Founded after a new mother’s difficult return to work, BubbaDesk has built a 12,000-person waiting list by offering parents something traditional childcare can’t.
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Jessie Glew had barely settled in as a first-time CEO when she found herself facing a personal crunch. Her ASX-listed company, WOTSO, was set to double its co-working spaces in the next two years.
And she was pregnant with her first.
“I have never had a more existential crisis than that moment,” Glew recalls. “How the heck am I going to do this?”
She did not take maternity leave. “I was working in hospital when Harley was born, I kid you not,” says Glew over a Zoom call from her co-working space in Sydney’s Neutral Bay.
Glew admits that the decision to pursue a trial of a new concept – the co-working crèche – was driven by her “part-selfish” needs. She connected with a new outfit called BubbaDesk, and within weeks, a crèche had been set up at Glew’s Neutral Bay office.
What Glew stumbled into out of necessity is emerging as one of the more intriguing responses to a perennial problem for new parents: how to return to work without breaking hearts or careers.
BubbaDesk, the start-up behind the crèche inside WOTSO, is part of a small but fast-growing cohort trying to redraw the boundary between childcare and the workplace. And it, too, was born of a new mother’s most visceral moments.
My milk dried up
Lauren Perrett, [nee Phillips] was working in sales for Intralinks, a US-based fintech for deal-making and capital markets, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. She and her then boyfriend, banker Tom Perrett, moved to a rundown old farmhouse in Gunnedah in northern NSW, got engaged, got pregnant, and continued working hard via satellite.
But Perrett noticed herself changing with pregnancy. Going beyond a “safe radius” from the house became confronting. “It would cause physiological symptoms where I’d feel like I was going to collapse while driving the car. It was quite extreme.”
Her plans for going back to work, however, were bullish. Four months ought to do it, she thought, expecting to be the same overachiever she’d always been.
“I am a highly anxious, high-expectations mother, so building a service that suits my needs is usually going to support most parents.”
Lauren Perrett
After the baby, Charles, was born in 2022, everything got worse. “That was really unexpected,” says Perrett. “I didn’t know what postnatal anxiety was. Or postnatal depression. I’ve since learnt that it affects one in four.”
Immediately upon her return to work at the four-month mark, she left Charles with Tom, who’d taken paternity leave, and flew to Auckland to meet clients. “I had a panic attack. My milk dried up, and when I returned, I thought, ‘I can’t do this – something so innately maternal is not letting me physiologically survive without being close to my baby.’”
As Tom’s paternity leave neared its end, they explored their options. They toured daycares [too forbidding]. They explored the idea of a nanny [too expensive]. “I tossed the idea around with my mother’s group, ‘Why don’t we all just pitch in for some nannies, find a space somewhere, and work while the nannies take care of our children next door?’”
They all thought it was a great idea. That was all the validation Perrett needed. Eight weeks after floating the idea, the first BubbaDesk co-working space opened in Erina, on the NSW Central Coast, in November 2022.
There were few bureaucratic hurdles. “Because parents remain on-site and are available, and have full liability of their child, our concept is more akin to a nanny service than it is to a centre-based-care model,” says Perrett.
As she watched the first customers come through the door, she saw relief in their faces. “There’s science-backed evidence that the first 1,000 days are the most important in a human life. It’s when your child’s brain reaches 90% of its adult size. What we were seeing was children learning quite quickly that mum or dad was just next door.
“Cortisol levels stayed low. They settled quickly. And that just put parents at ease. We saw tears on day one from parents at the thought of leaving their baby for the first time. But they were given the opportunity to feel that, and to experience that, whereas conventionally, up until this moment, society has gone – it’s all centre-based care and one size fits all. That’s what you do if you want a career.”
A scandalous tailwind
BubbaDesk is now open in eight locations, with up to 16 children in each, and a four-to-one carer-to-child ratio, catering to children up to three years of age.
It costs $160 a day, including the workspace hot desk, which makes it tax-deductible. This compares to more than $250, non-deductible, for a nanny, or $130-$200 in daycare costs in Australia, before subsidies [which can bring the cost below $100 for eligible families].
The Perretts bootstrapped, then raised capital through their immediate network, but are seeking to raise $3 million, preferably with a strategic partner, to grow to 15 locations by the end of 2027.
Recent scandals have provided a tailwind. The childcare sector reeled from allegations of multiple sexual offences against children by a childcare worker Joshua Dale Brown who had worked in 20 different centres in Victoria.
Interest in BubbaDesk rocketed. “We have a wait list of 12,000 across Australia,” says Perrett. “Predominantly Victoria, off the back of the abuse allegations. And also, Queensland and Western Australia for similar reasons.”
They’ve done a deal, says Perrett, with a West Australian real estate investment trust to build BubbaDesk facilities into a commercial office that’s under construction. “Once it’s announced, then it’s extremely replicable across its network,” she says.
“It builds the amenity within their building because BubbaDesk can then service the whole building from a close-proximity childcare point of view. So, it attracts and retains occupants and just bolsters their portfolio.”
Companies such as Safety Culture, Woolworths, and Canva have also adopted BubbaDesk as an employee benefit, with staff receiving discounts.
Canva came to use BubbaDesk after a staff member told the team they’d been using it, says Georgia Punch, head of belonging and people at Canva. “So we reached out to explore a partnership.”
Punch has been using it herself since October last year, when her daughter was about 18 months old. “Traditional childcare centres are notoriously hard to get into. Most require a minimum of two days a week, and there’s no wiggle room if your plans change,” she says.
“BubbaDesk lets you move bookings around when you need to. That’s been a genuine game-changer for us.”
No regrets
Back at Wotso, Jessie Glew’s Harley is now two years old, and in that time, Glew has grown her company from 20 locations to 40, just as she’d planned during pregnancy.
And she has breastfed Harley, put her to sleep, and had lunch with her.
She still worries about whether she’s managing the balance between these two most important jobs. “But knowing I can take my child to work with me, and see her whenever I get a moment, is something special.”
It has also proven good for business. Four of WOTSO’s 40 locations now have BubbaDesk crèches.
Lauren Perrett’s eldest, Charles, has graduated to a daycare centre, but her youngest, Harvey, two, is at BubbaDesk. He’s just metres away behind the next wall as we speak.
“I am my customer,” says Perrett. “I’ve built my two businesses by taking into consideration what I need as a mum. I am a highly anxious, high-expectations mother, so building a service that suits my needs is usually going to support most parents.
“I read a statistic that you have 90% of your time with your children by the time they’re nine or 10 or something, so having that taken away from you when your maternal instinct is telling you to stay close to your baby, it’s not a regret I want any woman or father to have – which is why we built this in the first place.
“I’d be doing the concept an injustice if I didn’t keep pushing to bring it to more parents.”
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