JoyLet

It’s no secret that becoming a new parent is expensive. Despite awareness of this, new parents are shocked when they realize that the high-priced gear and clothes their child uses are outgrown or phased out within a few months. Babies may not even like or use expensive pieces of gearSa. Thousands of dollars spent on equipment are flushed down the drain after a few months of use, never to see the light of day. This is incredibly frustrating for new parents, especially those without a substantial income to supplement this rapid, expensive cycle. It’s also concerning from a waste perspective.

This is where JoyLet comes in. Founders Alli and Natalie recognized the problem and decided to find a better way. JoyLet is a marketplace for monthly baby gear and toddler toy rentals. Customers can use the website to rent one product at a time. They are charged a monthly subscription fee and pay a one-time fee for cleaning, pickup, and delivery. Bundles allow them to rent multiple products at once. JoyLet creates curated bundles based on activities and developmental stages and allows customers to create their own based on their specific needs.

JoyLet formed during Alli and Natalie’s MBA studies at Georgetown University. However, the idea itself existed long before then. Prior to and during her MBA, Alli was a member of the strategy and marketing and analysis team at United Rentals, the world’s largest construction equipment rental company. At the time, she and her husband were also thinking about starting a family. They looked at costs, and with a sustainability mindset, they were concerned about purchasing baby gear for a few months’ use. Alli, having a rental industry background, took a deeper look at the problem. She believed she had the skills and expertise to develop a real solution. To her, implementing a rental model made sense from an economic perspective. The products they would rent would be durable, well made, and only used for a few months or a season at a time. The innovation cycle is slow given the industry’s stringent regulations, and there is good longevity on the assets, especially because kids are aging out of them every three to six months. Alli entered her MBA program with this in mind and met Natalie in class. Alli pitched the idea as part of an assignment and Natalie joined her project group, providing the yin to her yang. As part of the class, the two built a business plan and conducted surveys and interviews of hundreds of potential customers. Natalie and Alli teamed up after the class and pitched the idea in different competitions. They succeeded and found enough funding to launch their initial site. From there, they performed market tests and, as of a few months ago, have both left their jobs to pursue JoyLet full time.

Despite its founders’ lack of technical background, JoyLet has accomplished a great deal, bringing a viable solution to market. What distinguishes it from other traditional companies is the absence of a traditional CTO. In early 2022, Alli and Natalie considered hiring one. They asked Vertex Labs for guidance and evaluation of candidates’ technical strengths. They also asked them to gauge the feasibility of proposals from development studios they considered contracting for their software needs. Helping them navigate these murky waters, Vertex Labs established a strong relationship with JoyLet and, since then, has met with Alli and Natalie biweekly to advise on technical and strategic questions.

While Vertex Labs’ insight was invaluable, there are many challenges in building and managing a tech-enabled service like JoyLet. Alli cited the most difficult part of the process, thus far, as “fighting imposter syndrome and trusting that what [they’ve] built is sufficient, despite neither cofounder having a technical background.” At the initial stages of fundraising, before JoyLet had the customer roster to prove their capabilities, Alli and Natalie received some pushback because they didn’t have a technical founder. Most people, even some investors, assume that you can’t build a startup without one. Having recently canvassed the market to evaluate other rental software, JoyLet found that the low code/no code solution they developed is in parity with, or better than, the others out there. Overcoming this self-doubt—this technical imposter syndrome—was one of the most persistent challenges JoyLet faced during their foundation. Now, they’ve not only proved that you don’t need a technical founder to succeed, but that it is more than possible for a nontechnical person to develop the automation and integration required by tech-enabled service companies.

Going forward, JoyLet has big ambitions to scale across the country while ensuring that the growth is sustainable. In the near term, the founders are keeping a sustained focus on the company’s home market of DC and the surrounding mid-Atlantic market. JoyLet is constantly taking in user feedback and making changes to their business to reflect customers’ desires. Before getting ahead of themselves, they want to establish success in DC first. If they can do that, more growth will surely be possible.