How ChildLogs Founder Kieran Oldfield Built a Simple SaaS for Childminders with Organic Growth

My wife is an OFSTED-registered childminder, and I used to be her assistant. I noticed that there was so much paperwork to do and records to keep on top of, and the software out there to go digital seemed to make things more complicated than what it should be and was very expensive. So I decided to develop ChildLogs out of inspiration from my wife, so that she and other childminders alike could keep on top of everything simply and without breaking the bank.

I am not too keen on social media; however, posting in childminding communities on there has almost always led to interest and sign-ups. Contrarily, paying for targeted ads on Google and Facebook didn’t get much, if any, interest.

I haven’t really received a lot of complaints, to be honest. The odd one or two users suggest improvements, such as when logging an injury, they’d like a diagram to mark and other things that perhaps make the app a bit more complex. But I feel this would be overkill for an app that I want to make about simplicity. I handle things like this by taking on board people’s recommendations, thanking them, and putting recommendations I see to be great ideas into ChildLogs.

Maybe that it’s for the younger generation of childminders. I’ve made the product very user-friendly so that even older childminders who are less digitally inclined find it simple and structured to easily go about their record keeping.

I’m looking to just continue adding features and scrubbing ChildLogs up in places where I feel it can improve.

I gave 46 childminders and parents signed up to Childlogs.

I used to develop websites for different businesses to showcase their offerings online. I have never been employed in the industry, and I am self-taught. I’ve built other projects, and I built a booking/reservation app that I was thinking of putting out for production, but ChildLogs at the moment is my only live production-level SaaS.

The biggest mistake I’ve probably made is perhaps paying for targeted ads too quickly, without trying to grow organically. Despite not being the biggest fan of social media, I have learned that if used correctly, it is a fantastic tool to take advantage of and reach out organically to different communities. Maybe another mistake I’ve made when I’ve been in the process of making it was perhaps listening to too many ideas and trying to please absolutely everyone. I’ve learned that you can’t do that, and I’ve got to make it the way that I think is best. It will be brilliant for some people, and maybe not other people’s cup of tea, and that’s fine!