Nurture aims to teach children important life skills through interactive gameplay and entertainment.

Parents understand how difficult it’s to keep their children engaged in online learning. Education is a brand new app designed for youths aged 4 to 7 that gives interactive content and games that can keep them engaged. The company’s mission is to equip kids with key life skills comparable to socialization, basic financial literacy, mindfulness, fitness, nutrition and more through story-driven adventures that children can actively take part in.

Nurture announced its $2.8 million pre-seed round on Wednesday, led by Golden Gate Ventures. The funding will go toward hiring preschool content creators to help create content for the platform.

The flagship title that Nurture first launched is known as “Doki’s Delivery” and focuses on helping children learn social-emotional skills. The series follows a gaggle of characters who’re on a mission to deliver an egg via spaceship.

The app also has a dual-screen component that requires parents to download the Nurture TV app on Fire TV or Google TV so kids can interact between each screens. In the case of “Doki’s Delivery,” kids can use their phone or tablet as a game controller while playing on the TV screen. They can tilt their mobile device from side to side to help the characters avoid obstacles.

Other interactions include responding to the protagonist’s calls, designing a spaceship, and hatching a mysterious egg that players can then take care of – similar to Tamagotchi, the favored children’s toy.

“I didn’t want it to be passive, mindless screen time. I want it to be an active, interactive learning process,” co-founder and CEO Roger Egan told TechCrunch. “(Once kids) understand the concepts, we use games and interactive materials to practice the skills and apply them.”

The company plans to release latest original content focused on “growth mindset and financial thinking,” Egan explained. Additionally, Nurture is in talks with about 20 popular third-party creators to expand its content library. Nurture’s creator platform lets creators host content on their very own digital “islands,” which users can access with a swipe of the app’s menu.

In addition to engaging educational content, parents will have the opportunity to track their children’s gaming performance.

“We have these moments called reflection moments where we ask questions and the child can answer them…With that answer, we can synthesize that information and understand how well they understand a concept, and then feed that into the product and let the parents know how the child is learning and how they’re progressing,” Egan said.

Offline classes may even be available to help parents learn the way to consolidate the knowledge they’ve acquired through the app, and to encourage children to apply their knowledge in on a regular basis situations.

Nurture was founded in 2022, just a few years after Egan’s children began distant learning throughout the pandemic. With a front-row seat to his children’s education, he felt that traditional education wasn’t adequately preparing children for a rapidly changing world, especially one dominated by artificial intelligence. He also believes that children should learn things like adaptability, critical pondering, digital literacy, mindfulness, and empathy to achieve success in the long run. But he struggled to find suitable alternatives to complement his children’s education.

Egan previously founded online food market RedMart, which was acquired by Alibaba. He was joined by co-founders Danny Limanseta (chief product officer), who served as product design manager at Redmart; Sally Doherty (chief human resources officer), who previously worked at Microsoft; and Scott and Julie Stewart (creative directors), a husband-and-wife team specializing in animated children’s content comparable to “Lego Friends: The Next Chapter.”

In addition to being an investor, Priebe can be a game design advisor at Nurture. Priebe was chargeable for creating Club Penguin, the wildly popular online multiplayer game.

“The next generation of kids are learning games faster than they are learning shows,” Priebe told us. “I really like the idea that you’re not just going to sit and watch linear TV anymore… It’s really innovative how the (Nurture) characters stop and pull the kid into the adventure and ask, ‘What would you do?’ or ‘How would you like us to do this?’”

Nurture is currently in an invite-only beta for users within the U.S., U.K., and Canada. It plans to expand to other markets in 2025. The company may even launch a paid subscription once the app is publicly available.

Other participants within the round included Reach Capital and Seedcamp, with participation from Club Penguin co-founder Lance Priebe. Other notable advisors included Manual Bronstein, Roblox’s chief product officer; Scott Kraft, former head author and executive producer of “Paw Patrol”; and Joey Mazzarino, a puppeteer on “Sesame Street” known for his roles as Murray Monster, Stinky the Stinkweed and other Muppets.