Inspiring small businesses: Koru Kids

In our ‘Inspiring small businesses’ series, we share and celebrate great stories from fellow small business owners who started and run their own business. By bringing you closer to these inspiring businesses we hope that you find motivation, tips, and ideas for building yours. Next up, we spoke to Rachel Carrell about her inspiring childcare business Koru Kids.

What is it that you do?

I am the CEO of Koru Kids, a start-up building an entirely new childcare system from scratch, using modern technology. We specialise in 'after school care', as that’s a time of day that is really tricky for lots of families. Through Koru Kids, parents get a regular nanny who looks after the children at home, so the kids can go to their after school activities, chill out, have dinner, and parents can come home to have quality time with them before bedtime. Koru Kids nannies are energetic, enthusiastic, flexible and reliable - and we employ both younger and older people, a rare thing in the childcare industry. We also take care of all the administration and payroll. Since our inception in 2016, we've delivered hundreds of thousands of hours of after school care in London and train and deploy more than a hundred new nannies every week. We’ve just raised £10 million pounds in Series A investment from tech company Atomico to expand our offering.

What's the story behind your business?

I was the CEO of a healthcare company when I had my first child. All my friends also started having kids at the same time as me. I saw them struggling with childcare and thought, 'There must be a better way.' Not only do families in the UK now spend more on childcare than they do on their mortgage, but the childcare that exists is often too inflexible to accommodate working parents’ schedules. I knew I’d hit upon my life’s work.

What inspired you to start your own business?

I was very inspired by this obvious problem that had become very real to me and that nobody else seemed to be doing anything else about it! When I started I presumed there would be lots of people trying to innovate too, but soon discovered that wasn’t the case. Over time my team and I developed our triple mission: to help working parents juggle the hardest years of their life; to help caregivers thrive in a difficult role; and to give children a childhood full of everyday adventures, setting them up for life.

What is the most difficult aspect of running your own business?

For this particular business, it’s that the problems we are solving are so difficult. Building a ‘full-stack’ business is hard as you have to build many different businesses at once. We recruit, train, match, and help manage nannies – that’s four very different activities. We need to be excellent at managing complex operations, people, and technology. We’ve also had to overcome some assumptions on the funding side. Many investors and others view childcare as ‘small beans’ – not recognising the actual size and criticality of the market. Additionally, childcare is particularly high-stakes. Success requires superb execution with no room for error. Oh, and finally, I had a baby in the midst of the fundraising. I had to do phone calls the next day and in-person meetings within two days. This was necessary because fundraising is a ‘sales funnel’ activity where speed, the volume of conversations and intensity of interest matter – but it was not easy.

What is the best thing about running your own business?

Having kids focused me on what is important in my life. My tolerance for wasting time has never been high, but it dropped through the floor when I had kids. If I’m going to work at all – if I’m not going to be with my kids – I need to be doing something that I think is really important. With Koru Kids I truly believe I’m working on the most important thing I could possibly be working on, and that’s an incredible privilege.

To find out more about Koru Kids follow their website, or follow them on Facebook , Twiter, and Instagram.