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"Was anyone else obsessed with The Babysitter&amp;#x27;s Club? My fav character was cool New Yorker, Stacey. She had great 80&amp;#x27;s hair--gotta love a good perm (I&amp;#x27;m guilty of getting em in my younger days). Well if you liked the series as a kid--you&amp;#x27;re going to love today&amp;#x27;s topic and service: SitterCity.com. I interviewed the founder, Genevieve Thiers, to find out more. The interview after the jump.Storked!: Do you remember having a cool babysitter when you were little? (What did you guys do?) GT: I do remember having a great sitter that would always entertain my twin sister and I with arts and crafts projects and cookie baking. Storked!: Lucky! My parents always left us with my Gram and Pop--and don&amp;#x27;t get me wrong, they were awesome. They took Carlo, Brian and I to Hot Grill for burgers and shakes and my Gram taught me how to crochet yarn necklaces! But, I always kind of envied my friends who were left with the cool high school juniors. So, did you babysit as a teen? GT: Not only did I babysit all of my younger siblings, my twin sister and I were in competition for who logged the most sitting hours for our neighborhood. Storked!: I started sitting for my neighbors when I was 12. We built forts out of pillows and blankets in their basement and drew on the tiles with these awesome crayons when it was bathtime. In high school, I worked for a daycare after school, where I met a family that would become a routine gig throughout HS and even college when I was home on breaks. I was a big arts and crafts and dress-up tea party sitter. Babysitting was never a chore. I loved playing dolls and eating things like double-stuffed Oreos for a few a hours a week--super relaxing! Now tell me, how was Sittercity.com born? (Was it like Kristy&amp;#x27;s Great Idea from the BSC? Humor me and say yes.) GT: Sort of? Yes! As a college student in Boston, I worked my way through school babysitting for over 30 families. One fateful day, I saw a pregnant woman slowing climbing the 189 steps to Boston College&amp;#x27;s upper campus to post flyers for a babysitting job. Horrified, I asked the mother-to-be for the flyers, sent her home and posted them myself. While papering the university, I had an epiphany. What if there was one central place where parents could meet all of the sitters and nannies in that city? And with this, Sittercity.com was born. I modeled Sittercity.com after online dating websites and enthusiastically took my idea to investors. After hearing statements like: &amp;quot;My wife handles that&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;It&amp;#x27;s a babysitters club,&amp;quot; I bought the Sittercity.com domain myself and hired two friends to create the website. To attract babysitters, I printed 20,000 flyers and covered the city of Boston on foot. I gained 600 sitters before the site&amp;#x27;s launch! Storked!: How many parents currently use Sittercity.com? GT: We currently have more than 200,000 parents on our site. Storked!: How many sitters rely on Sittercity.com for their employment needs? GT: We have more than a million care provider profiles. Storked!: Is Sittercity.com nationwide? I live in Wayne, NJ. GT: We have sitters in every city nationwide. We have about 25,000 sitters within a 30 mile radius of Wayne, NJ. (Wowza, I wonder if anyone wants to babysit the famous JD! I never have a sitter. I spent the entire weekend with JD--good times, but still, I need to get out more.) What do you want moms new to your site like me to know? GT: Not only will you be able to find a multitude of qualified sitters in your area, choosing a sitter from Sittercity gives an even better peace of mind than using your neighborhood teen, as you can read references, parent feedback and background checks. Not only is Sittercity safe and easy to use, it&amp;#x27;s extremely affordable. And speaking of affordable, Genevieve is offering Storked! readers an exclusive 10% off. Code is: STORKED and yay it never expires (so tell your friends!) So tell me my lovely Storked! readers: Do you think it&amp;#x27;s safe to secure a sitter, online? Let&amp;#x27;s discuss."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/sex-love-life/blogs/storked/2008/11/sittercitycom-pretty-cool>