SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Nov 3, 2016) -  Brightwheel, the first all-in-one platform for early education, announced today it has acquired MyChild, a company with a similar focus on helping schools and childcare providers go paperless. "MyChild has made life easier for parents and educators alike and has introduced thoughtful products to our industry," said Dave Vasen, Founder & CEO of brightwheel. "We're excited to welcome their schools and families on board, and to continue our joint mission together. "
"Brightwheel has a beautiful product and a passionate following across the globe," said Hugo Augusto, Founder & CEO of MyChild. "We're excited to be joining forces and for what this means for our schools and families. "
In conjunction with this announcement, brightwheel has been making significant investments in its platform. This includes a powerful new billing and invoicing solution, mobile sign-in for parents, and new messaging capabilities. Features of the brightwheel platform include:
Digital Check-In: Secure, mobile check-in for students and staff with real-time ratios for all your rooms. Daily Reports: Easy tracking of all early learning activities and milestones. Assessments: Customizable observations and assessments -- quick & easy, with optional photo attachments. Paperless Billing: Automated tuition invoicing with seamless bill pay for parents, deposited right into your bank account. Photo Sharing: Capture, tag, and share classroom moments automatically. Parent Engagement: Parents get a real-time feed to stay close to their child's learning and continue it at home. Communication: Quick messaging and one-tap calling. For more information, visit  mybrightwheel.com  or email press@mybrightwheel.com with any questions. About brightwheel
Brightwheel is the first all-in-one platform for early education. Through brightwheel, teachers can easily track attendance, record assessments, share photos and notes, and gain insights into daily activities -- while administrators can manage enrollment, staffing, licensing requirements, and paperless billing. For parents, brightwheel provides a real-time connection to their child's education and the ability to continue the learning at home. Schools and childcare providers across the globe have fallen in love with brightwheel. For additional information, visit: www.mybrightwheel.com .

Leading Early Education Platform Brightwheel Acquires MyChild

EdSurge
By Antoinette Siu Nov 3, 2016
Image credit: Brightwheel
San Francisco-based startup  Brightwheel today acquired MyChild, a Lisbon company making an engagement system for parents and schools. Last year, Brightwheel raised $2.2 million in seed funding to build a free mobile application for parents to stay updated with their little ones at daycares and classrooms — everything from what they ate at snack time to what number they counted to that day. Investors in that round included Eniac Ventures, RRE Ventures and Sherpa Ventures. “For us, the acquisition is about further strengthening our leadership in the industry,” says founder and CEO Dave Vasen. Brightwheel wanted MyChild for the parent communication and student assessment components of the tool, he says. Brightwheel’s app allows parents and teachers to manage attendance, updates on toddlers throughout the school day and billing. To Vasen, who pitched the company idea on “Shark Tank" earlier this year, the company addresses both a paperwork and people problem. “[We] started by listening to administrators and teachers and observing their daily workflow,” Vasen tells EdSurge. He adds: “There is an insane amount of paper in this industry — sign-in sheets, daily reports, assessments, and notes to parents. The list goes on, and everyone is just sick of it. It's annoying. It's inefficient, and it's actually expensive.”
Brightwheel launched a pilot in 2015 with 10 schools using the platform, and now it’s grown to some 2,500 schools in every state. The app will remain free, Vasen says, but Brightwheel is testing a premium plan with schools. “Every day, we hear we hear stories from teachers who have more time with students, parents who are more engaged in their child's day-to-day learning, and business owners who have more control over their school's operations.”
The amount of the deal was not disclosed. Comments

Brightwheel Acquires MyChild, Targets Early Education With Mobile App

Aug 4, 2016
Even when they make noise, babies are cute. Ask Trump …
Growing them is a challenging task, but hopefully you can make it a little easier with the help of some innovation and technology. Meet these 7 Portuguese startups that love your children and want to help you make them happy people. 1
KIDE
KIDE is an app and web marketplace, dedicated to baby and kid’s fashion. It allows you to discover the perfect outfit for your kids with trendy fashion from small independent brands. A simple, quick and personalized shopping experience based on the ‘tinder for fashion’ on mobile and web platform. 2
MagikPlay
Magikbee  launched MagikPlay – educational app that merges the simplicity and fun of traditional wooden toys with different learning challenges for iPad, allowing kids to develop their skills and learn, with different and interesting challenges. Their proprietary technology doesn’t need batteries, wires nor internet connection. It’s their “little magik secret”. 3
MyChild
MYCHILD is a parent engagement tool that helps centers/schools to focus on child development instead of paperwork – daily sheets, portfolios and assessments. Their Software as a Service (SaaS) enables day care’s teachers to provide immediate information updates on the activities of children at the day care center. The information is accessible to parents online, anytime, anywhere. Mychild’s initial key services are Information reports, photos and videos private sharing and event management. 4
Nutri Ventures
Nutri Ventures  is an entertainment brand for children that promotes healthy eating. They have created a children’s entertainment show and a digital platform where kids can live the adventures of the nutrition kingdom as true heroes and have access to exclusive content and activities. Michelle Obama has developed a lot of actions to improve children’s nutrition. Nutri Ventures was invited by the USA First Lady to be part of “The White House Convening on Food Market to Children”, who remarked on the startup’s commitment to improving childhood nutrition. 5
Pumpkin
Pumpkin was created by a young family who wanted to promote happiness and well-being among families in Portugal. The company helps you find services and activities for families and gives you tips to live memorable moment with your loved ones. Pumpkin currently reaches more than 100,000 families per month and has over 2000 partners across the country, all of them recommended by families. 6
Science4you
Science4you develops and produces a range of educational, science-based toys, online games and activities for children. The company grew 70% on sales in 2015 and expects to expand to 35 countries and achieve €16M in sales this year. 7
StoryTellme
provides personalized books for children between 3 and 10 years old, to promote their creativity involving parents, friends and educators. The children lend their world to the characters becoming the hero, the villain the mascot or the helper. The result a colorful booklet and an e-book the little ones can share with family and friends. TAGS

7 Portuguese startups that also love your babies

Auditmark, Girissima, iM3DICAL , MyChild, PETsys Electronics and Wizdee are new tech-based start-ups selected, in the Call For Entrepreneurship program, for funding from Portugal Ventures. AuditMark is a leading HTML5/JavaScript source code protection provider through its awarded product JScrambler, which has tens of thousands of customers in more than 50 countries around the world. Web Applications are the present and future. We have them on desktop computers, on tablets, on smartphones and soon enough in our cars and home appliances. Millions of Apps installed on thousands of different devices executing HTML5/JavaScript will create huge security issues. With the investment from Portugal Ventures, well provide the solution., said Rui Ribeiro, CEO and Co-Founder of AuditMark. Girissima.com is a multibrand online boutique providing the latest fashion trends to chic and modern women all over the world. Its unique offering already attracts users from over 25 countries, mainly in Europe and increasingly recognized elsewhere. Our goal is to provide our customers with what we call collectible fashion to love and to last which summarizes the passion we want to share with our clients, but also the seriousness with which we face our commitment to them and with the fair quality/price relationship. Aytea A-Amandi Rezende, Girissima.coms CEO. iM3DICAL is an innovative Software as a Service platform that provides cloud-based solutions and services to manage and optimize medical imaging information. The company has a growing customer base in Portugal, where market validation has been achieved, and now plans to grow in international markets. We are breaking the paradigms of conventional products by offering a solution that enables our customers to manage and optimize their diagnostic workflows, while adding mobility and availability to the service they provide. Our business model ensures flexibility to enable our customers to grow as they need. stated Joao Guedes, iM3DICALs CEO. MyChild is a parent engagement system and app that helps childcare centres and preschools to focus on child development instead of paperwork. Its now easier than ever before to track childrens daily routines, share photos, create portfolios and engage parents with daily e-mail reports. Our clients are benefiting from increased parent engagement, higher retention of children and staff, and decreased costs. We are proud to work with preschools and childcare chains both in Europe and in the US market, where we want to continue to grow and contribute to the academic, professional and social success of every child said Hugo Augusto, MyChilds CEO. PETsys Electronics is focused on the development and production of photon detectors for Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and other applications. PET is the medical imaging technique of reference in cancer detection and the medical community agrees that early detection leads to vastly improved cure rates. PETsys innovative detector technology allows for PET scanners with improved performance. We have already demonstrated in clinical tests the best image resolution on the market (1.3 mm compared to 4-5 mm in current scanners), and we have new technology with an unprecedented time resolution of 250 picoseconds allowing for PET scanners with 3 times higher sensitivity, said Joao Varela, CEO and co-founder. Wizdee developed Wizdee Discovery , a disruptive business discovery solution. Wizdee Discovery is a self-service data analysis and exploration solution for business users, allowing them to make business queries in natural language, as simple as typing "count sales by vendor by month, and get results that can be easily manipulated and visualized. "Allowing business users to create their own analysis in a simple and intuitive way, boosting productivity, is one of the major benefits of Wizdee Discovery, which leads to time and money savings for the company", Paulo Gomes, CEO and Co-founder, added. The new investments that have now been realised by Portugal Ventures are the result of the Call for Entrepreneurship. The Call For Entrepreneurship is a dynamic and periodic initiative aimed at bolstering the Portuguese technology-based entrepreneurship ecosystem. The Call For Entrepreneurship aims to give innovative projects, especially those which are science and technology-based, access to venture capital investment in the initial stages of their business development. The projects selected by Portugal Ventures benefit from an investment of up to 750 thousand Euros (about 1 million USD), up to the maximum of 85% of total funding needs. Through this initiative, Portugal Ventures aims to invest around 20 million Euros per year. Some of the venture capital funds managed by Portugal Ventures are co-invested by the European Union through FINOVA , managed by PME Investimentos , COMPETE and POR LISBOA . The 6th Call For Entrepreneurship is now open and submissions will run till 27th February. All submissions are to be made through the Portugal Ventures website. Share

Portugal Ventures invests in new tech-based start-ups

44 minutes ago
MyChild app founder Harsh Songra
When Harsh Songra was in primary school, he had trouble controlling and coordinating his movements due to a condition called dyspraxia. Hailing from a small Indian town called Bhopal, it took his parents nine years to figure out his actual problem. Now, Songra wants to help other children avoid the same fate and get treatment faster from a pediatrician – a doctor that specializes in infant care. His app MyChild helps parents screen developmental disorders in their kids in just 45 seconds. It then makes suggestions on which specialist doctor they should visit. There are many clinical pediatricians, who focus on diseases, but not enough developmental pediatricians, who make sure a child grows up normally, says Songra. “This in spite of the fact that every sixth newborn [in India] suffers from a developmental disorder today.”
Dyspraxic kids have subtle differences in behaviour and manoeuvres compared to normal children, especially in playground activities like jumping, catching a ball, hopping, and skipping. They also face difficulties in tying shoelaces and buttoning up, as well as drawing and using scissors. To do these tasks, they need one-to-one guidance. Besides the agony of finding the right doctors, Indians with such disorders also face social stigma and insensitive remarks. Songra’s teacher was rude to his parents when he failed in one of the subjects in sixth grade. He was asked to join a school for disabled children, which, according to Songra, didn’t provide quality education. The incident stuck in Songra’s mind, and he decided to build something in the future that would make other parents capable of screening disorders. He started early by learning Android programming at 16, as he felt technology could bridge the gap. Launched in February, the MyChild app is for kids aged between 11 and 24 months. But this isn’t Songra’s first app. The young gun, who is a computer application student in Bhopal School of Social Sciences, has also developed Studiebay , an aggregator of coaching classes in his city. He also built a calculator for his dad (who is a businessman) to compute value added taxes (VAT). MyChild, of course, remains the closest to his heart. “I don’t want any parent to face what mine did,” he says. Free from developmental disorders
Today, MyChild gives advice based on your answers on a questionnaire. The app asks parents to fill out the physical details like weight, height, and age of the child, followed by entering specific details pertaining to his/ her growth over the years. For example, if a boy does not hold his head steadily between one and four months, raise himself to a sitting position between four to 11 months, or stand up by a piece of furniture before he turns a year old, MyChild will suggest that the kid get physiotherapy and work on his ability to balance using orthopedic machinery under a qualified physiotherapist. It also skims through details like the ability to smile and speak mono-syllables, then double-syllables, and finally words and sentences. The app is mainly aimed at early identification and intervention. “My child was suffering from delayed speech disorder. [The app] helped me to know which specialist I needed to visit. I was confused about this in the last six months,” says a user who has been visiting general pediatricians and did not wish to be named. The advice provided by the app is based on theoretical research from various books. “We do not claim to be completely accurate,” says Songra, adding that the app is for reference only. The founder says that making the algorithm was a tough job as he could not find doctors in the developmental pediatric field. Presently, Dr Zafar Meenai, international secretary of South Asian Society for Newborn Screening (SASONS), is advising the startup. “We want to extend medical research with the help of multiple doctors and medical associations to make the algorithm more accurate,” says Songra. While it is currently screening delayed motor coordination as well as delayed speech and language development, MyChild is now working towards screening disorders like autism. The startup is also building a community of doctors and teachers who will guide mothers in the journey from being pregnant, to having a child, to nurturing them. With this, it wants to tap into mothers from nuclear families who are first-time parents, and who usually have more doubts than ones living in joint families. MyChild is being accelerated at the FBStart program, which also provides US$20,000 worth of services like servers and testing tools. Editing by Terence Lee and Michael Tegos
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This 19-year-old built an app to detect movement disorders in children

Mastercard

Arthur D. Little

Wipro

Acquired

MyChild, originally founded in Lisbon, is a parent engagement system and application for childcare centers and preschools. The application provides parents with direct information on their children's early childhood school experience, informs parents about their children's growth, and screens developmental disorders - all while saving Directors and Teachers significant reporting time. MYCHILD is composed of a web-based tool for Directors and Teachers which is complemented with native mobile apps for Teachers to collect information and for Parents to access it.

Date	Round	Amount	Investors	Valuation Valuations are submitted by companies, mined from state filings or news, provided by VentureSource, or based on a comparables valuation model.	Revenue	Sources
11/3/2016	Acquired		Brightwheel	$XXM	0 FY undefined	2
1/30/2014	Seed VC		Subscribe to see more	$XXM	0 FY undefined	10

Date	11/3/2016	1/30/2014
Round	Acquired	Seed VC
Amount
Investors	Brightwheel	Subscribe to see more
Valuation	$XXM	$XXM
Revenue	0 FY undefined	0 FY undefined
Sources	2	10

First funding	Last Funding	Investor	Rounds	Board Seats	Type	Location
11/3/2016	11/3/2016	Brightwheel	1 Acquired		Corporation	California
00/00/0000	00/00/0000	Portugal Ventures	Subscribe to see more		Venture Capital	Portugal

First funding	11/3/2016	00/00/0000
Last Funding	11/3/2016	00/00/0000
Investor	Brightwheel	Portugal Ventures
Rounds	1 Acquired	Subscribe to see more
Board Seats
Type	Corporation	Venture Capital
Location	California	Portugal

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