BridgeCare – a leading data and technology infrastructure platform for early care and education – announced a $10 million investment from Avenue Growth Partners (Avenue), an early growth equity investor in category-leading vertical SaaS companies. And BridgeCare, a modern SaaS solution with customers in 14 states, will invest in innovation and services to advance the mission of supporting state and local governments in making the ECE system more equitable and effective for all.
The early education has historically lagged behind other sectors in digital transformation, with critical processes like provider licensing still occurring via pen and paper in many communities. And like the healthcare sector with its slow adoption of electronic medical records, child care has faced challenges in its ability to adapt to the rapid demands of the digital age, and the delays have ultimately made it difficult for leaders to get a true picture of child care availability in their region and nationally.
With over 500 U.S. counties using the software, BridgeCare has already gained significant national attention and serves more than 500,000 families and 50,000 providers with better access to affordable, high-quality child care and early childhood education.
Since being founded in 2016, BridgeCare’s accomplishments in ECE include:
- The successful matching of over 40,000 Colorado 4-year-olds with high-quality early childhood education with its voter-approved, mixed-delivery Universal Pre-K program, more than doubling the amount provided under the state’s former system.
- Texas’ user-friendly child care search portal called Texas Child Care Connection for families to find available child care openings statewide.
- The revamping and administration of Alabama’s First Class Pre-K Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) with two tracks: Assessment and Enhancement.
- Regional adoption of Coordinated Enrollment in Virginia, which currently including three of nine Ready Regions.
KEY QUOTES:
“We’ve gotten to this point by viewing our customers as our most important stakeholders and using our parent-led team to build solutions that truly deliver impact where legacy systems have fallen short. This new partnership with Avenue enables us to build on that momentum and bring our platform to even more states and counties to power equitable and accessible early care and education.”
“We’re very proud of the impact BridgeCare has made in the space so far but there’s so much work to be done. We’re excited to build upon our existing relationships within the nation’s most ambitious ECE initiatives and deliver more innovations to make their equity and accessibility goals a reality.”
- BridgeCare’s co-founder and CEO Jamee Herbert
“We were initially drawn to Jamee and JC as entrepreneurs, and they have done an excellent job building a high-growth business with market-leading technology. Over time, we became compelled by the intersection of the company’s mission with the entrepreneurial opportunity to build a business that generates meaningful value for the early care and education ecosystem.”
- Avenue co-founder and partner Ryan Russell
