Sara Mauskopf
Sara Mauskopf is the co-founder and CEO of Winnie. She’s also the mom of three young children and vocal advocate for high quality child care and early education for all.
Bloomberg recently published an article on eldercare marketplace Papa uncovering harassment and sexual assault perpetrated by both caregivers and care recipients on the Papa platform. The crimes described in the article are horrific, but I’m not shocked to hear they happened. I’d argue they were very predictable and preventable based on what I know about the startup valued at $1.4 billion and the class of startups it represents.
In the past seven years of building Winnie, I’ve witnessed firsthand the emergence of marketplaces that promise to "turn anyone into a caregiver" with minimal to no training and vetting. It’s a direct reflection of a society desperate to create a greater supply of care, and the intentions might be noble. But in our rush to fill this growing supply gap, we’ve neglected the caregivers already doing this work today.
At Winnie we’ve taken an entirely different approach to building a care marketplace. We only work with vetted, licensed childcare businesses. It's unquestionably safer and more reliable than individual caregivers. Licensed childcare businesses have stringent regulations in place that require background checks, mandatory training, and inspections for anyone intending to provide childcare services.
We also believe in investing in the existing caregiving supply rather than trying to create new supply through quick hacks. At Winnie, we’ve launched a childcare jobs marketplace to help child care workers find the best opportunities and stay in the field. With our marketplace, we have added pay transparency to a system where workers are notoriously undervalued and underpaid. Our entire mission is to strengthen existing childcare businesses and help them grow – that’s how we create supply. Turning college students or neighbors into caregivers in minutes might make an appealing pitch, but it’s not safe or sustainable.
More funding needs to be directed towards improving existing systems — supporting caregivers with competitive pay and benefits, growing the profits of existing childcare businesses, and so much more. Rather than pouring money into platforms that offer a quick but potentially unreliable solution, we should focus on fortifying the established system that, while not perfect, provides a more secure foundation upon which to build.
We also need to recognize the unique dynamics of caregiving. Caregiving, be it eldercare or childcare, is not a service that can be scaled like an e-commerce business. The job requires specialized skills and a genuine empathy that cannot be ensured through a quick online registration process. It’s about nurturing long-term, meaningful relationships between caregivers and care recipients. Often this is at odds with the venture style growth. Papa raised $240M in venture capital at a $1.4 billion valuation. They were clearly under massive pressure to grow quickly into that inflated valuation at all costs.
The demand for caregiving will continue to rise, and it's true that we need innovative solutions to meet this escalating need. However, innovation should never come at the expense of safety and quality. Let's use this moment as a wake-up call to reassess our approach to care. Let's ensure that innovation is directed towards reinforcing our established caregiving systems, rather than recklessly creating an unregulated marketplace.
