'Day Care On Wheels': How A Bay Area Mother Dreamed Up Kango

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — When Sara Schaer pictures her upbringing, she remembers that her mother was always driving. Whether it was to horseback riding or piano lessons, Schaer was raised with the feeling that anything was possible because her mother was always there for her.

As the co-founder and CEO of Kango, a ride-share app for children, Schaer said she wants mothers and parental figures and their children to feel that way, too: It's one of many reasons she launched what she calls a "day care on wheels."

Schaer, a San Francisco resident and mother of two sons, worked at a startup in the 2000s in the city when her children were young. But when her sons started preschool, Schaer was saddled with an age-old dilemma: how to be a good mother without giving up her career.

"Everywhere I looked, it appeared like it was a universal hugely acute pain point, you know, parents having to choose whether to go back to work or not, and I struggled with that myself," Schaer told Patch.

Her husband worked more than an hour away down the peninsula, and Schaer had her hands full during the day running a global team across multiple time zones.

"It was very difficult," she said. "Hitting those pain points of juggling the difficult, 'Can't be everywhere at once' issues really spurred me to give birth to the concept of Kango."

A problem-solver by nature, Schaer launched Kango in 2012. By 2021, the Bay Area-based app had garnered thousands of drivers who served families from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and now the Central Valley and Modesto areas. Last year, the app began offering services in Arizona as well.

"I just wanted kids to feel like they could reach for their dreams, and the parents also to be able to do that without having feelings of guilt or feelings of frustration or fear," she said. "We wanted them to feel that their child was safe, and we really wanted to make that come through in every aspect of the service."

The app isn't the only ride-hailing company for children. Zum and HopSkipDrive are also apps that serve families in California.

Out of hundreds of ratings on Apple's App Store, Kango has received mostly five-star reviews.

"Kango saved me several times at the end of the school year when I needed to get my son rides to and from school 45 minutes away," one reviewer wrote. "Their service is excellent, always responding to me right away and resolving any issues that came up."

Kango, Schaer clarified, isn't necessarily "Uber for kids," as many call it. Unlike Lyft and Uber, the company requires its drivers to undergo fingerprinting.

But those are just some basic requirements. Kango also checks driving records, meets drivers in person and requires them to attend an orientation. Cars must pass a 19-point vehicle inspection and an additional background check through the California TrustLine Caregiver Registry.

"We're the only ones licensed and insured to transport unaccompanied minors under the age of 5," she said. "It's not just having a curbside-to-curbside pickup. We'll never leave the scene of a drop-off if a child is unsafe or not met."

On the other end, Kango has a team whose sole function is to monitor rides and watch them in real time.

"We can see every ride happening as it's happening," she said "Everything is trackable on a map. Everything is time-stamped."

The app is tailored for young children who need a ride home from preschool, kids who need to be carted to and from soccer practice, or parents who want to make sure their teenage daughter has a way to get home safe from a party, Schaer said. Kango also has a day care arm, which Schaer hoped would be another safe and accessible tool for parents.

And then the pandemic hit the West Coast, upending the lives of virtually every California parent and child. "Activity dropped very, very significantly in a very short amount of time in March 2020," she said.

So Schaer pivoted into problem-solving mode. Almost immediately, Kango drivers began making Costco runs, picking up perscriptions at pharmacies and even delivering a Thanksgiving meal to a family. This was, of course, in addition to consulting a medical panel to implement all of the coronavirus safety precautions Californians have grown used to in 2021.

Now that vaccinations are on the rise in the Golden State, Schaer said many of her drivers are returning to work as parents and kids are reintegrating themselves.

This Mother's Day, Schaer and her family will head to Half Moon Bay, where she'll be reunited with her mom, the one who once carted her around to pursue her dreams.

"She was in graduate school at the time when I was born," Schaer said. "And this was in the '70s. She dropped out of the program she was in, and I always remembered, 'What would she have wanted to do?'"

After Schaer graduated from high school, her mother returned to graduate school and went on to teach.

"So it was just a pause, as it turns out," Schaer said. "But when I was born, she felt or she chose to stop what she was doing and step off that particular path, at least for a while. Some of the confidence I have today is because I was allowed to push myself. ... Those were values I wanted for my own children."

Today, Schaer hopes that Kango can help both parents and children reach their goals by removing the stress of treacherous, back-and-forth commutes and, above all, safety.

"Particularly for mothers, but for parents in general, I wanted them to feel like they didn't have to put either their education or professional goals on hold just because they become parents," she said. "I just wanted everything to be possible and that you can reach for the stars, and let your dreams come true."