Wonderschool Founder Chris Bennett on Pandemic Pods and Equity

Welcome to the future of education. Really excited to have my guest today, Chris Bennett, CEO, founder of wonderschool, which frankly, wonderschool was turning a lot of heads before the pandemic started. It was one of the hot growing companies in early education child care space. Chris, you were cited by a lot of folks is quite visionary this pandemic hit and you all have done some remarkable things in the business to support families and learners all over. So excited about this conversation. Fits really well into the pandemic pod trend right now as well out there. So Chris, first, welcome.

Thank you.

Yeah, and I'd love to start because I was watching you all when you first got your start as wonderschool, before the pandemic, and you were growing pretty rapidly and stuff like that. Just love to hear, you know, maybe for those that aren't familiar, just briefly what you were doing beforehand, but what the pandemic did to your business and how you all have adjusted.

So I'll give you a little bit of background on Wonder School and myself. So, Chris Bennett, I'm CEO of Wonder School. I'm originally from Miami, Florida. My parents are immigrants. They're from Honduras. And I grew up with a really large family. I have 31 first cousins and, yeah, 31 first cousins. And growing up I was always like, always did well academically and never really sure what the reason why when I looked at my cousins. And one of the things that stood out for me is that I went to some really incredible preschool. And that preschool, I believe, really helped me in elementary school and middle school and thereon. And I was the first in my family to graduate from college. And I went to Wharton and always really been interested in entrepreneurship. Moved to the Bay Area because it's such a great place to start a company. And when I was here, I kept hearing from my friends that there was a shortage of childcare, that my friends were having a hard time finding childcare. And I thought that was really weird because in Miami, where I'm from, there's a lot of childcare and there's a lot of in home childcare. So my sister went to an in home childcare program and I would go to her program for after school care. And the woman who started that business, you know, she always did really well. Like we actually, she, she grew her business from an in home business to a center in a commercial space. And my parents actually started a business next to hers. And I remember seeing people going in and out of her business all the time. So much foot traffic. There's so much demand for childcare. So I didn't understand why more folks were starting in home programs. And what I found was that starting a program is really hard for a lot of talented educators, and it's really confusing. And so we thought, what if we could build an Airbnb like experience where folks can use a technology platform to start a program and get their program up and running? And what we did is we actually rented a home to learn everything about starting a program. We hired a teacher, and we went through the process of creating in home programs. And then we found individuals to start programs out of their own homes. And that's what we do today. So we scaled the business to, you know, folks starting programs out of their own homes. And along the way, we started to find folks who wanted to start forest school, so outdoor programs, and they started joining the platform. And the, you know, the pivot that we're going to talk about is actually really not a pivot. We've been doing micro schools for years. Folks have been coming to wonderschool wanting to start micro schools for years, and a number of them, we actually let them do it. And I'm really glad we did because we learned a lot about it and it really prepared us for this moment today.

That's super helpful. The one thing I just want to emphasize there is that Airbnb insight you had and helping make a seamless experience to create. It's something that I've sort of felt like would be the wild card of disruption, if you will, of our schooling system writ large because it is so hard for people to start. But so many people want a more customized or smaller experience that's tailored to their needs. You all cracked that nut quite significantly. Before you jump into the sort of the micro school piece of this, just give folks a sense of the size that you had reached and how many in home, you know, in home arrangements you were supporting and the like.

So what's actually really interesting about the pandemic is it actually has led to a big decrease in the number of programs that we have on the platform. So we're in 11 states right now, and what we're seeing is a lot of in home programs for schools, they're still around because they don't have the, the same level of investment needed to start a commercial space. And with commercial programs, they're. They're being forced to close because of shelter in place ordinances across the country. And yeah, so a lot of them are being forced to close. And so a lot of those parents are going to in home Programs and forest programs that we have on our platform.

Super interesting. Okay, and so what's the scale right now that you all are at in terms of those programs?

So we're in the thousands of programs that we have on the platform today.

Very cool. Very cool. So talk about then. Let's talk about, I guess, the impact that Covid did have or didn't have on the business. There were a lot of headlines about it at the time, but maybe more exciting than. So just a snippet on that. Cause what I really want to get into is then parents have been rushing to create these pods and you all are really facilitating that right now. And so. Want to talk about that work?

Yeah. So when the pandemic. When in March, we. Well, I was at a conference, a Learn Capital conference in February, and I remember hanging out with a number of tech entrepreneurs there who run ed tech companies. Sorry, let me just turn the notifications off. And I remember talking to one of the founders there and I was like, hey, man, this thing that's happening in China, it's going to impact us. Like, it's, it's. It's gonna come here, you know. And I remember getting on a flight to go to Salt Lake City and thinking, this might be the last time I fly and someone might have coveted on this flight. Like, what does that mean? And this was at a time when people weren't even.

You were ahead. I was gonna say. You were quite ahead then.

Yeah, yeah. You sort of have to be when you're an entrepreneur because you have to, you know, like, you're sort of predicting the future.

Future.

And so. And then I remember getting back to the office and talking to, you know, folks in my community and no one was worried about it. And then two weeks later, it was a, oh, just wash your hands and everything's going to be fine. Like, we're making. It's too big of a. Everyone's making a big deal out of it to. And then that's when I heard that. When I started to hear that and see what was happening in. I think it was in New York or. Yeah, New York was getting hit bad. I thought, you know, startups are valued on growth. You need to grow. It's not a. It's not a. It's not a company where you're trying to be. Especially early on, trying to.

It's not a steady state business. Yeah, exactly.

You're trying to be steady state business. So our business model has been, you know, we take a percentage of tuition. And so I thought, I don't know if every city in America looks like Wukong and everyone is sheltering in place, parents aren't going to want to put their kids in childcare. And if parents aren't enrolling in childcare, we need to be prepared for that. And so we decided to do a real make a really hard decision because we have, we had an incredible team, an incredible team. And it's incredible to see some of the roles that a number of them have gone on to do. And folks are starting companies. A lot of exciting things are happening for the folks that were on the wonder school team prior. But we had to downsize the team because we weren't going to be able to grow revenue the way we thought we would in the number of enrollments on our platform. And so we downsized in March and that was absolutely the right decision because we wanted to make sure we had enough Runway to be able to prove out other parts of the business. And also I wanted to give my teammates the ability and time to find something next. So we made sure everyone got really good severance packages. We covered a lot of folks cobra so that they had insurance during this hard time. And you know, I've been pretty involved in helping folks find their next date.

Gotcha. No, that's super helpful to understand. So then we move into this moment and people sort of get through the school year. It sounds like the centers and so forth and forest schools were fairly stable on your platform. And then people all of a sudden start realizing, I think sometime this summer that schooling is not going to go back to what they had hoped it would or what they had. And parents in many cases have been reporting that they don't want it, they don't want to send their kids. There's a lot of fear. And people start thinking about homeschooling arrangements. They think about how are we going to care for our children during virtual schooling or remote schooling arrangements and the like in the press. All of a sudden this pandemic pod and micro school phenomenon popp pops up. Micro schools, as you said, you know, it's something we, we've all in the sector, I think been tracking for a long time, but newer right to sort of the mainstream audience. And then you guys come out with an announcement a few weeks back, I think at this point saying, hey, we're going to support people creating these micro schooling communities. And there was an interesting twist on that, which was for those still enrolled, if I have this right, for those still enrolled in the district, right in the school. So talk about what you're facilitating and the why behind that.

So we're just so well positioned to support the creation of micro schools. Micro schools are in home. They're mixed age. And that's exactly what wonder school does for children between the ages of 0 and 5. You know, our classrooms are for children. Yeah, they're all mixed age. We find individuals who can start in home child care programs. We take them through the entire process of the creation of the program, the pricing, the licensing. They get access to our community through this, and they use our technology to do it. And then we help them fill their programs. And we've been doing that for, you know, a long time. And we're the. We're the market leader in this, in this, in this space. And so when I saw what was going on with micro schools, the woman. The woman, I don't remember her name off the top of my head, but she started the pandemic pods. I believe her name is Leanne. She started the pandemic pods Facebook group. And then a gentleman named Yvonne who runs the Seattle pandemic pods group. Prior to, like, the, the rise, I posted on LinkedIn, I said, hey, I'm starting to see people come to us saying they want to start micro schools, like, more than I've ever seen. This is so interesting. Who, who, who should I talk to? And one of my investors is like, you should talk to Yvonne in Seattle. So I spoke to him, and then I started to see this Pandemic pods Facebook group because one of the big places where our parent our programs promote their programs is in our providers promote their programs. They promote them on Facebook groups. And so I keep track of them all. And our platform helps our providers keep track of them. And I found one in. I found Leanne's and I messaged her. I was like, hey, this is really cool. You didn't exist a couple of days ago, and you have a thousand people in your group. And then I remember looking at it a week later, and she had 6,000 people in her group. And I think she has like 40,000 now. And, and that's in the main group. There was like a pandemic Brooklyn. There's a pandemic San Francisco. And I just saw this rise and said, oh, my God, this is one incredible, the work she's doing and what Yvonne's doing. But two, there's a lot of demand for this. And there's. And I'm like, hey, wonder school can help. And I kept thinking about all the great work that, you know, founders were doing early on in the, in the pandemic with ppe. So there was like the Flexport founder who was supporting individuals bringing over mass from China.

Yeah, high school, High school classmate of mine actually. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was really inspired by that. And so I saw that and I was like, hey team, what can we do to help? I thought, hey, let's expand our solution. Let's make it easier for a parent to find a microschool on the wonderschool platform. So we updated our search filter so parents can find them. Let's make it easy for someone to start a micro school on the wonderschool platform. So we added, we updated our signup flow and the creation flow so folks could do that. And I started. We have like a group of mentors that we have that we hire as contractors. Our providers can contract with them so they can hire them for support. And I started to find all of the leaders in the micro school movement. So I spoke with this gentleman named Jerry Mintz, he runs Aero and added him to our platform so folks could get access to folks like Jerry to support them in the creation of their programs. And then I started to interview folks who are on our platform who are operating micro schools, like a woman named Tracy in Little Elm, Texas. And we just brought on this program, Iron Kids down in Southern California and started to interview them and tell their stories so that folks who want to start micro schools can read their stories and come to wonder school to do so.

Very cool. So and are you finding that as you're supporting these across many states? I think you said your support in 11 states at the moment. Are you finding so central? Thompson, on watching on YouTube right now, just asked, is there special licensing by states? And I guess I'd add how different are the requirements as you, as you move across the country for starting these micro schools?

There absolutely is different licensing by state and there's, there's home like every. What we're learning is that some programs are licensed as child care programs. So the programs we already operate can take children up to 12 or 13 and child care programs tend to be after school care programs. And so if you think of a micro school, I don't want to, you know, diminish what it is, but it's effectively an all day after school care program is what I've like been calling. But that's the simplest leap I can make. The other simple leap is what Jerry told me. He called it a homeschooling resource center, which I thought was really cool too. And so it's children who are learning their own thing, coming together for care. Um, and that's what we enable. And so that's, that's, that's why when we made our announcement, we said that we, we, we focus on folks who, with children who are already distance learning because they're not coming. Folks aren't coming to Wonder School for the curriculum. They're coming to Wonder School for the care and they're utilizing the curriculum that they already have. But to the original question, there's different, there's different regulations in every state. So every state has different childcare regulations. And then if the child is actually going to use a new curriculum, then the child typically, the family typically needs to get registered for licensing around homeschooling or potentially even a private school. And so what we do is when folks come to wonderschool and they sign up for wonderschool, we support them in figuring this out, because the whole country is figuring it out at the same time.

And do you help them through speaking as a parent, going through the homeschooling process this very minute with my two daughters, do you support them in, in, you know, filling out the paperwork with the district or state and so forth? All through on the. If they're actually withdrawing right from the school and going into a homeschooling arrangement, do you, does the platform support them in that process?

So for us to move as fast as we needed to move, we haven't been able to build a technology that we have been able to build for childcare programs to help folks through the process. So a lot of it is support. So we have a community where when someone signs up for wonderschool, they're able to get access to our community of providers. And we have a micro school community. And in there, our team supports individuals in finding the answers they need. But, Michael, what we primarily focus on is teachers who want to start a micro school are parents who want to start a micro school. And so typically the person who's starting the school is usually doing it as a business. They're planning to do it long term. We are supporting folks in the creation of pods for the short run. But a lot of the folks that are coming to us want to do this, not only now, but in the long run.

Gotcha. Yeah, that resonates. Because that's sort of been, again, my thesis that if there was going to be disruptive innovation of schooling itself, it would have to come through in that sort of an arrangement that you all are, with you all as the facilitator, effectively. I guess my question is you all have, as you said, you're not providing the curriculum. So a lot of times these families are still enrolled maybe in their district and so forth. How are you thinking about the equity piece of this? And that's been a major topic and some sarcastic headlines from writers and the like around Silicon Valley, being excited about pandemic pods and so forth. How are you thinking about making sure that, that the child care aspect of this is accessible to all and so forth?

It's something I think deeply about. You know, the mission of wonderschool is to ensure every child gets access to the education they need to fulfill their potential. And so we are very, very committed to every child getting access. Especially when I share my story, when I think about micro schools and equity, sort of two things come to mind. One, I don't, I don't really know what families are. It's, it's really hard to get visibility into what's happening for families all over the country that are going through this. So I don't, I don't actually want to presume that, you know, for folks that are low income, folks that are middle income, I don't actually know what's happening for them. But my guess is they're figuring this out just along with, you know, very wealthy families that are going through this. So that's, that's just the first thing I want to state. Secondly, I'm really interested in what I. What's really exciting about this movement is this could potentially lead to funding for micro schools from, from, from our school districts, from our state government, from our, from the federal government. And if there's funding for micro schools, just like there's funding for public school or funding for charter schools, then all of a sudden, you know, everyone gets access to micro school. There's a gentleman on our platform, Jeremiah, he's Native American, he runs a program down in Arizona. Children go to his micro school for free. They're funded through the charter school network. Arizona is the only state that I know that does this.

Yeah. With their education savings accounts and then allowing the charters and so forth. There's multiple paths to make it happen.

Exactly right. And so, and so I'm learning so much right now. And because I'm effectively new to k to 12, Wonderschool is new to k to 12. And I want to make that very clear. But we're learning a lot. And that's exactly right. The education savings accounts are allowing children to go to micro schools for free. And so all I keep thinking is, why isn't that available nationwide? That's available nationwide. Then the equity component is solved for now, the quality component, that is the next level. That's something that we're going to have to solve for. But that's an issue that, that's a, that's an issue for every type of micro school, no matter what the, what the, like how wealthy the parent is. And so, so I actually emailed superintendents all over the country when we launched this. I emailed charter school leaders all over the country because I'm like, hey, we can support you in this. And the response wasn't very positive. I think that the, I think that it's going to take time, but the funding is there and so the key, how do we unlock that?

So I want to, I want to dive in on that for a moment because I've been super discouraged, I guess I'd say with school districts and superintendents responses to this moment and the inability to form and support micro schools or pods in their communities. And the feedback that I've gotten for better or worse is, I mean some I think are just sort of deer in headlights trying to make sure, you know, trying to figure out operational. Right. The other piece of it is I've gotten feedback that liability concerns and sort of lack of direction from the states are holding them back from a regulatory perspective. Have you heard that at all? Or sort of what's. What, what's driving the non response in your mind?

So to be fair, some folks are taking the meeting and we are having conversation with superintendents and charter school providers about making wonderschool available to their entire district and working through how to figure out funding there. But for better or worse, our education system and our governments move rather slowly. And I say for better or worse because sometimes it's good that our government doesn't move too quickly.

Sure, that could be a positive.

Exactly. There's so many folks, so many different type of constituents that you know, are government governance. And so I'm a very big supporter of what we're doing. I just, I still don't know. I don't know why. But you know, I've seen some stuff that's going on in San Francisco and what I'm seeing in San Francisco is I saw a couple of emails where, where the school district is partnering with child care resource and referral agencies like Children's Council, a very innovative leading, you know, resource and referral network to figure out how to create pods for public school children. They're doing it through not, they're not doing it through homes, they're Doing it.

Through.

Just like public spaces, which makes.

All the sense in the world. There's totally right now. Right?

Yeah, I thought, I thought that, I thought that response was incredible. And I would say that there's probably a lot of that happening that we just don't see. I learned about that through an email that someone forwarded to me. You know, this, this is probably happening. I'm just unaware of it. And so I think our leaders are working as hard as they can and they're trying to respond to this. But I think at least I, for sure, I have no idea what it's like to run a school district. And my guess is the level of complexity of it is incredibly high and there's a lot more to it than I would ever imagine. And so it's probably hard to be as nimble as a startup primarily providing technology to folks to do it. So I'm sort of, I think that's a good.

Yeah, I think it's a good observation. It's interesting. And then maybe close on this question, but first an observation which is, I do think one of the challenges of running a district is that there are so many different constituencies with vastly different needs. And in many ways this pandemic has brought that out more than ever. Right. In the sense that some parents, if we're going to be at home, like, hands off, I want the time with my kids. And if other parents, like, if we're going to be at home, I want synchronous live, 8 to 3 tons of programming. And then there's all the variations in between, hybrid preferences, in person, et cetera. And in some ways micro schools, though, are the antidote for that because you can really, like you said, customize for certain preferences and make sure theoretically, if we can build the quality up, that everyone gets a rigorous experience at the same time. I guess the last, I guess the last question from my, on my end is what are you seeing that's really inspiring right now on your platform? I'm sure you're seeing stories or groups coming together like what, what jumps out at you and you're like, you know, it can be one or two, three things that you're just like, yeah, that's, you know, those people are going to get this and, and it's great that we're there to facilitate it.

Wonder School is an interesting platform because we are a for profit education company and I would say so, you know, we want to, we first need to earn a profit to be successful. But secondly, we support entrepreneurs who are building businesses and One thing that's really inspiring that I'm seeing is there because there's such a need for outdoor programs for micro schools. We're seeing folks come to the platform and see more success than we've ever seen in the past. There's one woman on our platform who joined, you know, she was making a preschool teacher salary and she's making probably about 20 to 30% less than what she was making as a preschool teacher a year in a month. Serving. Yeah, yeah. Serving a large number of children. And because of her sort of innovative spirit, she's likely going to start multiple programs that will serve many more families. Wow. And if funding comes from the government, she will be able to even serve even more families. The woman. There's a team of women that I recently spoke with in Southern California who just started a program and they were getting enrollments within four to five days of creating a program on the wonderschool platform. And they starting off as an after school care program, but they have a vision of actually starting a charter school at some point, starting with after school care. And so what I think is really exciting is this pandemic is bringing folks who might take their skills and apply it to a classroom and they're building their own effective platform to affect an entire community with their ability to be innovative, which is honestly super inspiring to me. There's one other thing I'm seeing. When we announced that we were starting to work in micro schools, we don't have a curriculum platform, you know, and folks who offer curriculum, some of the leading curriculum providers started to reach out to wonderschool and said they could support folks who wanted to start programs on the platform. Friends who run companies that support folks in finding teachers have reached out. And so one of the things I'm seeing in the edtech community that's really, really exciting is the level of collaboration is so high. They're like, hey, let's not compete, let's not try to build what each other have. Why don't we just partner and package it as a solution for communities so that they're able to solve this problem utilizing all of the services we have? And so that's also been really exciting. Just the level of collaboration and the level of, hey, how do we all support each other so that we can support parents and teachers? So that's been exciting too.

That's incredible and both inspiring and also if you facilitate a network of childcare providers that can actually make more money doing good for families around the country, that's also, that's a heartwarming place, I think, to end this conversation. But Chris, put the link to wonderschool here below, people. Check it out. Um, I think it's incredibly. You know, it's. I remember being desperate for something like you all to come a few years ago, and then you appeared and you were focused in the preschool space. I'm personally thrilled you're getting into the K12 space, too. I think it could be humongous. And so just particularly in these times. Appreciate that, all that you're doing. Thanks for joining me.

Thank you so much, Michael. Really appreciate it.

Yeah. And be well, everyone, and we'll be back next time.