Trusted wants the providers of its on-demand babysitting service to feel like they’re part of the family. The company announced today the launch of a tuition reimbursement program for employees, which will help them save $5,250 each calendar year (as long as they meet specific criteria).
In order to participate, employees must be enrolled in an accredited university and must have a GPA of 3.0 or better. It doesn’t matter if you’re an undergraduate or graduate student, nor is the program limited to a particular major or profession: “As long as you’re working towards your degree, it doesn’t matter at all,” the company told VentureBeat.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1898260,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"business,","session":"B"}']Trusted CEO Anand Iyer said that since the company’s launch six months ago, the team had been thinking about what incentives and benefits it could offer care providers to help them stay engaged, while also setting the service apart from other on-demand marketplaces. It turned out that some of Trusted’s workers are nursing students carrying an average loan of $30,000.
The tuition reimbursement program is expected to take some of the pressure off of employees so that they can put their education into practice while also generating income to pay off their other bills. Trusted tested this offering out with employees from the University of San Francisco and says the feedback was “overwhelmingly positive.”
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Iyer sees the tuition program as a “unique offering and proposition for providers to work with Trusted.”
Since its launch in September, Trusted has seen a large amount of demand — so much that it has had to limit availability so that it can continue to offer the same level of service. Iyer said that it’s gotten to a point where there’s a waiting list for parents interested in using the service.
The premise behind the company is that it’s a marketplace to find trustworthy childcare. If you’re looking for a verified caretaker for a specific situation, but don’t want to spend hours searching for the right one, Trusted wants you to take a chance on its team. All providers are W-2 employees, have had a background check, and undergo a strict testing process. What’s more, parents can elect to watch their child through a livestream set up by the babysitter.
The service started out in San Francisco and is slowly expanding to other parts of the Bay Area. Iyer told us that it is alpha testing in the peninsula and upper East Bay (between Oakland and Walnut Creek) now.
The company raised $1.1 million in seed funding, but just added an additional million to that round from investors like Naval Ravikant and CrunchFund.
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