Carolyn Baron | Villagechat
Founder of Villagechat
Carolyn Baron is the founder of a mobile app, that is designed to connect parents based on their kids' shared GPS locations. Carolyn shares her journey from real estate to tech, the challenges of growth, and the lessons learned along the way. Her story is a testament to resilience, problem-solving, and the drive to turn an idea into reality.
The Problem
Parents of teens and pre-teens often struggle to connect with one another unless they’ve already exchanged contact information. Whether it’s for planning rides, coordinating event details, or ensuring someone is home, the lack of a quick, secure way to communicate leaves many feeling disconnected.
The Response
Carolyn Baron created a mobile app that connects parents through their kids’ shared GPS locations—no phone numbers required. The app acts like a modern-day directory, helping parents message one another directly for everyday coordination and peace of mind.
What It Takes to Stay the Course
With a 30-year background in real estate and advertising, Carolyn knows the importance of resilience. She believes entrepreneurship is about solving real problems and staying committed even through rejection. Her advice: if your idea keeps you up at night—in a good way—it’s probably worth pursuing, as long as you’re ready to sacrifice for it.
“ If you believe in something and love it, get out and do it because you will wear more hats than you wear doing any other job”
-
I'm Carolyn Baron and I've developed a mobile application that is for the parents of teens and pre-teens. It connects parents to each other based on their kids' shared real-time GPS location. I like to say it's a 4 1 1 or a white pages for parents nowadays because we all carry cell phones. There's no way to reach other parent if you don't have their number already.
So this is a way to connect to parents that's built around our kids' shared activities. So if I don't know you and you don't know me, but our kids are together, I can direct message you. So whether it's a travel sports team or they're at an event, or it's a homecoming, we can connect to confirm details or make sure someone's home or organize a ride.
Whatever it is, but I don't need to get your number from someone else. Well, my day job, when I'm not wearing my mobile app cape, is I'm a realtor and I've been a realtor for almost 30 years. So while that's not a entrepreneurial function, the nature of finding, getting and killing work is completely entrepreneurial.
I have to get out of bed every day and make it happen. I've gotta find my own clients. I gotta make deals happen. I gotta. Be motivated. So in some ways I'm a living, breathing entrepreneur for 30 years, but in terms of saying I'm gonna fix a problem that hasn't been solved, that's, that's something I decided to take on.
Although I would argue in my day job, that's all I do is solve problems. The phone rings and people have a problem with a house or a transaction or a school or. I gotta figure it out. They want an answer. Uh, my finger is on all of those things, and so I'm constantly trying to solve problems, but I would, I, I think I would say to people thinking about starting a business.
Particularly as someone who has had one that had a lot of time and energy and fail, you do it because you feel it and you believe it, and it, it feels right to you for whatever your cause is, but it's deep in the pit of your soul and it gnaws at you to be done, and so you do it. But I think. In doing that, you have to be cautious.
You have to take stock of what might this cost me? Um, and that's not just the financial investment, which is always significant, but it's time. It's time away from your current job that pays the bills. It might be time away from your family or your girlfriend or boyfriend or your pets. Whatever matters to you, it's gonna take a high level of dedication.
And so you have to believe you love it and are inspired by it that much to put everything into it. And if that bell is still ringing after you've asked yourself all those questions, I think you gotta keep going. It requires a lot of mental toughness to be an entrepreneur, um, because there's a lot of naysayers out there.
It is super. Easy to get people to say no. Um, I think I mentioned, I worked in advertising for 11 years. We'd hold focus groups. You can get people to complain about anything about your product, but ask them to say something nice and they're all kinda like, Hmm, you know, they, they really have to think about positive qualities.
So when you are pitching your idea to people, um, you gotta have. Mental toughness, you gotta have resiliency. You gotta have patience because people are gonna say no lots of times. And you have to be able to take that criticism, review it, tumbled around a bit, take what's meaningful, apply it, iterate, and go back out again.
Um, I mean, the first thing I would say is do it. I mean, do it. If you believe in something and love it, get out and do it because you will wear more hats than you wear doing any other job. Whether you're already out of college and doing this and a job, or you're in high school and thinking about doing this.
You're gonna wear the CFO's hat, you're gonna wear your operational hat, you're gonna make all the decisions. When do you get to do that? You, you will be completely in charge and you will learn more than you can learn doing anything else. It's your baby. You run it, you own it, you take care of it.
