Invasion of the mommy sites — Maya’s Mom launches with angel funding

updated

Maya’s Mom, a start-up based in a Palo Alto garage, has launched the latest site for parents to trade tips about how to care for their kids.

There are numerous other sites doing very similar things. Minti.com launched last year, and got $1.19M in venture capital earlier this year. It appears to have stolen an early lead, and has found all kinds of ways to integrate with other popular Internet sites. There’s Mommybuzz, which is very difficult to look at because its color is jarring, and requests an immediate login.

Maya’s Mom is one of two Silicon Valley newcomers. The other is San Francisco’s MothersClick, which emerged this month, founded by a first-time mom. They’ve both decided to focus on what they see as the three main features popular among parental advice sites.

These are: (1) A forum for questions and commentary from parents, which is the Maya’s Moms’ central feature, (2) a listing of kids activities, and (3) a place to look up “groups”

The main difference between these two is on the homepage. Maya’s Mom presents you with its main features from the outset. It is open, without registration required. MothersClick, meanwhile, requires you to register, and requests you to choose a geographical area before you select a group. It is too early to tell whether these extra steps will help or hamper MothersClick — since some will presumably like the registration requirement, and others won’t.

We talked with Maya’s Mom founder and chief executive Ann Crady a few days ago. She just finished raising an angel round yesterday from a group including Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake, Yahoo exec Jeff Ralston, Tickle founder James Currier, Presto’s Raymond Stern, Wink’s Michael Tanne, angel investor Jeff Clavier and True Ventures.

She describes it as a cross between Yahoo Answers and Facebook. It is centered around the asking and answering of questions related to parenting. Lower on the site, it lists kids’ activities. If it can guess your location, or if you give your location to the site, it will show you activities in your region. Right now, its strength is in the Bay Area, and it plans to build from there.

While generally open to anyone, it does give parents the option of sending questions privately to trusted friends.

Investor Jeff Clavier said he invested in the site because, like his other investment in Dogster, it has the potential to be a “passion centric community” site. He calls it the “Dogster for moms.”

Crady previously ran business development at Yahoo’s Search and Marketplace Group, and before that was at 1stUp. She was also a corporate securities lawyer at Wilson Sonsini. She has a daughter named Maya (they are pictured above), and she is a member of various parental groups in the Bay area.

A partial screenshot of the homepage is below: