Private sitter marketplace with referral-based social network
A two-phase build transforming a babysitter booking app into a trusted-network marketplace where every connection is earned through real relationships.
Challenge
Our client had a clear vision: a private, referral-only marketplace where families find and book trusted babysitters through their personal network — no anonymous profiles, no strangers. Every user would need to be referred by an existing member to join.
The problem was building that trust model on top of a functional marketplace. They needed:
- A full booking and payments infrastructure — search, scheduling, Stripe payouts, booking modifications, cancellations — that worked reliably from day one
- A social graph layered on top of that marketplace, so families only see sitters connected to them through real relationships
- The whole thing built on the Sharetribe platform to get to market fast, but with enough custom engineering for referral gating, social proof, network-filtered search, SMS notifications, and booking modifications
- A system that could launch as a straightforward marketplace MVP, then evolve into the full network model without rebuilding from scratch
Solution
We delivered the product in two phases, each scoped as a fixed-price engagement — the first establishing a production-ready marketplace, the second adding the social network layer that makes the platform unique.
Phase 1: Marketplace MVP
- Configured and customized the Sharetribe Flex platform with extended user profiles — family descriptions, children's ages, pets, partner info, special requirements
- Built a complete booking flow with day, night, and hourly reservation types and Stripe payment processing with provider payouts
- Designed and developed a custom booking modification system, allowing families to propose changes to existing bookings with additional charges processed automatically
- Implemented a "would book again" social proof system — after each booking, families endorse sitters, with aggregated counts displayed on listing pages
- Built real-time SMS notifications via Twilio for all booking events, new messages, and modification proposals
Phase 2: Social Network
- Built a referral-gated signup flow — new users must enter an existing member's email to join, with the referrer receiving notifications and approving each new member
- Designed a connections system supporting family-to-family, family-to-sitter, and sitter-to-sitter relationships with search, requests, and privacy controls
- Engineered six network visibility rules computed nightly via batch job — direct connections, booked-and-endorsed sitters, one-degree and two-degree family connections, network endorsements, and sitter-to-sitter relationships
- Built the social graph in PostgreSQL alongside the Sharetribe data model, with atomic nightly syncs that never corrupt existing visibility data if a job fails
- Implemented a "Trusted Network" toggle letting families optionally broaden their search, gated behind a feature flag for controlled rollout
Impact
The platform launched as a functional marketplace and evolved into something genuinely different — a sitter network where trust is the product, not just a feature. The referral model creates natural, high-quality growth: every new user arrives pre-vetted by someone already in the community.
The technical architecture was built to grow. Sharetribe handles the marketplace core — listings, transactions, messaging — while the custom PostgreSQL layer manages the social graph independently. The two systems sync nightly without either depending on the other's uptime. When the client is ready to scale, the infrastructure is already there. When they're ready to hire their own team, the codebase is documented, tested, and ready to hand off.
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