Curiosityville acquired by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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.