Founder Profile: The Female Founder Creating Family Connection Through Tech

We saw a picture of a soldier trying to read a book to his daughter through a webcam and it broke our hearts. How is it that he was out there possibly giving his life to keep our families safe and this was the best technology available for him to make sure his daughter got a bedtime story?

 Experts recommend that children read or be read to for at least 20 minutes a day but millions of family members like grandparents, traveling or divorced parents and our US Military are separated by distance and they use smartphones and tablets to stay connected. But video-call technology wasn’t built for children and it doesn’t really lend itself to reading a book together, so we built Caribu. And because our company was inspired by the US military we’ve partnered with the non-profit, Blue Star Families, to donate free subscriptions of Caribu to all currently serving US military.

Less than 2% of Venture Capital goes to companies based in Miami, less than 2% goes to female-founded companies, and less than 1% goes to companies founded by women of color, so all the odds were against me. This is why I gathered my airline miles and started throwing my hat into the ring for any pitch competition I could find.

 I have an amazing consumer product so every time I pitched we got tons of downloads from the audience, tons of free marketing from the organizers of the competition, and in some cases non-dilutive cash! In our first year we won over $100K in cash and prizes and kept the company afloat until we could raise our $1.3M seed round. Now I’m the 59th Latina to raise over $1M in funding.

 For women who would like to be investors, I think equity crowdfunding is the perfect first investment for getting your feet wet. The due diligence has already been done by the platform and the check size is manageable. We’re hoping to turn hundreds of women into angel investors with our campaign this summer.

Caribu is an interactive video-calling platform that helps parents and grandparents to read and draw with children when they’re not in the same location. A trusted adult and child call each other through a Caribu video-call, choose a book, and read or draw together in real-time on a shared screen. There are hundreds of books, and educational workbooks to choose from in seven different languages. We have customers reading together in 164 countries and have high-quality globally recognized publishers like Mattel, Highlights, and Sesame Street.

When we did a Product Market Fit survey earlier in the year we found out that our core customers were Glammas (glamorous grandmas). It made total sense. Glammas are 50-70, they’re tech-savvy, this is their first grandchild and they want to build a relationship with them, they have the most disposable income of any age group, and make 4x what a millennial mom makes.

 So when we think of who drives the engagement for the multi-generational family to connect, it was Glamma. Again, kids want to do an activity together. The weekly video-call with grandma can feel like the Spanish Inquisition if it’s just going back and forth with questions and answers, so adding a book or a coloring sheet or playing tic-tac-toe becomes an icebreaker to longer and more meaningful conversations which create lifelong memories for the whole family.

We get “Thank you!”, a lot. This is a game-changer. It’s the FaceTime kids don’t run away from.

Our platform is an app that is sold and distributed through the Apple and Google Play app stores. Our basic subscription allows unlimited access to the library and video-calls for $6.99/month, we plan to increase the price soon, and we do a 50/50 revenue share with our publishers.

 We also are rolling out a yearly and lifetime subscription, and we have multi-month gift subscriptions available for holidays which are perfect for Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Grandparent’s Day, and the winter holidays.

Until recently, we had been trying to build and market Caribu for everyone. The reality is that Caribu is a better video-call alternative to FaceTime or Skype for any situation where a child spends time away from family often, such as military families, parents who travel for work, divorced parents and so on. However, when we set out to nail down our product market fit, we narrowed down our most engaged demographic – grandparents.

 Being an emotional product with a game-changing experience for families, we have benefited from great organic growth and have also had great results with paid advertising, primarily on Facebook with the grandparents. Our scaling plan is to actually take a step back and focus on one or two key demographics at a time. Make sure we understand what is the best approach to reach them and that also ties into pricing and product strategy. Owning one market at a time, we can have a more predictable and sustainable growth rate given that we are still a small team.

We’ve mitigated some of our bottom of the funnel challenges by building out our product team but we must continue fortifying and improving the platform and building IP for groundbreaking technology. Another challenge is finding the right mentors and advisors to build the best evidence-based and research-driven technology for children and seniors to use. The last challenge is, of course, funding to aggressively scale adoption and growth.

Truly, the main technologies that glammas use to build long-distance relationships with their grandchildren are FaceTime (if everyone in the family is iOS) and Skype and WhatsApp.  Facebook Portal is the only video-chat with a little more interactivity. Larger incumbents (FaceTime, Skype…) have been focusing on their enterprise offerings and are unlikely to diversify into markets for children or glammas.

 The lack of interactivity and engagement for young children on these platforms is the source of the problem Caribu solves but these companies could be potential acquisition exits.

We build for global domination but are very aware that we’ll be an attractive acquisition target in a couple of years. Acquisition by a large strategic buyer in the children’s publishing or distribution space. Edtech company looking to expand into the books or early childhood education category. We are continuously thinking of how to best position ourselves for a successful exit down the road, and the value that a buyer could gain from us — such as our publishing and author partnerships, data, team, and technology.

We need to keep growing the team in engineering and marketing and scale our marketing efforts to reach more glammas.