I never really understood the idea of childcare marketplaces.

I kept that discomfort mostly to myself, because I could see that many parents were using them. And when I tried them myself to find babysitters, I could see the surface value: they offered options. But for me, that was all they offered. They never felt truly satisfying. They did not resolve something deeper I was experiencing as a mother.

For a long time, I wondered whether I was the only one feeling this. My search went on, and I was wondering if I was someone who is the only one having the problem.

I started working on Nooks.

As we did, we started meeting parents who were using Nooks not just because they needed “childcare” in the conventional sense, but because they needed a break, some time to themselves, or room to return to unfinished parts of their lives. They wanted to work on their computers, write, make art, think, breathe. Many simply wanted to sit for a while and feel like themselves again.

That changed my understanding of the problem.

Before COVID, we did not have a clear business pattern. We were just trying things and learning as we went. Many business owners simply liked the concept and supported us. Whole Foods and the Museum of Art and History in Santa Cruz were among the first to welcome us. Later, coffeeshops allowed us to host Nooks. Philz Coffee and Bazaar Cafe were two of them.

I still remember those early days vividly. The owner of Bazaar Cafe would sometimes play banjo during the Nooks. He used to come early for me. Maybe he sensed that it would help me feel steadier. These are small memories, but I hold onto them because they point to something important: what was happening there was at a human scale. The way people showed up mattered. The connection mattered. It was not scalable in the usual startup sense, but it was real.

I was lucky to have mentors who believed. I went through programs. I learned to think more rigorously about what I was building. But even then, I could not fully answer the questions people asked. Was this a viable business? What exactly was happening in Nooks? Why did it feel meaningful, even when I could not fully explain it?

Then Covid happened.

After that, I went through more programs, spent time thinking about network theory and DAOs, and wrote a white paper that pushed me to go deeper. I began asking myself: What is really happening in Nooks? Why does it feel different? What is it that parents are actually finding there?

The word that kept coming back to me was relationship.

I do not know yet whether the relationship can be “scaled” in the way people usually want things to scale. But I do know there is something there worth taking seriously.

After COVID, parents began asking for Nooks again. At the same time, pods became more popular. More families started searching for something in between existing categories: not quite daycare, not quite school, not quite a playdate. Micro-schools, homeschool pods, care pods, all of these forms started appearing more visibly. Something in family life and work life had shifted.

And still, parents were looking for something more.

When Nooks restarted, each Nook that formed continued. Since 2025, we have hosted Nooks in different kinds of spaces, and one thing has become increasingly clear to me: the spaces matter enormously. The Nooks that felt strongest and most sustaining were not simply those with available square footage. They were the spaces where people interacted in humane ways, where there was warmth, flexibility, recognition, and care in how the hosting itself happened.

The two spaces I am working with right now are both places where I know the owners personally. We appreciate one another’s work. There is real regard there. And I think that matters more than we often admit. Parents, teachers, and space partners are not just looking for anything other than this in Nooks. They are looking for a way to develop a relationship around care.

That is why I think I was never comfortable with marketplaces in childcare.

Marketplaces are good at presenting options. They can help organize supplies. They can make search easier. But I do not think the deeper problem in childcare is simply a search problem.

I saw this even more clearly when I visited childcare owners who wanted to host Nooks and who were listed on every marketplace, yet still were not filling to capacity. I visited some of these facilities. There was nothing obviously wrong. The teachers were nurturing. The environments were good. And yet something was still not clicking.

So what was going wrong?

What I keep coming back to is this: many people are looking for spaces in which relationships have a chance to develop, and needs have a chance to be heard. Trust develops through repetition. It develops through seeing the same people again, returning to the same place, being recognized, settling into rhythm, and feeling that one’s child is held in a living environment rather than simply placed into a slot.

That is very hard to create through a marketplace alone.

What Nooks seem to be doing is creating neighborhood-based micro-communities where this kind of trust can form. It is still scattered. Much of it is still informal. Many parents are trying to build these structures on their own. But intention matters, and awareness matters. When we pay attention to the actual human problem, something different becomes possible.

I am still asking larger questions.

Can this be scaled? If so, how? What would it mean to scale something without flattening the relationships that give it value? How do ideas like malleable nodes and network theory come into the picture? If each Nook is a local relational unit shaped by its parents, facilitators, and space, then perhaps the right model is not a centralized marketplace at all, but a network of place-based nodes that remain local, adaptive, and human while still learning from one another.

I do not have the full answer yet.

But I know this much: marketplaces may solve for optionality, but they do not necessarily solve for trust. And trust, I increasingly believe, is the deeper problem.

That may be why Nooks continue. That may be why parents return. That may be why certain spaces matter so much. And that may be why what looks, at first, like a childcare problem is actually a deeper question about how care, work, neighborhood life, and human relationships can be re-stitched together.