Maven Acquires Bright Parenting to Expand Pediatric and Family Care Offerings

On June 4, 2020, VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) learned that Maven, a digital health company focused on family care, announced on June 3 local time the acquisition of Bright Parenting. Bright Parenting is a leading parenting app that helps parents of children aged 2 to 10 learn and apply evidence-based behavioral health techniques and skills to build strong parent-child relationships. Through this acquisition, Bright Parenting’s content will be integrated into Maven’s upcoming pediatric and parenting products, further advancing its vision of a more integrated model for women’s health and pediatrics to bridge gaps in whole-family care.

Steve Jacobs, founder and CEO of Bright Parenting, will join Maven as Vice President of Product, while co-founder and CTO Lou Klepner will serve as an advisor.

Maven is a digital health company dedicated to women and families, specializing in research and services across fertility, maternity, and pediatric care. Over the past year, Maven has established partnerships with clients from more than 100 companies worldwide, tripling its customer base. Its telehealth network has expanded to cover over 20 specialty areas and includes 1,700 healthcare providers, addressing critical gaps in the healthcare system.

The company also launched a new product called Maven Wallet, which helps members better manage fertility-related expenses, such as those for in vitro fertilization (IVF), egg freezing, adoption, and surrogacy.

Since 2018, Bright Parenting has helped more than 50,000 parents build strong relationships with their children. Bright’s daily personalized tips, activities, and practices enable parents to gain more parenting insights in just two minutes a day. This interactive content is designed by practitioners of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and other health industry experts, filling a market gap for parents who are too busy to adequately attend to the upbringing of children over the age of two.

The global outbreak and spread of COVID-19 have led to significant gaps in fertility, pregnancy, postpartum, and pediatric care. Seizing this opportunity, Maven Clinic launched a new initiative featuring expert-vetted resources specifically tailored to the pandemic, aiming to strengthen health support for women and families during this period.

Maven is not the only health tech company interested in the parenting sector. To strengthen its uGrow platform, tech giant Philips acquired Health & Parenting, an app developer focused on parents, in 2017. Parents can use the app to track their babies’ sleep patterns, feeding habits, height, and weight, thereby monitoring their children’s healthy development in real time. Additionally, Aptive launched a free app for tracking children’s healthy development in 2017 and secured $2 million in seed funding in 2019.

“A strong parent-child relationship is a key component of the family and can promote children’s healthy development. The COVID-19 pandemic has posed significant challenges to the parenting and mental health sectors, making now the most critical time to invest in parents, particularly working parents,” said Kate Ryder, Founder and CEO of Maven.

Erik Lumer, Chief Product Officer at Maven, stated, “Personalized care is central to our company’s mission, as we aim to provide parents with more scientifically grounded family education guidance. BrightParenting’s clinical foundation, personalized content, and goal-oriented practices align perfectly with our strategy.”