How Softr helped KidsCircle establish their online childcare service and raise a seed round
The co-founder of KidsCircle told us how she came up with the idea of a platform for a new kind of childcare, what challenges she and her team faced when building it, and why they chose Softr for their website.
Introduction
KidsCircle provides online childcare services, engaging with kids through interactive video conferencing. The co-founder of the service Sabine Wildemann is based in Berlin and Zurich and has two children herself. At a certain point, she realized that there's a need for additional and more flexible care options for kids and established the KidsCircle platform together with her co-founder Felix in March 2020 to fulfill that very need.
At KidsCircle, the team of Kids Coaches offers a wide range of activities including theatre, crafts, painting, experiments, dance and movement, and so on, supporting parents in their homes for up to 2 hours a day. The purpose of Sabine and her team is to establish a loving environment and a shared experience without a performance approach. Their innovative childcare offering is something new in the digital space, and they plan to continue improving the platform, refining the technical aspects and user experience as well as incorporating new programs and activities. With their solution, they make parents happy on the one hand and contribute to equal opportunities for mothers and fathers and support companies in implementing flexible forms of work on the other.
Next, we'll find out more about the process of building the KidsCircle platform, what other tools and technologies had been used before switching to Softr, and what Sabine and her team have been able to achieve with Softr.
Experience with other tools
Right now, the online marketplace is built with Softr and the video conferencing sessions are organized through Whereby. However, the KidsCircle team had tried out and used other options before ending up with their current tech stack. Sabine told us that she had tried out numerous site builders and during the last few years she had mostly been using Wix for her projects. However, she was not really satisfied with the experience, as there was a lack of standardized elements, and many things had to be adjusted manually, which required a lot of time and effort. Also, everything needed to be done twice, as the mobile version had to be implemented separately. So, the initial version of the KidsCircle website was built using Wix but Sabine and her team were also looking for more flexible and faster options that would fit the needs of their early stage startup better. Therefore, they were testing out other options to be able to make a switch at a certain point.
Why Softr?
Eventually, the KidsCircle team learned about Softr and decided to give it a try, and they were pretty surprised with the results.
"It took me one day to build up the site, learn the integrations, and to see how the customer service acts. I was completely flashed that it is so easy, and that everything is working really well. So, I quickly decided 3 weeks later to set up our main page and transferred it to Softr."
Sabine Wildemann, Co-Founder, KidsCircle
We asked a few more questions to find out a bit more regarding what Sabine and her team liked about Softr, what the platform's main benefits were in their opinion, what their experience with customer support had been, and so on. Among the main advantages of the Softr platform, Sabine mentioned the overall usability, the standardized building blocks, and the availability of necessary integrations. In particular, they recently integrated Weglot to add multi-language functionality to the site. The setup of the two versions of the site took only 30 minutes, and they were quite satisfied with the experience.
Sabine also mentioned the high-quality customer support that she and her team received.
"The support from Softr is excellent: fast, structured, and reliable. In the times of digital automation, personal customer support is one of the most important parts of the core product that makes customers happy in the long run."
Sabine Wildemann, Co-Founder, KidsCircle
Current results and further plans
Although KidsCircle started only a year ago, they've already achieved some outstanding results and have just raised a seed round.
"We just raised our seed round with our 4 amazing business angels: Nicole Herzog, Dr. Carole Ackermann, Daniela Hinrichs, and Corinne Rohner. With these four experienced business angels, we have now bundled enormous expertise to be able to further advance the business development."
Sabine Wildemann, Co-Founder, KidsCircle
Sabine and the team are also continuously working to improve their customers' experience with the platform. One of their latest improvements was reducing the onboarding time for companies to 3 hours, allowing the associated parents to register and gain access to childcare services on the same day. Further on, KidsCircle will be launching several new programs such as the holiday program, the KidsCircle Club, and the KidsCircle Academy, and they are sure that Softr will continue meeting their needs and supporting them throughout their journey.
