Fully Baked #37: Parenting Companion

💡 A parenting companion you can use with your hands full

🔬 What the research says about demand and trust

🚀 How we’d find the first families

🤑 The economics of helping parents through the first 100 days

⚔️ Who’s already building this?

❓ Our verdict: is this a go or no-go idea?

I’m fully obsessed with voice dictation right now. So whenever I’m using Claude or ChatGPT for work or in my personal life, I speak to it. It’s so much quicker and more natural than typing. I think that a whole new wave of voice-first products are going to emerge, one of which should be focussed on helping new parents.

Because being a new parent is hard. You’re holding a crying baby, trying to remember the last feed and wondering whether your partner already changed that nappy. This is not the moment for a complicated dashboard. Here’s the idea.

Create a voice-first companion for new parents that acts as a copilot to help track details about their kids.

Parents speak short updates about feeds, naps and household routines into the app which tracks and logs everything. The app then uses this data to assist the parent by reminding them when the next feed needs to happen, when their baby might be ready for a nap etc.

Parents already go online for help. In the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital’s November 2023 poll, 80% of parents of children aged 0-4 said they used social media to discuss parenting topics. Getting children to sleep and nutrition/breastfeeding were common subjects.

Trust is part of the problem. In that same poll, 40% reported difficulty distinguishing good from bad advice and 38% were concerned about others finding out private family information.

The uncomfortable discovery: Huckleberry’s Berry already draws on a child’s logs, remembers family details, summarises patterns and accepts voice messages for logging. That is very close to the pitch here.

Logging can still be awkward. One Huckleberry reviewer described repeated taps while holding an upset child; a Nara reviewer struggled with timers when breastfeeding required both hands.

Payment is the harder test. Nara reviews include both disappointment about charging and an intention to pay. Parents want less fiddly logging. Whether they’ll pay for another app is still the unanswered question.

Partner with an antenatal class provider to introduce CooPilot to parents before their baby arrives. Let families try the demo, and pay the provider a referral fee when someone buys.

Recruit a small group of new parents through parenting communities. Find out whether CooPilot makes sharing care with a partner easier, and whether they’d pay for it and recommend it to friends.

Expand to more antenatal class providers once families are using and paying for it. Track the cost of acquiring each paying family, including referral fees and time spent supporting partners.

Create short-form videos showing the magic moment: one parent wakes up, asks “What did I miss?” and gets the overnight feeds, naps and next steps in seconds. No scrolling. No waking their partner. Share these on TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, and work with parenting creators to reach more families.

Revenue: $29 per month per user (paying family). Assuming eligibility and enrolment in Apple’s Small Business Program, a 15% store commission leaves $24.65.

Acquisition: Target $10 per paying family, including referral fees and onboarding costs. That leaves $14.65 in the first month before voice processing, hosting, support and other costs. At this price, keeping acquisition costs low will be crucial.

Huckleberry: Its free tier includes tracking and syncing across devices. Plus adds easier logging through voice, text or photos; Premium adds AI guidance. The lesson is uncomfortable: voice, memory and shared records are already part of an established product’s offer.

Nara Baby: Its current FAQ describes Siri commands for hands-free logging and shared access for caregivers. It also describes paid family plans. Hands-free logging and family coordination would therefore be difficult features to charge for in isolation.

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