childcare
(3)
Gretchen Salyer
Gretchen Salyer is the founder and CEO of The June Care Company, a community-based childcare platform she launched in June 2021 after 15 years in technology, ending as a general manager at Intuit. Born out of pandemic childcare swaps she organized among neighbors, June Care connects parents who need care with vetted, background-checked stay-at-home parents who can earn income watching other children nearby. The company - whose name stands for Joining Up Neighbors Everywhere - has raised about $3.6M in seed funding led by Craft Ventures, and operates on Salyer's belief that the childcare crisis is solved by helping every family build its village.
Dave Vasen
Dave Vasen is the founder and CEO of brightwheel, the leading all-in-one software platform for early education that serves thousands of childcare centers and preschools across the US. A Stanford and Wharton graduate, Vasen left AltSchool in 2014 to build brightwheel after seeing firsthand how preschool operators struggle to run both a classroom and a business simultaneously. He famously appeared on Shark Tank in 2016 where Mark Cuban and Chris Sacca fought over the deal, landing a $600K investment. Brightwheel has since raised $88.8M in total funding and reached a $700M+ valuation by 2024, with $75M in annual revenue - making it one of the most impactful companies in the early childhood education space.
Sara Mauskopf
Sara Mauskopf is the CEO and co-founder of Winnie, a marketplace helping millions of parents find daycare, preschool, and childcare across the United States. A MIT computer science graduate and former product leader at YouTube, Twitter, and Postmates, she co-founded Winnie in 2016 after struggling to find childcare for her first child. Under her leadership, Winnie has raised $15.5M in funding, serves over 4 million parents, covers 250K+ licensed providers across 7,000+ U.S. cities, and ranked #177 on the 2023 Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies - earning the #1 Consumer Services Company spot.