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“Parents have an intrinsic need to be connected, to be a part of the village, so to speak,” Soam Lall said.
Lall speaks from experience. Left to take care of his 15-month-old alone while his wife was out of town for a week, he felt, in his words, “isolated and alone.”
Of course, demographic statistics dictate that finding other parents of young children in Los Angeles isn’t hard. What Lall lacked, however, was a natural way to start a conversation with them. His proposed remedy? Kinnecting.
Kinnecting is a matching service for local parents that uses social, geographic, and individual attributes to facilitate meetings. Parents create profiles including such bits of information as their location; gender; number, age, and gender of children; and interests. They’re then directed to a list of parents deemed compatible by the app’s algorithms, with whom they can make plans to meet or exchange thoughts about such matters as pediatricians, indoor play, and kid-friendly restaurants.
“We take into consideration simple data like distance between two users as well as deeper data such as gender of users, gender of children, age differences of similar children and parents, similar interests, mutual friends, and even the user’s hometowns are factors in the algorithm,” Lall said.
Though there's a variety of common in-person means by which parents can meet — picking up their children from school or a religious or charity function, for example — most first-time parents, many of whom are millennials, are accustomed to using technology to solve problems efficiently. Kinnecting, Lall said, taps into that generational ingrainment, offering a logical, instinctive, and targeted way to bring younger parents together. Furthermore, due to factors like their children’s age, some parents aren’t able to attend in-person events in the first place.
“During the first two years of parenthood, there is no social structure like school to rely on,” he said. “As a result, parents turn to the Internet for answers and community.”
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Of course, parent-matching apps don’t have the same precise inherent restrictions as dating apps. For example, users might want to register both as individuals and as couples, or they might not have a preference about the gender of the people with whom they’re matched. However, Lall has implemented some constraints, largely taking cues from dating-app precedents: users can only sign up individually (rather than as couples), and they’re most likely to be paired with parents of the same gender. However, based on eventual user feedback, Lall is willing to loosen these criteria.
Lall said the startup has proven especially successful among military families, whose frequent need to relocate often hinders their ability to befriend local parents. He’s in the process of partnering with a number of “military-oriented websites” and has his sights set on providing services for the Department of Defense. “We’re also working with a number of local Los Angeles stores and popular parent destinations to help bring the community together,” he said.
“Our goal is a lofty one: we want to connect every parent on the planet,” he continued. “This interconnected platform of parents will discuss everything from travel tips to products — all parent related — all from another real parent, in real time. Parents sharing advice. Parents supporting one another. Too utopian? I think not.”
