San Francisco, CALIFORNIA (February 14, 2024) — BridgeCare, the leading data and technology infrastructure platform for early care and education, announced today a $10 million investment from Avenue Growth Partners (Avenue), an early growth equity investor in category-leading vertical SaaS companies.

BridgeCare, a modern SaaS solution with customers in 14 states, will invest in innovation and services to advance its mission of supporting state and local governments in making the ECE system more equitable and effective for all.

BridgeCare’s Co-Founder and CEO Jamee Herbert says this investment comes on the heels of years of organic growth driven by the extraordinary need for new solutions and digital transformation in early care.

“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,” Herbert says. “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.”

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. 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 these delays have ultimately made it difficult for leaders to get a true picture of child care availability in their region and nationally.

However, the need for modernization is undeniable with an August 2023 report by the US Office of Educational Technology highlighting education’s digital status as one of “critical infrastructure,” and key players in building secure, accessible, and resilient solutions being service providers. It’s in this role - critical infrastructure - that BridgeCare has found consistent opportunities for impact.

Avenue Co-Founder and Partner Ryan Russell says his firm was impressed by BridgeCare’s founding team and the critical need BridgeCare met in the early child care space.

“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,” Russell said. “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.”

With more than 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.

“We’re very proud of the impact BridgeCare has made in the space so far but there’s so much work to be done,” Herbert says. “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.”

Since its founding in 2016, BridgeCare’s accomplishments in ECE include:

• The successful matching of more than 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.

• 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, currently including 3 of 9 Ready Regions.

ABOUT BRIDGECARE

BridgeCare has built data and technology infrastructure for government agencies and organizations working to build an early childhood education system that works for everyone. Entirely parent-led, BridgeCare solutions have made quality child care more available in 14 states.

ABOUT AVENUE

Avenue Growth Partners provides growth capital to B2B software entrepreneurs building vertical-market winners. Headquartered in Washington, D.C.,select Avenue investments include PortPro, BizzyCar, Rosie and Hive. For more information, please visit www.avenuegp.com.