Our Story: How Endless Spreadsheets Led to EPD

Hi there,

My name is Anand Sanwal and welcome to Enrichment Program Directory aka EPD.

This is a small experiment.

Let me explain.

Summer breaks, school holidays and after school activity scheduling all come with a peculiar form of parental torture for us. 

I’ll focus on summer breaks to illustrate. 

While everyone posts those blissful family photos on Instagram, behind the scenes we’re frantically trying to figure out what the heck our kids will actually DO during all that “wonderful free time.” 

My wife and I found ourselves in this familiar circle of hell: excited about potential summer camps & enrichment opportunities for our kids, but completely overwhelmed by the absurd process of finding them.

Spreadsheet Hell

Our system was what you might charitably call “a hot mess.” We had:

• Google spreadsheets 
• Random Facebook group recommendations 
• Text chains with other parents 
• Endless browser bookmarks 

We became those people who texted friends at 10pm: “Hey, what was that robotics thing your daughter did last summer?” (Sorry about that.)

The kicker wasn’t just the ridiculous amount of time wasted on a process that sucked—it was knowing that despite all this effort, we were probably missing great programs simply because they weren’t on our radar.

The Breaking Point

After one particularly grueling evening of summer camp research with my wife, I exasperatedly and pointedly said “Why are we always late doing this? The best stuff is already booked.”

FYI – Not smart.

And right then, the idea for Enrichment Program Directory arrived from the heavens. 

In fact, I tweeted about it soon thereafter hoping some other parent had felt this pain and built a solution.

This was almost 3 years ago.

The Obvious Solution No One Built

The grand epiphany wasn’t particularly revolutionary tbh.

What if all this information existed in one searchable place?

It seemed so obvious it had to exist already, and I was hoping my tweet would surface the solution. 

But nada.

And after looking around, I discovered it didn’t. Or at least, not in any usable simple form that I liked.

So I decided we’d build it. 

From Chaos to Directory

And so here it is – Enrichment Program Directory.

Why the name?

• I named my last company ChubbyBrain before it became CB Insights. If it’s not clear, I’m not great at naming stuff.  So we went with a name that says what we do.
• This better be good for SEO.

And we started with STEM programs in NY and NJ. 

Why?

1. I’m Indian. Of course, I am all about STEM.
2. I live in NJ and so already had a lot of this in our endless spreadsheets.
3. It would be immediately useful for our family.

So we gathered our sprawling data, setup on WordPress and created a very simple structure that a normal human could navigate, and started reaching out to program providers to fill in the gaps.

The information landscape for enrichment program is fragmented, outdated, and sometimes wildly inaccurate. Many amazing programs seem allergic to basic marketing, hiding their existence like some kind of enrichment speakeasy. I’m hopeful we can shine a light on them and also help families find them.

If you operate/work for a STEM program, should update or add your program’s information here.

V1.0 – Beta

Today, Enrichment Program Directory (EPD) is what we wish we’d had years ago: a straightforward way to find quality STEM programs without losing your mind and time along the way.

I realize it’s far from perfect, but we figured we’d launch now given many parents will soon be in the summer planning abyss. Hopefully we help your kids find great programs – whether for afterschool, the weekends or the summer. 

I don’t know where this will go

I hope this will be useful to you. 

Some parents who’ve already used it have found great programs and removed some of that planning anxiety. They also gave us a ton of great feedback. So thank you.

And if people like this, we’ll use your feedback to figure out how to make it better, i.e. go deeper on STEM programs, expand to other cities/states or tackle new categories (arts, sports, etc).

And of course, my wife and I are excited to use it for this summer’s planning.

If you have feedback or want to see us take this in a particular direction, please reach out to me at anand@formidablefellowship.org.

And if you want to get discounts to STEM programs or hear about new programs,  you can get our newsletter here.

Anand

P.S. Totally unrelated – if you have an entrepreneurial child, we’re giving out $1000 grants to middle and high school entrepreneurs.