It’s a question many college students face–how to earn money around a non-traditional and constantly changing schedules. It’s also a questions many parents face–how to conveniently find a babysitter that you trust. The answer to both of those questions is Wyndy.

Founded by husband and wife Tommy and Ginger Mayfield, Wyndy pairs local families with college students in the area and is one of the only apps on the market that provides mandatory background checks for its users. They pair came up with the idea while Tommy was a full-time attorney and Ginger was going to grad school; they needed a reliable way to find a babysitter for their two young daughters; so they created an app that fit their exact needs and found that a lot of other families had the same needs, too. Meanwhile, so did local college students.

Millennial Magazine sat down with Tommy to discuss the app, and why it’s been such a beneficial resource for college students.

Tell us about Wyndy & why you originally saw a need for it.

Wyndy is a mobile app that makes it easy for parents to find, book and pay background-checked college babysitters.

Wyndy was born from a desire to solve a problem that my wife and I faced. I was working long hours as an attorney at a large corporate firm, my wife was getting her master’s degree at night, and we had two daughters under the age of five. We needed lots of babysitting help, but finding trustworthy and reliable childcare was extremely difficult. Like millions of other parents, we found ourselves using the same technology that parents had been using for more than a decade, which was basically no technology.  We’d meet a handful of sitters through offline relationships, add their numbers to our phones, and then send what seemed like hundreds of text messages to book one. We’d then have to stop by the ATM late at night or scrounge for the checkbook to pay the sitter.

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It occurred to us that we were living in a world where apps like Lyft and Shipt made it possible to get a ride or have our groceries delivered at the tap of a button. Why wasn’t there an app that could make it just as easy to find, book, and pay trusted babysitters? We set out to harness the power of modern technology to transform the way parents find reliable childcare by connecting them with a community of vetted, background-checked college babysitters.

Why do you specifically partner with college students for child care with Wyndy?

Before Wyndy, many of our favorite sitters were college students.  By virtue of their enrollment in top-tier local universities, they had already distinguished themselves as intelligent and responsible young adults.  In many ways, they reminded my wife and I of ourselves when we were in college. Our daughters also loved these sitters because they got down on the floor and really engaged with the kids.  As we began thinking about Wyndy as a concept, we recognized that there are parents all over the country who are already trying to connect with local college students to meet their babysitting needs.  We believed that if we could start with those students as our potential supply pool, then add additional trust-building features, we could create a platform that parents would love and that had the potential to expand to cities across the country.

Why do you believe Wyndy is a good option of income for college students?

Wyndy is a great way for college students to find and book local babysitting jobs that fit within their schedule! Wyndys can work when they want, as often they want. They can also select jobs based on availability, desired pay rate, number of kids, and the location of the job. Wyndy helps students build valuable relationships and find connections for future jobs, and some of those connections can turn into job references once the students graduate. Using Wyndy to book babysitting jobs opens more doors than the traditional method, while providing additional income with an unlimited cap!

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How can college students get involved outside of the app?

For those Wyndys that want to be more involved in Wyndy and our growth we have internship and campus representative opportunities.

What advice do you have for entrepreneurs who want to create an app?

Before taking the plunge into creating an app, I’d my strongest advice would be to conduct market research, organize focus groups and interviews with potential users, and work hard to understand the competitive landscape.

Do as much as you can manually before diving into actually building the app. Don’t assume you know exactly how your users need or want to use your product. The worst thing that could happen is to build something that your customers can’t or don’t want to use.

Ideas are a dime a dozen, the real challenge is execution and the devil is in the details.

To learn more about Wyndy, visit their website or download their app from the App Store.