Kangarootime, a cloud-based mobile application that digitally streamlines administrative duties for childcare centers, schools, and day-camps, recently secured $300k in follow-on funding from 43North, a startup competition and incubator space founded in 2014 as part of the Buffalo Billion economic develop initiative. After graduating from the Los Angeles Founder Institute, Kangarootime founder and CEO Scott Wayman moved the company from southern California to Buffalo, New York in 2017, and recently participated in the 43North program, where Kangarootime won the 2017 competition and secured an initial 43North-led seed round investment of $500k, bringing their total funding amount to $2 million.
In addition to his role as the CEO of Kangarootime, Scott is also a Co-Director of the Buffalo Founder Institute (the early admissions deadline of which is on 2018-11-18), where he will help local aspiring entrepreneurs launch impactful startups. Having gone through the program himself and launched a start up that has made such positive impact on communities around the country, Scott is the perfect candidate to utilize his vast expertise to lead the next generation of mission-driven founders.
The Kangarootime operating system saves educators and care providers hundreds of hours of their valuable time by automating procedures like billing cycles, child check-in/check-outs and attendance, as well as creating a paperless management system that ensures providers and parents alike always remain up-to-date and in-contact with one another directly.
Check out Scott pitch Kangarootime at the 2015 Vator Splash event.
The platform also offers nudges to childcare professionals to help them do their jobs better, and can be configured to prompt them, for example, when it’s time to change an individual child’s diaper or feeding should be administered. The system works to create peace of mind for parents, and streamlines management functions for care providers. Today, hundreds of childcare centers across the country are using Kangarootime.
Prior to founding Kangarootime, Scott worked to develop electronic records sharing tools for the healthcare industry. He noticed that childcare providers faced similar challenges, stemming from redundant and confusing paper-based records keeping systems that siloed away important information. Scott saw a big opportunity to bring the headache-saving value of digitized management tools to hardworking childcare providers, who have plenty of other things to worry about throughout their workdays. Today, Scott identifies significant advantages to running a startup tech company from a smaller ‘Rust Belt’ city like Buffalo. According to Scott,
Many of our employees couldn’t afford to buy a home in LA. Moving here opens up all kinds of options. We think there is tons of talent here in Buffalo. People that do have families, who might have progressed along in their careers, we want those people to work for us.
Kangarootime has garnered increasing interest from more than just investors. Besides the recognition they have received from 43North, within the wider Buffalo startup ecosystem the company was also name a finalist for ‘Best Tech Team in Education’ by the InfoTech WNY BETA awards. Kangarootime continues to attract media attention as well, and was recently featured in a story on CNBC, as well as plenty of local coverage including in WKBW TV and The Buffalo News, among others.
Today, there are more than 700,000 daycare centers throughout the United States according to research from IBIS World, generating more than $50 billion in total annual domestic revenues. With the follow-on $300k investment from 43North, Scott plans to expand the Kangarootime team, hiring 50+ Buffalo-based employees in 2019 as they continue to grow rapidly and expand their service to hundreds of new daycares throughout the US.
Graduates of the Founder Institute are creating some of the world's fastest growing startups, having raised over $1.75BN in funding, and building products people love across over 200 cities worldwide.
See the most recent news from our Grads at FI.co/news, or learn more about their stories at FI.co/journey.
