Empowering Parents To Track Their Children’s Development Proactively
Tryde helps parents track childhood development milestones, provides guidance on toys to purchase, and encourages parental presence. Tryde is led by a mother-daughter founder duo, Cheri Bolebruch and Jordan Bolebruch.
Cheri has been working with infants and toddlers for 40+ years. She has been with the early intervention program for 20+ years. She spent most of this time evaluating children in their home or daycare settings. She noticed early on that parents needed more access to information regarding developmental milestones that are expected at each age. Parents were seeking clear and concise guidelines to determine their children’s developmental levels in all areas (Physical Development, Language, Cognitive, and Social Development.)
Jordan started her career in finance and moved on to tech a few years ago. Sh brings strong business and marketing expertise to complement Cheri’s on-the-ground childhood development experience.
They see a strong social mission to their work with Tryde and have launched an app with lower prices than what their competitors charge in order to broaden access.
What is the family of the future and how does Tryde fit into that?
Currently families are leaning more towards technology. However, you will note that 90% of the toys we recommend revolve around real play and physical toys. We hope the family of the future looks a lot like the family of 1970s — where kids spend a lot of time playing outside and families do things together. The activities we suggest are based on you interacting with your child.
Moment of inspiration for Tryde?
It was not a moment. It was Cheri’s day-to-day life working and listening to people saying that they cannot find information on childhood development online. When they did find information online, it made the parents more fearful. Cheri cited one example of a mother completing a survey online that declared her child was autistic without any in-person evaluation or advanced diagnostic techniques. Cheri firmly supports the stance that Tryde should not make suggestions about developmental delays but rather support the development process of children by educating parents.
Cheri states:
“We do not want to scare people. We want to educate parents on what their children should be doing. Parents often need guidelines about what is appropriate for development at specific ages. We want to teach parents to be your child’s own advocate.”
What is Tryde’s overarching mission?
Tryde’s mission is to empower parents with the ability to assess and track their children’s current developmental milestones. In addition, Tryde provides practical suggestions and toy recommendations to assist in development. Tryde is designed to get children on track early. If you feel your child is not at the right stage, Tryde helps you to take action. Tryde is just a resource and always recommends if you have concerns to reach out to your healthcare provider.
What type of customer research did you conduct before launching Tryde?
Tryde was built on Cheri’s 40+ years of experience talking to parents and evaluating children. In terms of launching the app, Jordan and Cheri worked closely with a group of parents to see if they would incorporate the app into their day-to-day life. The group provided feedback and critical beta testing of features like the toy recommendations and Ask Tryde feature.
One of their key takeaways from beta testing and Cheri’s years of experience was that parents do not have a strong understanding of all aspects of childhood development. Parents tend to focus on physical skills like gross motor and fine motor — rather than language, social, and cognitive development. Jordan and Cheri also picked up on the importance of building a community where parents can talk to each other and share suggestions. They hope to focus on community-building once they establish a solid base of Tryde customers.
Their greatest accomplishment so far is that their customer feedback supports that the app is easy to use. Jordan stated,
“Ease of use is the number one thing we wanted to go after. We envision parents taking 10 minutes to use the app — be it on their commute or before a meeting starts. In 10 minutes, you can complete an assessment of your child’s skills, receive toy recommendations, and even send a note out to the Tryde expert line for specific questions.”
Tryde’s Rapid Response to COVID-19
In response to COVID-19, the Tryde team is offering parents and caretakers access to their “Ask Tryde” feature for free independent of the app. They are offering completely free access to their email, Info@trydeapp.com where parents can ask any developmental questions regarding their child ages newborn to 2 1/2 years old to Cheri! Through this feature, they also offer additional suggestions not found in the app as well as toy ideas. Their instagram account is also available and updated multiple times weekly with different developmental suggestions and toy suggestions for parents in a variety of skill sets.
What are your entrepreneurial words to live by?
Cheri: Get Jordan to do it!
Jordan: Always be working, always be thinking!
