The Unemployed Life
Adventures in Babysitting
If you want to find a babysitter in New York, you can go to myJambi.com, enter your specific needs and get an instant list of qualified sitters who match your criteria. You can check out their profiles and read reviews and ratings by other parents. Or, if you want a plumber in Chicago, a landscaper in Portland, or a Web designer in Santa Fe, myJambi can help out with that, too.
But myJambi, a three year old New York-based company, has only its three founders to turn to when a job needs getting done these days.
Poised for serious growth only a matter of months ago, those plans are now on hold. The company’s five full-time employees were let go. Big plans to expand into numerous service categories are being honed to a handful, with a big emphasis on babysitting. And the number of cities it serves has also been greatly pared back. Meanwhile, the company’s three co-founders, who had graduated to managerial roles, are now back to the grunt work of coding, design work and trafficking ad orders. As for funding? Forget about it, now’s not the time.
“We realized it would be really tough to raise another round of money in this economy,” says David Huebner, co-founder and chief product officer.
The downturn has been tough on a lot of businesses, but start-ups like myJambi are holding on by finding every possible place to cut costs. According to a recent study by the University of Maryland and Network Solutions, small businesses are succeeding despite the recession. In fact, 69% of small businesses made a profit in 2008 and 70% think they’ll still be operating after five more years.
These days, Huebner has taken over design of the site, getting into the nitty-gritty of page specifications and requirements generation. CEO Rio Bennin has taken over all coding for the site. Co-founder Kristina Vetter is soloing search engine optimization and search engine marketing, as well as buying ads and targeting users. “We’re all taking on a lot,” says Huebner, who used to have an assistant and a freelance designer.
With their reduced staff, myJambi cannot expand their operations into new cities. “We had to change our strategy to grow myJambi in a new way,” says Huebner. “We focused on very specific markets and services to grow our site. We had to choose some very niche markets.” With fewer resources at hand, myJambi has opted to go with quality over quantity. Rather than trying to balance their coverage of every city and every profession, they have chosen to focus their efforts on particular places and services. They are currently putting a strong emphasis on the needs of New York City and those seeking babysitters. By focusing their attention, myJambi’s co-founders hope to keep the quality of their services high in order to keep their customers coming through the lean times.
The hardest part, for Huebner, isn’t all of the extra work. It’s the disappointment and frustration of seeing an exciting business plan put on hold. “You build up this business,” says Huebner. “And you really get going. You grow the business. You get an office. Then the downturn happens and you realize that all of those plans for a bigger operation that you thought were on track have to take a back seat while you recalibrate.”
An earlier version of this story misspelled Rio Bennin’s name and misidentified David Huebner. He is chief product officer.
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11 comments for “Adventures in Babysitting”
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An interesting article about an interesting start-up. I wish them luck!
It’s a shame. It’s one thing when jobs are lost by big companies, but in this recession it seems like entrepreneurs are drastically cutting their employees so they can survive. Perhaps the government recovery plans could be to find this type of job rather than just pay unemployment. It’s the small businesses that make the US great – and we will lose a lot of them and a lot of us will lose our jobs.
Good article. Best of luck to these guys and other startups trying to ride out the downturn.
Very well written and informative. Hope to read some more from Jess.
I wish we had young kids at home to use the babysitting services offered by myJambi.
Thanks Jessica for the article and to everyone for your thoughtful comments! While the current economy does present a number of new challenges, it also has given us the chance to think about our business and our roles in new ways and listen even more closely to what our users want and need. And while we have been focusing our attention on New York, we have been excited to see new members join from across the country as our name gets out there thanks to articles like this one. We were also able to raise a small amount of capital recently that has enabled us to strategically market the site. Thanks again and please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any feedback or questions!
A difficult reality, but a creative way to hold things together. Well written and well taken, Well?
the concept for this business is very interesting. hope that they are able to expand-would love to see them in the Philly market!
Seems like a great idea. It’s these kinds of start-ups that fuel the economy. Of course, with more people at home these days and people with less cash to spend on going out, there’s bound to be less need for these services. I can see a time when this business could expand to other cities and really take off.
Interesting article about a company offering a much needed service. I wish them luck and hope they will consider Chicago as well. Great topic!
These are tough times… nicely worded piece here. Best wishes to all the budding entrepreneurs out there.
Good article; thanks for sharing. Good luck to you entrepreneurs out there! As everybody’s cutting down costs, I’d like to remind everyone that social media marketing is really cheap and effective these days. Creating a short, captivating video and putting it up on YouTube, Vimeo, and AdWido can easily improve your image for a relatively low cost. Once again, good luck!