The Pinay who worked to have it all — and succeeded!
As a young Filipina mom living in the United States with elderly parents, Sheila Marcelo saw the necessity of having a go-to service for families who need assistance, and the opportunity to help her kababayans. Doing good with Care.com was her way of giving back.
I asked, is Care.com akin to an employment agency?
“No, we’re just a marketplace, just a marketplace to match families and caregivers. It’s like a match.com, like a dating website. Or it’s sort of like LinkedIn for jobs.” Care.com earned its income through a subscription service. “We charge the families because they have the deeper pockets,” says Sheila, who also relaxes by gardening and designing interiors.
The nannies who were employed didn’t give Care.com a part of their first month’s salary.
“That’s why it was such a revolutionary product that we ended up doing because if you think about it, nannies and caregivers don’t make enough money. And nor did we charge agency fees. We didn’t extract value from them.”
“Care.com has numerous offices. Our largest headquarters were in the Boston area. The second one was in Berlin. Then we had an office in the Bay Area and in Austin, Texas. We had numerous offices.” Care. com was founded on “the purpose to help every family at each stage of care and today. Although I’m no longer at the helm, the company helps millions of families at home and at work across 20+ countries and growing.” Sheila sold Care.com in 2020, at the height of the pandemic. “I didn’t have a crystal ball. I did not. No, it just was the timing worked out. And then I took a year off and then I joined NEA, one of the largest private equity firms. I was a venture partner. And then there, I started two companies, one called Proof of Learn, which is teaching next-gen jobs. And that’s why I’m spending a lot more time in different countries around the world where we launch university partnerships here in the Philippines.
“What makes it different is it makes the graduates job-ready on what we call next-gen jobs, at the latest platforms, and we partner with the latest platforms. Like Solana or Avalanche and Blockchain. And we update the curriculum of the latest releases that they have. And those platforms give grants to the students as they complete. So they can actually generate income while taking the courses. And so the schools love it. We don’t charge licensing fees. We don’t charge extra tuition. Whatever tuition they’re already paying the school, that’s great. We just embed it so, because our dream is to get jobs. And that business model will charge employers.”
And then Sheila also has Ohai.ai. According to its website, Ohai.ai is “focused on developing solutions for Chief Household Officers, primarily women, helping them achieve their utmost potential.”
“It’s a greeting. So we say. Oh, hi!” explains Sheila. “Every morning, the assistant, her name is Oh, she says, ‘Oh, hi there!’ So it’s a greeting. It makes everybody feel warm.” Ohai.ai is another mission-oriented venture. “Because when we were developing an AI course (for Proof of Learn), the intermediate course using AI to complete tasks, automated tasks, I paused. I said, instead of just teaching developers how to use this, can we use the automated AI to complete tasks for families?”
“AI is really a virtual assistant for families. It can book schedules, move meetings for you, resolve conflicts…”
Launched just this January 2024, it is designed to lighten the load for busy parents through “O,” the virtual assistant, who helps in managing schedules, coordinating family tasks, booking appointments, setting reminders, sorting through emails, and more. The Ohai.ai team consists of early employees of Care.com, data science and AI experts, and product and engineering leaders from beloved consumer brands.
All her innovative startups fulfill their mission and vision — and yes, make money.
Sheila believes in creating companies with social impact that are, at the same time, not dependent on fund-raisers.
“I tend to focus on problems, not through philanthropy. And there’s definitely a movement. I see that you can build — what we call the double bottom line, which means you can not only create a profitable company that sustains your mission for social impact, because the challenge with some philanthropy and non-profits is that they have to constantly raise money to impact lives.”
In Sheila’s case, “I’ve proven that you can build companies that are profitable for good. So it’s a very fundamentally different approach. In fact, I partnered with, and I’m a member of, Forward Global. It’s high net worth individuals around the world that come together. And they create social impact, either for profit or non-profit, it doesn’t matter. As long as you create an impact.”
“I always say to people to solve problems. Whether they’re a working parent or a stay-at-home parent, it doesn’t matter, that you’re building products to help them. Because every family dynamic is so unique and independent, that it’s personalized to the situation.”
So did this Pinay conquer the world of technology, and pursue her causes as well?
“I’ve learned through time in a boardroom, I want to be valued for my brain, as opposed to my skin color or my gender. And the way to do that is to conquer the bias by being a role model for intelligence.”
By using her own needs as a working wife, mother and daughter as her business model, Sheila has become the queen of care, even in the practical sense of the word.