Based in Boston, with offices in Howard County’s Elkridge, education publisherHoughton Mifflin Harcourt acquired the Cockeysville edtech startup Curiosityville, officials for both companies announced Monday. It was the second acquisition for HMH in a week.
Founded in 2009, Curiosityville offers a subscription-based online education platform targeting kids from ages 3 to 8. Technically Baltimore wrote about the company last year.
In a release, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt President and CEO Linda Zecher said the startup “fits perfectly with our mission.”
“We place enormous value in the impact of early childhood education, both at home and in pre-school settings, and believe that the incorporation of Curiosityville into our own robust offering for young learners will enable us to deliver a unique, engaging, research-based solution to parents and educators alike,” she said.
Curiosityville founder and CEO Susan Magsamen said she felt connected with Harcourt on her first trip to their Boston headquarters in December. The first thing she saw upon walking into their offices, she said, was a wall painted with a quote about, well, curiosity.
“I really had this feeling of coming home,” Magsamen said.
A Harcourt spokeswoman declined to disclose terms of the deal. Magsamen said Curiosityville and its five employees would stay in Cockeysville. The company is an Emerging Technology Centers member.
“It’s a very young company. I’ve been working in this early learning space for a number of years but really just began to breath life in Curiosityville” since its 2009 founding, Magsamen said, adding that the group is “really noodling” on its next project.
Before you go...
Please consider supporting Technical.ly to keep our independent journalism strong. Unlike most business-focused media outlets, we don’t have a paywall. Instead, we count on your personal and organizational support.
3 ways to support our work:- Contribute to the Journalism Fund. Charitable giving ensures our information remains free and accessible for residents to discover workforce programs and entrepreneurship pathways. This includes philanthropic grants and individual tax-deductible donations from readers like you.
- Use our Preferred Partners. Our directory of vetted providers offers high-quality recommendations for services our readers need, and each referral supports our journalism.
- Use our services. If you need entrepreneurs and tech leaders to buy your services, are seeking technologists to hire or want more professionals to know about your ecosystem, Technical.ly has the biggest and most engaged audience in the mid-Atlantic. We help companies tell their stories and answer big questions to meet and serve our community.
Join our growing Slack community
Join 5,000 tech professionals and entrepreneurs in our community Slack today!