preschool
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Ladybird's big idea: let the pictures do the talking
A blue hippo, a rolling hedgehog, and a kingdom of fools: Ladybird Entertainment's catalog reveals how an Iranian animation studio thinks about children, comedy, and stories that travel.
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.
Cadence Education Is Building a 350-School Network Without Erasing the Names on the Doors
The private preschool operator has grown from 225 schools in 2020 to 350 in 2026. Its playbook is scale behind the scenes, local identity out front - and a curriculum designed to make care feel like preparation, not parking.
Diane Trister Dodge
In this Early Learning Nation Studio conversation, Chris Riback interviews Diane Trister Dodge, the founder of Teaching Strategies and one of the most influential figures in American early childhood education. Dodge traces her path from wanting simply 'to become the best teacher possible' to accidentally becoming a publisher: she trained Head Start teachers in 1966 Mississippi, made her own materials on a mimeograph machine, and self-published a filmstrip about classroom arrangement when no publisher would take it. That first effort grew into The Creative Curriculum and the Teaching Strategies GOLD assessment system, tools that shaped early learning nationwide. She reflects on what high-quality classrooms look like, the persistent inequities facing at-risk children and early childhood teachers, and her current work giving back through the Dodge Family Fund.
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.
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.
Winnie
Winnie is a San Francisco-based childcare marketplace that connects millions of parents with licensed daycare centers, preschools, and early education providers across the United States. Founded in 2016 by Sara Mauskopf and Anne Halsall - two former Google and Postmates engineers who were also parents - Winnie has grown from a local San Francisco app into a national platform covering 200,000+ licensed providers in over 7,000 cities. The platform combines comprehensive data (tuition costs, licensing status, inspection reports, availability) with community reviews and a SaaS layer for providers called Winnie Pro. Ranked #177 on the 2023 Inc. 5000 list and #1 in Consumer Services, Winnie sits at the intersection of a 500-billion-dollar childcare crisis and a generation of parents who expect the same search experience for daycares that they get for restaurants.
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.