Starting Wonderschool As A Leading Child Care Marketplace With Chris Bennett | EM Group Chat #186

Welcome back to Everything Marketplaces, where we talk with founders and leaders from today's top marketplaces. So this is episode 186, which is a really great group chat that we just had with Chris Bennett, who's the co-founder and CEO of Wonderschool. Wonderschool is a marketplace that makes it easy for parents to find trusted childcare nearby. They also help empower teachers to start education programs and childcare businesses. Wonderschool has also raised over $49 million in capital from top investors like a16z. So this is a great chat with Chris. We're going back to the founding story and first steps of starting Wonderschool. Some of the early challenges. We got to learn more about how it's evolved and scaled, did a deep dive into it as a leading marketplace for childcare today, discussed topics like how they're focusing on enabling new providers, working directly with government agencies. Chris shared some of his key fundraising learnings after raising over $49 million in capital from top investors. We also had a great group Q&A. I really enjoyed this conversation. You're going to find it great. Watch to the end. So, Chris, as I mentioned right before we started recording, you've been a highly requested group chat guest for a while now. So I'm really excited to have you join us here today. I want to start off with saying huge thanks for taking the time to do so in advance. We have a lot that we're going to dive into with all of your experience starting and scaling Wonderschool, but I thought it'd be great if you can start off by briefly sharing your background for those here that might not know you.

My name is Chris Bennett. I'm the CEO and founder of Wonderschool. You know, started the company in 2016 because we noticed that there was a a shortage of childcare in the Bay Area. And I went to a home-based childcare program in Miami where I grew up and, and, you know, had a great experience in the program. And, you know, the woman who started the program, she still runs it today. It's a center now. So it's like 100 kids. And, and, you know, I saw that and then I started noticing in the Bay that there wasn't enough childcare. So I didn't know why more people weren't starting these like home-based childcare programs. programs, like think like a daycare in someone's home. And so I decided to start a couple of daycares myself. So I helped rent homes and, you know, supported teachers in starting their own businesses. And the unit economics made a lot of sense. And so I ended up raising a seed round and then started to scale it. And You know, here, here we are. And so today we're about, we're in like 50 states, like 47 states, but probably in 50 now. I haven't checked in a while. And, and we, you know, we, we help folks today start childcare programs. We help run a substitute teacher pool. So we help childcare providers get subs. We help with teacher recruitment. So we help teachers get jobs into childcare programs. And then we provide business coaching to childcare providers to help them grow their business. And what we've noticed is that the 2 big things childcare providers need are teachers and students. And so we spend a lot of time, you know, optimizing things so that we can get them more teachers and students and then help them earn enough to stay in business. So I'll pause there.

Yeah, no, that's a great kind of background and sharing about, you know, the early days for Wonderschool. But I guess, you know, as a kind of a marketplace and kind of getting started, you know, what were the first steps that you actually took to start it at the time?

I was fortunate enough to work with the First Round Capital team on this, and I was talking to Josh Kopelman pretty much like every other week. And I started the business with a co-founder, his name is Errol, and we were talking to Josh and We were like, hey, we have this idea. We noticed that there's not enough childcare. And we came across this guy named Harris Rosen in a place called Tangello Park in Florida, in Orlando. And there's a Reddit post about him. And we're like, hey, like, you know, this guy started these childcare programs out of people's homes. And like the community's like so much better now. Like they're like, the crime rate went down, like the grad— high school graduation rate increased and all these like positive like things happened because like this guy started childcare programs outta people's homes. And Errol was having a hard time finding childcare at the time. And, and so we're like, hmm, why don't we explore this? And then I thought back to my childhood and then I worked with this So then what I did, so I, we told Josh about it and Josh was like, go start a couple childcare programs. And so we said, okay, cool. So I was like, Errol, you focus on the supply side, I'll focus on the demand side. And so Errol went and recruited some teachers and I went and pinged a ton of teachers and said, hey, I'll help you fill your childcare program for free. I'll be your chief, I'll be your CMO. And so I just went through like the, like I went through like There's like these directories. And so I just started going through the directory and like calling childcare providers like, hey, are you full? It's like people were like, some people were like, yeah, I'm not full. I was like, hey, can we help you fill your program? And so then I just, you know, Ubered over and just started asking a ton of questions and then just started helping them fill their programs and it worked. And so it was like, oh, okay. And then Arrow found teachers and that worked. And then we like, and then we merged the 2 playbooks and then started to build a business around that.

That's very cool to hear about doing the things that don't scale in the very beginning, right? You mentioned SF before, so did you focus primarily on SF and the kind of Bay Area to get things started and kind of build up initial liquidity?

Well, we first wanted to prove out if it was an idea worth doing. So the first thing was like, is this actually worth it? Like, does it work? Like, can a childcare provider earn enough? Can we build, like, can we acquire teachers and parents in a sustainable way to build a business? And it worked. So it's like, okay, like, does it work in Berkeley? So we did it in Berkeley, it worked. Does it work in Los Angeles?

It worked.

Does it work in this neighborhood, that neighborhood? Does it work in New York? It kept working. So we're like, okay, like this works. So then like it's, then the fun part begins, which is like, how do we like scale it? Right. And it's so remarkable, like, 'cause there was no AI then, right? So we couldn't really use any like LLMs, but so much of what we were doing then I think about this a lot was like, we were, oh, we had the fortune of working with Michael Seibel from YC. And so he was like coaching me a lot because I'm friends with him and he was telling me like, you gotta build playbooks. And so we started documenting everything and I still have the playbooks and I still use them today. And essentially those playbooks, you know, you can now run that through ChatGPT or like an LLM. It can do so much of it for you now. So it's really exciting to be able to like start applying that to like our providers today, our childcare providers. But the idea was figure out if it was worth scaling because one of the mistakes people make is they build businesses that just like aren't worth building. You can't get the economics to work or there's not enough demand, you know? And so that's what we were trying to validate. And then like, we, you know, it's an insatiable amount of demand for this. And so that's when we knew this is a business worth building.

That's really cool. And I guess as far as like what point in the business was that?

First 18 months.

Oh, wow. Yeah, you've definitely scaled quite a bit since then and, you know, briefly kind of gave us an overview of it, but could you just kind of like walk us through, you know, aside from that, like the early stages, like how it's evolved?

When I first started the company, I walked into this thing called a resource and referral agency. And so you can like Google it. There's one in every zip code in America. And they're essentially like, think like the library, but like the library system, but for childcare or like a school district, but for childcare. So the way it works is like childcare resource and referral agencies are sort of the hub for childcare in a community, but they're primarily made to serve Like folks who are lower income in terms of like literally, literally, like literally lower income. And, but I didn't know that at the time. So I went online and, and by the way, I don't have kids, so like I don't really know a lot about like the pain point of finding childcare. I just realized like it was a big problem. So So I went into this resource and referral agency, it's called Bananas in Oakland. Incredible organization, great group of people doing incredible work for the community. And when I walked in, this was in 2016, I was like, hey, I want to find childcare. I was just kind of like trying to use the existing system. And when I asked, they ended up giving me a Like a printout of like phone numbers and some information. And I just had this moment where I was like, oh my God, like now I see why there's a childcare crisis. Like, you know, the folks that are doing this don't have access to like modern technology or they aren't using it. At least I'm not sure what's going on. And, you know, it was just really, really difficult experience to find childcare. And then what we did is we actually started 2 childcare programs. And in the process of starting them, we went through the whole licensing journey. And so I like went to all of the, like, I went to the CPR class, I went to the first aid class, I went to the, I like shopped for homes with like real estate agents. Shout out to Maureen in San Francisco, helped me out. We like, we took the licensing course, we submitted applications, we did everything just so we could feel like the every step of the experience. And again, it was just very antiquated in California, right? And so it was just like very interesting to be living in the Bay Area where like we're in the hotbed of innovation, but the childcare system Isn't really getting access to that. And that's in California. In New York, you have to send in a letter to the state asking for an application, and then they mail it to you, and then you have to fill it out and then mail it back. And then it's like this whole thing. And so we just saw that and we're like, oh, okay, there's so many Barriers, you know, and we can help. We know we can help. We can just bring modern-day technology to this sector. And so that's sort of what became the plan.

And I guess, like, was that the kind of the point in time where you realized that was like a, you know, a bigger problem? So, you know, not just kind of connecting supply and demand, but, you know, really focusing on, you know, enabling new providers or?

So look, the mission of the company is to ensure every child gets access to high-quality early childhood education. Within five minutes of home, okay? And I recognize that like in rural areas, five minutes of home is pretty hard to execute on. But like the idea is that like it's close, right? And and we have a unique mission. It's not like any. It's not like a lot of other companies that exist, right? There are a lot of companies in this space. A lot of them, you know, are looking to help childcare providers operate their businesses better or. Help parents find childcare. But, you know, our mission is to like operate in a world where everyone has access to it. And what I always say is like, you know, there was a time and I lived in San Francisco when I had to walk 4 blocks and like pray to God that I could get a taxi to get to the location I wanted to get to. And now, you know, I can press a button or 3 different buttons and have transportation at my fingertips, right? And so I want to get to a place where that's the same thing for childcare and it's a totally doable thing, which is like the other interesting thing. But like when you look at the market, there's not enough childcare. That's the biggest problem. There's not enough supply. And then the supply that's in the market needs a lot of support, right? Because it's a really hard business to operate because people say it's because of like the thin margins, but that's not really the biggest problem. The margins can be pretty sizable is that you constantly have churn. You have a lot of parent churn, natural parent churn, right? Parents typically stay in a childcare program for 11 months. So you constantly need to keep filling your program. And then childcare teachers are some of the lowest paid people in society. So they're always churning out, they're always looking for a job to make more. They're always like moving. So you constantly need— so it's an operational challenge that can be solved with an efficient marketplace. But the marketplace needs to have multiple components to it, which is a challenging thing to deliver on, but a doable thing. And so that's what we're really focused on.

You briefly mentioned earlier as far as not all markets being the same and some of the playbooks that you use. So could you share a little bit more about what all goes into launching a new market for Wonderschool?

Oh, so now, The vast majority of our growth has come through government partnerships. So when I started, what we would do is we would analyze the supply and demand imbalance. We would analyze like how many, like, you know, the, how much we think we could essentially like an ROI analysis on a market, the licensing laws, et cetera. And then that's what, how we were launching markets. So we launched San Francisco, LA, New York, this way. We started going to Denver and then the pandemic hit and we decided to start to partner with states, cities, and counties. We were getting it as inbound, which was really interesting, but like I didn't take it seriously because I didn't realize that like government was an interesting thing to partner with. Like at the time, really the only company that I knew of selling into government was Palantir. And it was still like crazily like a little bit of a joke, you know, like, I don't know, people just didn't take it seriously. But my board was like, Chris, like, what are you doing? This is a huge opportunity. And so I decided to start doing it in 2020. And what we've realized is that governments need help solving the childcare crisis just as much as like governments need help doing it. And so Now the way we launch markets is where we get a government partnership. And so, and we work with these, we work with state, city, county governments to figure out how best to help them solve childcare. And then in the process, you know, we're building a lot of scalable systems that we can apply to the next city, state, or county. And then, you know, eventually like we'll have enough of a of a foundation to go back to being more of a, like a non, like enterprise, like partner or non-government partner, like marketplace. But that's not really where our heads are right now. There's a lot to build.

Definitely. That sounds like it. And I know you and I were also talking, you know, previously before this, as far as, you know, on it seems to be a little bit more common for marketplaces to kind of pursue the kind of enterprise or B2B route now. And so I guess like, you know, with that in mind, you know, do you have any maybe tips for founders that might be thinking through that and how that might help them build a better marketplace?

Yeah, I interviewed this guy in like 2018. He worked at this company called Porch and I actually hadn't heard of it, but they're like a big-time marketplace nationally, maybe internationally now. And And they're big time in, what's that place called? They're like in, they're in Washington. And, you know, I'm interviewing him, he's a product manager and he's like, hey man, have you ever considered like partnering with like businesses to do what you're doing? And I had always thought like, you know, like Bright Horizons, Bright Horizons does a lot of partnerships with like, Bright Horizons is like a big time childcare provider, the biggest in the world maybe. our second biggest. And they partner with like employers like Goldman Sachs and like Salesforce, you know, that's what I would always stop. But then he explained that what Porch does, and I'm probably butchering this, but the idea still sticks, which is like Porch is like a, it's like a hardware company. Like you can get like, it's like TaskRabbit. Like you can get help with like your your house, doing home renovations. And I think you can buy like materials through it too. I'm really sorry for anyone who knows about Porch. I'm really messing this up. But like the, but what he was saying is that like what he would realize is that you could like, they partnered with a lot of the inspectors or they would partner with, they would partner with like the people who were part of the journey of using the porch marketplace. And he said that that was a way for them to get a lot of growth. And that just sounded very logical to me, like very logical. And so I started to prioritize figuring out like, and being that I went through every step of the journey, filling the schools and, you know, helping the schools get operational, I knew all of the different sort of touchpoints and all of the different companies that like a childcare provider would meet along their journey. And I was like, hey, what if we started partnering with all these people, right? And building software for them and helping them do their jobs better. And I found that that's like a really, really powerful way to build a marketplace. And so I don't know, like the sort of like technical way of describing that, but you know, that's something that if I were building a marketplace today, that's what I would be thinking about for sure.

No, certainly. And then maybe what are like some examples, like specific ways that's helped when like launching a new market?

You get word of mouth, right? You get all of these people who are the biggest problem with marketplaces, at least my opinion is getting the unit economics to work. Right? And so there are a lot of things that are happening in the world right now that are lowering the cost of onboarding and servicing and potentially even acquiring users, right? Which is great. But there will be competition, like, you know, CAC will continue to increase. And so you have to find ways to make your economics work in like a, with a moat. And the more you establish those types of relationships, the deeper, the deeper your moat. And so, or the more fortified you are. And so it's just a, it's a competitive advantage. And then also from a user experience perspective, it's like just a better user experience when everything is on one platform or everything is interconnected, right? It just feels magical. And so But like, you know, to deliver on that magical experience requires like a confluence of a lot of different functions, like executing the right way for the customer. And so, and so that's sort of what I'm like realizing through this approach.

I mean, hopefully you definitely mentioned lots of different kind of considerations that'll probably come up during the group Q&A. And so another topic that I actually wanted to chat about, and you mentioned it kind of at the beginning, is that AI. You know, how are you leveraging AI at Upwinter School?

You know, I posted on LinkedIn a couple of years ago, like, what's, who moves faster, a company that has, is AI native or a company that from the get-go or a company that is not AI native and starts to incorporate AI. And there are a lot of really interesting responses to it. And I, I still agree with the prevalence of like the company that is integrating AI can win, but it's hard. It's hard because like when AI's at your core, you just, it's just the different types of people join your company. There's like almost like an expectation that like, you know, we're just gonna do everything from an AI native standpoint. But when you integrate it into a company, it can be really hard because it can scare people. People think that like, it's like, it's almost like people won't adopt it because they're afraid of it or they don't think it's valuable. Like people don't, may not realize it's valuable. So it's hard to, it takes time to help people understand it and adopt it. And so But we're incorporating it, you know, pretty rapidly. We're making it easier for childcare providers to get support. We're making it easier for parents to get the support they need. And I have a ton of exciting things that we're thinking about and building around, like becoming a much more, pretty much like an AI native company. And, you know, AI agents were like the concept of an AI, like I remember when ChatGPT like launched and I remember using it for the first time and it was so cool and so magical. And you know, it was just this moment, like I remember it was like the first time you're using Twitter or like the first time like logging onto the internet where you're like, holy moly, like everything's about to change. And I couldn't figure out how to incorporate it into the business. And then when AI agents became a thing, It was like, then it was like, oh, boom, that's it, right? Like, how do we use, how do we create AI agents for everything? Like, how do we, how do we make it so that childcare providers and parents can get the need, their needs met instantly, right? And, and now on top of that, how do we make sure they're getting the best information? It's really powerful. So, and so what we're doing right now is we're just building AI agents for everything. And we have, and one of the things one of our board members told us, he said something that was cool. He said, because we were at a board meeting, we're like, hey, how do we, what do we do with this like whole AI thing? Because, and he's, and it's, you know, it's Jeff from a16z and Jeff, like, you know, a16z is like one of the biggest like leaders in AI investments today. And You know, the thing we talked about was the, the, the way to, the way to really be powerful with AI, especially AI agents, is having access to data, proprietary data that you're able to use to create, like, to provide a really good user experience. And so that's something we think about a lot when it comes to parents and childcare providers. And then on top of that, you know, I spent a lot of time talking to government officials who are like, who literally are trying so hard to help their communities, but don't know what sort of bills to pass. They don't know how they can help. And we have all this data, right? Like I can tell you how many people search for childcare in New Mexico in the last hour. I can tell you what they're searching for. I can tell you, you know, tell you a ton of things, right? And so what we're doing is, and with the right like privacy, with the right level of security, we're Trying to— and the right level of anonymous data, trying to help policymakers make better decisions, right? So that they can help us solve the childcare crisis.

That's really interesting to learn more about. So you got a lot of head nods when you mentioned that, the kind of first moment when you experienced it. So, and it's definitely interesting to see how, you know, the more operationally complex marketplaces can leverage agents, as you mentioned, as well.

Yeah. Like imagine DoorDash being built today, right? Like from scratch. If you have Waymo now, you have ChatGPT, you have all these robot companies, like, so like the, you remember they had to burn so much money to get the scale they have, probably wouldn't need to do it as much now. So, but it requires a different level of talent, a real, a different level of thinking, you know? And so And so, yeah.

Well, cool. So we're gonna get into the group Q&A a little bit. Otherwise, you and I could just go on talking through some topics. But one of the things I wanted to ask about is, you know, the fundraising journey. And I believe you've raised whatever, $49 million for some top investors like a16z, as you mentioned, you know, so what has the journey been like? And do you have any maybe key fundraising learnings that you could share with founders here?

So the journey's been great. You know, we have a16z, Goldman Sachs, great investors. You know, we started the company with the first round team. They helped us a ton. Josh, Ariel, Whitney, and like, you know, what are some of the things I learned? One is grow, grow your business and know your unit economics. I don't know if that's like It's pretty straightforward. Know your unit economics and grow fast. And, oh, and provide a delightful experience for your users and solve a big problem. Solve a big problem. You can do the first 3 things I mentioned and the market might not be big enough. And so you might be wasting your time. Now, like the market might seem small and could become a lot bigger, which is fine. And that's kind of what's happened with childcare. Like when I started the business, my market was like home-based childcare programs with parents paying out of pocket. And now our market is like That plus governments, employers, fintech, right? Like there's all this, all of these businesses we can build on top of a marketplace. So you have to be careful, like, 'cause like your market might be a lot bigger than people will think it is, but you have to have the conviction to know that like it's a big market and not the conviction to raise, the conviction to keep going is really the conviction, like the conviction you need.

It's gonna be great tips. So cool. We're gonna get to the group Q&A. Hey, Peter, Joe, wanna come on?

Hi, Chris. I have a double barrel question about topics that you already touched on. You said that you started getting traction like neighborhood per neighborhood, and I would like to know like when did you scale that up to more like a growth strategy of state per state or county per county? And how the double barrel question is, how does AI accelerate that growth strategy right now?

Yeah. So one of our biggest costs was just to service the childcare providers. And so now we can use AI to service childcare providers en masse. So that decreased our costs like significantly, massive, massive decrease, like 95% decrease in In our cost, right? And so, and then filling a childcare program is really interesting because like, it's like the conventional wisdom is you gotta do everything by market, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That I don't buy it for us because it's like, So much of a childcare program can be filled by the provider doing the work themselves. So it's like, like the way you fill a childcare program is actually run an open house. And so, and you know, most childcare, home-based childcare programs need like 6 to 12 kids. And then once you get 6 to 12 kids, you start getting a waitlist and you see churn every, like on average every 11 months. But sometimes you'll have kids who stay in for like 30 months, right? So you really just need to recruit 6 kids. The other thing is that like childcare is a little bit more like dating, like, like, like the childcare program Mike likes might not be the childcare program. I like, like, my child might need like to play outside, Mike's child might like to play inside. You know, I want like a Russian program, Mike wants like an outdoor program, right? Like, they're like, they're very, it's very personal. It's not a one size fits all. It's not Uber, right? It's, it's not even Airbnb, because it's like a long-term commitment. And so you're really just trying to find the 6 to 9 families that like you. And, and, and that like will like your program. And so it requires like a pretty high touch. It's a little bit like a date to enroll in the program. And, and so what we do is we give childcare providers tools to go and find those people, post on Nextdoor, post on Facebook, host an open house. So like, you know, imagine a world where every childcare provider got those tools and got a playbook to fill their school. If you operate that way, you actually don't really need to have density play right now. Density play helps because you can get more parents to them, and that's an added benefit. But like, but it's way more scalable if you can sort of get your supply to get your demand. for you, right? And so like, that's how like Udemy launched, right? Like, how do you give tools to your supply so that they can like bring your demand for you? And so that's been my strategy. It's a hard thing to scale though because like it's hard to teach people to like teach a whole group of people to do that. It's actually interesting. That's been the hardest part. Like getting my team to build that playbook and then building the playbook to do it. But AI helps, right? Because then you can start to make it like code and then it's not like you have to teach people, you just teach the code base and then you like nail it. You get product market fit on that, those features. And so that's what we're really focused on right now. It's literally what we're doing today.

Great question. So hey, Ajith, do you wanna come on?

Yeah, uh, hi, uh, thanks Mike, and, uh, great, great talk, Chris. Uh, we are building Craved, which is a marketplace for, uh, personal chefs, and one of the points that you mentioned was about making it a great experience, right? So in the early days, I wanted to understand, did you do that through product, and how much was it done manually or through customer success? And Over a period as you grew, like now you're a bigger company, how much, how has it changed and how do you see that changing going forward? Because that's something that we are, you know, we're thinking about how do we focus on that?

It's really hard. It's hard to scale, but it's worth trying. It's worth continuing to do it and it's expensive to scale quality, right? And so You have to figure out ways to fund it. Like Tesla, right? Like start with the most expensive cars, then eventually get like to build a really, really cheap car for everybody. Like make it mass market. Like that's an intuitive way to build a marketplace, right? Or a business. And like one of the things like we did is we like started with wealthy people. Right? Who want to pay for expensive goods. That's pretty straightforward. You just do it in the Bay Area. It's an expensive, wealthy place, right? And so start them and yeah, that's what I started to do. And so I, and so, and the other thing is that when you start with wealthy people, they like demand quality. So it's a great way to force you. It's a forcing function. All right. But like, you want to deliver quality for everyone. So what you, what I've done is I've learned like how to build a quality experience for people who demand it. And what now, what we're doing is we're scaling it to people who don't demand it, but who deserve it. And so Like, and so like, but we can do it with economies of scale so we can do it in a, with like way lower costs than when we did it and when we first started the business. And, you know, I know the playbook too, right? So like, even though like we make mistakes, I know the playbook and that's the biggest benefit. Like I know the playbook and so Like Brian Chesky talks about this a lot when he talks about like founder mode and how he talks about like when you're a founder, you can always just build it again, right? Because you know how to do it. And so like that's one of the benefits here where it's like sometimes I'll walk into programs and I'm like, oh, we missed the quality mark here. But like I know what to tweak with the next program to make sure that we nail it.

Hey Chris, I actually had a question that a founder I posted wanted me to ask, and it was around trust and safety. So, you know, in the earlier stages, you know, how did you kind of build trust and safety? And what is the role that it plays today?

Well, childcare's an interesting market because there's already like built-in trust and safety because all childcare programs have to get licensed. And so there's a background check process that all childcare programs have to go through, and everyone in the home has to go through the background check process. Along with that, there's an inspector who comes through, and the provider has to get CPR and first aid. And that's like pretty much the case all in America. So that's like huge. That helps a ton because we don't have to build that infrastructure. And so we're like all about getting childcare programs licensed because we want them to make sure that they're going through like the right systems. That's one. 2, we would inspect the homes ourselves and we had like a rule, which is, would we enroll our kid in the program? And so, and so, and if not, how do we make the program a place where we would enroll our kid? So what would we change? And then what we would do is we would partner with early childhood education leaders who knew a lot about what like the right environment was because it's unintuitive, like to the normal adult on what is the right environment for children. So we got, we got advice from it and we would work with them and us like business people plus childcare people work together to deliver a great experience and a great like environment for the, for the, for the program. And then when parents start, when parents enroll in the program, what we do is we get like feedback from them to see how it's going for them. Then we use that feedback. And the feedback we ask them is all based on what we know matters for a high-quality childcare program. And then we use that feedback to coach the childcare provider on how to make their program better. And then we just have this like, and then the belief is like we have an ongoing feedback cycle and we operate with a growth mindset. So like the childcare provider might not be, you know, spectacular today, but if they're willing to take feedback, they can be spectacular in the long run. And it works. We have childcare providers who are getting bad reviews that are making millions of dollars today.

Wow.

running massive childcare centers all across, you know, the country because they take— it's just this continuous, like, learning to, like, make these, like, incredible programs.

That's going to be really helpful. I appreciate it. Well, hey, Camila, Joe, do you want to come on?

Yes. I had a question. So you talked about in the beginning that you were a free CMO of building the enrollment of the childcare programs, but you also said that you had to make the economics make sense. So how did you transition from doing this service for free to now monetizing it and being successful?

A large portion of our Business is paid for by governments, so it's free for a lot of it's free for childcare providers. But the economics work if the childcare provider pays too. So for everyone, because the amount of value we add to them, they wouldn't really be able to receive it without us. And so that's where like a take rate makes a lot of sense where it's like, You know, you couldn't probably get this without the support of our business. And so, but right now that's a small portion of our business. That's not like what we're really focused on. We're really focused on just getting as much supply on the platform as possible and adding value to them and, you know, generating revenue from them with the different services we have later on. Because we have folks that are really motivated to pay for the childcare providers.

Thank you.

Awesome.

That's a great question. Hey, Chris, I have to ask because it sounds like, you know, there's lots of moving pieces to Wonderschool. So, you know, what is the team like?

It's a pretty normal team from a function standpoint, right? We have like an enterprise go-to-market team. We have like a childcare go-to-market team that consists of sales, Biz ops, marketing, data. So it's kind of like 2 growth teams, I guess. And then, you know, typical back office finance, accounting. Yeah, we have engineering. It's just, so it's pretty straightforward business. It's just like we're kind of operating 2 businesses together, like a government business and like a childcare business.

And do you have any tips maybe for our earlier stage founders on that team building and hiring?

So one thing I've learned is like hire, hire through referrals. Referrals are really powerful. I just finished reading this book called Who. I read it a couple times now. It's about recruiting and, you know, you get some of your best candidates through recruiting, excuse me, through referrals. I think like, I think one thing is really important is You know, you gotta figure out who the CEO is and you need to figure out what a CEO is. And that, that took me some time to learn. And, you know, the CEO makes the decision at the end of the day. The CEO makes sure that there's money in the bank and the CEO's expected to deliver on the outcomes, right? So like it comes with a lot of responsibility. So I think it's just really important for folks to, like, there comes a time when that needs to be like figured out. And that's like the, I think that's like a really like unique part of the sort of like startup journey because as you start to get more scale, like You know, there's a lot more people need to like focus then, right? It's less like an ideation and it's more like, how do we turn this into a repetitive process? So yeah, those are some things that come to mind.

Awesome. Well, I appreciate it, Chris. We're almost out of time here, but, you know, thanks for taking the time to join us here today. I know we bounced around with, you know, on some of the topics kind of earlier in the conversation and also in the Q&A. So we really appreciate it and, you know, taking the time to help, you know, share some of your experience and insights with the the thoughts here. And I have one last question before we wrap things up, and that's my usual closing question. And if you could go right back to before you started Wonderschool, you know, what would you tell yourself about marketplaces?

So I like love marketplaces because they like create so many jobs and they help people, especially like sharing economy marketplaces. So what would I tell myself? I would probably say like, like trust myself more. Like just like, I like trust my intuition more. There are a lot of people who will tell you things that go against your intuition and you think that like, oh, 'cause they worked at Uber or they like are billionaires or they did this, that they must be right. But the way it actually works is you take it in and then you check in with yourself and you check in with yourself and like, do I believe this is true? And if you believe it's true, do it. If you don't, don't. So a lot of it is like honing my gut.

That's, that's gonna be great parting advice for us here. So, so awesome. And then last but not least, time for a quick plug. Where can we keep up with you at?

You can find me on Twitter. My handle is Bennett and the B is an 8. And then I'm also, you know, but most of my work is through Wonderschool. And so you can just find us at wonderschool.com.

Awesome. I'll include links and I'm sure you'll get lots of marketplace founders coming your way. So really appreciate taking the time to join us today for the group chat and thanks everyone for the great questions.