Should Your Company Go Online-Only?
It was graduation week, and like many matriculating seniors, Genevieve Thiers wondered what she would do with her life. She worried that her classical Opera training might not 
provide the immediate financial relief that she would need to pay the bills. That’s when she spotted inspiration: a pregnant woman. She watched the slow, belabored steps the woman’s swollen feet took up the staircase; she watched the woman grab the railing for support as she pulled herself up the stairs like a pot-bellied mountaineer hoisting himself up a steep rock wall. The woman was trekking across the Boston College campus, posting fliers soliciting a babysitter.
Pistons began firing in Thiers’ head. She recalled thousands of nights spent babysitting as the oldest of seven children. She saw how inconvenienced the pregnant woman was by drafting, printing, and distributing flyers, not to mention actually finding a worthy candidate. And Thiers knew there was a relatively simple answer to the problem that millions of mothers around the country must have been facing too: an online community that matches care-seekers with care-givers. The whole thing reminded her of Match.com, where she met the man that would eventually become her husband. “If people could use the Internet to find true love, why not use it to find a quality sitter?” Thiers asks. After a quick call to her father and a $120 loan to buy the domain name, www.SitterCity.com, No. 358 on the Inc. 500, was born. Read full story:
