506 The Zillow of Daycare & Preschool w/ Sara Mauskopf (Winnie)

Sara Mauskopf is the CEO and co-founder of Winnie, a marketplace for child care built on powerful data systems and backed by a trusted community of parents and providers.

Parents use Winnie to research and uncover high-quality daycares and preschools in their geography with detailed information about licensing, tuition, and photos. Sara started Winnie in early 2016 after she experienced the frustration of researching daycares first-hand as a new mom.

She has called upon her experience in product management at Google, YouTube, Twitter, and Postmates to catapult Winnie to success. 

In this episode, Sara and Aaron discuss the origins of the company, the evolving market for daycare, and the business model behind the platform.

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Sara Mauskopf’s Challenge; If you have children in childcare, talk to the care provider/teacher about how you can help.

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Winnie Website

If you liked this interview, check out our interview w/ Luke Skurman where we discuss building a platform for researching schools & neighborhoods.

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Maruskopf: It is hard to run a profitable childcare center. Like the margins are small and you really need to build a strong business to run this profitably. And so, you know, there's just a lot of high kind of fixed costs. You need a space, you need staff. 
Watson: What's up everyone. Welcome back to going deep with Aaron Watson. My interview today is with Sarah Maruskopf. She is the CEO and co-founder of Winnie, a platform marketplace focused on helping parents find childcare. This is a very big problem. That takes a very large percentage of parents' spend. And Sarah felt the pain intimately and translated that pain into her very own startup.
In today's interview, we discussed the origins of the company, how she iterated on finding product market fit. And general trends in daycare and childcare that her company is at the cutting edge of this is a really good interview and she is a master of her domain. So I won't waste any more time. Here is Sarah Maruskopf.
Voiceover: You're listening to going deep with Aaron Watson,
Watson: Sarah, welcome to go deep with Aaron Watson I'm excited to talking with you. 
Maruskopf: I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me. 
Watson: So I want to start off– I actually messed up the words. I was trying to write out how I was going to introduce Winnie, and I just wrote a child marketplace as opposed to a childcare marketplace. And that is definitely not what business you guys are in.
Uh, so maybe you can. Take the reins from my hands and explain your business and the value that you're providing to parents across the country. 
Maruskopf: Yeah. You're going to get us in trouble and like remove from the app store or something. So we are a childcare and education marketplace. We really got our start helping parents find daycare and preschool.
So really focused on group childcare, licensed group child care across the United States. Parents come to us searching for daycare, preschool, and now all other forms of Karen education. We're starting to broaden and expand to things like camps and classes. And then they can search and filter by the criteria that matters to them, whether it's the age of their kids or price or kind of program.
So we're trying to make it really easy for parents to find the care and education that meets their needs, and then connect with those providers through our platform who are kind of the other end of the marketplace. They come on Winnie. They claim their page and then they use Winnie to get business, to fill their open spaces.
Watson: So this reminds me a lot of another company that we've covered on the show, niche.com, which is focused on, like universities and neighborhoods that one would potentially move into and kind of, you know, helping with that basic internet research that we all do, trying to get legibility into one of these platforms.
So we'll link that for folks that want to kind of understand just another version of this business model, but as you explain it via analogy via metaphor. I know that in the early days you're thinking of this as like a Yelp for parents, but these platforms we see in so many different domains, Zillow, Glassdoor, like what's the analogy that you find is the most apt.
Maruskopf: Yeah. I mean, that's the kind of crazy thing is, we started Winnie and we were like, how does this not exist because this exists for literally everything else we do in our life. Whether it's finding a restaurant on Yelp or finding a job or finding a house, and these marketplaces are really life-changing.
They make the search that before, you know, you had to drive around and look for open house signs in your neighborhood. They make that search really easy, allow you to compare prices, and that did not exist for. What is for parents, like one of the most important and considered purchases, they make the care and education of their children.
And so we almost couldn't believe that this was still a white space. But we, it was, and there's tons of analogies. Like you point out because it really exists for almost everything else in your life.
Watson: And, can you talk a little bit about how you got to this product in its current form? I know that using a net promoter score assessment was a big part of that. Can you just talk a little bit about the life cycle from the early days to now? 
Maruskopf: Yeah, so it's we're coming up on our six year anniversary of working on Winnie and it was a bit of a windy path. We really started. Not sure what we were going to build. We knew we wanted to build something for parents. We were new parents ourselves at the time and just really struggling being, working mothers, my co-founder and I both had young kids and it took a while to figure out that childcare was really the big need for parents.
And that there was this white space when it came to. Your group childcare, your daycare, your preschool, or your camps. And that parents really were kind of doing things the old fashioned way, but it took a lot of building and tinkering with other ideas. And we use this, you know, very common tool and in product building, which is the net promoter score where you basically see like, are people promoters of your product?
Do they like it enough that they're going to recommend it to their friends? And what we found was that like, for all these other ideas, we were tinkering with. Like people were using it and downloading it and we could kind of drive growth, but they weren't promoters. And it wasn't until we built what, when he is today, this childcare marketplace that we were really like changing people's lives in such a dramatic way that they remembered.
And when a friend was doing their childcare search, they were recommending Winnie. Now that was really the big. I would say the big difference between like having product market fit and not having product market fit. And we didn't really realize that until we started to measure,  you know the net promoters.
Watson: And when it starts to work and when you have that product market fit, is it really those referrals that people are making that is the kind of key metric or the key thing that has been, that you've attributed your growth to? Is it SEO? Cause this also seems like an SEO thing where I'm Googling best daycare, Northern Pittsburgh, I'm hopefully landing upon Winnie versus alternative sources.
Maruskopf: Yeah, we get a lot of our traffic are parents that find us. And also our providers that find us through literally just typing into Google daycare near me or preschool near me or on the provider side. Like they may want to see what other providers in their area charge for their programs so they can set competitive prices.
So it is a lot of our businesses driven by SEO, but we still continue today to measure the net promoter score, both for parents and for our providers, the daycares and preschools on our platform, to understand like, are we really adding value and how much value? And so I think it's important that we don't just build a website that gets a lot of traffic, but that people really find it useful and come back, especially on the provider side, like these are businesses that constantly need new families as kids age out of their program. And so it's really important that when we establish them as customers, we retain them and can be a lasting influence on their business.
Watson: Yeah, it'd be fascinating to know what the LTV is for one of these childcare centers. 
Maruskopf: Yeah. I mean the one of the big issues with the industry and, you know, challenges that we're trying to help with is like, it is hard to run a profitable childcare center. Like the margins are small and you really need to build a strong business to run this profitably. And so, you know, there's just a lot of high kind of fixed costs. You need a space, you need staff, you need to pay that. And so, it is important that, you know, they run really efficient good businesses. And that's not, you know, always easier trivial to do.
And so, you know, part of what we want to help with is that you know, making sure they're not leaving spaces unfilled, because that's the number one thing that makes these businesses not as profitable as they could be. 
Watson: And it's clear that a platform like yours aggregating demand, but also just making the entire market more legible to a new parent like myself who's just trying to get a lay of the land or what are my options? What are my price ranges is a huge service to that. What have you learned about, and I'm sure you pass this along to the providers that are on the platform. What have you learned about the decision-making process that parents go through? For this type of purchase price seems like one of the obvious ones, but dont--
Maruskopf: Yeah, I mean, it's a very considered purchase for parents, you know, there's like the other end of the spectrum is like, you know, your Uber driver, like you don't really care that much who picks you up. You're just trying to get a car and get to where you're going.
And childcare's very different. You really care about who your provider is, and there's a big difference for you from one provider to the other. And the kind of big learning for us is that all parents care about different things for summer, really price sensitive, actually a lot are very price sensitive. But other factors can matter a lot too, like the location and the hours, you know, if the provider is in your price range and a great location, but they don't have the right hours for when you work. They're basically completely worthless to you. So all of these factors really matter. And then, you know, there's all these kinds of secondary factors on top of that.
Like, You know, do they do Spanish immersion? I'm really interested in my kid learning Spanish or is it a Montessori program? And so really there's lots of information that parents need in this purchase. One of the things we're finding, that's kind of a new trend is the decision-making process is getting condensed.
So, whereas before you might've gone in toward many different programs over a multi-week period, submitted an application and then enrolled for six months in the future. Now, you know, parents are finding programs entirely online. They may never set foot in a center before they send their kid there due to COVID.
And so it's really condensing the search period, which I think is actually a good thing for everyone, for the industry. And for parents, if it can just be a shorter, faster, easier process. And if more of it can be moved online, there's really no reason you have to visit a center in person to find out you can't afford it, which was kind of the status quo beforehand.
So we're just trying to make it much easier to get kind of the basics out of the way online, save you time. And then, you know, maybe you can tour the one or two places you really think you might actually enrolling. 
Watson: That's a fantastic point because even just the time saved by management for the daycare, walking everyone through individually, versus if you, even if they did one, you know, not that it's perfect for everyone, but a video tour record at one time, get it up and make that digestible to someone in a digital format makes perfect sense.
Maruskopf: And the daycares were really reluctant to do this, like before COVID they wanted to tour everyone with any possible interest before they gave basic information out like schedules and prices. And then COVID, they were kind of forced to change their ways and they realize like, oh, actually this is a lot more efficient. I don't want to tour someone who can't afford my program. It's a waste of time for everyone. So I think we are making a lot of progress on that front, kind of quickly, which is good. 
Watson: Well, I mean, I think that that's the general theme, at least from my vantage point as an eternal optimist from COVID is yes, a lot of tragedy associated with it.
And all sorts of different forms, but a lot of kind of bad habits got shaken out and just cannot be able to persist after such a kind of significant cultural shift like that. I'm curious just in general. What else you saw come out of it? Because one of the things that we saw, we did a breakdown of the KinderCare IPO that recently occurred and –
Maruskopf: watch that breakdown. I did my own breakdown. So–
Watson: –we saw, you know, them have just challenges with revenue in 2020, because a lot of people took their kids out of daycare, took their kids, not necessarily willingly like out of school because of safety concerns. And that also causes this stress on an industry that really, I don't know how it compares to say airlines and hotels, but it's kind of an occupancy factor.
That's really determining profitability or not profitability on a month to month basis. What other things are you seeing? Because anecdotally, as someone who just did the whole shopping around thing, it's hard to get in anywhere. I was looking at your map on Winnie actually before this, and it's like everything within five to 10 miles of my house is not. They're not openings. And then all the other openings are like 20 miles away. So what's up? What's going on?
Maruskopf: Right now the industry is facing a particular challenge, which is with staffing. So this was always kind of a problem in childcare, but it's gotten a lot worse, as a result of the pandemic.
So, you know, overall, like we're hearing hiring troubles for a lot of lower wage jobs and childcare has been really notoriously underpaid and undervalued. And so these centers are having trouble hiring and retaining their staff who could go, you know, be a delivery driver for Amazon and possibly make more money.
And so we're finding some are responding by increasing wages, which is a good thing. Hopefully more we'll be doing that in the future, especially as more money gets put into the industry, hopefully from the government or from employers or some of these other sources. But we also are starting to help with us at Winnie.
So we actually just built and launched a feature for providers where they can not only use their Winnie page, which is kind of their presence on the internet to recruit families, but also to recruit staff, to hire teachers, to hire other staff, to run their programs. And we think this is actually great. Like Winnie is a great place to do this because we do have such a large audience of parents and providers who can be great candidates for these positions, especially parents. They're kind of an under utilized audience. But you know, many of these programs offer free or reduced tuition. If you work there, for your child. So you get to work the same hours that your kid is in childcare. You get to be near your child. And you can build your career in early education. So we actually think there's a nice fit here. So we're starting to help providers with that because it's a real problem. And it's the reason that the centers that would otherwise have more spots available, kind of have to close classrooms or not take as many kids because they can't meet the ratios that they're legally required to meet. They can't hire enough staff. 
Watson: And I cannot think of, a better baptism by fire, so to speak and learning childcare skills than actually having, becoming a parent and having a kid.
Maruskopf: Yeah. I mean, the other challenge with, you know, some of these states and a lot of the kind of teaching positions to be the head teacher, you do need certain early education credentials. And so there's, you know, an expense associated with becoming a preschool teacher. If we're not compensating these teachers enough, like who is going to go into this field. And so we really do have to increase wages, and these businesses have to run more efficiently and more profitably to be able to do that. 
Watson: So right before COVID, was the last fundraise for you guys at $9 million series a in late 2019. And I have to imagine that a part of that was– I know that a part of the fundraising process is talking about the Tam, the total addressable market and what this opportunity represents.
And we've alluded to it earlier in this conversation that this is a non-trivial spend. Basically, like for me and my wife, it's our mortgage and childcare and our daycare costs are like the two biggest line items. So I'm sure that was a part of the pitch, but what other parts, just in terms of the market opportunity here got you so excited in addition to the obvious need for parents to kind of have this legibility?
Maruskopf: Yeah. I mean, I got excited to build this like out of my own need, but what I was able to get Besters excited about was the opportunity. And so like we started Winnie, you know, as I was saying, kind of like not sure what we were going to build. And we tried a bunch of things that not only didn't have product market fit, but weren't good businesses.
And so it's important to find the intersection of like solving a real problem, but also a problem people will pay money for. Childcare and education for your kids under 18. So this doesn't include anything to do with college is $212 billion in the U S alone every year. So it's massive. So this is, not only your daycare and preschool, which I think is around 65 billion of it, but you know, things like camps, classes, you know, even tutoring and aftercare for older kids.
That's the 212 billion. So it's massive. It's a huge Tam. And then of course there's places outside of the United States to expand to one day to, to make that Tam even larger. And so I think that is really the kind of what made this such a ripe area for us to work on, was like the combination of solving a real need for parents and providers, but also a really huge market. And now, you know, I think some of the challenges have been like making. opening investors' eyes to that opportunity, you know, as they kind of look for the new shiny thing. And I think COVID also helped with that. Like it kind of brought childcare to the forefront, education to the forefront. And I already see things really changing investor appetite, increasing to invest in childcare and education, which is great.
Watson: And it's also in that arena of somewhat illegible markets that might actually be expanded by, you know, bringing a more legible service to them. So you referenced Uber before and not necessarily came who the driver was.
I can remember before Uber, a night out when I was much younger. And there would be, you know, just someone that kind of pulled up in a car that was trolling the streets late at night to potentially drive you back home to your apartment. And that was something that eventually became, Hey, we know we're calling the Uber and we're walking out and we know, you know, at least who the driver is, where they're going so on and so forth.
And the original kind of like black car for hire option, which seem tiny expanded into this much larger idea, childcare in a similar way. There are all sorts of, you know, inter neighborhood relationships where, you know, parents are passing the kids off house to house down the street. There's other characters who might not necessarily be licensed or regulated in the way that is important.
So what else have you learned or seen from that vantage point as it pertains to this daycare market? 
Maruskopf: Yeah. I mean the amazing thing with childcare is a lot of these centers are not operating at full capacity. Even when they are full, they have spots every single day that are going unfilled.
That might be an afternoon spot from 12 to five. It might be because some kid is sick. In class that day, and those spots just go unfilled. And that's because there's not really a good way to offer that spot. If someone calls in sick, like how do you flag to your neighborhood that you now have a spot available?
And we see, marketplace is really the first step to start to enable that. So, you know, just a simple example is one of the kind of really big searches on Winnie is actually for drop-in care. We see tons of parents come to us looking for not their full-time daycare preschool, but maybe an opportunity just for a week when they're in between options or maybe because, you know, they need to go to a doctor's appointment and they don't, they may be a stay at home parent and lots of providers actually offer it smaller home-based daycare is tend to love to offer this service, but they don't have a good platform to do so. So that's just like one way that we can kind of open up a new form of care which by the way we think the world is kind of moving in that direction anyway. 
Watson: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's really like a liquidity thing almost in like the adjacent rooms or spare rooms of a house for Airbnb. 
Maruskopf: Yeah. It's kind of crazy that this, again, doesn't exist because there's kind of, we don't have to create new supply. We don't have to invent new spots from somewhere, which is kind of the thing that investors always love. Like, where's the kind of latent supply? It's like, it's here, it's already operating every day and they're just not full to capacity. Because the way we think about capacity is this really stringent view of a full-time nine to five space, which isn't how the world actually works. And isn't what parents are looking for. 
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Watson: So classic question associated with marketplaces is getting something like this bootstrapped off the ground.
It's relatively self-evident that, you know, this information super valuable to parents and what, where the users would come from necessarily. But in terms of populating your actual website with this valuable information, what did it look like in the early days and how has that process evolved over the years of running Winnie?
Maruskopf: Yeah, so in the early days, it was a lot of integrating with the state licensing. Authorities pulling in information from the state, which is public, are really hard for parents to find themselves on all the licensed childcare providers. But increasingly most of our data comes from the providers themselves. And so there was like this time when we really had to bootstrap by getting a lot of the data ourselves and that the data we could get was really limited because a lot of this was not on the internet, and having a model where it starts to be the case that providers the supply provides more and more of the data. I think that was a really important dynamic. We needed to see working. And when we saw starting to work in certain markets, like we knew, okay, this is kind of a sustainable thing where we can start by integrating with the state licensing database.
We can get the information on licensed daycares and preschools, but we really need the providers to come on board and claim their page on Winnie. Update with stuff like their prices and whether they have openings, which is information that is constantly changing and really only they know. So it was important to kind of see that switch from the majority of the data provided by us to the majority provided by the supply.
Watson: Makes sense. Can you talk a little bit about the business model? We've talked about Zillow before a lot of their business leads for real estate agents, niche.com who reference at the beginning leads for the universities in the form of the students. How's that work? 
Maruskopf: Yeah. So our business model is our customers are the providers, the daycares and preschools and camps and classes.
Parents use our product entirely for free. No way for parents to pay in this process. They're paying for childcare, which is hard and expensive enough, and we don't need to charge them anything on top of it. And the daycares and preschools are the ones that are growing their revenue as a result of using Winnie.
So it just naturally fell into place that they're the ones that are willing to pay for our services. So right now, the number one service that when he provides is regeneration, like it is the reason providers typically come to us and start paying us. But increasingly, we are trying to provide them with other tools and services like their page, which by the way, now for most providers gets more traffic than their own website.
These tools and services are very important for them to run an efficient, profitable business. So, you know, the other example of the feature to help them get staffing needs, we want to not just be, you know, kind of lead gen for them, but also start to help them in other ways.
And we think, you know, we can we’re a kind of product and engineering driven company. And so there's lots of other things we can build and do that would help them run their business better. 
Watson: What also seems like, and I’m truly have other avenues to getting insights like this, but as the platform gets more and more traffic, more and more queries within your search engine for daycare, daycare near me, Spanish immersion, like you referenced before that you would be able to offer an information product that would inform future if it's a franchise model or if it's an expansion model for, Hey, you know, this geography, this neighborhood, this whatever really, you know, it's underserved in the daycare market, in the whatever market. And that would basically inform development opportunities. 
Maruskopf: Yeah. Yeah. Right now we kind of do that for free for customers. And we actually, we do a lot for free. And I think this is, you know, what we're starting to realize is like you're providing a lot of value and I think marketplaces need to do this to grow.
They give away a lot of value. They don't capture all that value. But yeah, this is, you know, some of the stuff we're starting to think about, is like, how do we package a lot of the stuff that we're doing for our customers and start to think about it as like a value add service. And you know, as we think about things, that way we would, you know, naturally be incentivized to do a better and better job at it because it's you know, something they're actually paying for rather than just like a thing we do when they ask for it.
Watson: So as we aim towards wrapping up here, Sarah, um, I want to talk a little bit about your background before starting Winnie, and really, you know, you've been at Postmates, Twitter, YouTube, Google. These really kind of successful and blue chip technology companies and a common kind of query that we get from listeners, from people that had our events is, you know, I'm in corporation, ABC startup XYZ.
I kind of want to go. Do my own thing. I'm not sure, you know, do I need more seasoning? Are there more lessons that I can export from this big established business, into my new one? So in whatever order with whatever kind of specificity you want to, from those past experiences, what have you taken from roles like being head of product into starting your own thing that you found really valuable?
Maruskopf: Yeah. So first of all, I do recommend that young people who are starting out like do join a larger company or at least one where they feel like there's really people that they can learn from and grow from. Because I think that is a huge value added of working at some of these larger companies is you see, you know, experts amazing people in the roles doing these jobs and you can really learn and, and know how it should be done. I think the other really like, thing I didn't value until later was, you know, the people you meet and the connections you make at a larger company are super valuable.
Like these are really talented individuals who will go on and do amazing things in their careers. And so you're now connected with this network of amazing people. But not to shoot myself in the foot at Winnie because we are hiring, we would love newer grads. In addition to really experience folks is there's also like.
Watson: What kind of roles?
Maruskopf: We're always hiring for engineering and product. We're now also, you know, trying to staff up on the sales side. So some interesting positions there and marketing, I mean, we are trying to also be opportunistic. So like for talented people kind of have like a general apply for whatever thing on our website.
You know, we want to hire the best. So anyone in the U S because now we are remote first, so, we still have an office, but we can work from anywhere. But yeah, the benefit of a smaller company and like Postmates was a pretty small company. When I joined, even Twitter was relatively small. It was a couple hundred people, the hats you can wear, you're not so specific in your role. You can try lots of things and branch out and typically move around in the organization and up in the organization faster, which can be a great experience for them starting your own business, where you have to wear all the hats and do all the things.
And I think for me, it would have been really jarring to go from like Google to starting my own company. And it was good to have experience at smaller companies. At least at the time they were smaller, to see, you know, what does it look like when you have to do some of these things yourself? How do you think about, you know, hiring for these areas?
When do you know when it's time to hire, how do you, you know, present to investors or your board. Those are experiences you really only get at a smaller company earlier on in your career.
Watson: Right on. Any specific hats that were challenging to put on for the first time upon starting Winnie.
Maruskopf: Yeah. I mean, I thought when I started a company, I would get to be the product owner.
My background is product management. I was just excited. I teamed up with an amazing product thinker and Halsall who is now our chief product officer. And I was like, we're just going to get to like, build great product together. It's going to be wonderful. Like, so much fun. And it was for the first, you know, year, we were just like, we were writing code.
We were coming up with product ideas. But quickly it became clear that like for the company to grow, I needed to do things that weren't product and actually I couldn't spend any of my time on product and engineering. Uh, so things like raising money and hiring, and press, and things that like the CEO is really only positioned to do.
That was a little bit in people management, you know, managing the team, and the talent. That was a little sad initially to come to terms with. Like it, wasn't going to be just like all fun and games tinkering around. I needed to build an actual company, but I've come to terms with that and embrace my new role.
And also now I'm proud to be like the worst product person and definitely the worst engineer at Winnie. And so happy to see that to all the folks who are better at it anyway.
Watson: Well, that's actually such an architectural story that we've covered in the past year with a person that gets into, you know, starting a bakery because they love to bake. And then they build a successful bakery and they hire bakers. And now they're kind of managing bakers as opposed to being that baker in a similar way. So a lot of familiar threads. 
Maruskopf: Yeah. I mean, just the other day I wrote like a launch announcement that we were going to send out. And then I, you know, I kind of drafted up an idea I had in my head and then I sent it, sent it to our marketing, woman, to you know, get it ready.
And like, she just made it, like 500 times better. Like it was like, not even, it was so embarrassing what I had initially written compared to her take on it. And I just realized like, yeah, this is building a company. Like you hire people that are 500 times better at the role than you are. And my job and my super power is like, can I find those people? Can I retain those people? Can I put them in the right roles to shine? Can I, you know, challenge them with the next set of challenges and experiences, and it's not going to be writing. Amazing launch announcement because I'm gonna, I'm going to always be worth it. 
Watson: Right on self-awareness. But if you want to go far, go together, just mess it up. You want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together is always the best way.
Maruskopf: But she also did it faster than me. 
Watson: Awesome. Sarah, this has been fantastic. I want to aim for asking the last couple of questions, but I've got a rule. If I ever am interviewing someone and they're doing something that I have never seen someone else to do before I have to ask them about it.
Cause when else will I get the opportunity? So on your Twitter page, you have a linked out to an OpenSea collection for folks that are not familiar with what OpenSea is. It is a marketplace for NFTs, which is amongst other applications, a way for selling artwork in a way, you know, without going through some sort of a middleman, it's a kind of open marketplace concept OpenSea has absolutely blown up over the last year.
The application or the route that you've taken, is having when your kids actually produce artwork there on OpenSea, so just, you know, in whatever terms, make sense. Tell me about the decision to do that. I think it's super creative and interesting. I was like, wow, that's so cool, the moment I saw it. But just take us through the thought process there from a parenting.
Maruskopf: Yeah. I mean, I'm really interested in, like crypto and web three and NFTs, but I also, you know, have a company and a full-time job. And so, you know, one of the things we pride ourselves on Winnie, is like, just the ability for folks to develop professionally, we have a professional development budget where people can apply that towards anything they want to learn or do every year.
It doesn't have to be related to their job function. And so, you know, similarly I think it is important like as the CEO, when there's new technologies out there that are gaining a lot of momentum that I like have some understanding of what's going on. And so it was important for me to kind of like, learn about what is going on with Crypto and NFTs. But because I don't have any talent myself. I, again, like had to tap someone who was a much better artist than me. So I took my six-year-olds artwork and she is on board with this. She is doing it with me. I have her permission. In fact there are a number of pieces she does not let me put on OpenSea.
But we created this persona crypto Brynn. Her name is Brynn, and so crypto Brynn has a collection on OpenSea and it's been fun to just see how it all works. I feel like the best way for me at least to learn something is just by jumping right in and doing it. So I've just been having fun with that. And it's also a nice, a nice way to bond with my daughter because she now gets really excited when one of her crypto Brynn pieces sell, and is really proud of that. So it's also a good way to share one of my interests with her. 
Watson: Right on. Well, tell her I like the Fox drawing amongst the others. And we will link that in all the other good stuff in the show notes for this episode. Sarah, before I ask the standard, last two questions. Anything else that you were hoping to share today that I just didn't give you the chance? 
Maruskopf: No, this was great. I feel like we covered a lot if you know, folks are looking for childcare, check out Winnie, winnie.com. And if folks are looking for a job, check out winnie.com/jobs, because we are hiring.
Watson: Right on. We're going to link that in the show notes for this episode, goingdeepwithAaron.com/podcast for every episode of the show or in the app, we are probably listening to this right now. I'm also going to link Sarah's Twitter as well, which is a good follow. You had a nice zinger on, what's the guy from my first million. I can't think of it. You roasted him pretty good here a couple of weeks ago. 
Maruskopf: Yeah, probably. Big on a dunking on people in Twitter. 
Watson: I love it. So before we let you go, Sarah, I'd like to give you the mic one final time to issue an actionable personal challenge to the audience. 
Maruskopf: Yeah. So my personal challenge is for those of you that have children in childcare in daycare or preschool or in school. Is to talk to your childcare provider, or your teacher and ask them, you know, one way you could help.
I think. We just take these educators for granted. And you know, we've all seen over the pandemic, how essential they are and they are, you know, in need of our help right now. It's also a great thing to do around the holidays. Ask, you know, there's a way you could get involved or help in the new year.
Whether it's a small way or big way. And if you were not a parent, or you don't know any childcare provider educator you can ask to help. I would say, ask to help a parent and they also, many of us are struggling and challenge. Still it's the case that we are still very much in the thick of it for us, with young children who are not yet vaccinated, the under five set.
And so, you know, if you have the capacity or the ability to do anything, to help a parent, you know, I'm sure they would appreciate it. 
Watson: Amen to that. And one of the underrated qualities of things that are people remember as being kind, cause, you know, hopefully we're always kind to our family, our friends, people that are close to us.
But when someone does something for you that wasn't required, it wasn't expected. It wasn't out of any sort of obligation. Even a small act can really resonate with someone as an act of kindness. So I think that your challenge is perfectly in line with that. Sarah, thank you for sharing it with us and for coming on the podcast.
Maruskopf: Awesome. Thank you for having me. 
Watson: We just went deep with Sarah Maruskopf, who we're not there has a fantastic day.
Hey, thank you so much for listening to my interview with Sara. If you enjoyed it, then I would encourage you to also check out our past interview with Luke scurman. As I referenced in the interview, his platform. It's a very similar business and business model. And if you pair these two together, you will have a much more coherent picture about the challenges and opportunities associated with building a marketplace.
It's linked in the show notes. Also hit subscribe because we have another great episode coming next week.
Maruskopf: Thanks for listening. Connect with Aaron on Twitter and Instagram at Aaron Watson, 59.

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