How to Prepare for — and Capitalize on — the Reinvention of Parenting

An edited version of this article was originally published in Business Insider.

I grew up in Italy, just outside Rome, and I always thought I’d become a young father. I pictured myself kicking a ball around the yard with my children and taking them with me to watch AS Roma, our hometown soccer team—a pep in my step all the while, my parenting skills bolstered by the buoyancy of youth.

Perhaps I expected to have children young because my mother and father were young when they had me. That was the norm back then: to raise big, rambunctious families. My mother is one of five sisters, and I grew up surrounded by cousins—12 at the last count. My grandparents also lived nearby.

When I emigrated to America, after high school, I maintained both my hope and my expectation that I’d be a young father. Things started according to plan when I met and married my American bride, singer/songwriter Jennifer Lee Snowden. Yet as it tends to do, life threw us a curveball. Due to illness, we were unable to start a family right away, as we’d hoped. This was frustrating and scary. However, due to the amazing progress in fertility medicine, we were able to “bank” our luck, and as I write this, there are some fertilized embryos nestled safely inside nitrogen tanks, awaiting a future arrival date.

Although it felt unusual at the time, the fact that my wife and I have waited to have children aligns us with the broader cultural shift happening all over the world: more and more, parents are delaying procreation. According to the National Vital Statistics System, 3.8 million babies were born in the USA in 2017. Although it sounds like a high number, this was the lowest reported fertility rate in 30 years.

Importantly, this reflects the successful campaign against unwanted teen pregnancies—which are down 55 percent since 2007—but it’s also a matter of strategy. Some parents are waiting until they feel financially secure and professionally established to have children—which is entirely logical: according to the US Department of Agriculture’s Expenditures on Children by Families, parents can expect to spend $233,610 to raise a child today, from birth to adulthood. 

Some couples, of course, like my wife and I, are dealing with illness and fertility issues, but increasingly women who are otherwise healthy and who possess plenty of time to have kids are likewise deciding to bank their eggs.

Either way, here’s what we know for sure. People are waiting longer to have kids. The mean age of first-time mothers is continuing to increase from 21 in 1972 to 26.3 today, alongside fathers who are now around 31, up from 27 in the same time period. As a result, when couples today do have children, they are more informed, and more conscious of safety concerns, because they’ve taken the time to educate themselves about these things.

They’re also constantly digitally-connected, and because they’re educated and informed, they’re demanding better and more reliable child-centered products and services. (Some of those products include Cocoon Cam, an AI-vital signs data-capturing monitor started by a former Tesla engineer; Tinyhood, an on-demand expert advice network which functions as a “ParentTech” style assistant; and Kidizen, a peer-to-peer resale market for kids clothing and products.)

All told, this amounts to a seismic generational shift both in how parents prepare for raising kids, and what they demand out of the technology that helps them do that.

Data shows $300 million in capital flowing to startups servicing this revolution—particularly IoT connected devices and data tracking services.

What we’re also seeing is a broader socio-economic shift towards products and services with roots in the Sharing Economy—companies that allow parents to rent, resale, and share rather than buy—as well as the “Quantified Self” movement: technology that tracks data for self-improvement.

This trend is of deep interest to me, both personally and professionally. I’m not only an aspiring father, but an investor. The ability to see around corners, to understand what’s coming next, is a vital skill for early stage venture capitalists and one I’ve worked hard to hone. As such, it’s clear to me that what we have on our hands is not just a revolution in parenting, but an economic opportunity.

Here’s how we should all be preparing for it.

Look for companies that are democratizing parent services for the masses.

At Alpha Edison, the VC firm where I work, we make concerted efforts to identify startups who use new technology to bring upmarket services—services which were once only enjoyed by the rich and powerful—to the masses. (We call this strategy Democratizing Decisions).

Examples of companies who fit this bill are Uber and Lyft. Both companies made perks like private drivers, for example, available to all.

As it happens, there are several companies who are democratizing the parent services space in a similar way. Consider the rideshare service for minors, Hop Skip Drive, which has raised $75 million in funding to date. In providing child-safe alternatives to Uber and Lyft, their growth will mirror what happens with the industry as a whole.

Other examples of companies bringing “luxury” to the masses within the parenting sector include:

• Doulas (hypnobirthing meditations, pelvic floor exercises/reminders);
• Sawyer (after-school EdTech);
• Juni Learning (remote tutors); digital therapists;
• Coworking spaces with childcare;
• Mommy Nearest (social secretaries);
• The Mom Project (returning to work coaches)

In making upscale, desirable parenting services available to a larger percentage of people, these companies have a chance at real success. Watch them.

Look for companies that alleviate “Silent Suffering.”

Another category of market opportunity that my team at Alpha Edison defined centers around relieving “silent suffering”—or, everyday irritations that we all just put up with, the kind that, if someone solved them, would unlock massive latent demand. 

For example, many women suffer in silence when it comes to the physical recovery from pregnancy. "As a society, we've made it seem "normal" that women will pee in their pants, have painful sex, or never regain core or pelvic strength for years after giving birth," says Carine Carmy, Co-founder and CEO of Origin, a women's health company. "These issues are far more common than they need to be, affecting one in four adult women, and many women are no longer waiting in pain. They're seeking help and treatment, and the good news is that physical therapy and other noninvasive methods work."

The most obvious form of silent suffering parents presently put up with is the lack of paid parental leave and the lack of affordable childcare options, which leaves many mothers unable to work. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 71 percent of US mothers are in the workforce, compared to 92 percent of fathers. The participation rate drops still further—to 65 percent—for mothers with very small children.

Both Paid Parental Leave and Universal Child Care are key pieces of legislation ripe for debate in the run up to the next election. But in the meantime, providing safe, affordable childcare is a massive opportunity. Next gen parents want and need state-of-the-art childcare with Internet of Things connectivity so they can keep in touch with offspring during the workday. They want on-site childcare at coworking spaces, allowing parents who have chosen entrepreneurship over more structured full-time employment to both parent and pursue their dreams.

Companies who can deliver on that in the near future will change lives.   

Look for non-toxic startups.

One imperative particularly dear to parents today is that the products they purchase for their children are free of toxic chemicals. They likewise don’t want products that promote climate-unfriendly practices. For example, it’s now widely derided online that disposable diapers are the third largest contributors to landfills and take 400 years to biodegrade.

As such, a variety of new companies have begun sprouting up that prove so environmentally conscious. (It just so happens that many of the founders are celebrity parents.) These include:

• Jessica Alba’s eco-friendly child/baby line The Honest Company, which has raised $503 million to date;
• Karolina Kurkova’s wellness line Gryph & IvyRose known as “Goop for kids”;
• and Emma (Baby Spice) Bunton’s Kit & Kin.

Emma Bunton in particular has captured mommy bloggers’ universal acclaim. Bunton’s company sells diapers made with far fewer chemicals than leading brands and chlorine-free fluff pulp harvested from sustainably managed forests.

In the baby/child food sector, Sarah Michelle Gellar’s company, Foodstirs, bills itself as “junk free” organic DIY baking, providing simple-to-use kits with no “bad” ingredients. After raising $6 million, Gellar told Good Morning America about the power of taking parenting brands direct to consumers: “Customers today want to go on the journey with you— they want to know what’s in what they’re eating, and using, and social media makes that possible.”

This epitomizes the ethos companies in this space are starting to adopt. It also hints at something of a winning formula that investors should be paying attention to.

Look at companies poised to disrupt incumbents.

 I’m bullish about the companies detailed above because, while many are still small, they nevertheless are direct threats to the biggest players in the baby/child products and services industry, due mainly to their focus on non-toxic lines and their genuine interaction with their customer bases. They’re heralding trends that will only continue to grow in importance over time, as the parenting revolution takes shape and garners influence.

I met recently with Lisa Barnett, the founder of Little Spoon. She reiterated that assisting the parenting revolution is very much something entrepreneurs like her are focusing on.

“2018 was the first year the millennial generation represented the critical majority of new parents,” she said. “And in the same way we’ve seen millennials disrupt so many other consumer categories, they’ve entered the parenting space with the same demands for high quality, transparent, health conscious and affordable products for their families. We started Little Spoon in response to this need, and it’s a big reason we’ve seen our organic, fresh food and nutritional solutions resonate so deeply and immediately with this generation of new parents around the US.”

The disruptive potential of entrepreneurs like Lisa is massive. Big picture, the total addressable market for global baby care products is estimated at $73.86 billion, and projected to grow to $109.13 billion by 2026. It’s still a fragmented industry, but Johnson & Johnson (23.2%), Procter & Gamble (18%), and Kimberly-Clark (8%) are the three market leaders. And they’re susceptible to disruption. In line with the widespread concerns around toxic and harmful ingredients, J&J are still embroiled in a lawsuit around asbestos traces in their talcum powder, which are said to cause cancer. Most experts predict their market share will drop to 17 percent or less in the coming years as a result. So there’s a real opportunity for smart startups to grab market share or make themselves ripe for successful IPO or acquisition.

More importantly, there's a real opportunity for companies and investors to do good and change lives here. For example, when I met with Lisa, our conversation eventually turned to her parenting hopes. “I’d love to be a mother at some point,” she said. “But I feel it’s really tough, if not impossible, to be an entrepreneur CEO and working mother without masses of support.”

I felt for her. It’s a horrible choice for a person to have to make—that between pursuing your dreams and starting a family. Technology designed for the next generation of parents can alleviate some of that pressure and solve for the time-constraint burdens of early stage parenting. Obviously, technology cannot solve all of the problems parents face today, but developed and cultivated strategically, it can certainly make it easier for women to stay in or re-enter the workforce, should they choose to have kids.

At the end of the day, everyone wants a chance to be a committed, engaged, and happy parent—and there’s a huge market opportunity for folks who desire to help people achieve that ideal. I, for one, am keeping an eye on that opportunity not only as an investor, but as a potential customer. When I think about the reality of the life my wife and I live—we both work full time, me as an investor, her as a singer/songwriter—I know we’ll want and need technology partners who can provide us with the types of services and tools that allow us to both raise our children and chase our professional dreams.

This is indicative, I think, of the way all parents feel today. It’s a byproduct of the reinvention of parenting. The way we raise families has changed—perhaps forever. It’s time for founders and the people who power them to change, too.