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See exactly when your family will run out of PTO — before October hits. Drop in your school calendar and both parents' days, and we'll tell you the week you'll go negative.

Problem

We're a two-paycheck family and we ran out of PTO in October — the school year still has seven months to go. Nobody overlays both our PTO balances against the school calendar until it's already too late.

Audience

Dual-income US families with K-8 kids in districts with frequent half-days, professional-development days, and weather closures. Both parents have employer PTO; one is usually the 'default parent' who absorbs the surprise days off.

Reasoning

Source signals

  • **SIG-20260426-us-family-logistics-back-to-school-pto-shortfall** — "35 PTO days vs 37 days off school"; "I have so little vacation time anymore"
  • **SIG-20260426-us-family-logistics-daycare-illness-carousel-pto-couple-juggling** — "I had two days of PTO left" + 1 illness/month первый год daycare
  • **SIG-20260426-us-family-logistics-default-parent-detection-burnout** — "I'm often the default parent" — burns through PTO faster than partner

What we ship

**Core features (MVP)**

  • School calendar import: ICS feed if available, or upload-photo/PDF of district calendar with AI extraction
  • Per-parent PTO balance: current days, annual allotment, refresh date
  • Forecast engine: counts full-day-offs + half-days + avg sick-day load (from family history or US baseline)
  • Big-glance home screen: "You have 17 days left. You run out November 4."
  • Email/SMS alert when forecast crosses threshold (60 days before zero)
  • Partner-share link + household view

**Primary user flow**

1. Landing → "Find out when your family runs out of PTO" → connect school district or upload PDF

2. Enter both parents' PTO balances + refresh dates

3. Home screen: forecast line + the date in big text

4. Free tier: one forecast snapshot. Premium ($19/yr): rolling updates, email alerts, what-if simulator, FMLA tracker

**What it looks like**

  • **Landing page**: hero "Run out of PTO in October? Not next year." + screenshot of burn-down forecast + CTA "Forecast my year — free"
  • **Main app screen**: KPI "Days left: 17" + burn-down chart with annotations like "Spring break — half day — minus 0.5 days each"
  • **Alert**: email digest "Heads up: your PTO will run out November 4 at the current rate. Here's how to slow the burn."

**MVP build plan (9 days)**

  • Day 1-2: backend schema (households, parents, school_calendars, days_off), auth, JWT
  • Day 3-5: ICS parser, AI photo/PDF extraction for school flyers, forecast engine
  • Day 6-7: React UI, home screen, dashboard, what-if simulator
  • Day 8: Stripe Checkout one-time + email alert pipeline via Postmark
  • Day 9: landing, deploy to CF Pages + Railway, ProductHunt prep

Reasoning

The pain is validated by three SIGs: viral Paige Connell LinkedIn post ("35 PTO days vs 37 days off school"), r/Parenting back-to-school PTO threads, and r/workingmoms daycare-illness carousel. Holiday Optimizer (1.6K upvotes on r/SideProject) proved demand for PTO planning — but it's solo-mode, and its top comment explicitly asks for "multiple calendars + family + school breaks". That's our wedge: take the Holiday Optimizer format and shift it from "maximize your vacations" to "don't burn out in October."

Stack-fit is clean: ICS parsing + LLM extraction + simple math — fits a 9-day solo build on FastAPI/React easily. Subscription justified by annual refresh cycle, but we lean toward $19/yr one-time-feeling unlock (matches the back-to-school purchase moment in August).

Quick competitive read

5 competitors profiled (Stage 5b). Market density: **medium (5/13)** — adjacent categories well-served, exact wedge empty.

  • **Holiday Optimizer** (free, browser-only, 50+ countries) — direct DNA parent. Their top-upvoted Reddit comment was an explicit feature request for "multiple calendars + family + school breaks." Strongest demand signal we will ever see. They explicitly stay solo-mode + free, legitimizing our family + paid tier above them.
  • **Cozi Gold** ($39/yr, 21-year incumbent acquired by OFW 2022) — horizontal calendar, no PTO/forecasting. Complementary, not competitive.
  • **FamilyWall Premium** ($44.99/yr, Paris team of 7, 15 years) — family communication suite (location, finance, messaging). No AI, no PTO. Sets WTP ceiling at $40-50/yr.
  • **Skylight Calendar 2** ($159-$629 hardware + $79/yr Plus) — hardware-first wall display. Magic Import OCRs school flyers into events but doesn't forecast. Closest defensive risk; re-check quarterly.
  • **Vacation Tracker** ($2-4/user/mo, $25-75/mo minimum, 17-person team, 3,500+ B2B customers) — pure HR/employer tool. Structurally cannot scale down to a 2-parent household. Validates category but doesn't compete.

White-space wedge: **family-level PTO forecasting against school calendars**. Empirically nobody combines (parent PTO balances) × (school district calendar with half-days/in-service/closures) × (forward burn-down forecast). Holiday Optimizer would be the natural builder, but its author is doubling down on solo-traveler optimization. WTP for US dual-income family-organization features is demonstrated at $40-80/yr (Cozi $39, FamilyWall $44.99, Skylight Plus $79) — our $19/yr undercuts the category while owning a sharper jobs-to-be-done.

Initial pricing hypothesis

Free tier: one forecast snapshot. **Premium $19/yr** (rolling forecast, alerts, what-if, partner-share). Alternative: $24 lifetime one-time. Test both on landing.

Distribution hypothesis

1. **Reddit organic**: r/workingmoms, r/Parenting, r/FinancialIndependence — pegged to back-to-school spike (Aug-Oct). Cold post: "built this because we ran out of PTO in October."

2. **ProductHunt launch** in August at back-to-school cycle.

3. **TikTok organic**: visual "when your family runs out of PTO" burn-down chart works for viral framing.

4. **Paige Connell collab**: she wrote the original viral LinkedIn post — natural affinity, cold-DM her.