Nurture Aims to Teach Kids Life Skills Through Gameplay

The new app Nurture is made for kids ages 4 to 7 and has games and interactive material to keep their attention

Parents know how hard it can be to keep their young children interested in learning online.

The company aims to teach kids essential life skills like how to get along with others, how to handle money, how to be mindful, how to be fit, how to eat well, and more through story-based adventures that kids can actively join in.

The $2.8 million pre-seed round for Nurture was reported on Wednesday. Golden Gate Ventures led the round. With the money, preschool content creators will be hired to help make material for the platform.

The first big game that Nurture made was called “Doki’s Delivery,” it was meant to help kids learn social and emotional skills. The show is about a group sent on a mission to deliver an egg in a rocket.

The app also has a feature that lets kids use two screens at once. Parents must download the Nurture TV app on Fire TV or Google to let kids use this feature TV. Kids playing “Doki’s Delivery” on TV can use their phone or computer as a controller. They can move the phone from side to side to help the characters navigate barriers.

Players can also answer the main character’s call, design the spaceship, and hatch the mysterious egg, which they can then care for in a way similar to the famous kids’ toy Tamagotchi.

“I didn’t want it to be mindless, passive screen time.” “I want to make it a fun and active way to learn,” co-founder and CEO Roger Egan told TechCrunch. “Once the kids understand the ideas, we use the games and interactives to help them practice and use what they’ve learned.”

Egan said the company will create new original material about “growth mindset and financial thinking.” Nurture is also talking with about 20 well-known third-party creators about adding to its material library. The creator platform on Nurture lets artists put content on their own digital “islands,” which users can access by swiping through the app menu.

Parents will be able to see how their children are doing in the games and the immersive learning material.

There are times when we ask the child questions and let them answer. These are called “reflection moments.” “With that answer, we can put all that information together and determine how well they understand the concept. We can then use that information to improve the product and let parents know how their child is learning and progressing,” Egan said.

There will also be tasks that kids can do away from the app that will give their parents ideas on how to help their kids remember what they’ve learned and get them to use what they’ve learned in real life.

Nurture was started in 2022, a few years after Egan’s kids started learning from home during the pandemic. He thought standard schooling didn’t prepare kids well enough for the fast-changing world, especially one powered by AI, because he could see how his children were learning.

He also thinks that kids should know how to be flexible, think critically, use technology well, be aware, and have empathy to do well in life. But he had difficulty finding suitable alternatives to help his kids’ schooling.

Egan started the online grocery store RedMart, which Alibaba later bought. Danny Limanseta, who used to be the product design lead at Redmart, is one of the co-founders. Sally Doherty is the chief people officer, and she used to work at Microsoft. The chief creative officers Scott and Julie Stewart are married and are experts in making animated shows for kids like “Lego Friends: The Next Chapter.”

One of Priebe’s jobs is to invest, and another is to help Nurture create games. Priebe made Club Penguin, a famous online game where multiple people can play together.

Priebe told us, “The next generation of kids learns to play games faster than they watch TV shows.” “I like the idea that you won’t just sit there and watch linear TV anymore…”It’s exciting how the girls in Nurture stop the adventure and ask the child, “Now, what would you do?” or “How would you like us to do this?”

Currently, Nurture is only open to people in the U.S., U.K., and Canada who are invited to the beta. In 2025, it wants to grow into other areas. Once the app is available, the company will also start a paid membership service.

Reach Capital and Seedcamp are also in the round, and Lance Priebe, co-founder of Club Penguin, is also there. Manual Bronstein, who is the chief product officer of Roblox, Scott Kraft, who used to be the lead writer and executive producer of “Paw Patrol,” and Joey Mazzarino, who plays Murray Monster, Stinky the Stinkweed, and other Muppets on “Sesame Street,” are some other well-known advisors.