Girl, 15, Hires CEO to Run Her Babysitting Company

Noa Mintz founded business as 6th-grader
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 2, 2015 8:30 AM CST
Girl, 15, Hires CEO to Run Her Babysitting Company
Stock image   (Shutterstock)

The Baby-Sitters Club has nothing on Noa Mintz. The 15-year-old New York City girl started Nannies by Noa in August 2012, and the New York Post figures a "conservative estimate" of $375,000 in revenue (without specifying a timeframe). CNN Money notes that as an 8th-grader, Noa was devoting 40 hours a week to her company. And so in July she hired a CEO to ease her "excruciating hours" dealing with "hundreds of emails" per day, she explains to the Post. That CEO, 26-year-old Allison Johnson, says that while "it was a little bit of a challenge at first" taking directions from a then-14-year-old, she's impressed with Noa's work ethic. "She'll get back to me during study hall. She can't shut off." Nannies by Noa, which matches up families with babysitters and full-time nannies, was hatched when Noa, then a 6th-grader, realized she was always unhappy with her own caregivers and figured there had to be a better way.

"For what you’re paying, your kids should be more stimulated," she says, explaining that her company works with "engaged nannies who don't sit on the side at the playgrounds on their phones." Those nannies go through an intense interview process—one 37-year-old tells the Post she had no idea she was being interviewed by a teen, and "was intimidated." Today, the company has 190 clients; they pay a fee of $5 per hour for babysitters or 15% of a nanny's gross salary (typically $50,000 to $80,000). Noa did need some help: Her dad is the registered owner of the business, and filed the LLC on her behalf since she's a minor. But "telling people I'm in high school now, it’s more reassuring, I think, than saying I’m a middle schooler," she says. As for her goals, she tells ABC News, "I want to become the nation's leading child care agency." (This 15-year-old's invention could save Alzheimer's patients' lives.)

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