Chriselle Lim and Joan Nguyen are celebrating the growth of Bümo’s network and new opportunities for parents.
The friends turned cofounders launched the coworking space with licensed childcare a few years ago. In addition, the two opened their Los Angeles Century City mall location back in 2020.
In the early days, the two founders raised nearly $3.5 million in seed funding for the childcare company with many celebrity investors alike including Offline Ventures; Emmeline Ventures; Jessica Alba, the founder of Honest Company; supermodel Coco Rocha; Raissa Gerona, the Chief Brand Officer of Revolve; and many more.
Bumo, meaning ‘parent’ in Korean, maintained its core mission to find solutions for mothers and parents alike. Bümo Virtual School, initially starting out as a one-month learning camp in COVID-19. The website launch on April 20th of 2020 grew to over 1,000 families in 30 countries.
Raised by Vietnamese refugee parents, Nguyen spent much of her childhood living in poverty. Her father finished 7th grade and her mother, high school – as a result she was raised with the understanding that education was not only important but also a privilege that she needed to pursue wholeheartedly.
With a budding passion for education and learning, Nguyen started MeriEducation, an INC500 company, at 20 years old with $3,000 saved, giving educational services ranging from SAT preparation to academic tutoring.
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Chriselle Lim began her career as a wardrobe stylist logging in years of editorial shoots with prominent fashion books and celebrities. In 2011, she launched her YouTube Channel and website, the Chriselle Factor, to empower and inspire women all around the world through her daily musings on beauty, fashion and lifestyle.
In a conversation with What’s Trending and other outlets, Chriselle stated, “We wanted to create something that would give women the option whether they want to work or stay at home to just have extra help, immediate help, on demand help because life is complicated,” says the co-founder.
She also added, “We are just so happy to be surrounded by an amazing community of mothers, dads, working women, stay at home women – all of it.”
Nguyen also stated, “There really should be an Uber for childcare. It’s easier to find a dog walker online than it is to find a nanny or a sitter for childcare. We sought out to build something that was much more meaningful which was a marketplace where you can book on demand childcare.”
The brand has expanded to BümoBrain and Being Bümo since the brand’s early days as well.
Joan added, “When we stated this journey a year ago we had zero locations. And now we have 2,400 searchable locations online.”
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In a conversation with Forbes, the two mentioned how they themselves wanted to be there for parents.
“Chriselle and I were the case studies,” Nguyen shares. “Between the two of us, we have four kids 5 and under, with our older children in preschool. Both of our children’s schools tried really hard to adapt, but it was clear that you cannot retrofit the traditional school model into the virtual setting. You must start fresh — and build it exactly the way you want it.”
The Century City location offers the ability for parents to check in with their child’s progress throughout the day alongside cloud stored video footage that is backed up forever and never deleted.
