CED Tech Venture profile: Online organizer startup PodKeeper

Charlotte startup PodKeeper, which aims to help parents “finally stay on top of their many family commitments,” is among the 90+ startups and emerging companies presenting at the CED Tech Venture Conference in Raleigh next month.

“By using the group calendar and family organizer, parents are able to keep every kids group organized like never before,” says CEO Steven Sacks, who talks about his company and why investors should be interested in PodKeeper in an exclusive Q&A.

This is the latest startup profile of Tech Venture presenters as part of a partnership between the CED and WRAL TechWire.

What is the focus of your business?

PodKeeper is an online organizer for busy parents that allows them to finally stay on top of their many family commitments. From youth sports teams to scout troops to school classes, there are always a lot of details for moms and dads to manage – both with other parents and within their own family. By using the group calendar and family organizer at http://www.podkeeper.com, parents are able to keep every kids group organized like never before.

What is the top pain point/business application you are seeking to address?

If you’re a parent with kids ages 3-15, your life is like being on a hamster wheel, as you try to keep up with your kids’ schedule. From school classrooms, to sports teams, extracurricular activities, and other volunteer commitments, staying on top of all the details is a daily challenge.

Today, most of the coordination is still done through group email lists, which is extremely inefficient for this purpose and a bad solution for a problem that overwhelms parents on a daily basis. PodKeeper is the solution, and over time, PodKeeper is poised to become the online dashboard of every busy parent’s life.

What makes it unique?

While it may seem easy to build an online organizer for parents, it’s actually quite difficult to get it right. Parents demand a great user experience that meets their specific needs. So we spent a couple of years learning how parents want to communicate and we cracked the code on providing a tool that saves them time and makes them feel in control.

PodKeeper has several attributes which differentiate us and will help us get millions of loyal users. We’re Sticky. Once parents experience having one Pod, they create Pods for their children’s other activities. The more Pods a user has, the more indispensable PodKeeper becomes, and it becomes a habit that’s a part of their daily lives. One-Stop Organization. PodKeeper offers a comprehensive solution where all of one’s information is in one place. Parents don’t want to go to one site for a baseball team, one site for scouts and another site for the school class. Superior User Experience and Customer Focus.

We know that for this audience, the user experience is king. PodKeeper is quick, timely, relevant and easy, and we are extremely responsive to customer needs. Built-In Viral Growth. PodKeeper has a built-in viral method of acquiring customers – a person creates a Pod then invites members of the group, who are likely part of other groups that can become Pods, and so on.

Why should investors be interested in your firm?

We have product-market fit, great traction and with the viral pass along that’s built into the product, we are ready to scale. We have an attractive growth profile, while also being attractively positioned. Our customers are a highly coveted group because the parents of kids ages 3-15 are active consumers with a lot of purchasing power.

PodKeeper’s technology platform is “powerfully simple” in that it is especially beneficial to our target audience and is so easy to use, which are two qualities that allow the platform to scale.

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