SwarmLabs was founded by Ashley and Peter, two designers-turned-developers who decided the early years sector deserved the same quality of software as any other industry.
Ashley and Peter spent over a decade running a digital agency, helping businesses across retail, hospitality, and professional services build products that people actually wanted to use. They became obsessed with the gap between how software could feel and how it usually does.
When the AI revolution arrived, they saw a different opportunity: not to chase trends, but to point their skills at a sector that had been left behind. Early years education: where practitioners spend more time on paperwork than with children, where security is an afterthought, and where the software looks like it was designed in 2009. Because most of it was.
SwarmLabs was founded to fix that. Not with a quick product, but with a long-term commitment to the people who run our nurseries and look after our youngest children.
Ashley Hammond
Co-founder & CEO · SwarmLabs
"We've spent years watching great design transform how people work. The early years sector is full of dedicated, brilliant people who just haven't had software that respects their time. That's what we're building."
Peter Chapman
Co-founder & CTO · SwarmLabs
"Security and privacy aren't features you bolt on at the end. They're the foundation. When you're handling data about children, there's no room for shortcuts. We build everything with that in mind from day one."
Design partner
From day one, we've worked hand-in-hand with the team at Little Learners Childcare: real practitioners, real settings, real feedback. They shaped every feature, challenged every assumption, and helped us understand what it actually takes to run a multi-site nursery.
Little Bees is the cornerstone of a new vision for SwarmLabs: applying fifteen years of design and product craft to sectors where software has stood still for too long.
The early years sector sits at a unique intersection: it's deeply human, highly regulated, and chronically underserved by technology. We saw an opportunity to bring the same quality of experience people expect from consumer apps into a professional setting where it matters most.
Partnering with Little Learners Childcare gave us something most software companies lack: an honest mirror. Real staff, real children, real days. That grounding shapes everything we ship.
Child data deserves the highest protection. Every decision we make, from infrastructure to features, starts with security.
We sit with nursery managers, room leaders, and childminders to understand the day before we write a line of code.
Fifteen years of design craft applied to software that needs to work at 7:30am with a child in one hand and an iPad in the other.
Whether you're running a setting, building a product, or just curious about what we're working on, we'd love to hear from you.