Kids catch a ride with HopSkipDrive

Correction: The article originally referred to one of the App's backers as Smart Capital. It has been changed to FirstMark Capital.

HopSkipDrive, a tech startup based in south downtown Los Angeles, takes the concept of app-enabled ride sharing to new levels. It even has a special term for the independent contractors they use who make up its fleet: “caregivers on wheels.”

Its purpose is to help people navigate the challenges of car-culture parenting in L.A. by providing trustworthy transportation to children on their way to baseball practice, dance class, school, you name it.

Co-founders Janelle McGlothlin, Joanna McFarland and Carolyn Yashari Becher — who have eight children among them — like to joke that they created the local ride service for kids “to solve our problems.” All three working moms and their husbands were exhausted from figuring out how to get their children from point A to B. They didn’t need a nanny, just someone to help shuttle them to places, said McGlothlin, who serves as chief marketing officer. 

HopSkipDrive — which launched in March after a pilot program that began in November 2014 — has some natural similarities to Uber or Lyft. After all, it’s a smartphone-enabled, ride-sharing app that brings a driver to your door. But given that it’s created by parents, for parents, there’s an entirely different standard involved.

All drivers are screened to ensure there are no points on their driving records, each car is thoroughly inspected, and when rides are ordered, the parents and child get an image of the driver with some background information on that person. Pricing starts at $20 per ride under 5 miles and 30 minutes, and they can be purchased in bulk for lower per-ride rates. 

“The reality is our children who are of appropriate age use the service, so we built in all the safety measures that we as parents felt were important,” McGlothlin said. “And we each have different styles.” 

Naturally, some guardians require more information than others in order to feel comfortable signing up with HopSkipDrive (hopskipdrive.com).

“Some of us are less neurotic, and some of us are more neurotic,” said Yashari Becher, the company’s COO, causing her business partners to break out in hearty laughs. “You’ll see that with some of our parents.”

There are differences among the kids who use the service, too. “You have kids who are more rigid, and kids who are more flexible, and we need to be able to serve everybody,” she added. 

Parents can make specific requests or share additional information about destinations and passengers — ranging from, “My son is highly anxious” to “My teenage daughter just wants to sit in the backseat and listen to music.” They can track the ride en route and are notified when the child is picked up and dropped off at the specified destinations. 

Today, HopSkipDrive has more than 250 drivers and serves thousands of riders a month. It covers practically all of Los Angeles County and is already receiving requests to bring its services to other cities around the country.

If there’s anyone who could figure out a solution to harness technology in the service of managing L.A. geography and busy contemporary family life, it’s three working moms. McFarland, HopSkipRide’s CEO, and McGlothlin, who live in Eagle Rock and Highland Park, respectively, became friendly through their children eight years ago. During birthday party chitchat involving the logistical nightmare of ferrying kids across the city to school, extracurricular activities, parties and the like, McFarland joked about the need for a shared van. 

“Janelle and I looked at each other like, ‘Huh!’ There’s something there,” McFarland recalled. “We started meeting on Sunday mornings, mapping this out, while our kids played in the next room. It became so interesting and exciting that there wasn’t any way we couldn’t start this company.” 

It also helped that McFarland, the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor and a first-generation American, has an MBA from Stanford. She and McGlothlin studied fields relevant to entrepreneurism while undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania, and they’ve worked as general manager of a tech company and owner of a branding and copywriting company, respectively. 

Meanwhile, Beverlywood resident Yashari Becher, who served as executive director of a nonprofit and who has degrees from UC Berkeley and UCLA, had been thinking about a family-oriented dispatch service for years. “I was scheduling my work hours around being able to pick up my kids,” she said. 

She remained personally invested in the family transportation concept and decided to “figure it out” in 2014. Through the grapevine, she eventually learned that two moms on the Eastside were hatching a similar plan. Yashari Becher was introduced to McFarland and McGlothlin through a mutual friend, and then joined the Sunday morning business meetings to develop an idea that these three parents knew from firsthand experience would eagerly be embraced if they designed it right. 

Major investors have showed their confidence in HopSkipDrive’s market potential. The company is backed by Santa Monica’s Upfront Ventures, Maveron and FirstMark Capital. McFarland notes that prominent female-focused venture capitalists include Joanne Wilson in New York and Built by Girls Ventures. 

The company’s drivers show their investment in the service by creating a sense of community. Some are stay-at-home mothers — some of whom bring their own tots along for the ride — or empty nesters. 

“It’s also been great to see the driver community we’ve created and this diverse group of caregivers,” McFarland said. “They really love what they’re doing. And I think they appreciate the fact that [the company] is run by women.”

For parents such as Sarah Kate Levy, a Hollywood Hills-based writer and mother of four, the service helps solve the puzzle of getting multiple children around town while balancing a work life. She recalled one particularly challenging situation when HopSkipDrive saved the day. 

“I had kids who had to be in Encino, Burbank and Koreatown, simultaneously. I outsourced Encino,” she said. “It was a crazy location they had to navigate — a church-school campus — but the software was set up to easily provide specific instructions for the drivers, and they managed to track my 8-year-old down with ease.” 

Levy said her oldest daughter received another side benefit from the experience. 

“She loved the independence of riding in her own taxi and was beaming with her own sense of accomplishment every single day she rode with them.”