a challenge. Tandem is addressing both of these with its modern approach to the child care sector. According to its website, it is enabling staffers to work on their own schedule “for the first time ever.” We’re particularly impressed by TandemPay, the company’s payment processor. This unique innovation allows Tandem to generate revenue from its customers’ transactions without passing these fees to them. At scale, this makes the service entirely free for customers. This is an atypical business model for a SaaS company and, if successful, is something we hope to see gain traction. With employment in child care centers on the rise since a steep low during the pandemic, Tandem can become a core hiring service for one half of the sector and an essential employment tool for the other.

📚 Further Reading

Tandem Blog [Tandem]
Drive Capital invests $5M in startup seeking to tackle childcare crisis [Columbus Inno]
Meet Tandem, the Columbus startup creating a free marketplace for childcare [Purpose Jobs, 2020]

Written by the editors

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