Playground (tryplayground.com)
Playground (tryplayground.com) Mission, Purpose & Impact
Frequently Asked Questions
Our mission is to make excellent childcare accessible to all.
Founders Daniel and Josh Andrews grew up in child care. Their mom directed a center with 250 kids, their grandmother worked as a preschool administrator, and their aunt ran an in-home program. They witnessed firsthand the endless spreadsheets, clunky software, and paperwork that pulled educators away from what mattered most: the children.
When their family couldn’t find a tool that truly helped, Daniel and Josh teamed up with their childhood friend Sasha Reiss to build one. What began as a solution for their own mom quickly restored hours each week to their family’s center — time that went back into serving kids.
Word spread. Providers across the country began asking for the same relief from administrative chaos. Today, Playground continues to build with that same empathy and urgency, helping child care providers nationwide operate more smoothly so they can focus on delivering excellent care to more and more families.
Playground’s mission to make excellent child care accessible to all starts with supporting the educators and providers who make that care possible every day, through our software and beyond.
For instance, in 2025, Playground acquired Early Childhood Investigations (ECI), a trusted webinar platform that has provided free, conference-quality professional development to early childhood educators nationwide for more than 15 years. When ECI’s founder was preparing to retire, Playground stepped in to ensure the platform could continue rather than shut down.
Today, Early Childhood Investigations Webinars are proudly produced by Playground and continue to operate under their own name. Each month, ECI hosts 4–6 free webinars featuring respected researchers, directors, and early education thought leaders, drawing between 2,000 and 5,000 registrants per session.
Playground’s values — entrepreneurship, craftsmanship, and empathy — guide how we hire, build, and operate.
We demonstrate entrepreneurship through high agency and ownership. Team members are trusted to move quickly, experiment with new tools, and make thoughtful decisions without waiting for permission. Leaders set clear context and empower teams to execute.
We demonstrate craftsmanship by maintaining a high bar for quality in both our product and internal work. We invest in modern, well-designed technology, iterate consistently based on customer feedback, and encourage continuous skill development across the organization.
We demonstrate empathy by staying deeply connected to the educators and providers we serve. Our founding story began with our founders' family’s child care center, and that perspective continues to shape product decisions and customer relationships. Our acquisition of Early Childhood Investigations to preserve free professional development for educators is one example of that commitment.
Our values show up in how we prioritize, how we collaborate, and how we define success.
Playground (tryplayground.com) Employee Perspectives
Playground's "daycare in a box" model streamlines launching and running a childcare center, offering software that can handle everything from communication to tuition to registration and payroll. Brothers Daniel (pictured far right) and Josh Andrews and Sasha Reiss (pictured center) cofounded the New York-based business in September 2020 and have raised $3.4 million at a $15 million valuation.
Playground (tryplayground.com) Employee Reviews
