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Wonderschool

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Company or group
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Other company
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The profile

Wonderschool, which helps educators run licensed preschools and day cares in their homes, laid off 75 percent of its staff in March 2020 as families kept children home. It then steered its providers toward PPP loans, reporting in June 2020 that almost half of its directors had applied. Later it sold its platform to state governments: 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: 2026-09-29

In the archive

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 did to the business

In a post dated March 17, 2020, and updated March 23, the company listed 27 areas where its programs were still operating, 10 of them with restrictions and three as emergency child care. Its providers, it said, continued to help working families and "families of emergency response and health care workers" who were struggling to find care. The Bay Area county orders it quoted required child care to be "carried out in stable groups of 12 or fewer." The company said it had switched to virtual tours, had directors run daily fever checks, checked in with directors every day and kept a hotline. In December 2019 it had announced openings in Boston, Chicago, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.

Pandemic-relief role: steering directors to PPP

In June 2020 a Wonderschool blog post reported a survey of its directors: "Almost 48%" had applied for the Paycheck Protection Program, against a national family child care rate of 25 percent, and "over 70%" of applicants were approved, against 45 percent nationally. The national figures came from a May 2020 survey by NAEYC; the post did not print how many directors answered. Experts in its support network, the post said, "helped identify participating banks" and told directors when the next round of funding opened. The same post put director earnings at "roughly $70,000"; the 2018 and 2022 funding releases both said $78,000.

In January 2021 Wonderschool announced a partnership with Womply, which "gives directors FREE 1:1 support in completing their PPP applications," and told readers: "Directors: please apply for the PPP loan." A Womply page at womply.com/wonderschool carries a publication date of January 21, 2021, in its metadata. The page said: "The government pays lenders and agents to help small businesses access these programs," and "if Womply helps you get a loan, we get 20% of the lender's fee." A December 27, 2020 law led SBA to change the lender fee on loans of $50,000 or less, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis said in a December 2022 report. The fee went from 5 percent of the loan to the lesser of 50 percent of the loan or $2,500. Neither Wonderschool's post nor its March 17, 2021 press release says whether Wonderschool received any payment for the partnership. The release summarized the borrower's side: spend the loan on payroll, rent, mortgage interest or utilities and "the government will forgive the loan." It also offered discounted tax preparation and recalled a deal with Yelp, announced in February 2021, giving directors new to Yelp "$300 in upfront advertising credits."

A search of SBA's loan-level PPP data (data as of September 30, 2024) for "Wonderschool" returns no loan to the San Francisco company. It returns eight loans totaling $117,533 to six borrowers with "Wonderschool" in their names, five in California and one in Tennessee. The data do not show whether those programs belonged to the company's network.

Layoffs

On March 26, 2020, Layoffs.fyi reported that Wonderschool had laid off 50 employees, 75 percent of its staff, across all departments, because "families are now keeping their kids at home." How Wonderschool handled layoffs →

After the first shock

In January 2022, announcing a $25 million Series B led by Goldman Sachs, the company said its platform had been "deployed statewide in New Mexico, Indiana, and Nevada" and served "nearly 1,700 programs." A Form D filed with the SEC on December 29, 2021 shows that Gaingels Wonderschool 2021 LLC, a Vermont investment vehicle, sold $192,000 of equity to 26 investors, with the first sale on December 23; the filing does not name the round. In Nevada, a provider hub set up by the state in partnership with Wonderschool opened in Las Vegas in early 2022; Gov. Steve Sisolak said that in addition to federal dollars, it would be funded through the state Division of Welfare and Supportive Services. The Nevada Independent later put the state's hubs, "powered by Wonderschool," at $1.5 million, and reported that one provider's $10,000 grant from Wonderschool and its 12-week program were "funded by American Rescue Plan dollars." Nevada had 253 home-based child care programs before COVID and 183 by July 2020, according to Child Care Aware figures cited by StateScoop. By August 2022, a state official told StateScoop, Wonderschool had helped 110 new providers start, double the number the state had hoped to attract.

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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