Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Sarah Bond is promoted at Microsoft’s Xbox, Sheryl Sandberg launches Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners with her husband, and two cofounders who met at Rent the Runway sell their startup. Have a productive Monday!
– Runway to success. Almost a decade ago, Marissa Evans Alden and Stephanie Choi were working together at Rent the Runway in New York. Evans Alden was the fashion business’s head of radical innovation while Choi was senior director of merchandise planning; Rent the Runway CEO Jenn Hyman paired them together to lead a team.
Choi had a 2-year-old at the time, and she told Evans Alden how tough it was to find the right music enrichment class for her daughter in Brooklyn. “We’re spending our time getting you a dress in under an hour,” Evans Alden remembers thinking. “Why is something important as your daughter’s education hard?”
The pair left Rent the Runway and founded Sawyer in 2015, thinking they would create “ClassPass for kids,” a platform that would allow parents to more easily book kids’ classes. But they found that the underlying infrastructure of the industry wasn’t yet set up to accommodate that vision. “The fitness world had MindBody, but our world had nothing,” Evans Alden said. Mom-and-pop businesses ran their classes on pen and paper or on Google spreadsheets with seasonal signup schedules that varied wildly. They sold classes by the semester, as drop-ins, in packs, and as memberships.
So the cofounders pivoted to build a software platform that would power kids’ enrichment programming registration, payments, and parent communication, for organizations ranging from theater camps to music classes. They then built a marketplace for parents to browse classes on top of that infrastructure.
Today, Coins2Day is the first to report, they have sold Sawyer for an undisclosed sum to DaySmart, an Ann Arbor, Mich.,-based business management software provider. DaySmart is a private company with about 300 employees; Sawyer has a fully remote team of 40 and has raised about $23 million in venture capital funding since its founding from investors including Female Founders Fund and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
DaySmart CEO Patrick Shanahan said in a statement that the acquisition allows his business to “serve a new audience.” For the Sawyer team, selling their company after eight years feels like a “great accomplishment,” Evans Alden says.
Choi’s 2-year-old daughter who inspired the idea for the startup is now 10, and the cofounders have four other kids between them. The kids participate in activities ranging from parkour camp to soccer and theater. “That’s what’s so fun about this industry,” Choi says. “There are so many fun, awesome activities kids get to do.”
Emma Hinchliffe
[email protected]
@_emmahinchliffe
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ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Next chapter. Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd is stepping down as CEO and becoming the dating app business's executive chair. Her successor is Lidiane Jones, who has spent this year as the CEO of Slack under Salesforce. Wall Street Journal
- Race day. At the New York City Marathon yesterday, new mom runners had access to lactation stations along the route. A service also helped runners transport personal nursing pumps from the race's start to its finish. New York Times
- Top of the leaderboards. After the close of its Activision Blizzard acquisition, Microsoft reorganized its Xbox division. The reshuffle promoted Sarah Bond to Xbox president, overseeing platform and hardware. Bond is one of the most senior women of color in gaming. The Verge
- Sandberg out of stealth. Former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg officially launched Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners, a venture capital and private equity firm she started with her husband. The firm will not raise outside capital and will instead be fully-funded by the couple, according to a spokesperson for Sandberg.The Information
- Rank and aisles. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R–Ala.) Spent the better part of this year blocking hundreds of military appointments to protest a policy that accommodates service members who need to travel for reproductive care. Women in the service and in government have come out to oppose the senator's tactics, which they say will make it harder for women to serve.Vanity Fair
- CEO in crisis. The National Association of Realtors named Nykia Wright, the former Chicago Sun-Times CEO, as interim chief executive as scandal rocks the ultra-powerful group. Days before her appointment, the NAR was ordered to pay $1.8 billion for inflating real estate agent fees, a decision it plans to appeal. That was on top legal fallout from reports of sexual harassment and discrimination within the organization, which some realtors say former CEO Bob Goldberg ignored for years. (The NAR said it investigates reports of abuse and "take[s] corrective action as needed.") New York Times
- Captain to coach. Erin Matson was named head coach of UNC field hockey in January, just a year after she led the team to a national championship as a player. But Matson had started prepping and petitioning for the head coach spot long before that, and a successful first season—the No. 1 Tar Heels won the ACC championship on Friday—makes the 23-year-old a promising new leader in the game.The Athletic
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: PayPal appointed Jamie Miller as chief financial officer and promoted Archie Deskus to chief technology officer.
ON MY RADAR
The couple behind the Skims industrial complex The Cut
Jezebel and the question of women's anger The New Yorker
Missy Elliott talks battle with anxiety, Graves' disease ahead of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction Complex
PARTING WORDS
"Ultimately, I’m going to say I look forward to women taking a stronger place in life. Because I think that may be our hope for the future."
—Actress Helen Mirren, who portrays Israel's first female prime minister in the upcoming movie Golda, on her vision for the future of peace in the Middle East
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