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CEFA Turned Preschool Into a $2.5 Million Franchise - Here Is the Lesson Plan
Natacha Beim Boserup could not persuade existing schools to adopt her early-learning ideas, so she opened one herself. Twenty-eight years later, CEFA packages curriculum, teacher training and a premium school experience into a franchise that costs roughly C$2.5 million to C$3 million to open.
The Preschool That Runs on Curiosity - and Nearly 100,000 Small Customers
It sells peace of mind to working parents, a business to local owners, and a play-based curriculum to nearly 100,000 kids. Inside the franchise that turned early childhood into one of America's most resilient service industries.
Vivvi
Vivvi is a New York-based child care and early learning company that partners with employers to make high-quality care affordable and flexible for working families. Founded in 2018 by Charles Bonello and Ben Newton, it operates a growing network of early learning campuses for children from six weeks to five years old, and layers on employer-sponsored offerings such as backup care, in-home care, virtual tutoring, and its Care Cash reimbursement program. The model turns child care into a recruiting and retention benefit for companies while giving parents full-day, year-round, research-based programs.
Kibeam Learning
Kibeam Learning is an Oakland, California edtech company building the Kibeam Wand Reading System - a screen-free, AI-powered handheld device that brings physical books to life with sound, character voices, read-aloud and play-based games. Founded in 2020 by LeapFrog LeapPad inventor Jim Marggraff, Kibeam targets PreK-3 literacy at home and in classrooms, grounded in the Science of Reading, and has run large pilots including a partnership with the University of Florida's Lastinger Center reaching tens of thousands of families.
Begin
Begin (legally Conscious Content Media, dba BEGiN) is a New York-based early-learning company that builds research-backed, play-based products for kids ages 2-10. Its portfolio - HOMER, codeSpark, Little Passports, and the Sesame Workshop partnership app Learn with Sesame - blends digital, physical, and experiential learning around a '6Cs' skills framework, and has reached more than 10 million families. Backed by LEGO Ventures, Sesame Workshop, and Gymboree, the company raised a $94.5M Series D in late 2022 before entering a prenegotiated Chapter 11 restructuring in December 2025 to cut roughly $106.5M in debt and continue operating its brands.
Teaching Strategies, LLC
Teaching Strategies is a Bethesda, Maryland based early childhood education company best known for The Creative Curriculum and GOLD, a formative assessment system used by hundreds of thousands of teachers serving children from birth through third grade. The company provides integrated curriculum, observation-based assessment, family engagement tools, and professional development across Head Start, public Pre-K, private child care, and elementary programs in the United States and abroad.