Anupama Vaid, founder of ParentSquare, reshapes K-12 education with innovation, persistence, and a commitment to equity, achieving remarkable growth and accolades in 2024.
2024 has been a remarkable year for ParentSquare’s founder, Anupama Vaid. Earlier this year, she was presented the 2024 Power of Women Award by venture capital firm, GSV Ventures, recognizing female leaders creating significant impact in the field of education.
Indian American Anupama Vaid’s venture ParentSquare was born out of a personal experience. Back in 2011, while on a sabbatical from her job as a computer engineer, Vaid began noticing significant gaps in parent-school communication while working with her kids. She realized the need for a more seamless program and thus, was born ParentSquare—a unified school-home engagement platform for K-12 education.
A year ago, ParentSquare acquired Remind, one of the largest free communication services in education used in over 80 percent of public schools in the country. And then, for the second year in row, ParentSquare was recognized on the 2024 Inc. 5000 list which ranks companies by overall revenue growth over a three-year period. From 2020 to 2023, ParentSquare achieved 665% growth in revenue and a staff increase of over 525%.
Along with her husband Sohit, the CEO of ParentSquare, the entrepreneurial duo has taken their venture to newer heights and are now serving over 20 million students across all 50 states.
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ParentSquare explained
Vaid describes ParentSquare as much more than merely a communication channel. She calls it a platform—a go-to hub for all school-related needs. She says, “It helps foster seamless connections between schools, families, teachers, students, and the staff.”
Explaining further she said, “What ParentSquare does is, it brings alive all those flyers, forms, and reports that [were] previously contained [in] children’s backpacks.” In fact Vaid gives an apt summary to describe her product. She says, “You can think of messages [coming] home full of pictures and videos along with essential updates like attendance, lunch balance, grades, bus delays notifications, progress reports all under one platform.”
The medium also guarantees ease for parents as they can fill forms and sign permission slips or RSVP for events. Teachers can request volunteers, class supplies, donations, and even easy sign-ups for parent-teacher conferences.
But that’s not all that ParentSquare is about. “It also facilitates teacher-student interactions, enabling communication with prospective families. With school websites from ParentSquare, you can write messages and also keep your communities informed. One can also showcase school achievements and post about opportunities for staff recruitment,” Vaid adds.
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The first breakthrough was tough
“When we first started, we thought the product would gain traction very quickly. From the get-go, we saw amazing engagement from users. Everybody who used it was very thankful. However, we didn’t account for the fact that selling to educational institutions is very different from selling to businesses. In education, the decision makers are not typically the users of the product—and there’s often a committee that decides what to buy. It’s very different from a B2B sale,” Vaid said.
“About six months in, we realized: This is really tough,” she added. “For the next three years, it was mostly persistence that got us through. We were winning one industry award after another, but sales weren’t following. But then in 2014, a chain of events began that turned things around.”
Vaid said the principal she had initially approached with the idea for the product had moved on and become superintendent of a charter school network. “And we were adopted there,” she said. “We also found our first set of investors who were willing to invest the money we needed to scale our operations, and we were able to add a sales co-founder. Everything started coming together then.”
Vaid explained how the platform was updated with new features in increments, making it accessible to every student-family. “Going a bit further, after we started with email, soon after added text messaging and a mobile app, expanding the ways that parents could access information. We have seen during the pandemic how many families don’t have a home computer or Internet access. We realized that communications equity was central early on in the company’s development, and we were committed to making our tool accessible to families from a mobile phone. We have also added support for multiple languages, again so there are no barriers to using the system.
We have made other enhancements that allow parents to view all of their children’s information from a single login, even if their children attend different schools. It makes the users’ lives easier while keeping the data private, separate, and secure for each individual school, and it also helps schools gather and clean up their parent data so every student in the school is contactable.”
“Our growth has always been driven by customer feedback, prompting us to continually innovate and address the evolving needs of our users. This led us to expand our offerings to include support for school websites, acquiring Gabbart Communications to complement our services seamlessly.
“This year, we also welcomed Remind—a beloved tool among teachers and coaches—into our platform, enabling even greater parent engagement and advocacy for schools and in their children’s education. By merging ease of use and their unique two-way texting capabilities, we are empowering teachers and coaches to foster stronger connections.”
American and Indian education system
Vaid also spoke about the differences she saw between the Indian and American education systems,. “Coming from India, where I was educated in a different way, I have a much broader perspective about the state of education in America today,” she noted. “In some respects, American education is more rounded and caters to the whole child and the path they want for themselves. For example, I like how kids in high school can choose their own journey. In India, we didn’t have that freedom. I chose computers, and that defined all the courses I took. However, the problem is that we’re still not evolving in education. While we’re teaching our students to be lifelong learners, the institutions themselves aren’t following that learning philosophy. They also need to learn and evolve like we expect our kids to do.That was my frustration when I started ParentSquare. Schools are teaching students technology, yet they don’t always use that same technology themselves.”
She adds, “If you look at the numbers, the U.S. is quite far behind. We’re 11th out of 64 nations in science and 30th in math. That’s crazy. Yet, when you look at per-pupil spending, we’re the highest in the world. We should be setting an example for the rest of the world.”
On the American Dream
Vaid is a first-generation immigrant who realized the American Dream. “As a first-generation immigrant, launching a successful startup is indeed a testament to the American Dream,” she said. “What brought me here is a combination of persistence and passion, and I’ll forever be grateful to the support system I have. I have been fortunate to have incredible encouragement from my husband, parents, brother, cousins, and others who believed in both me and the potential of my idea to connect schools and families.”
“The great thing about education and edtech is that it’s one big family. It’s not a competition, it’s about how we can improve the lives of children. There’s enough room in the sandbox for everyone to play and to learn from each other. It’s also very important to never lose sight of why you started it all in the first place and stay true to your clients and listen to them. Our users are at the heart of everything we do, and maintaining a deep understanding of their needs and aspirations ensures that we stay true to our mission of enhancing school-home communication,” she added.