A Happy Medium
One entrepreneur is helping divorced couples find common ground.
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As a child, Jainarain Kissoon was constantly surrounded by the issue of divorce--just not in the conventional sense. His mother was a divorce attorney, so the topic came up often. Still, it wasn’t until his mother’s cousin suffered through a painful divorce that something clicked for Kissoon. He wonderd if there was a way to make divorces less stressful. Soon after, he and five co-founders started OurFamilyWizard.com, a scheduling website for divorced and separated families whose mission is to ease the pain during a divorce by providing effective communication and organizational tools.
The site includes five main features for families: a calendar, a message board, an information bank, a journal and an expense log. For $99 per parent for one year or $179 for two years, families can use the website to stay involved in their children’s lives, with less conflict. “Divorce itself is such a taboo topic. It’s just been recently, in the last five to 10 years, that people have even begun talking about their divorces and sharing those kinds of feelings,” says Kissoon, 30. “Overcoming the negative stigma of being a product for divorce has probably been the biggest challenge for us.”
OurFamilyWizard.com has 5,000 active users, with subscribers in every state and more than 17 countries. The company also works with judges in more than 30 states and Canada who recommend that families use the site to soften the difficult times ahead. By the end of this year, the company, which projects 2009 sales of up to $1 million plans to expand storage space and offer bill-pay services to parents. Meanwhile, Kissoon is still at work making divorce a little more manageable. “Our main focus has always been the children’s best interest,” he says. “At the end of the day, that’s why we do what we do.”
Originally published in the June 2009 issue of Entrepreneur's StartUps
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