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Wonderschool Profile: Pandemic Layoffs, Business Model, and Current Status

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Company or group
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The profile

Wonderschool laid off 50 people, 75 percent of its staff, in March 2020, when shelter-in-place orders kept children at home and emptied the in-home preschools and day cares its business ran on. It later turned to state governments as customers: its own pages credit a partnership with Mississippi with 3,000 new child care slots.

  • Category: child care and early education
  • Pandemic-layoff role: Additional sourced company
  • Last updated: 2026-09-25
  • Related article: The Pandemic Layoff Stress Test

Founders, executives and investors

Chris Bennett is Wonderschool's co-founder and chief executive. MaC Venture Capital's Marlon Nichols invested in its seed round in 2017. In August 2018 Andreessen Horowitz led a $20 million Series A, with general partner Jeff Jordan joining the board and Omidyar, Gary Community Investments and First Round participating, bringing total financing to $24.1 million.

Business before the pandemic

Wonderschool helped experienced educators open licensed preschools and day cares in their own homes. It handled licensing, accounting, marketing and enrollment in exchange for 10 percent of tuition. Each program had six to 12 children. In August 2018 the company said it had 140 schools open in Los Angeles, New York and the San Francisco Bay Area, nearly 500 educators in the process of opening, and about 70 new directors signing on each month. Its directors, it said, earned an average of $78,000, against a national median of $28,000 for preschool teachers. Andreessen Horowitz's Jordan compared it to eBay, Airbnb and Instacart.

What the pandemic changed

The model depended on families dropping children off. Layoffs.fyi recorded the cut on March 26, 2020: 50 employees across all departments, particularly engineering and partnerships, because "families are now keeping their kids at home."

After the first shock

Wonderschool began selling to governments. In April 2024 testimony, the America First Policy Institute pointed to the partnership between the Mississippi Department of Human Services and Wonderschool as an example of increasing the supply of child care. The program, it said, helps qualified people open home-based programs where care is short. Wonderschool's own case studies say the Mississippi work created 3,000 slots, including 37 new programs and 1,095 slots in one month, and that it runs a substitute-teacher pool for Mississippi centers. It also lists work with North Carolina's Smart Start network. In April 2025 a Wonderschool representative registered in support of two child-care bills, HB 2271 and HB 3191, before the Texas House Trade, Workforce and Economic Development Committee.

Since 2025

In June 2026 the company's government page advertised Wonderschool Oversight, a product "designed to help states detect child care subsidy fraud early," built, the company said, on partnerships with more than a dozen states. Bennett is still described there as chief executive.

Sources

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