Nurture is a new app that blends active TV watching, gaming and education—and the fledgling Washington-based edtech company behind it is keen to fire it up with bespoke content featuring characters and shows that kids already love.
Serial entrepreneur Roger Egan started conceptualizing the Nurture app—which is initially aimed at kids ages four to seven—during COVID, when his sons (who were five and nine at the time) had to learn from home. Realizing that his kids weren’t building fundamental life skills, including critical thinking and creativity, he identified an opportunity for a platform that provides a more personalized learning experience, where TV viewing transitions seamlessly into playing games on a phone or tablet.
How it works in practice is that kids start off watching short animated videos on their TVs. Then as part of the narrative, characters break the fourth wall to “call” a friend, reaching out to viewers on their mobile devices for help with challenges. Kids can complete these fun tasks—which range from puzzles and navigation games, to mindfulness exercises—by themselves or with a friend of their own.
A core part of Nurture’s go-to-market strategy is to license third-party characters and brands. The company is actively looking for partners and has had conversations with companies including WildBrain, Nelvana, Cyber Group Studios and Blue Zoo.
Each IP will get its own exclusive area on the platform where kids can watch videos and play games featuring the brand’s characters, instead of all the content being lumped together. Nurture says it will initially collaborate with brand partners but produce all of the original animation itself to ensure that the content fits the platform’s look, feel and curriculum.
Interestingly, Egan’s career is not in kids content or animation. He was an investment banker before he started the Singapore-based online grocery business RedMart, which was acquired by Alibaba in 2016. So as he set about building Nurture, he quickly recruited husband-and-wife duo Julie and Scott Stewart—creatives whose careers are squarely rooted in the kids media industry—as co-founders and co-chief creative officers. The Stewarts’ previous credits include co-creating animated series Rev & Roll (Family Jr.) and Kate & Mim-Mim (Disney Jr. and CBeebies). And for the Nurture launch, they have created a new original series called Doki’s Delivery (pictured below), which is about getting packages where they need to go.
Nurture has also tapped a handful of advisors—including Club Penguin co-founder Lance Priebe and Barbara Coloroso, author of several best-selling books about child development—to help build its educational framework.
Egan’s strategy and early talent partnerships attracted angel investors and venture capital firms like California’s Reach Capital and London-based Seedcamp, which have pumped around US$2.8 million into the venture (with Nurture’s founders also putting in some of their own money).
The company has been testing Nurture for about a year now, rolling it out in phases. It’s free at the moment in order to gather feedback, but will eventually introduce à la carte pricing for different levels of access.
Egan sees Nurture as a channel that’s aiming to grow with its partner brands and series, while positioning itself as a trusted source for age-appropriate, learning-focused content. The goal isn’t to try and compete with studios that can create a large volume of content, but instead to make a handful of games with high levels of replayability, he says.
“It’s Dora or Blue’s Clues on steroids,” says Julie Stewart. “It’s a new way of consuming media and learning, and companies [we’ve talked to] are excited to extend their brands and have their characters engage [with kids] in a more meaningful way.”
Nurture’s launch also stands to benefit from several broader parenting trends that are at play in the market, including a desire for guilt-free screen time and more games that families can play together, adds Egan.
Another factor is that Nuture’s approach fits naturally into the time kids are already spending on gaming. In the US, more than 90% of kids ages three and up play video games, and eight- to 17-year-olds do so for an average of 1.5 to two hours every day, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Nurture’s current strategy is focused on building an audience, but longer term, the plan is to explore opportunities to license its tech and pipeline so companies can create interactive content for the platform themselves, says Egan. This will help keep a steady flow of new content coming onto the service.
As it takes off, the platform may also age up to reach an older audience in the seven- to-nine age range. The overall mission is to create autonomous, life-long learners. “We hope [viewers] subscribe to Nurture and never leave,” says Egan.
Kids content creators and producers interested in working with Nurture can contact Julie Stewart at julie@nurture.is.
This story originally appeared in Kidscreen’s Q3 2024 magazine issue.