Nurture

[What it is]

A multi-language educational app

Nurture is an Oakland-based nonprofit that incubates home-based child care businesses in California’s child care deserts. DreamLabs designed and built Nurture’s bilingual mobile app, which walks aspiring providers step by step through state licensing and the basics of running a child care business, along with admin tools for Nurture’s team to guide each cohort. The first version shipped 36 features in four weeks of development, and the app has been live on the App Store since March 2023 and is also on Google Play.

Parts of California, including the Central Valley, are child care deserts, and licensed home-based child care businesses are one way to add care where it is scarce. But aspiring providers have to work through a multi-step state licensing process while also learning the business side, from budgeting and marketing to record keeping. Nurture’s program pairs self-paced lessons with group support and one-on-one virtual coaching, in English and Spanish. It needed a mobile app that could carry that curriculum and hold learners at key milestones until the team had reviewed their work, plus admin tools for guiding cohorts of learners.

[How it works]

36 features in 4 weeks of development

We worked as Nurture’s fractional product team. Each release ran from user stories and feature specs through lo-fi wireframes, mid-fi designs, full-stack development and QA to launch.

Learner app

Account sign-up and login, with an English/Spanish toggle
Lessons filtered by each learner’s assigned learning track
Several lesson formats: resource directories, libraries of external links, single images, video sequences and embedded forms
Favorites, plus feedback on any lesson
Achievements for completed content, with some milestones locked until an admin reviews and approves them
One library for everything a learner uploads
Details and Zoom links for weekly meetings
Push notifications

Admin tools

Every learner’s details, with a way to contact them directly
Progress review for each learner, marking specific steps as correct or incorrect
Completion achievements awarded by admins
Push notifications to all learners or to selected groups

Stack

Flutter and Firebase
Figma
Notion and Slack for project management

Timeline

Late 2022: the engagement starts with user stories and wireframes
First version: 36 features in four weeks of development, six weeks in all
March 2023: Nurture launches on the App Store
By August 2024: 19 releases across the mobile app and a desktop web app that admins use to run guided cohorts

Outcome

The app is live on the App Store and Google Play in English and Spanish, and it still receives updates (most recent: September 2026).
Its store listings today describe Nurture’s content as five courses (Explore, Plan, Start-Up, Take Root and Grow), worked through as learning pathways with milestones and badges.
Partner programs deliver Nurture’s training through the app. Stanislaus County created a 12-week cohort program with Nurture in which participants take their business training in the app and meet weekly online for coaching, and San Joaquin County has since adopted the model (NACo, 2025).
CBS Sacramento profiled a mother who used the app to work through state licensing step by step and turn her home into a licensed child care facility.
In her Clutch review, Nurture’s founder says economically marginalized entrepreneurs use the app to get a child care license efficiently and learn the essentials of running a home daycare business.