Ask Parents of HN: Would you use an "Uber for babysitting"?

Obviously, the comfort level would have to be there, which is why I think the sites use the matchmaking approach. I know with my kids, they know and love their babysitter, which is a huge incentive to stay with the same person. I would think that once you've established that you like a sitter, you might try to go outside the system and make a side arrangement, so I would guess that you'd want to have a mechanism to request (or deny) a specific sitter or maybe a way to rank them.

Yes, I'm sure we can come up with algorithms to try previously used sitters first.

amazing idea but I see a flaw in the 1 or 2 strike policy. Kids are individuals, and what may piss one kid off may not piss another kid off. Is the baby sitter a strict disciplinarian? What if the parents don't want their kids disciplined? What if some parents want their kids to sit in front of the TV, while others would be outraged at the thought?

The 'On demand' aspect of this might be a little too difficult, but I could see a huge market even if your app helped schedule future sittings between '3 or 4 favorited sitters' that a particular family met through your service. Good luck!

Do you have kids yourself? I don't want to be condescending but, this is one of those things where you have to be part of the target market to understand that the protective instinct you have over your own kids is so strong and so raw that it would be really hard to overcome inside an on-demand transactional marketplace.

You will also understand that kids up to school age (toddlers) generally only trust people they're very familiar with, it's a process that takes days, not hours or minutes.

No matter how good the checks and due diligence you have in place are - because the majority of parents will not entrust kids to a stranger at the drop of a hat. As codegeek said, trust takes time to build, especially so between the child and sitter. In the process of putting my 2 year old into daycare it wasn't just a matter of dropping them off - there was a month long process where either I or my wife were taking time off work to introduce her to her new carers, making sure she was comfortable with them etc and that was after vetting 4 different care centers.

With sitters, we'd only allow grandparents or my wifes older sister who has similar aged kids too.

[Edit: 2nd para - putting myself in my own kids shoes]

As a parent of 3 girls, I can't emphasize that trust thing enough above.

I would absolutely, never, EVER use such a service. My wife would balk at the very suggestion of it. It sounds like a great idea on paper but no matter how much profiling, checking, due diligence, etc you put into it on your side, none of that matters to her, or my kids. They have to KNOW and TRUST the person they are with. We need to be able to vet that directly by observing them with the kids and get references from people we already know and trust ourselves. Having someone else say "Yep, they're cool!" when we don't know the source, means nothing.

Most of my friends who are parents are equally paranoid about these issues in this day and age (sexual predators anyone?). You're going to have a really tough time selling this to your target market.

You may not agree with my perspective, but I can absolutely guarantee this will be your #1 roadblock in getting parents to sign up for such a service, so you need an iron-clad answer to that question at the very least.