It was during COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 when two Shopify employees decided to quit their jobs to pursue their dreams. Michael Perry and Mike Taylor wanted to create a platform that can help parents better manage their hectic schedule and spend more family time. Perry and Taylor, together founded Kit that got acquired by Shopify in 2016, founded Maple, an all-in-one household management platform.
Aimed at easing the parenting and organisation work, Maple also focuses on helping parents evenly distribute work and collaborate asynchronously.
We’re building the app ecosystem of apps, services, all kinds of things that are going to live on this platform that’s going to revolutionize parenting.
Michael Perry, Co-founder, Maple
Funding
Launched with the seed funding of $3.5 million, the round was led by Inspired Capital and participated by Box Group and a number of angel investors at Shopify including Harley Finkelstein, President at the Canada-based company. The app billed as “family tech platform” is available both on iPhone and Android.
“I think you’re gonna see a lot of Shopify inspiration in this product – we think we’re the back office of every family. And we think we’re building the app ecosystem of apps, services, all kinds of things that are going to live on this platform that’s going to revolutionize parenting,” Perry had told techcrunch.com.
“You have 125 million households in America, you have 3 million children being born every year, you have 30% of the households in America being single parent-run households. It’s hard. Some people are working one two jobs, most couples are working couples. Every industry that’s changed has been about making things more accessible. In the case of Shopify, at one point building, an online store required hundreds of thousands of dollars and a bunch of skilled people. Now you can start a store for $20 in five minutes – 20 years ago, that was unfathomable,” he added.
Partners
Maple’s primary interface comprises of a list of tasks that parents need to perform during the day. It asks parents about their responsibilities in the household and then prepare a customised schedule to help them get those tasks completed.
Maple has partnered with Yumi, a food and nutrition brand for babies; Haus, which will offer date night packages for parents and Lalo, a DTC furniture and gear brand for toddlers.
Function
Maple allows families to schedule, share lists, chat, organise and work together from anywhere. The platform also enables parents to take help of other family members for the completion of tasks and later thank them for their help. According to Perry, the concept of appreciation and small social interactions was a key ingredient he prioritized during the product design.
Maple helps parents create plans, strategize needs such as household chores, weekly meals, vacation itineraries, school schedules and much more. Maple Browser allows anyone in the Maple community to publish a plan in shared browser. These plans can then be discovered, used, downloaded and customised by another parent or family using the app. Acting as a shared resource for families to crowdsource information, parents can now earn for what has always been an unpaid labour.
Wake-up Call
Talking to businesswire.com in September 2022, Perry, CEO and Co-Founder of Maple had said, “Having our first child was a wake up call for me. Unpaid labor is often placed on the primary caregiver, and we see that households operate very much under the 80/20 principle. Parents, and especially Mom, are expected to maintain a career and run a seamless back office when it comes to their family, without any tools that are tailored for the task.”
“Maple changed the game by creating tech specifically for the family unit. Now with Maple Browser, parents can get back invaluable time with their families, which otherwise would have been spent creating repetitive lists or scouring the internet for information. This is the new way for parents to leverage the knowledge of caregivers from across North America, and eventually globally,” he added.
Maple Browser
Maple Browser offers a new way to discover “ready made plans” that includes to-dos, calendar events and notes. The plans can be downloaded and used by any user of the app. The browser accessible to all users has more than 300 plans prepared by households across North America and industry leaders. Even over “40,000” users can share plans to help other families, thus providing a platform for parents to participate in creator economy. They can share their exclusive plans at a set price.
Maple Browser allows users to publish plans created with the help of app’s tools, which includes:
- Collaborative Notes: Maple Notes help users gather information in a shared place. Parents can create guides, share instructions regarding an upcoming trip and save family recipes among others.
- Organized To-Do Lists: Team can complete tasks efficiently. One can create shared to-do lists, delegate tasks and get things completed as a team. Maple will inform everyone as the things are done.
- Family Chat: Maple keeps everyone in loop with special household chats inside each plan. This aims to improves the communication of family.
- Shared Calendar: Users can bring all family events at one place by coordinating schedules, tracking kids’ activities, creating new events. Maple thus helps in keeping family on the same page.
Privacy
In a 2021 interview to techcrunch.com, Perry shared his ambitions of creating “the family graph” that can put into use for creating special recommendations and optimise the task of family management. However, people can act reluctant to share personal information and their work lives.
Commenting on this aspect, Perry said that Maple team prioritise user privacy at each step. Maple limits what, when and how it exposes information to its partners. After all, Perry, a father and a husband can understand the adverse effect of incursion into private life.
About Maple Founders
Michael Perry: Founder & CEO at Maple, was earlier Director of Kit, a “fully automated virtual marketing assistant for small business owners”. He worked on the project for 6 years, 11 months before it was acquired by Shopify. In August 2011, he founded GVING, a “cloud CRM solution for small businesses to establish a database of customers”.
Mike Taylor: CTO & Co-Founder at Maple, co-founded Kit in June 2014. He joined Shopify as a Senior Lead of Engineering and after working for over 4 years, he quit his job to work on Maple. He holds Bachelor’s degree in Molecular Biology from California State University-East Bay.
