[andjd]

> This seems like a project an entrepreneur ought to try and take on.

In a market where there is an affordability crisis, why would we want to add a tech entrepreneur as a middle man who will want to take 30% off the top for "owning" the relationship between customer and provider (like DoorDash, etc)? You see a little of this with corporate day care centers (e.g. Bright Horizons), and these operations charge a substantial premium over independent providers. They just have a higher cost structure, and greater demands to make returns for their investors. In NYC, the cost of sending just one child to one of these is close to hiring a nanny.

I agree that it's probably not reasonable to call wait-lists a market failure when having excess capacity in the market would require rates to increase to a level the market is unable or unwilling to bare.