YAYA PASS — a startup that is building a technological ecosystem for parents

Laura Yeraliyeva, 28 years old, city — Almaty, founder and CEO @yaya_pass

We met Laura Yeraliyeva, the founder and CEO of the YAYA PASS startup. She shared insights into the challenges modern parents face and how the project helps solve them.

About herself

I am from Zhezkazgan. After school, I studied at Shanghai Maritime University on a scholarship. During that time, I worked at Farfetch, where I was inspired by startup life. I returned to Almaty with big ambitions and self-belief. I joined Chocofamily, growing from a partner manager to a department head in the "Rahmet" project. I gained practical experience and up-to-date knowledge.

While working there, a former colleague from Chocofamily invited me to become a co-founder of the Wonder Woman project — a community for women.

At that time, I got married, had a daughter, and went on maternity leave. I faced the challenge of finding a nanny. It turned out to be a difficult process. I realized that many people encounter this problem. Thus, the idea to found the YAYA startup — a nanny search service — came to me.

About launching the startup

I researched the "parent niche." I conducted customer development and discovered that nannies needed training and scoring. Therefore, I found specialists, arranged for them to be recorded on video, and uploaded the content to the platform. In this way, we trained over 200 nannies and conducted assessment interviews with them.

A few months later, we reached Product-Market Fit. Clients came through word-of-mouth, including bloggers and well-known personalities. The project became profitable. It was time for scaling and attracting investments.

At that point, I realized that "nanny verification and training" is a cash flow business, not a venture capital story. I also understood that this product could only be one of the services provided by our startup. The main goal is to create an ecosystem for parents.

Next, we researched the B2B market. Partners understood how we could help them, so they were eager to work with us. This led to the idea of YAYA PASS — a single subscription to children's centers, which we are actively developing.

About the team

The team was assembled organically. The CTO is my co-founder, ZhanSaya. She reached out to me independently. She had a similar idea, and we joined forces.

The CMO is Enlik. She used our services as a client, and I suggested she develop marketing and sales within our company — areas where she excels.

The COO is an acquaintance who knows the B2B sector well.

I met the product manager during a course, and the sales department consists of former colleagues or acquaintances.

Target audience

The product is designed for parents. We relieve them of the headache associated with searching, selecting, and booking educational centers for their children. The website provides ready-made selections of clubs based on children's age and geolocation.

We also help save family budgets. On average, parents spend 100,000–200,000 tenge per month on clubs and children's leisure activities. We offer a monthly subscription for 49,000 tenge.

We also provide access to sports, developmental, and entertainment centers. For example, we cooperate with the creative center Grow, the football center Footbik, the tennis center Jan dosym, the developmental center Baby Club, and other sections.

For partners, we digitize their audience. We attract new users, work on customer retention, and develop their brands through marketing support.

Incubation, acceleration

I completed three programs:

1. Startup Bootcamp 4traction

2. PowerUP Incubation Program

3. Hero Training Pre-acceleration Program from Draper University.

Now, we are going through the IRA acceleration program at MOST Hub.

Challenges

There are many difficulties in building a startup. If you are looking for an easy path in business development, are not ready to constantly change and improve — you should not enter the venture market.

Here, there are its own rules of the game, crazy speeds, high risks, and sharp turns. There is no time to rest or relax. You must constantly stay in a resourceful and driven state. You need to develop, learn a lot, stay on the wave, and keep your ears open.

I burned out when we worked only with nannies. There was a lot of work, leaving no time for rest. After six months, I couldn't even talk. The worries and responsibility caused stress.

Clients could easily devalue all our work, for example, because a nanny was late. Therefore, we realized that this direction is not created for scaling. Now I see that people are satisfied with our product, and I understand that we are on the right path.

Team members are also important. Some of them are not ready for changes; they lack "startup thinking." However, I have a normal attitude toward firing and hiring. The strong will always remain, while others will naturally fall "out of the system."

Achievements

Our achievements:

— assembled a team of 10 people without investments

— with a minimal marketing budget, made YAYA top of mind in Almaty in the nanny search sector

— achieved positive revenue

— quickly found a new growth point.

Plans

By the end of the year, we plan to attract investments and develop a mobile application.

Next — expanding into new markets with the parent ecosystem.