Megan Spivey and Megan Petrik met while their daughters were attending daycare. The business consultant and financial services professional bonded over their shared motherhood experience. And once their kids entered kindergarten, they confronted common questions between themselves and other parents concerning what their summers would look like.
The mothers teamed up to create Google spreadsheets that would help them stay in touch with friends who had kids in other schools. Spivey comically shared that she and Petrik were the “quarterbacks” of this duty.
“But when we were just about the third grade year,” they both shared, “we were like, ‘Okay, this is still a mess.’ So that’s when we started talking about, ‘[how] could we use tech in a way to make this better.”
That question ultimately led the mothers to co-found Summer Sanity.
The pain points the co-founders had discovered came mostly from personal experience. But after discussions with other parents, the Megans realized that there were multiple, common problems with the traditional methods of family scheduling.
One problem, for example, is that schedule coordination is difficult for larger families, given the number of activities that need to be juggled. Another is that keeping in touch with other parents becomes difficult with a variety of communication methods (Facebook, messaging, email, etc.) at play. And some parents have trouble with the process of finding extracurriculars in the first place; Google searches are only so helpful due to heavy advertising.
Behind all of these issues, though, was a larger core problem: There was no central place for all their needs.
“We’re dealing with this,” Petrik said. “And parents in general, especially working parents, have so many things they have to keep track of between their job and their whole life.”
The Summer Sanity solution
Spivey and Petrik’s solution, Summer Sanity, is a summer planning famtech platform built to streamline scheduling and communication. Spivey serves as the startup’s CEO and CFO, and Petrik as the President and CCO.
Through the platform’s interface, parents can add each of their children and list anything from summer camps to birthday parties. Activities then populate a “smart calendar,” Summer Sanity’s primary product—and one that’s different from familiar options most people are accustomed to using. Rather than displaying time blocks cluttered with all of a given user’s plans, anything scheduled pertains to children’s activities, creating a family-focused view instead of the kind of cluttered, all-purpose calendar parents typically juggle. The calendar’s color-coding features also limit confusion, filtering for specific activities or events.
Alongside the calendar, there is also an invitation tool through which users can request to “friend” other parents using the platform in order to share plans. Petrik described “parent connection” as the beauty of the friends feature, and the “key to success” for Summer Sanity’s mission.
“The more of your trusted village you’re connecting with, the more this will help you with getting ideas for camps, figuring out where you might be able to save money with babysitter sharing, how to ‘save some sanity’ with your commutes, etc.”
Before they started, Spivey and Petrik didn’t have experience with web development. A friend connected them to a developer, Brian Moran, who is now their beta developer and tech advisor, and helped them start the beta website.
The beta calendar launched on May 1 and now has about 200 families onboarded as well as more than 200 shared connections across six states. Early users have given the interface and its usability high ratings and strong feedback.
Summer Sanity moving forward
Since the site is still in beta, there is much more the Megans plan to do. Currently, they are developing the Summer Sanity app, which will launch in Q1 of 2026. The plan is for this app to follow a freemium model. The basic membership will be free and will include access to the smart calendar. The ad-free premium subscription will include a carpool coordination chat for parents.
Another revenue stream in the works is a program directory for paying users, which will provide a more “consolidated approach” to finding activities like summer camps, according to Petrik. In addition to their revenue plans, the founders are also looking for other family-oriented businesses to advertise to their users
Both founders are members of Women in Tech, and Spivey will soon join the Leadership Forum. The startup will soon participate in and demo at ConvergeSouth, a business expo and conference in Winston-Salem. Spivey and Petrik are also pursuing grants from organizations like NC IDEA and expressed gratitude to the friends and family who have invested in the startup so far.
QUICK BITS
Startup: Summer Sanity
Co-Founders: Megan Spivey (CEO), Megan Petrik (President)
Founded: 2025
Team size: 4
Location: Charlotte
Website: www.summersanity.com
Funding: Bootstrapped, SAFE Investment
Summer Sanity’s foundation was built on faith and community, according to Spivey. She and Petrik have a vision for their startup to give back to communities where people may not have the means to put their children in summer programs, but first want to adopt the platform to these communities’ needs.
“We’d like to make an impact in that way for kids who might have different summer experiences, and parents who have different stresses,” Spivey said.
The Summer Sanity app will be available Q1 of 2026 and free to download, but anyone interested in using the smart calendar can access it now at the startup’s website.
