Group learning tech platform focuses on working parents and caregivers
Companies have come to realize that monetary compensation alone is not enough to retain their top talent. They often observe that the professional demands placed on employees often conflict with their personal needs and obligations, impacting their focus, productivity, and even their ongoing employment. Keep Company, a tech startup based in Maryland now offers an innovative employer-offered benefit that prevents burnout and reduces the attrition of top talent.
Keep Company focuses on the 73% of the workforce that are working parents and caregivers. The startup harnesses data and direct employee feedback, gaining valuable insights that enable employers to better support their top talent. Program results show that members resign from their jobs at a rate five times less than the industry average.
“The loneliness epidemic isn’t going anywhere and we’re encouraged that more companies are addressing the need to care for the substantial majority of the workforce that takes care of someone at home,” said Adrienne Prentice, co-founder and chief executive officer of Keep Company. “At Keep Company, we’re seeing the impact of our solution on individual employees and the firms at large.”
Prentice has a great story about the founding of Keep Company. As a successful corporate attorney, she faced the added challenge of balancing parenthood with her career. She realized that perks were not enough to help her in the transition to be both a lawyer and a mother. She felt she lacked the skills and support to “adequately care for and advocate for myself” while handling those dual demanding roles.
Feeling she was failing and isolated, she became a leadership coach and worked in talent management— which led to her founding MotherNation. The peer support community for new moms, however, only addressed part of caregiver needs—the missing portion was a workplace that fostered belonging.
She and her co-founder Claudia Naim-Burt began by piloting Keep Company’s group learning tech platform for parents and caregivers at global law firms. The platform is a combination of coaching and a custom curriculum that builds communities of like-minded people. The interactive sessions are described as filling a gap between therapy and happy hour.
The program’s results have been dramatic with 95% of members feeling less alone after the core 12-week program and 89% taking better care of themselves. Such a successful impact, resulting in a 6x YoY growth, led to the startup’s recent $1.4 million funding round with Techstars, Idea Fund Partners, VEST Her Ventures, 100KM, Pixel Perfect Ventures, and TEDCO for a total of $2 million to date.
“We invest in women-led companies building the trillion-dollar infrastructure needed to support the future of work, women’s labor participation and economic mobility. I’m incredibly proud to support Keep Company as Claudia and Adrienne’s mission of keeping women and caregivers in the workforce perfectly dovetails with our own,” said Erika Lucas, founder and general partner, VEST Her Ventures. “The social-emotional skills and support Keep Company provides play a crucial role in retaining top-performing talent at the height of their careers.”
The recently raised funds enabled Keep Company to timely add a top talent to its executive team with the hiring of a new chief technology officer, Zvi Band, a well-known tech entrepreneur in the D.C. region. Band brings his experience of having founded and sold a CRM platform for the real estate industry.
“Bringing people together has always been at the forefront of my work and I am honored to join a team deeply committed to addressing one of the biggest challenges parents and caregivers face today,” said Band. “Keep Company is a true benefit to both the employers that offer it and the employees who experience it.”
