By Sarah Stockman
Staff Writer
In 2015, Palisadian Sean Greene quit his job at MatchCraft, a digital marketing company in Santa Monica, to start a babysitting app called Bambino.
Greene came up with the idea for Bambino after difficulties finding a local sitter to watch his kids. He wanted to create an app that would allow babysitters and parents to connect, and so Bambino was born. He launched the app in June 2016 and now, a year later, it is being used nationwide. “In January we entered one new market, which was in Connecticut,” Greene said. “In March we launched 30 markets simultaneously.”
When Bambino was initially launched, its users were restricted to Pacific Palisades. “Initially, we launched and you could only book in the 90272 zip code,” Greene said.
However, due to demand, “We expanded three months later and opened it up so people outside the Palisades could book.”
Since launching the app nationally, Bambino has added five new markets a week. The app uses Facebook to connect sitters and parents. For example, when parents log on to the app, they’ll see sitters in their area that their Facebook friends have used. They can also see their friends’ ratings of that sitter. This makes it easier for parents to trust the sitters to watch their children.
Greene says that the popularity of Bambino is due entirely to its users talking to their friends about it.
“It’s very much [through] word of mouth and through social networking,” he said.
This social aspect helped move the app to the national stage. To make it easier for par- ents to bring the app to their community, Bambino placed a link at the top if its website page that reads, “Want Bambino in your community? Click here to apply to become a Community Advocate.”
Once someone contacts Bambino, they often become the community advocate and an adviser to the company.
“We hire a community manager . . . [and] they get a commission,” Greene said. This position is largely volunteer but helpful to Bambino because, “We have actual feet on the ground.”
Greene said the app retains 70 percent of its sitters and 60 percent of its parents, but it’s most loyal following is still the Palisades.
“The Palisades is our biggest community by far, largely because we’re 8 months leading in that market,” Greene said. “We have 500 parents registered and 250 sitters.”
In Los Angeles, Greene noted that the app is used across the Westside, in the Valley, and in the South Bay.
The app is currently only for short-term sitters over the age of 13. Greene said that when parents want the sitter for longer they tend to exit the app, which is something the company plans to soon fix.
“We’ll be adding different types of bookings like recurring bookings and overnight bookings,” Greene said. “We’re looking at a lot of intelligence matching, [which is] the ability to match parents and sitters based on connections like a LinkedIn.”
To learn more about Bambino or to bring the app to your community, visit www.bambinoapp.com.
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