How do you take a break from your kids when the entire family is quarantining at home? When the coronavirus first hit in the spring of 2020, Kyle Reilly \u201916 came up with a solution to the problem many working parents began to face. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reilly, a client manager for a financial services firm, was looking for an idea for a start-up, and his girlfriend, Kristina Hanford, had just lost a gig performing on Broadway. Together, they realized they could connect the scores of laid-off performers with the kids who were cooped up at home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Virtual Babysitters Club (VBC) was born, offering hour-long Zoom sessions that featured professional singers, dancers, and actors who could entertain and engage children with puppet shows, dance parties, sing-a-longs, interactive games, and more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cParents were looking for an opportunity to focus and to have their kids do something fun and engaging that wasn\u2019t just mind- numbing TV,\u201d Reilly says. \u201cVBC gives them the opportunity to have a guilt-free hour to get things done.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
They posted the idea on Facebook, and within days, they were overwhelmed by parents across the country who wanted to register their children for an online class. The business became a media sensation, with Reilly and his co-founder appearing on Good Morning America<\/em>, CBS News<\/em>, and Fox News<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One parent who signed up just after the company launched was Sarah Kahn, who was running a business consulting company with a 1- and 4-year-old at home in the San Francisco Bay area. Even though she had a nanny, she booked two classes a day so she could make business calls while her children were on Zoom. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere\u2019s not a price you can put on this,\u201d\nsays Kahn, who contacted seven virtual\nbabysitting companies before choosing VBC.\n\u201cIt\u2019s definitely given me some down time so I\ncan do other work, and it\u2019s given my children\ninteraction with other children across the\ncountry, which I think is really cool.\u201d\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Besides attracting more than 1,300\nparents to book sessions over the past two\nyears, VBC has also worked with more\nthan 25 companies that have signed up to\noffer free or subsidized sessions to their\nemployees. One of the largest companies\nto purchase a package of VBC classes was\nOcean Spray, the agricultural cooperative\nbased in Massachusetts.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Each company signing up for VBC\ngenerates between 50 and 100 employees\nwho try the service. \u201cIt\u2019s a nice way to\nprovide an employee benefit that is unique\nand modern in this crazy and challenging\ntime,\u201d Reilly says. \u201cFew people could have\nguessed two, three years ago how many\npeople would be working from home.\u201d\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although the lockdown has eased up, VBC continues to draw parents looking for a way to engage their children online because the pandemic has made it difficult for parents to hire babysitters to come into their homes or even invite children over for playdates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe world has slowly opened up over the\npast year and a half, but we still have parents\nand kids who love the service, and they still\nuse it,\u201d Reilly says. \u201cSometimes that means\nthe hours change, so if the kids are in virtual\nschool, it\u2019s an after-school thing.\u201d\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reilly, who lives in Delmar, N.Y., with\nHanford and their mini-goldendoodle, wants\nthe company to keep growing, even if life\nreturns to normal. Now that the platform is\nestablished, his focus is building the client\nbase and raising capital to build awareness.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe want to provide it for the parents\nwho really enjoy an alternative to traditional\nmeans of entertaining their kids and for the\nperformers who need something like this,\u201d\nhe says. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kyle Reilly \u201916 connects working parents who need childcare with professional performers who provide virtual entertainment to kids. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1263,"featured_media":9167,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[354,889,276,888],"coauthors":[754],"class_list":["post-8952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-endeavor","tag-alumni","tag-babysitting","tag-business","tag-children"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/palXSH-2ko","amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2022\/05\/Pipers-Playroom.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1263"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8952"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9349,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8952\/revisions\/9349"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8952"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n