Robin Hood’s Venture Studio Targets NYC’s Child Care Crisis as a Tech Problem

NEW YORK — This week, Blue Ridge Labs — the venture studio inside Robin Hood, New York City’s largest poverty-fighting philanthropy — brought together more than 25 organizations across technology, government, philanthropy, labor, parents, and the early childhood sector for a novel Child Care Innovation Day: a first-of-its-kind convening uniting tech leaders with cross-sector partners and end users to problem-solve expanding access to high-quality, affordable child care in New York City and answer a guiding question: How might tech support an early childhood workforce that makes quality care sustainable for all families?

“Child care isn’t a nice-to-have — it’s the infrastructure that makes everything else in this city work. Right now, too many working parents and caregivers are being forced into impossible choices, and the system they depend on is under enormous strain. If we don’t act, we risk hollowing out the very families that make New York City a place worth living,” said Richard R. Buery, Jr., CEO of Robin Hood. “We need a child care system that families can count on — and that’s exactly why Blue Ridge Labs exists: to scale innovations that solve the most pressing social challenges. Technology alone can’t fix this, but it can help parents and caregivers find and access affordable, quality options — and help educators raise the standard of care children receive.”

Since joining Robin Hood in 2015, Blue Ridge Labs has backed more than 50 social impact startups whose alumni have collectively raised over $200 million. Its model pairs technologists with low-income New Yorkers through a 5,000-member Design Insight Group, ensuring solutions are shaped by the communities they serve.

A New Model for Collaboration

Held at Robin Hood’s Union Square office, the full-day convening produced actionable strategies to reduce administrative burden on providers, build shared infrastructure across a fragmented system, strengthen workforce retention, and deploy technology to help parents and caregivers identify and access child care options.

Unlike a hackathon, Innovation Day was structured as a design sprint: small, cross-sector groups of founders, policymakers, investors, educators, and parents identified challenges and generated solutions in real time.

Participants represented a broad cross-section of the child care ecosystem, including:

• Funders and Investors: Rethink Impact, Overdeck, Emerson Collective, Artemis Fund, Promise Ventures, Pivotal Ventures, Partnership for New York City
• Technology Startups and Innovators: Upfront, Apiary, Playground, HeyMirza, Wiggle Room, Wellthy, Code for America
• Small- and Mid-Sized Nonprofits and Sector Organizations: Day Care Council of New York, EdTrust, Action Lab NY, Kennedy’s Children Center, Bridge Care, Inspired Community Project
• Providers and Workforce Representatives: United Federation of Teachers
• Government and Public Sector Partners: New York City Mayor’s Office of Child Care, NYC Office of Technology and Innovation, NYC Mayor’s Office of Policy and Planning, Division of Child Care Services, City Hall, CUNY

Innovation Day featured fireside chats with two founders on the front lines. Jaime-Jin Lewis, a 2018 Blue Ridge Labs Fellow, David Prize winner, and #Care100 honoree, returned as the founder of Wiggle Room, whose flagship product, AutoEnroll, turns a complex, compliance-heavy child care enrollment process into a streamlined digital experience for Family Child Care providers. Her ground-level insights on the realities providers face helped sharpen the room’s thinking throughout the day.

Charles Bonello, Co-Founder and CEO of Vivvi, brought the employer side of the equation. Vivvi partners with companies to make child care accessible for working families—treating it as a proven lever for recruitment and retention, not a perk. A thought leader featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Forbes, Bonello has argued that seventy percent of employees identify as caregivers, managing young children in addition to elder care and other family responsibilities.

Teams focused on two priority areas: strengthening business sustainability for providers and improving educator support and retention.

Across six working groups, several key insights emerged:

• Build shared infrastructure, not just funding. Participants called for unified data systems that bring licensing, training, and workforce tools into one place—paired with integrated eligibility and compliance tools that shift administrative burden off providers and families. Cooperative structures that allow small providers to pool resources and access benefits could further reduce fragmentation across the sector.
• Lower the barriers to entering and navigating the sector. New providers need coordinated “on-ramps”—shared services, startup support, and streamlined access to regulatory guidance—rather than navigating multiple disconnected systems on their own.
• Technology must augment, not replace, human support. As systems become more digital, providers still need trusted, peer-based guidance—suggesting opportunities to embed community support directly into new platforms.

Together, these ideas point to a clear direction: technology alone is not the solution, but when paired with better systems design and sustained investment, it can reduce friction, strengthen the workforce, and expand access to care.

The child care sector in New York City involves more than $3 billion in direct public spending and reaches into the tens of billions when private household spending is factored in. According to the NYC Economic Development Corporation, lost economic activity due to parents leaving the workforce, reducing hours, and absenteeism totals $23 billion—underscoring the scale of the problem and the market opportunity for tech-enabled solutions.

The convening comes at a pivotal moment. New York City and State have made major investments in early childhood education—including universal 3-K and a 2-K pilot in high-need neighborhoods—with an ultimate goal of building a universal child care system for all children below four. But expanding access puts pressure on a workforce already under strain: educators face low pay and limited benefits, providers are struggling to hire and retain staff, and too many parents are forced to reduce work hours or go without care altogether, according to data from the Poverty Tracker, Robin Hood’s signature study of poverty in New York City with Columbia University.

User Research, Built In

Blue Ridge Labs embeds end users directly into the product design process through its Design Insight Group (DIG), a 3,600-member community of low-income New Yorkers, including parents navigating the child care system. Their lived expertise shaped the day’s work and helped ensure concepts reflected real needs, not assumptions.

By day’s end, each group produced early-stage, tech-enabled concepts—from tools to support small providers to new approaches for improving workforce stability.

What’s Next
For founders in the room, Innovation Day delivered a grounded, cross-sector understanding of the early childhood workforce, shaped by provider and parent testimonies, policymaker dialogue, and expert collaboration. The expectation is that these insights will shape the products they build.

For the broader Blue Ridge Labs community, the challenges and opportunities surfaced at Innovation Day will be shared with current and incoming fellows—becoming raw material for the next generation of founders tackling early childhood care.

Ideas from the convening will inform future investment and pilot opportunities across Robin Hood and Blue Ridge Labs’ networks, advancing scalable solutions for families, providers, and educators citywide.

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About Blue Ridge Labs at Robin Hood

Blue Ridge Labs is Robin Hood’s venture studio for scaling innovations to solve the most pressing social challenges facing low-income New Yorkers. Its model pairs technologists with communities closest to the problem through programs including the Catalyst accelerator ($100,000 investment per venture), the Founder Fellowship ($20,000 stipend for early-stage founders), and the Follow-On Fund. Since joining Robin Hood in 2015, Blue Ridge Labs has backed more than 50 social impact startups, with alumni collectively raising over $200 million in follow-on funding from top venture capitalists and philanthropic institutions. Its portfolio spans education, housing, healthcare, financial empowerment, and workforce development—with alumni featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Fast Company, and recognized through Echoing Green Fellowships and Y Combinator. Central to its model is the Design Insight Group, a 5,000-member community of low-income New Yorkers whose lived experience shapes every venture from the earliest stages of design. For more information, visit robinhood.org/our-work/blue-ridge-labs.

About Robin Hood

Robin Hood is New York City’s largest poverty-fighting philanthropy. Since 1988, Robin Hood has invested more than $3 billion to support the most effective programs and organizations serving New Yorkers in need. Robin Hood’s board of directors covers all administrative, fundraising, and evaluation costs so that 100% of donations go directly to organizations fighting poverty. For more information, visit robinhood.org.

Media Contact

Crystal Cooper and Kevin Thompson, Communications, Robin Hood, press@robinhood.org