A year and a half after launch, KidPass, a monthly kids’ activity membership program based in New York City, announced they raised $5.1 million in Series A funding led by Javelin Venture Partners. New and existing investors including CoVenture, Y Combinator, TIA Ventures, Bionic Fund, Cocoon Ignite Ventures and FJ Labs also participated in the latest funding round. KidPass said that Jed Katz, managing director at Javelin, and Rachel Jarrett, president of Zola, would join the board of directors.

“We could not have asked for better investors and advisors to partner with to bring KidPass to the next phase of expansion,” said KidPass in a blog post. “With the new funding, we will now be able to significantly accelerate our growth through further investment in our technology platform, as well as reach thousands of new families as we launch in additional cities. KidPass is currently live in New York, and will soon expand into new cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Chicago. This investment helps solidify KidPass as the market leader, allowing us to more rapidly pursue our mission of helping families discover and book the best activities for children of all ages.”

Founded by three New York-based technology executives, KidPass launched in January 2016 as a kids’ activity membership program to help match kids with events, classes and activities in New York City, including exclusive events, swimming classes, camps, food and cooking classes, sports and fitness and more.

For a monthly membership fee, ranging from $49 to $189 per month, parents can buy credits and use those toward activities offered by KidPass partners. Since the company’s launch, more than 20,000 families have used KidPass to book thousands of activities through approximately 900 KidPass partners including Gymboree, Super Soccer Stars, The Craft Studio, the Museum of Modern Art, and YMCA.

“We started KidPass to solve a need that we had as new parents, and it’s been incredible to see the KidPass community grow to thousands of parents in New York City alone,” KidPass said. “Our progress has been a testament to the need that KidPass is filling for parents.  Our Series A raise, and the new investors joining the KidPass team, are a huge endorsement for our mission to dramatically disrupt and improve the rapidly growing $30B kids’ activities industry.”

With the new funding, KidPass plans to expand its capabilities to better assist KidPass partners with class management software, online registration, scheduling and payment tools. The KidPass team has already created a dashboard to help business owners with class management, now in beta testing. They believe they will be able to support their partners by getting them more exposure, new customers and incremental revenue without up-front costs.

“We have a lot planned for 2017, and are very excited to further expand our network of amazing partners and kids’ activities, launch new cities, and continue building a world class team,” said KidPass.

Katz commented on his firm’s investment in KidPass.

“We are very excited to lead the KidPass Series A. KidPass is treasured by busy parents who want to discover the best activities for their kids, get members-only prices, and enjoy a frictionless signup and payment process. But in addition to being a one-stop-shop for all types of kids’ activities, it’s also an entirely new and improved way for parents to explore their child’s interests through drop-in activities to see what they truly love before fully committing to semester-long programs. We love their smart, scalable business model and look forward to helping the KidPass team expand their valuable service across the country,” said Katz.

Insider Take:

This is a great example of how a membership model enabled three tech execs the opportunity to fill a need they were experiencing in their own lives – an easier way to discover, schedule and pay for kid-friendly activities. In just under a year-and-a-half, KidPass was able to scale its model to reach thousands of parents and involve 900 different partners. Clearly, the founders know what they’re doing, as evidenced by the Series A funding round. It is exciting to see how they’ve grown their model in such a short period of time. We can’t wait to see what’s next!