“I have another idea,” says Nick Waverek, on stage for the third or fourth time. “I started thinking about this when we had a baby.”

It’s the first night of Startup Weekend, a night teeming with innovative ideas. We’ve heard from the other two winners of the event – a wireless dog collar and a disruptive education model. You can imagine it was a tough choice to pick the top three. But this idea – the Infynt app – got first place.

And it started with a baby.

The Paper Problem

Nick and his wife Kirsten started looking into daycares months before their boy, now a 6-month-old named Soren, was born. After a grueling search, they chose one that appealed to them for its tech integration and additional security. But there was still something lacking.

For parents, especially those with infants, it’s crucial to know what their child’s habits are; daycares keep track of this throughout the day, keeping tabs on the kids’ eating habits, naptimes, diaper changes, etc. At the end of the day, they hand you the info on a piece of paper. Which usually gets tossed.

“When we were trying to figure out, when was the last time he ate? What did he eat? How’s his sleep? Why is he a cranky beast?…A lot of those things are coming to us in that piece of paper,” Waverek said. “If you need to look back for any reason, you have to shuffle through a stack of papers, and hopefully they’re dated. It seemed like this was a problem everywhere.”

Information like that can be crucial, especially for infant care. More and more, hospitals are encouraging parents to keep tabs on their child to figure out “what’s normal,” Waverek said.

“It’s not really important information until something goes wrong,” he said.

The Birth of Infynt

The solution Waverek proposed that first evening was an app that daycares could use to have a real-time connection with parents, and provide historical data for their child. What formed around the pitch was a team of five dads and a father daughter combo.

“All of a sudden we realize we had five dads in Fargo that are looking at changing the way childcare happens, and looking at it as the Big Data of baby,” Waverek said.

Waverek, a three-time Startup Weekend veteran with a second place trophy under his belt, used his past experience to get the team rolling right away. Much of the first half of the weekend, he said, was spent brainstorming and talking to multiple daycares and parents about the problem.

After hours of ideating and validation, they reached what perhaps could be called, the eye of the storm.

“The a-ha moment of Startup Weekend is when you look at that whiteboard, at what you’ve refined as your problem statement, and you all agree that that’s a real problem. And that’s what we have to solve,” Waverek said.

“Of course it happened for us like eight times. But the last time it happened, you could just feel the silence in the room and the energy in the room of like, yeah, that’s what we gotta do.”

Thus, Infynt was born at 4:00 PM on Saturday, March 28, weighing in at an estimated 2 or 3 lbs. Small, but healthy, and growing fast. In fact, by Sunday when it came time to present, the team had a polished presentation and a working prototype.

Tech Dads & Smartphone Moms

What they showed the audience, and what wowed the judges, was an app that allows daycares to input data about each child, by tapping on a picture of that child. Parents can also access information on their child through a username, and have direct communication with the daycare. This way daycares can send updates such as, “Soren took a 30 minute nap today”  as well as send a picture of Soren playing with blocks.

Sick kids, snow days, or other needed updates are communicated directly between parents and daycare as well.

“We decided to build Infynt to be that collaborative, activity tracking app and platform, so that way parents and childcare providers can very easily be tracking in the same system,” Waverek said.

Besides being functional, Waverek and his team also wanted to make it “a beautiful and native user experience.” This is to appeal their target market of increasingly tech-savvy parents, who are tired with the old-school methods.

“The ones that are adapting and serving that modern parent marketplace, the smartphone moms and the tech dads…they can help bring the perception of daycare providers up a bit,” Waverek said. “There’s an opportunity to create a premium product, and even charge more for it.”

First Steps

How much to charge, however, is what the team is now discussing. Waverek said the team is meeting up to talk price models, and how to balance price and value. Oh, and also how to build the app; four members of the team have tech background from their work with software solution company eOne, but none have any experience with mobile, Waverek said.

“We’ve built web stuff but no one on our team has ever touched mobile,” he said. “That’s another big driver force is just doing something new.”

Can we expect more from Infynt? Here’s what Waverek had to say:

“As you can see, we’re kinda starting to charge forth with it…while not quitting our day jobs.”

Baby steps, guys. Baby steps.

 

Learn more about Infynt here!  (you can also request a Beta invite!)

Photos courtesy of Zach Davis Photography.