Carla Small on Building Sprout Labs to Tackle Dyslexia

Carla Small, founder of Sprout Labs, joins The Female Founder to share how her son’s dyslexia inspired her to build an AI-driven platform delivering personalized reading instruction to children. After leading a business accelerator at Boston Children’s Hospital and overseeing ventures in pediatric innovation, Small turned her focus toward early literacy intervention—motivated by firsthand experience navigating the fragmented support system available to families.

Sprout Labs combines structured literacy methods with AI-powered personalization to provide daily, high-dosage tutoring tailored to each child’s learning profile. Small explains why early intervention between ages three and six is critical, how dyslexia affects nearly 20% of the population, and why many families don’t receive support until academic gaps widen. She also discusses scaling access through partnerships with specialists, offering scholarships to underserved communities, and using technology to lower the high cost barrier of traditional tutoring. Her approach reflects a broader vision: democratizing expert instruction and building a more equitable education system.

Key discussion areas:

• Turning personal adversity into a mission-driven edtech company
• Leading innovation at Boston Children’s Hospital before founding Sprout Labs
• Why early dyslexia intervention changes long-term outcomes
• Using AI to personalize structured literacy instruction
• Making high-dosage tutoring affordable and accessible
• Expanding into math, writing, and executive function support
• Partnering with specialists to scale impact nationally

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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Intro

SPEAKER_01 0:07

This is the Female Founder Show with host and entrepreneur, Bridget Fitzpatrick, exclusively on ASBN.

SPEAKER_02 0:18

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Female Founder Show. I'm Bridget Fitzpatrick. Today I'm talking with Carla Swall, the founder of Sprout Labs. Carla saw a gap in how we support kids with dyslexia and decided to do something about it. She built a company that helps children learn to read in a way that finally makes sense for them and gives families hope when they need it the most. Carla has such a thoughtful approach to education and entrepreneurship. Her work is changing lives, and her story is a great reminder of what happens when you follow a problem that you care about and stay committed to the mission behind it. I'm excited to dig into how she got started, the challenges that she faced early on, how she's growing Sprout Labs, and what she's learned as a leader along the way. Carla, thank you so much for joining us today.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Thank you, Bridget. It's great to be here, and it's great to see you again.

SPEAKER_02 1:09

Yes, you as well. Now I would love to start, as this is kind of a two-part question, so bear with me, but I would love to start with talking about what you were doing before you started Sprout Labs and then the motivation for starting Sprout Labs.

Early Signs And Family Journey With Dyslexia

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Sure. So I was running the accelerator, the business accelerator at Boston Children's Hospital, which is an 80-person team of technologists and business people that take the ideas of doctors, researchers, and nurses and spin them out into ventures. And one of the projects in the 30 and the portfolio that I was managing focused on dyslexia. And my son, my youngest son, Matthew, has dyslexia. So that was always really my favorite project in the portfolio. And when it came time to launch that venture, I actually was so passionate about the technology and the opportunity that I left Boston Children's and I became the CEO and co-founded that company with the two scientists who had created the technology and the science behind what we were doing. And that was a breakthrough dyslexia screener that we sold into schools nationwide. And then last fall we sold that business to the biggest ed tech publisher so that we could get that out to more kids, which is fabulous. And for me, that enabled me to focus much more on what my true passion place is, which is how do you help families who are facing what we faced as a family when Matthew was diagnosed with dyslexia and we knew he had this reading challenge. And really, in his case, you know, he he was, I could tell because he was my third and he was learning differently than the other two. He was, you know, a voracious, like curious learner. But then when he got to kindergarten and again in first grade, when everyone else was learning like their letters and how to read, he wasn't grasping it. And we just watched his self-confidence erode, and it was very, very hard and very painful. You know, now he's fine, we got him the resources he needed, but that's really what's behind Sprout Labs. We're really here providing that sort of one-stop shop so families have everything that they need, so they don't have to experience that journey that we experienced with Matthew.

SPEAKER_02 3:18

Yes, and there's a larger population of people with dyslexia than most people would think, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:25

That's right. It's 20% of the population have symptoms of dyslexia. And I think the other thing that people don't realize is it's highly hereditable. So if you have it in your family, you know, even a relative, there's a one in two chance your children will have it.

SPEAKER_02 3:39

Okay, yeah, good to know. So with Sprout Labs, talk to us about how you're helping families. What exactly is it? Is it virtual learning, correct? Yes.

SPEAKER_00 3:50

Talk to us about that.

SPEAKER_02 3:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Yeah, so we're we're basically providing expert and highly personalized reading instruction for children. And we're taking sort of the the latest technology, the latest AI technology, and we've built this for the customers that we work with, and we know two things about them. One, they're often way behind in reading, and in order to address that, you need what we call high dosage tutoring. It's not enough to get tutoring once a week. You really need it every day. And then the second thing is the vast majority of children that we work with have also ADHD or attention issues. So it's really important that it be engaging and keep moving in order to keep the attention of a child who has ADHD. And that's really what we're doing. So it's it's in essence like having your child's favorite teacher trained, super trained, in how to be a good reading instructor, living in your house and available whenever your child is available, whether it's like five in the morning or after soccer practice.

SPEAKER_02 4:52

It must be such rewarding work, I'm sure.

What Sprout Labs Does And For Whom

SPEAKER_00 4:55

It is so powerful. We have so many great stories of you know the difference that we're making. We recently heard from a grandmother who has a fourth grade grandson who uh she basically wrote to us at the end of the time that we've been working with him just to say thank you, because she said we heard him read a paragraph for the first time, and I've been waiting so long to hear that. She said we both had tears in our eyes.

SPEAKER_02 5:20

Oh my goodness. Now, at what age do parents usually f realize that their children have dyslexia?

SPEAKER_00 5:27

Yeah. So this is if if there's anything I wish that I could make wave a magic wand and change, is is that all of us would realize early on how important early intervention is. If you get to a child when they're three, four, five, six, you can actually rewire the brain with instruction, and that's what we're doing. But in doing so, you can literally prevent all the downstream issues. You can create a reader and you won't have any of these problems associated with dyslexia. The problem is, and the families that we tend to work with are they tend to be more like third, fourth, fifth grade. We can help all of them. We can help four-year-olds to 12-year-olds, but most of the time families are become aware of this issue and really have the capacity to pay attention to it when it's a more urgent issue. Typically, by third grade, kids are moving from learning to read to reading to learn, and that's when everyone is realizing like this isn't working, and those kids can be one or two or three years behind in reading.

SPEAKER_02 6:28

Is there an age where it's ever too late? Like, could an adult take your courses and learn?

SPEAKER_00 6:34

It's never too late. You can always learn to become a better reader, it's just more work. Yes. Higher dosing, higher frequency. Okay. I've heard it said that a half hour in kindergarten is equal to two hours in second grade. Okay. So you can see the value of the earlier the better. Yes, for sure.

The Power Of Early Intervention

SPEAKER_02 6:52

All right, let's change gears a little bit. Um, we met at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce event, the Co 100, where they honored 100 businesses, and over 12,000 businesses entered. You were one of those businesses, and you then went on to win the Disruptor Award. Talk to us about what that meant for you and your business and why you're a disruptor. I think we already know that answer, but yeah, yeah.

Recognition And Why It’s Disruptive

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Super exciting. I mean, we couldn't have been more thrilled and honored, and it's such a great opportunity to get the word out about Sprout Labs, which is really what we want to and need to be doing. Um, you know, I think what we're doing is we're leveraging AI for good, right? And I think there's a lot of talk about how we're all nervous about AI and all the things that it could be doing that are scary or not good. But this is truly AI for good. And that concept, so at this point in time, there are$30 billion spent every year on tutoring. Studies have shown that only 2% of it is that high-dose, high-quality tutoring that's needed. Because if you live in our community and you want an Orton Gillingham trained tutor, which is the gold standard of how you really teach sequentially and structured literacy for kids who need to learn how to read, it can cost well over$100 an hour. Nobody can afford that every day, but this is what the kids need. So the fact that we can do this with AI, we can do that high-dose tutoring, is truly disruptive. And then the other thing I would say is that it is so clear that our kids come in an array, right? They all have different ways that they learn. Some of them might have issues with reading, some of them might have issues with math. We factor in the whole child and we take them as they are. And then we personalize to that. So if they have an attention issue and they have a dyslexia, you know, we know that kid has a 22-minute attention span. We're going to teach to that child. We know they love baseball and we know they're motivated by points, whereas the, you know, the next child might just be motivated by reading the next passage. We know how to customize everything we're doing so we can keep them engaged. And you don't win this game of teaching a child to read unless they're engaged. And so we're super excited about the ability to take this technology and really apply it to kids who need it.

SPEAKER_02 9:10

And the disruptor award was very warranted. It seems like this might even be something that you could translate into any kind of learning. Is that true?

SPEAKER_00 9:20

Absolutely. Absolutely. In fact, we're starting with reading, but we're going to be adding in our roadmap, we're going to be adding math, spelling, writing, and uh executive function issues because it's very interesting, the brain of a child who has both a math issue, which is called dyscalculea, and a reading issue, which is called dyslexia. A lot of the issues are the same. So if we can customize the tutoring to the child, it's way more efficient. So we can work on, you know, sound symbol recognition across the two arenas or the two domains, and that child is getting that good dosing. Whereas today I think they're probably going to like a you know, one center for math and maybe going and getting reading in school. So we're thinking about the whole child, who they are, and how to customize that learning pathway for them.

SPEAKER_02 10:09

This is the future. Thank you for the work that you're doing to help so many people.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 10:15

Can you talk to us a little bit about the scholarship that you're offering for underserved communities?

SPEAKER_00 10:22

Yeah, it's really important to us. I mean, obviously, this is a product that costs money, and we're a young company, so we have to make this work if we want to be in business and next year and the year after that and grow. But we do, we are very cognizant of the fact that we we want to reach out to everyone, and we're blessed because we have a philanthropic organization, the Emily Seahall Tremaine Foundation, who's given us a scholarship fund. So if a family comes to us and they're in need, we can give out a scholarship to help them and give them access to our services.

SPEAKER_02 10:54

That's fantastic. Do you have any other steps that you're taking to grow or scale the business right now?

Personalization, Engagement, And AI For Good

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, we did a project this summer to sort of take a look at what the market demand would be, and we saw incredible response. We had 50% month-over-month ARR growth. There's such demand for what we're doing, and that's really where we saw the realization that this needed to be high-dose tutoring for all kids. And so we are going all in on building that product, but also understanding how we can form partnerships with different organizations and different providers out there in order to make this more accessible to families. So we know, for example, speech and language pathologists are often the first people to identify that a child has an issue, and we're a great partner with them because we can provide them with education around reading and continuing education units, but we can also build into their referral network so they can refer families to us. And reading specialists are the same way, and neuropsychologists. So, right now we're looking for many more partnerships so that we can spread the word about Sprout Labs.

SPEAKER_02 12:05

You're doing a lot of work and you're a very busy lady. So let's talk about your day-to-day for a minute. Are there any tools other than your own that you can't live without as a business owner? Um, it could be something AI related or something that you've used for many years.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's sort of the standard answer right now, but I continue to be blown away with what ChatGPT and Claude are able to do for us. I mean, I use it for everything from like organizing my week. I literally, one time, I one Sunday night, I was like, I'm just overwhelmed. Here's everything that's on my plate. And it just, you know, spit out the do this first, do that second, with you don't have to think that much. It's really a thought partner for you. And writing and and producing documents. Um, I think too, for us, we're doing some exciting things in um, you know, producing marketing materials, if you will, and things like gamma are exciting as well. So, yeah, I think the the tools that are accessible to us as founders are so powerful. If anything, it's just overwhelming to figure out which ones are the best ones, which is why it's great that you ask the question so we can all learn from each other.

SPEAKER_02 13:13

Exactly, exactly. I love how you called it a thought partner because that's exactly what it is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:20

So um let's talk about your leadership style. Um, maybe start with how many are on your team and how you lead them.

Scholarships And Access

Go-To-Market, Demand, And Partnerships

SPEAKER_00 13:26

Yeah. So right now we're a small team, which is uh important. We have a small full-time team, and then we have a cadre of amazing reading specialists. They have four years of Orton Gillingham tutoring and decades of tutoring working with all of these different types of kids that we're talking about. And together it's just a really powerful team. Um, I think in terms of leadership, I really believe in sort of strong ideas loosely held. And you know, as the founder and the CEO of the visionary, really you have a strong, I have a strong vision of like where this needs to go, what it needs to look like, but I myself can't do the execution of that without my really powerful team. I mean, each of my team leads is very strong and experienced in their areas, so they're bringing that expertise, but they're also teaching me constantly on, you know, this is this is how we how we approach it. So it's sort of like that balance of you know, how do you convey a strong convicted idea, but also be listening for how to evolve it. Um and then I think the other balancing act, I think, as a CEO or as a founder is that conversation around authentic versus performative leadership. And I think the longer I do this, the more authentic and a little less performative. I think performative is important. You need to sort of show the strong face and show the positive message, but you also need to balance that with when you're going to be real with everyone and sort of share like the challenges of running a business as well. And I find that is sort of a constant discussion in my head.

SPEAKER_02 15:07

It's funny because the work that you're doing with Sprout Labs kind of goes hand in hand with managing people, where teaching these kids who all have different ways of learning. Well, managing people they all have different ways of being managed. So if you look at it like that, it's very similar.

SPEAKER_00 15:23

Absolutely. We are learning from our students every day.

SPEAKER_02 15:27

Yes, absolutely. So I love hearing how founders ground themselves in um morning routines or routines that maybe are non-negotiable. Do you have anything like that?

SPEAKER_00 15:39

Yeah, I work out every morning or you know, pretty much every morning, maybe five times a week. It it I didn't start that sort of intentionally, but it became such a habit, and it's such a great launch to my day. And recently, you know, I think there's so much emphasis on strength training for women, and um, and that's the hardest, that was the hardest one I found to sort of put into the mix. So I've started strength training as well, which is really fun and really empowering. So, you know, a blend of sort of Pilates and yoga and um strength training, running, that sort of thing, and that's just a great kickoff to the day. And also sometimes I'll wake up with a long list of things that I'm thinking about or worrying about, and by the end of the workout, like it all seems better.

SPEAKER_02 16:22

It really does help mentally as well, for sure. So that's a great way to start the day.

SPEAKER_00 16:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:28

Now you have so much to be proud of, but when you look at everything that you've built and done in your career, what are you the most proud of?

Founder Tools And AI As Thought Partner

SPEAKER_00 16:37

That's a great question. You know, I think if I look back at Early Bird, the first company that I spoke about, uh, we found through a survey that 70% of the teachers that used EarlyBird identified a child who is at risk of dyslexia that they otherwise would not have noticed. And that's really, I'm really proud of that because I think we helped kids across the country. I think when I think about Sprout Labs, you know, I think about the stories that we're hearing from families where they go from being, especially the moms, go from being sort of all alone, isolated, and overwhelmed to really feeling supported and watching their children learn how to read. And, you know, nothing more magical than that.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:19

It's interesting too. I we're actually tapping into and supporting the reading specialist and speech and language pathology community in an interesting way. We're really allowing them to elevate their practice because we're sharing with them best practices around reading instruction and giving them access to resources that will really enable them to heighten and improve their practices. So I'm proud of that too. I think it's a community builder at the same time as like an individual family builder.

SPEAKER_02 17:48

Absolutely. I was just gonna say that you're building quite a community, and for people that have been longing for one, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

Yeah, it's overwhelming to be alone doing this. Right.

SPEAKER_02 17:58

So let's look ahead now. What is next? Where do you see yourself and Sprout Labs in the next five years?

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Oh, that's a great question. Thank you. Well, exciting, I think. We're gonna we're really gonna blow out this opportunity to democratize high dose tutoring. Um, and I think this concept of looking at the whole child and the multi-domain opportunity as we grow the roadmap to include kids with dyslexia, dyscalculia, uh, dysgraphia, which is writing, spelling, and and these are the things that really weigh a parent down of one trying to understand what does it mean, what do I do, what are the resources, do I need to do anything, is school gonna handle it or not? Um, and you know, I think it's it's a bit sad, but I think our system is failing our kids. 70% of fourth graders are not reading on grade level, and 2% of the tutoring that's out there isn't working. So I think five years from now will be the solution for reading specialists, for speech and language pathologists, for families to really have solved that problem for for those children.

Team, Leadership Style, And Culture

SPEAKER_02 19:03

I love that. You're doing such great work. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time today, and I can't wait to see where you take this because, like we were talking about earlier, it could be for so much more than than reading, it could be in every classroom in years to come.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

So absolutely. Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity. It's great to see you.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

Thank you, it's great.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

Take care.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

This is the Female Founder Show with host and entrepreneur, Bridget Fitzpatrick, exclusively on ASBN. If you're a female founder and would like to help other female founders with your inspiring story, we would love to hear from you.