HopSkipDrive’s ‘Uber For Kids’ Service Raises $3.9 Million

For a lot of parents, it’s important to have a baby sitter or nanny who has a driver’s license and a car to shuttle their children from school to a piano lesson or baseball practice and back home again. In some cases, parents decide to use car services like Uber and Lyft to act as their children’s chauffeurs.

But what if there was an app that combines child care and a chauffeur service into one package?

Carolyn Yashari Becher, Joanna McFarland and Janelle McGlothlin decided to meet this need when they founded HopSkipDrive last year, after a chat at a kid’s birthday party where they commiserated about the struggles that they face as parents when trying to get rides for their children. The three decided to create a new “Uber for Kids” service, and the company initially launched in March in the greater Los Angeles Area.

“We created HopSkipDrive to solve the problem we each faced getting our own kids to school and activities,” said Joanna McFarland, co-founder and CEO. “We soon became completely obsessed with the idea because there was really no solution.” McFarland has a background in product management, while chief operating officer Carolyn Yashari Becher is a nonprofit lawyer and chief marketing officer Janelle McGlothlin runs branding company Writebrand Inc.

Of course, convincing parents to trust their children with its drivers is a difficult obstacle the company has to overcome. HopSkipDrive now has more than 100 contracted drivers, and the company is careful to run thorough background checks on them all to ensure a safe and trustworthy environment for its customers’ children, with the hope of getting past the “stranger danger” of letting kids ride in cars with strangers.

This week, the company announced it raised $3.9 million in fresh funding. The funding round was led by Los Angeles-based venture capital firm Upfront Ventures, with additional participation from FirstMark Capital, Maveron, Built by Girls Ventures, and angel investor Joanne Wilson, among others.

HopSkipDrive offers pre-booked rides for children aged seven and up. The base price is $20 per ride, with additional charges being added depending on distance and duration. The company offers an interesting service that sits somewhere in the middle of the on-demand service sector, by being both a ride-sharing application and a child care provider. HopSkipDrive offers an alternative to parents who are using public transportation or who are stuck without a caregiver when their baby sitter gets sick at the last minute. Additionally, the company’s founders are careful to ensure that the same level of trust and reliability that is necessary for selecting a child care provider is applied to their service.

Currently, parents have to book rides 24 hours in advance, although co-founder Joanna McFarland says her team does its best to accommodate parents who are stuck in desperate last minute situations. The service is only available in Los Angeles at this point, but HopSkipDrive’s founders hope to expand soon to nearby areas of California. Rides can be pre-purchased in bulk to cut the price down from $20 per ride to $12. Although that’s still a long way from the cost of a subway or bus ticket, the company has a good chance of achieving significant success with its target market if it can overcome the inevitable “stranger danger” concerns.