Building to Solve the Child Care Crisis

On March 2nd 2020, I chose to join Chris Bennett and the incredible team at Wonderschool to build solutions to help solve the global education crisis, starting with early childhood education in America.

Wonderschool is a childcare technology platform, community and marketplace that empowers teachers to start and run high quality licensed childcare programs out of their own home, or out of a center.

On April 18th 2020, born out of frustration at the monumental institutional failure to prepare for the coronavirus pandemic, Marc Andreessen wrote an impassioned op-ed titled "It's Time to Build". It was a call to arms to political leaders, CEOs, entrepreneurs and investors. He implored them find the desire deep within to build. He asked the question: "What are you building directly, or helping other people to build, or teaching other people to build, or taking care of people who are building?" I didn't need to feel vindicated in my decision to join Chris at Wonderschool, but reading this motivated me further.

One sector Andreessen cited was education, and he made the point that access to the best schools and universities is still only available to the tiniest percentage of the global population, which of course is true. Start-ups like Austen Allreds' Lambda School are doing a great job of disrupting the higher ed space. However the root cause of the problem starts well before University. Neuro-scientific research has shown the formative years of a child's development (0-8 years of age) are critical "because this is the period in life when the brain develops most rapidly and has a high capacity for change, and the foundation is laid for health and wellbeing throughout life." And yet, ask any parent, of the challenges of finding safe, high quality, convenient and affordable care for their children, and they will tell you stories of high stress, high anxiety and high expense. There is unquestionably a supply problem.

My own story of childhood education is ultimately what led me to Wonderschool.

From birth to age 11, I grew up moving between military bases in the UK and Germany every 2-3 years, following my Father's assignments between various British Commando units. During this time I recall my parents doing everything they could for mine and my sister's education. In Germany there were fewer options. Education standards in schools for British military children was woeful back then. In the UK at least they could fight every 2-3 years to get us into a good faith school. My UK primary school experience at St Peters RC in Plymouth remains something I reflect on fondly, I owe headmaster George Finnie and his staff an incredible debt of gratitude. The fight my parents fought ultimately paid off, but it came at a price.

At age 11, I passed an exam that got me into a military funded boarding school. Based atop the white cliffs of Dover, the Duke of York's Royal Military School would give me a steady education until 18, no more hopping from school-to-school, and it would get me into University whilst my Father saw out his career in the military. The price my parents paid was missing out on my sister and I growing from children to adults. Only now as a parent do I appreciate how emotionally broken they were each time they dropped us back at school. But at least they knew they had given us a shot at a decent life. Sending us to boarding school is a huge unspoken sacrifice in our family. They fought, they sacrificed, they got lucky, and I made the most of the opportunity. Lucky me, I suppose. (And I had a GREAT time at boarding school, sooo much fun!)

Fast forward to now. I live in San Francisco with my wife and 2 young children. The kids were 3 and 3 months when we moved here, and we had absolutely no support system whatsoever, we had to build one, fast. Easier said than done. We thought getting our 3 year old into child care would be straightforward and help us build those networks. It was not straightforward at all.

The best ones had waitlists, were expensive and not particularly convenient. But more than anything choice was extremely limited. We wanted a particular environment for our child, the little details really mattered. Ages 0-8 are critical remember. It was incredibly difficult to get these kind of insights, and when demand far outstrips supply it's a sellers market! We were underwhelmed and not prepared to compromise. I was re-living a version of the battle that my parents had fought for my sister and I decades earlier in Europe, here in San Francisco with my own children. Limited choice, questionable quality, bland learning environments not specific to the child, inconvenient and expensive. I was a little shocked.

Many questions popped into my head. Could the world really not have moved on in almost half a century? Was this a global problem? Children are the future, why are they not being properly catered for? Their parents drive the economy, why the disconnect? There's a supply problem, that's the biggest opportunity, can we build technology to solve this problem? Should I find a way to solve this problem?

3 years on from that point, our children got lucky. My wife devoted her life to homeschooling at the expense of her career, it's quite the commitment as many parents have forcibly found out through COVID . The Bay Area is a great place to homeschool, vast networks of home-schoolers, outdoor environments and public facilities exist that are incredible for early childhood education. And most importantly we can just about afford it, which is a huge privilege. So, my kids got lucky just like I did, good for them I suppose? But that's not the case for a huge swathe of children across America and the rest of the world, not by any stretch. Child care deserts exists right across the country, and it's the low income, rural areas and immigrant populations most at risk.

At Wonderschool we are building a platform that already serves over 1000 child care programs across America. But that is the tiniest tip of the iceberg. We need to 1,000x that number to get close to fixing supply just in America. Coming out of COVID we predict the number of child care programs turning to Wonderschool will grow rapidly as demand for child care booms, with families desperately trying to get back to work to make money to survive.

Building to solve the child care crisis won't be easy, but we've made an incredible start. It's critically important that we succeed. Children right across the world need us to. They are the future. Thank you for the invite Chris and thank you to everyone at Wonderschool for welcoming me with open arms.

Most importantly, thank you to the incredible program directors, and the organizations who we are partnered with, who devote their lives to solving the child care crisis, I'm really excited that we get to work together on solving this. Let's build!

Wayne