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COBY’s Child-Safe Voice AI Architecture for Bedtime Routines · Deep Tech Germany – AI, Robotics & Frontier Innovation by Startuprad.io™

• 0:00
  Child doesn't need more content, a child needs a safe
• 0:03
  mirror that turns chaos into calm.
• 0:08
  Coby is building Emotional Tech for Kids, an
• 0:11
  AI powered screen free companion that
• 0:14
  helps kids ages 4 to 12
• 0:18
  navigate emotions and routines without
• 0:21
  overstimulation. The conflict is simple, parents
• 0:25
  are exhausted, children are dysregulated and screens
• 0:28
  escalate the problem. David Kanna's links by
• 0:32
  Bild Kobe from Lived experience and engineered it
• 0:36
  as a privacy first EU hosted and clinically
• 0:40
  informed positioned for dach early adopters and
• 0:43
  TikTok native go to market. The payoff is a new
• 0:47
  category with real unit economics and not a feel
• 0:50
  good gadget. Foreign.
• 1:01
  Your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German
• 1:05
  startup scene with news interviews and
• 1:08
  live events.
• 1:12
  Today's guest is David Cañadas Link Is
• 1:16
  that right? Candidas? That's right, that's my Spanish
• 1:20
  surname. David Cañadas Link | CoFounder &
• 1:23
  CFO of COBY - The Coping Buddy, Coby is not entertainment, not therapy and
• 1:27
  not a toy. It's emotional technology screen free
• 1:30
  child tailored AI inside a physical
• 1:34
  companion with parent control and boundaries designed
• 1:38
  into your system. This conversation sits
• 1:41
  at the intersection of voice, AI, child well
• 1:45
  being and consumer hardware where trust, privacy and safety
• 1:49
  are not marketing points but product architecture.
• 1:52
  David's true story begins with a progressive diagnosis
• 1:56
  and a hard question how you stay
• 2:00
  grounded when certainty disappears. That
• 2:03
  personal inflection became a product thesis. Children
• 2:06
  live inside big emotions daily
• 2:10
  and most households lack twos to
• 2:13
  to de escalated state of distract. Cobie's approach
• 2:17
  is clinically informed dialogue, predictable routines
• 2:20
  and gentle ritualized close of the
• 2:25
  day delivered through plush companion that avoids the screen
• 2:28
  war entirely. We cover Category creation Privacy
• 2:32
  First AI design under EU Expectations TikTok
• 2:36
  as a distribution engine and what
• 2:39
  it takes to ship hardware with real margins while staying ethically
• 2:43
  clean around children.
• 2:47
  That was already a lot. David, welcome to the interview.
• 2:51
  Thank you so much for having me. What event
• 2:56
  forced the first irreversible shift
• 2:59
  in how you think about uncertainty and control?
• 3:03
  Amazing question and yeah, there's
• 3:07
  quite a personal and life altering story behind
• 3:11
  that. The event it was five years ago, I
• 3:15
  was 29, I was wanting to make my
• 3:19
  fur shine so my driver's license for car I had for
• 3:23
  motorbike and yeah, and I realized pretty fast
• 3:26
  that the person sitting next next to me was seeing way more
• 3:30
  than me. Like it was hinting me to why didn't you see that sign
• 3:34
  and that sign and there was a person I was like I don't know. Like
• 3:37
  I don't know what you are telling me. And yeah, it went pretty fast.
• 3:41
  One Thing led to the other. The eye doct didn't want to tell me
• 3:44
  anything, sent me directly to university clinic.
• 3:48
  They conducted many tests and yeah, suddenly I
• 3:52
  was sitting in front of the professor. He told me I have the diagnosis Mobile
• 3:56
  Stargardt, degenerative genetic
• 3:59
  incurable eye disease. That I was gonna lose
• 4:03
  more sight, central vision, but I shouldn't
• 4:06
  be too afraid because before I go totally
• 4:10
  blind, I will already be dead. That was a fun
• 4:14
  conversation. That was a heavy conversation, I have to say.
• 4:19
  I see, yeah, more of you were expecting to get new glasses,
• 4:22
  right? And yeah, I mean, from there my personal
• 4:26
  journey started. And I mean, the life
• 4:30
  changes completely, right? You ask yourself what I'm gonna do with
• 4:34
  outside. I also like to paint canvas
• 4:38
  and pictures like how, how am I gonna do this? Or how am I gonna
• 4:41
  work? Will I be seeing the faces? Right.
• 4:45
  And the heavy part is that really once that at least in Germany,
• 4:49
  the medical system can't apply any more therapy to you.
• 4:53
  You're completely on your own. So there's no one helping you
• 4:57
  to adapt to that condition. How are you gonna
• 5:00
  live with it? How I'm gonna read, how am I gonna
• 5:04
  be mobile, like mobility and also how
• 5:08
  I'm gonna deal with my emotions regarding the disease and the
• 5:11
  progression of it. So. So basically how I'm gonna
• 5:15
  cope with it. I have to say there was a
• 5:19
  long journey from there of talking with many patients being into
• 5:22
  patient communities like the PR retina, that really helped a lot. But
• 5:26
  where I also realized many people that are there
• 5:30
  are elderly, don't even use computers or
• 5:33
  smartphones. And it's really hard to
• 5:37
  really match with someone that actually understands. Even though if you have family and
• 5:41
  friends, no one has the same experience as you have. No one
• 5:45
  sees what you can see, no one goes through that.
• 5:49
  Yeah. Also the experience of losing sight and
• 5:52
  it's a very, very difficult road to go along.
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  In my case, I think I was quite lucky in the sense that I'm
• 6:01
  quite a tech person. So I found my ways of adapting,
• 6:04
  right. Of finding the right tools on my smartphone, on my laptop,
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  I'm right now zooming in and out all the time with my gaming mouse to
• 6:12
  see your face and so on. But still,
• 6:16
  I noticed there's a big lack in this right now. From
• 6:20
  there on, many things happened. I talked with many patients, not only
• 6:23
  individually impaired community, but also through consulting projects in other
• 6:27
  communities from back pain over asthma, over
• 6:31
  diabetes. And there came a point where we
• 6:35
  realized as an adult at least you have, let's say,
• 6:39
  the resources or knowledge to find for yourself solutions or get
• 6:42
  in contact with people. But for example, with asthma kids, and that was
• 6:47
  when Kobe really was born, we noticed kids don't have that
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  type of resources. So here the problem is way bigger.
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  Like if you have a heavy diagnosis or chronic condition as a
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  kid, you're completely dependent on parents that want to help,
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  but often don't have the time or knowledge to do so.
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  Physicians or experts that you see all two years, if you are lucky
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  and that are really quite technical with the input that you give, give
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  to you. And then your peers being other kids,
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  usually you are one of a kind. So it's extremely difficult
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  to find someone to relate. So we decided that's something where we really
• 7:24
  want to find a solution, want to make a change and
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  give this kids a body, a companion on
• 7:32
  eyesight that can help them through this journey.
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  I see. And we may add, if you do have sick children,
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  it is that the parents are more busy in providing
• 7:44
  care for them than really enable them
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  to meet other children with the same condition. That's really a
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  difficult point. I was wondering,
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  are you willing or able to share because the
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  doctor said you
• 8:03
  may not live to completely lose your
• 8:07
  eyesight. What time horizon are
• 8:10
  you looking at here? I think in my case
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  I have to say now looking back
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  that I think I'm still quite lucky in a sense. Like with the live,
• 8:22
  it just meant in a sense that I will live long. It doesn't affect
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  now my normal lifespan, but
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  the progression will be slow enough that I will not lose
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  my total eyesight. So visual impairment is a spectrum
• 8:37
  like in most diseases, and in my case, usually you have
• 8:41
  visceral impairment. Either you have central vision loss, what I have,
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  so it's mostly known as macular degeneration, or you have
• 8:48
  peripheral loss. So that's mostly known. Retinitis
• 8:51
  pigmentosa. When you have periphery, then it's really about
• 8:55
  mobility because you cannot see any more objects in your, in
• 8:58
  your periphery. So you don't see a stone on a chair if it's down
• 9:02
  beneath you. So you will need a white cane. Or for example, you don't
• 9:06
  see a car coming from left that. Exactly.
• 9:10
  Now I see cars coming from the left, but I don't see details. So well,
• 9:13
  in my case I cannot read. So the progression was pretty
• 9:17
  fast. At that time I had, when I was diagnosed, I had
• 9:21
  80% of visual acuity on my left eye and 60 on the right
• 9:25
  eye. Now I have 10 on the left eye and five on the right
• 9:28
  eye. So I'm officially impaired in Germany with
• 9:31
  70%. But I am very well adapted.
• 9:35
  So the good thing is I use many technical tools
• 9:39
  to zoom in, zoom out and also in my disease, most
• 9:43
  of the times that's kind of the main
• 9:47
  like the main problem is the central vision loss because it doesn't expand
• 9:51
  too much over the whole retina. So hopefully that's the case. You never
• 9:55
  know for sure. But yeah,
• 9:59
  I hope it will not get much worse than it is right now.
• 10:03
  Yeah, fingers crossed for you.
• 10:07
  Going a little bit back to the story of Kobe. What
• 10:11
  problem definition made you decide that children
• 10:15
  need like a physical companion and not an act?
• 10:19
  Ah, that's a good question.
• 10:24
  So if you want to build a coping companion,
• 10:27
  meaning someone that you can also talk about problems, it's someone you will
• 10:31
  have to trust. And children to
• 10:35
  build trust they need something real like
• 10:38
  screenshots is something that
• 10:41
  actually nowadays I have myself a little daughter.
• 10:45
  Parents really in many cases it's the last resort they have
• 10:49
  for the kids, but they really want to avoid. And it's also more like
• 10:52
  a dopamine enhancing like entertainment device,
• 10:56
  distracting device, but it's not like a real companion or
• 11:00
  something you can identify with now also from
• 11:03
  therapeutic and psychological inputs that we have with the experts we
• 11:07
  were working with, puppet therapy is something that's extremely
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  effective and it's also used a lot in clinics. And the reason is
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  these toys, puppets, small toys for kids,
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  they are on eyesight, they open way more to these
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  toys that even to their parents or to the physicians
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  because they feel more like we are on the same
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  hierarchy level. Right. In many therapy, the many
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  therapists explain to us that in the therapy sessions they have
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  the first half hour is just bringing down the child to
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  really open himself because it's so difficult. Right. They are
• 11:45
  scared. What does this person want from me? And so on. So
• 11:49
  really finding a right medium in the sense of cuddly
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  plush toy that they know from their normal child life
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  was one of the. Yeah. The key points where we also saw
• 12:01
  in our testings that kids engage most. I mean we had different
• 12:04
  prototypes. We also had hardware prototypes with
• 12:08
  amazing eyes and screens. And the eyes were interactive.
• 12:11
  Adults loved it. Kids were scared. Kids
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  want something cuddly they can.
• 12:19
  Yeah. Relate to and that speaks their language.
• 12:26
  Yeah, the relation is very important.
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  So I was wondering when turning a product everybody
• 12:34
  would, everybody else would see as a steady phone call, as an
• 12:38
  app or something into a screen free product. What was
• 12:42
  the first high stake decision you have to make
• 12:46
  to narrow Cobie into this screen free product
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  and not like any Other screen based experience.
• 12:54
  I mean the thing is we, we also made, made our market research.
• 12:58
  I think the main thing was really user interaction. So conducting
• 13:02
  many user tests now my co founder Philip,
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  picking up kids from the park, their parents and we're
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  showing them different interfaces, right? We showed them for example
• 13:13
  a tablet with a talking toy or plush toy and so
• 13:17
  on. The hardware robot and kids were always engaged in the
• 13:20
  plushie. So that was one of the things. Also looking into the market,
• 13:25
  what other products out there were also are very
• 13:28
  successful. You see things like the Tony box, right? Also
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  completely screen free, telling stories or the tip toy, very
• 13:35
  successful product here in Germany
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  that worked extremely well and still are working very well. And one
• 13:43
  of the main points is really having the screen free.
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  The screen free component, it's something that parents
• 13:51
  love, but also kids, for them it feels way more natural
• 13:55
  actually to interact with screen free devices. If you
• 13:58
  think about it, I mean as an adult we're so accustomed to these devices.
• 14:02
  But as a kid you come with your
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  hands, with your eyes, right? With sensory,
• 14:09
  other sensory like attributes to this world that are
• 14:13
  actually not that fitted for
• 14:17
  screens. They are more fitted for something I can cuddle, I can
• 14:21
  take into my bed, I can take with me, like I can look at them,
• 14:25
  I can have a conversation and it feels more natural.
• 14:29
  So yeah, I mean we learned most from our customer from really the
• 14:33
  kids were the ones that took the choice of the
• 14:36
  plushie and still are doing so.
• 14:41
  And also the market seeing that these products are not many
• 14:46
  but are really something that parents are really also looking
• 14:50
  a lot for. I know from my daughter, she's now two and a half
• 14:54
  and how I feel like I've done it really only seldom times,
• 14:58
  but two times I had my smartphone and she looked, I don't know,
• 15:01
  Pew Pew was
• 15:05
  some song. And I really like, she's, she's
• 15:09
  instant and zombie mode. And I feel so bad if I see that.
• 15:12
  Like as a parent you see that and you're like, I don't want this for
• 15:15
  my child. I want her to, to be happy. And
• 15:19
  also the next point, maybe that's not directly a point for the
• 15:22
  plush toy, but a really important point for the AI and the interaction
• 15:26
  itself is that's a two way interaction.
• 15:30
  It's not one way, it's not you're just getting input
• 15:34
  and you're just digesting a story or a song or whatever and
• 15:38
  you're like okay, that's it. It's something where
• 15:42
  the eye always gets into interaction, makes short
• 15:45
  sentences, it paraphrases the kid but it always asks the
• 15:49
  kid to follow up on the conversation. So that makes also a hu.
• 15:52
  Huge difference. When. When. When you watch this
• 15:56
  because you're noticing my kid is not in zombie mode. My kid is
• 16:00
  having a conversation, creating a story with. With someone
• 16:04
  by itself. And that also makes a huge difference. I
• 16:08
  see. And not having zombies is always pretty
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  good. There
• 16:17
  is one sentence you thought the model to
• 16:21
  never say to child and it changes everything.
• 16:26
  Editor, cut this out. There was a world teaser and
• 16:29
  apparently that one was bad. Forget it. David.
• 16:33
  Let's go to the next question.
• 16:38
  What moment in early testing exposed the gap
• 16:41
  between what parents say they want and what actually works at
• 16:45
  7:30pm? Ah, you
• 16:49
  mean with our entry use case
• 16:53
  going to sleep.
• 16:57
  I mean I have to say many parents know that what they expect
• 17:01
  from the nighttime is very different from reality. Already
• 17:07
  we notice a lot like going to sleep. Bringing kids to sleep
• 17:11
  is one of the most crucial moments in
• 17:14
  everyday's life for every parent you expect fact
• 17:18
  that everything goes by itself, right? But it's not only going to
• 17:22
  bed like it's brushing your teeth, it's putting on the pajama,
• 17:26
  it's reading the good night story. And often not even then, the
• 17:29
  kids are done like they are still awake. They
• 17:33
  still want action, they still want to go into the living room. They want to
• 17:36
  be with the parents. They can't shut down. And this is something that is
• 17:40
  even more detrimental in cases like kids having
• 17:43
  adhd, something extremely common nowadays. Or also
• 17:47
  separated families, right? Where one parent
• 17:50
  has to take care of the whole process by
• 17:54
  himself. And also the kid is for example,
• 17:58
  yeah, crying for the other parent or
• 18:03
  so on. So the expectation of parents is that this
• 18:06
  goes by itself or as smoothly as it
• 18:10
  should or could. But in many cases that isn't the
• 18:14
  reality. Now often
• 18:17
  really one of the things that many have to
• 18:21
  rely on is for example putting a screen in between like
• 18:25
  TV or kid plays a game. Then I can at
• 18:29
  least clean the kitchen, right? Because this
• 18:32
  the other course that you have to do. But
• 18:36
  with Cobie it's something totally
• 18:40
  different. So first of all he co manages these
• 18:43
  processes. So for example, brushing teeth can be something
• 18:47
  quite boring. It's always the same that you do each night. But if
• 18:51
  you have Kobe there and the toothbrush is suddenly a train and
• 18:55
  your teeth are the vias of the train, then he's
• 18:58
  creating a gamified story out of it that makes it way more special
• 19:02
  for the kid and also engaging to do that type of activity.
• 19:07
  Same applies for putting on the Clothes. Then we also have
• 19:10
  strategies, for example, implemented that we also are
• 19:14
  working together with psychosocial therapists for
• 19:18
  this. Kids have to bring first Kobe to bed,
• 19:21
  but he doesn't want to go to sleep. And
• 19:25
  that's how kids learn. They learn through making things
• 19:29
  themselves, through interaction, through experiencing it. And that's how they
• 19:33
  get the perspective of the parents also something that is
• 19:37
  shown to be very effective. We also don't cut
• 19:40
  off the parents of the interaction itself. So once Covid goes to
• 19:44
  sleep, still Mama and Papa comes for the good night story. It's not like
• 19:48
  a replacement, but it's a co manager that can
• 19:52
  take on certain parts of this process
• 19:55
  and also open a bit of time for the parents to, for example, make other
• 19:59
  calls a day. Also, parents have always total
• 20:02
  control over how this routine
• 20:06
  is conducted through an app. So they can also
• 20:10
  change parts of it or overtake them themselves
• 20:13
  completely. So they are always in control. And Cobi is also
• 20:17
  always loyal to them. I do believe it's very important to
• 20:21
  have the security, the safety that they
• 20:25
  know they can rely on the Cobie or whatever the
• 20:29
  name they give to the pet. What
• 20:32
  principle governs Cobie's emotional dialogue when the
• 20:36
  child is dysregulated? There are few things
• 20:41
  coming to that. I mean, one thing that he does,
• 20:45
  it's kind of basic, but already makes a huge
• 20:49
  difference, is basically emotional paraphrasing. So
• 20:52
  acknowledging the emotion, saying, I understand that you're angry because
• 20:56
  of this and that and so on. So that's already something that
• 21:00
  often we notice also in families doesn't happen that often.
• 21:04
  And that also has a reason why it's not happening that often.
• 21:09
  So this is the first part of emotional regulation. So really
• 21:13
  acknowledging the emotion, naming the emotion, and kind
• 21:17
  of having an understanding, like, and also saying. And
• 21:20
  understanding why the kid is feeling this or that way.
• 21:24
  The next thing that Kobe does, he's kind of a mediator.
• 21:28
  I want to give you an example. Right. So the other day,
• 21:32
  for example, we were testing with a family also with two ADHD kids.
• 21:36
  I like them a lot, are really good friends, and I also like the kids
• 21:39
  a lot. But they are really something
• 21:43
  extremely. Yeah. Overpowered many
• 21:46
  times and always trying to test and
• 21:50
  really. Yeah. Building their own rules.
• 21:54
  And I noticed, I mean, the parents are very stressed and the father,
• 21:58
  he loves the kids, his kids. But if he sees at
• 22:02
  the dinner table, right.
• 22:05
  That his son is again throwing
• 22:09
  the spaghetti through the whole table because now there's a
• 22:13
  visitor there and they're excited, whatever, for sure he gets
• 22:16
  strength you would say in. In German.
• 22:20
  So he. He tells him, hey, you cannot do that and so on. And that
• 22:24
  has his reason for sure. His father, he has a certain responsibility
• 22:27
  towards the kids. His k. He also wants them to behave
• 22:31
  well. Also if others are there or if they may be somewhere else
• 22:35
  now, the kid was very like sad
• 22:39
  because often they don't understand the reaction of
• 22:43
  the parents in that moment. Right. They think it's something personal.
• 22:47
  What Kobe does, he's kind of a mediator. So he
• 22:51
  helps the kids reflect on why their parents are
• 22:54
  reacting this or that way, that it's not meant in a bad way. Something
• 22:58
  that in the position that parents are in that situation
• 23:01
  that they are maybe not capable to do due to
• 23:05
  their responsibility. But Kobe can be the perfect
• 23:08
  mediator for this kind of situations.
• 23:13
  So that would be one example. But yeah,
• 23:17
  one of the key things really to dealing with big emotions is really
• 23:20
  acknowledging the emotions, naming the emotions and
• 23:24
  kind of, yeah, helping the kid
• 23:28
  to understand that what he's feeling is normal,
• 23:32
  that there's a reason for it, but that he can also handle it.
• 23:36
  And. And then they learn through time
• 23:41
  what these emotions actually are. And when they feel it,
• 23:44
  they can react accordingly.
• 23:49
  With trade off. Did you accept to keep the product
• 23:53
  privacy first while still feeling responsive and
• 23:56
  alive? Let's go. This is kind of a technical question.
• 24:02
  Sometimes we do that.
• 24:07
  Trade offs. I mean, we're now building our
• 24:10
  first 100 series and from there on we will also. The next
• 24:14
  step will be to go to scale
• 24:18
  through China. So I think that there will be a few technical
• 24:22
  shifts and trade offs though. But to say how it is
• 24:26
  right now, basically what we have is, yeah,
• 24:29
  you would say an Alexa instead of a plush toy. It's
• 24:33
  a mini computer for kids. It has a
• 24:37
  microcontroller. So I think it's a
• 24:41
  certain type of Raspberry PI module.
• 24:44
  And then what it has is three key components are really good.
• 24:48
  Microphone, speakers and lights. Light is extremely important
• 24:51
  that we use for communication, but also for emotional reflection and
• 24:55
  other type of interactions. A belly light at Son Cobie.
• 24:59
  Now what we realized pretty fast, okay, do you bring the AI on
• 25:03
  the device itself? That's almost impossible to do this without
• 25:06
  making the plush toy extremely expensive. So the
• 25:10
  third thing was, okay, where do we place AI for that? We found a
• 25:14
  solution of it will be server hosted. So the device is
• 25:18
  connected to the WI fi, but it cannot be hosted
• 25:22
  with one of this, let's say standard US
• 25:26
  companies like OpenAI, Gemini and so on. Because then
• 25:30
  you directly have data compliancy. Problems. Data
• 25:34
  is also sent to the US and so on. You cannot control it
• 25:38
  or manage it. So the first thing, or let's say trial of was we
• 25:42
  need to have a European servers with our own models,
• 25:45
  trained by our own experts where we have full control over the data.
• 25:49
  Those are streamed via wi fi to the device. But that's not
• 25:53
  all, because the next problem is the most. The more power
• 25:57
  you put on the device, the more expensive it still gets. Because
• 26:00
  battery gets more expensive, everything gets more expensive.
• 26:04
  And I would assume you also need to recharge the battery more often.
• 26:08
  You need to recharge more often. And there are more processes happening than
• 26:12
  just AI like text to speech, speech to text, for
• 26:15
  example. You also need to do things in terms
• 26:19
  of data security and data anonymization that you
• 26:23
  screen the text from the kit,
• 26:27
  you screen through any type of personal data that he might say
• 26:30
  like an address and so on, and it gets erased before it gets
• 26:35
  streamed to the model. So these are kind of lot of processes
• 26:38
  that if you do them on device again you have the problem. The
• 26:42
  toy cost €600. What we don't want, our price point
• 26:46
  right now is 199 and we want to keep it that way.
• 26:50
  But to make it that. And that's already premium, right.
• 26:54
  So what you have to do is you need another computing
• 26:58
  system. In this case the trade off is the mobile phone of
• 27:01
  the parents. So basically we use a similar
• 27:05
  strategy actually that the meta Ray Ban glasses.
• 27:09
  So part of the computing happens on the
• 27:13
  smartphone of the parents in the back
• 27:16
  like so the app doesn't have in the background.
• 27:20
  Exactly in the background. So there you have the text to speech,
• 27:24
  speech to text and also the filtering. The AI
• 27:27
  is then on our own local service. So with a
• 27:31
  cloud provider and really on the
• 27:34
  computer itself, only the most basic things happen in sense of
• 27:39
  really getting the data to the smartphone and also having
• 27:43
  let's say the. Yeah, the
• 27:47
  right synchronization between microphone, speakers and the light.
• 27:51
  Right. So that's kind of the
• 27:54
  system how we build it to make it work. Also
• 27:58
  having into account all the stakes that we set ourselves for data
• 28:03
  privacy and anonymization, our audience
• 28:06
  that just want. To hint if your household runs the evening cycle of
• 28:10
  conflict, keep listening and measure every claim against the reality
• 28:14
  of bedtime. As a parent myself, I
• 28:18
  think that's being important.
• 28:22
  What inflection point moved Coby from nice
• 28:26
  idea to a category with momentum in
• 28:30
  your own mind?
• 28:34
  Good question. So
• 28:38
  as I said, I had a diagnosis talking with many patients,
• 28:42
  I was Consultant, innovation consultant, also with AI Focus
• 28:45
  and the healthcare and automotive industries in
• 28:49
  Germany. And then
• 28:53
  basically I was involved in bigger projects also in the healthcare
• 28:56
  system. And it was really talking with many patients and seeing okay, this
• 29:00
  coping problem is a real thing. Then the eye bubble
• 29:04
  happened and then my university, the Roche Le
• 29:07
  Minchin, it was really at Sual.
• 29:11
  I don't know sou coincidence.
• 29:15
  I already had the idea in my head, right? And it's something like you tell
• 29:18
  people while drinking a coffee, like hey, don't you think that this would be
• 29:22
  something cool? And then my university just wrote me an email
• 29:26
  saying, hey, here's an award. Strik award. Do you have an
• 29:30
  idea? Don't you want to apply? €5,000 you can win, blah blah,
• 29:34
  blah. I was like, okay, if you ask,
• 29:38
  if you ask that I may have something, yeah, I applied
• 29:41
  for it, we won the award. Or in that case
• 29:45
  I was me myself alone. But yeah, that was really
• 29:49
  the first, the first point. And many things happened
• 29:53
  from them. Like also
• 29:56
  I had done a few difference with my employer that was like, hey, this idea,
• 30:00
  they had other plans with me that was not spoken with me. I
• 30:04
  really decided I want to do this. I had backed up backup by
• 30:07
  the incubator my university and I really, yeah, went all
• 30:11
  in into this project. At the beginning I was still consulting
• 30:15
  a bit freelance. But then I saw right
• 30:18
  the. The traction we were getting first in this academic sector,
• 30:22
  right. So the first thing was building
• 30:26
  partnerships, building a team. My co founders also that
• 30:29
  I'm super proud of to have we're right now three co
• 30:33
  founders, but in total seven persons. So that was
• 30:37
  a huge thing. But also really getting institutional partners,
• 30:41
  right. Like the LMU Clinicum that were also totally
• 30:44
  convinced of the necessity of such a type of product.
• 30:48
  Now since then it's almost, yeah I would say one
• 30:52
  and a half to two years and interest and traction
• 30:56
  is rising. We were not that long ago in the ADHD podcast,
• 31:00
  we're getting emails from parents one
• 31:04
  day telling us we would need four cobies. We would attest we will do this,
• 31:08
  we will do that. We're having pre orders and just having all this
• 31:12
  support of the community of the team. But also seeing that
• 31:16
  with what we're building, we are solving a real problem. That
• 31:19
  is what makes for me and is still making the huge difference. Also in comparison
• 31:23
  to what I was doing before that still it was good
• 31:27
  job and professional job. But with this I feel like I'm
• 31:30
  solving something that means a lot to me. And
• 31:35
  yeah, life would be way better with Kobe's in it.
• 31:39
  I'm totally convinced of that. Saying that life would be
• 31:42
  better just between you and me, two fathers, what does a
• 31:46
  successful bedtime routine with Kobe look like
• 31:50
  in three observable steps? And keep in mind, it's just between you
• 31:53
  and me and something like a hundred thousand listeners of the podcast.
• 31:58
  So how would it look? First of all, you would
• 32:01
  have kind of a routine starter, right? You would say, hey, it's
• 32:05
  bedtime time. But it wouldn't be what it usually is. Like, no, I don't want
• 32:09
  to go to bed. It would be like, oh, yeah, cool, I'm going
• 32:12
  to Kobe. I could start a cool routine that actually I'm looking
• 32:16
  forward to today. Then first the kids, you
• 32:20
  see, okay, they are already with Kobe, going to the bathroom, putting on
• 32:23
  their pajama. As a parent, you're cleaning the kitchen and you're happy
• 32:27
  that that thing is done. And then once
• 32:31
  you see they are already with Kobe in bed and having
• 32:35
  like the good night interaction and story, you
• 32:38
  come and you see, oh, is Kobe already sleeping? Good. Then let
• 32:42
  me tell you the good night story. And now Kit
• 32:46
  is really kind of brought down all the, all the,
• 32:50
  let's say standard processes are done and he
• 32:53
  goes to sleep and Kobe is also sleeping. But it doesn't
• 32:57
  end there. In the morning, Kobe is also there managing morning
• 33:01
  routines, right? So there he
• 33:05
  also helps like you wake up the kid. Kobe helps him
• 33:09
  like, hey, do you have everything for school? This and that, but also makes
• 33:12
  kind of a cool interaction for the kids for that. While you can prepare
• 33:16
  breakfast, right? You come back to the room and the kid is really prepared
• 33:20
  to go out and you don't have to do it all by yourself. So he
• 33:23
  had a co manager there. On top of that, what also
• 33:27
  would be different is for example, in evening times, right? You see
• 33:31
  the kid is bored. He's like, hey, can I play PlayStation? Can
• 33:35
  I do this or that? Or maybe you just have another work meeting for
• 33:38
  half an hour when you don't know what to do. Now you can give him
• 33:42
  a Kobe. And you know that in that time, the kid will have a
• 33:45
  meaningful and a good interaction with this device that will actually
• 33:50
  not just be entertaining for the kid, but also teach him important
• 33:53
  skills like social skills, other learning
• 33:57
  skills, and more things that we're thinking of for the future, right?
• 34:00
  But you know that you're giving him a device that will not
• 34:04
  zone him out or just influence him with 1000
• 34:08
  different inputs, but really,
• 34:12
  yeah, create a meaningful interaction where he actually takes something
• 34:16
  from it, but where he Also has to actively engage into
• 34:20
  into the device itself. So that would be the
• 34:23
  difference. And also something you can rely on that even if
• 34:27
  something bad happens, you know you would get informed.
• 34:34
  I see. I was wondering
• 34:38
  what is like the single
• 34:42
  metrics you track that predicts retention
• 34:46
  and reduce conflict? Maybe even at your home.
• 34:51
  That's a good question. I would even have to look into my
• 34:55
  deck. I know we we had written them down.
• 34:59
  Wait a second. But one was time
• 35:03
  to time to bed was one of the metrics.
• 35:08
  The other one was.
• 35:14
  How often tantrums happen and meltdowns
• 35:18
  after Kobe usage. Also after Kobe long term usage.
• 35:24
  I know we had a third one but I
• 35:28
  wouldn't know right now which one it was. We had this in the deck somewhere
• 35:33
  but these were for sure two of them. Time
• 35:36
  to sleep. And
• 35:40
  also ah, here. Oh here. Time to sleep. Evening
• 35:44
  conflicts. Homework minutes. I
• 35:48
  mean this is our second use case. It's not the first focus because startup
• 35:51
  we have to start with something. But homework minutes is
• 35:55
  also one. I mean we're focusing also with adhd.
• 35:59
  How do I make homework digestible for ADHD kids?
• 36:02
  How do I break it down and five minutes categories
• 36:06
  and so on. So that would also be one.
• 36:11
  Just wondering how many of our listeners are
• 36:14
  entrepreneurs that tracking KPIs at home themselves.
• 36:20
  Just a quick teaser here. This episode is supported by Startup Rate
• 36:24
  IO where professionals get the signal. Next, we talked
• 36:28
  about the contrarian reasons most child well being
• 36:32
  fails. And even with great intentions.
• 36:37
  What is the most common failure mode you see in a screen based
• 36:41
  coping tool for children? What fails the
• 36:44
  most? Yep, pretty clear.
• 36:49
  If you start asking directly for problems,
• 36:54
  let's say the coping mode. We have different modes. Storytelling, giggly mode
• 36:58
  and so on. Always when even more if kids get to know
• 37:01
  Kobe, you start engaging into coping more. This
• 37:05
  is like hey, did you have any problems? And so on. That's never seen good
• 37:09
  and there are good reasons for it. It's like getting to know a
• 37:12
  new human being. Even as an adult. If you get to know someone and
• 37:16
  like third or fourth question in it's like what are your
• 37:20
  problems? You would be like sorry, but
• 37:24
  I don't know you even. Why should I tell you that? So this
• 37:27
  is something where we really know to get to the point to have the trust
• 37:31
  to talk about the problems with the toy. You
• 37:34
  have to go over a set of other type of
• 37:38
  interactions and positive experience to get to the level.
• 37:42
  So this is one of the major turn. Also it
• 37:45
  depends always on when you put it on the journey. What decision did you make
• 37:49
  that put you at odds with standard consumer growth playbooks.
• 37:53
  Yeah. So let's say when we started
• 37:57
  we were working together with the LMU clinicum, so
• 38:01
  really thinking of putting COE in a clinical setup.
• 38:05
  So also motivated right from my diagnosis, the big dream
• 38:09
  was always, hey, you get a diagnosis and you get for free a Kobe.
• 38:13
  We may add that LMU is one of the premier
• 38:16
  universities in Munich and they do have a university clinic for everybody
• 38:20
  who's not familiar with them. Sorry for interrupting. One of the biggest in
• 38:23
  Germany, actually, the clinicum. And
• 38:28
  there it was like we had extremely high data security,
• 38:34
  let's say requirements. So it would have meant to have our own servers,
• 38:38
  something extremely expensive. If you don't have a lot of
• 38:41
  users, you would have to have them implemented in the clinic
• 38:44
  itself. So that was something that it was
• 38:48
  really not feasible as such an early stage startup to set up
• 38:52
  and would also have been a high risk if we would have invested the money
• 38:56
  actually in that hardware at that time. From there
• 39:00
  on we started looking for other solutions. ABS
• 39:03
  actually was a good solution because they have the European hosted service
• 39:08
  and also kind of as a big company can apply to the
• 39:12
  regulations. Now the good thing also in our case
• 39:16
  is that we are noticing there are many other players coming
• 39:20
  on the market also in European network,
• 39:23
  with whom we are also talking. Also smaller startup, but good
• 39:27
  invested startup players that even add more layers
• 39:31
  of security with mathematical
• 39:34
  algorithms for data anonymization, et cetera, et cetera,
• 39:39
  where we are also thinking into merging one day. And one of the biggest
• 39:43
  advantages of this AI, let's say stream that we're in
• 39:47
  is that you can train on large cloud
• 39:50
  servers like AVs, but once you have your trained your model there, you can
• 39:55
  basically copy it anywhere you want. So I think this
• 39:58
  is like we learned that going the hardware yourself way wasn't
• 40:02
  the right way. Going the cloud way is a good
• 40:05
  intermediary way, even if you go with the big ones. But
• 40:09
  because the models that you have, you can always copy and
• 40:12
  transfer them to another solution once those new solutions get
• 40:16
  on the market. And that's what we're seeing right now. And also always digging deeper
• 40:20
  into it. I see
• 40:25
  what internal rule do you use to separate
• 40:29
  clinically informed from therapy theater.
• 40:33
  From therapy theater, just theater.
• 40:37
  All the stuff that influences really do reach
• 40:41
  sometimes say, and that are not really
• 40:45
  grounded in any science.
• 40:49
  What rules do you use to separate that?
• 40:53
  So first of all, in our team from the work with the
• 40:57
  clinicians, we got to know Sonia Fischbach and Sonia Fischbach
• 41:01
  has over 25 years of experience as a puppet
• 41:04
  therapist in clinic context and actually also explained to us
• 41:08
  all the complexity when it comes to interacting with children
• 41:12
  and conversations. Like there are many things like which words you can use,
• 41:16
  for which age group, when and whatnot. So first
• 41:20
  of all, we got the knowledge by having many
• 41:23
  conversations and interviews together and then we build a strategy to
• 41:27
  how do we make our models safe and
• 41:31
  also clinically informed. For that there are basically two major,
• 41:36
  yeah, let's say security thresholds that we use for that.
• 41:40
  First of all, we use agent systems. So we're for
• 41:43
  sure our native prompt engineering of Cobie, also our fine tuned
• 41:47
  model with synthetic child conversations. But now we use
• 41:51
  agents that kind of simulate attacks, right? They
• 41:55
  simulate having conversations about sex or harmful
• 41:58
  conversations. And we really make sure that doesn't matter from
• 42:02
  which angle you attack the model with agents with thousands
• 42:06
  and thousands of prompts. It never fails in this type of
• 42:09
  situations. So that's the first thing to do. The second thing we
• 42:13
  do to make it also clinically informed is that through the collaboration with
• 42:17
  Sonia and also with the clinic, we have now an expert
• 42:21
  network. And always before we release any type
• 42:25
  of Cobie system to kids, it first gets validated through
• 42:28
  them. So they get the Cobie first at hand. They
• 42:32
  test them on all varieties of conversations or
• 42:36
  all varieties of triggers they know from their
• 42:39
  lifelong experience as child experts
• 42:43
  to see if they can bring to CA something harmful
• 42:47
  or do something bad. And we think that's a really good approach.
• 42:50
  So we have the qualitative and the quantitative approach to say
• 42:54
  so to make it as secure and clinically informed as possible.
• 43:01
  What must be true by March
• 43:05
  for you to claim Cobie is positioned
• 43:08
  exactly how you want it, meaning like
• 43:12
  end of Q1, 20, 26.
• 43:16
  Exactly the time where we want to also start for the bigger
• 43:19
  preset round by then. What a coincidence.
• 43:23
  Maybe I. What a coincidence.
• 43:28
  So actually it's just that we execute and we're
• 43:31
  doing it already on all the plans, on our milestone. So that means
• 43:35
  we will have our full functioning prototype,
• 43:39
  at least one version. But by then we should have more like up
• 43:43
  to number is switching, but I would say up to 50
• 43:46
  versions built by ourselves. So the hardware, we're building it really
• 43:50
  in our office, the Plushto in Hungary. So
• 43:54
  they are standing in our office and the first of them are already
• 43:57
  in the hands of these experts and trusted families that are,
• 44:02
  let's say, deep testing them. That's the first thing. The second thing is that
• 44:05
  the AI is already completely set up on
• 44:09
  Our servers, the agentic tests have already been
• 44:12
  conducted and also everything regarding voice
• 44:16
  interaction works properly. Also it's a big and
• 44:20
  important field. We're in the midst of this trend, have learned a
• 44:24
  lot there. But this is smooth and latency free and
• 44:27
  these early stage prototypes really give a seamless experience
• 44:31
  to the kids, but also to the parents. We've been talking TikTok
• 44:35
  before and everybody
• 44:39
  knows there TikTok shop is around. So what's your go to market
• 44:42
  thesis for TikTok shop without turning the product
• 44:46
  into novelty. So when it comes to TikTok,
• 44:50
  first thing to say is we've grown
• 44:54
  an organic community For Kobe on TikTok in the last
• 44:58
  four months of over 14,000 followers, all
• 45:02
  parents. And we've done that not by
• 45:05
  selling our product, but by talking of the
• 45:09
  problems and stress factors that parents
• 45:14
  experience every day with kids and also giving their already
• 45:18
  practical coping tips on how to manage positively those situations.
• 45:22
  And with that we got really quite a lot of traction,
• 45:26
  many engaged users. The most engaging case was going to sleep.
• 45:30
  And we also have built an organic funnel to
• 45:33
  our website. So right now in December, we
• 45:37
  have already 100 pre orders. But the interesting part
• 45:41
  about this pre orders is that we have spent zero euros on
• 45:44
  ads, but we have also never even said that it's
• 45:48
  possible to pre order Kobe. So they are absolutely
• 45:52
  organic. These are really people seeing us on
• 45:55
  Instagram on TikTok or hearing us on a podcast and going on
• 45:59
  our website and pre ordering. So we're really proud of that. We think we can
• 46:03
  leverage that number substantially once we
• 46:07
  invest more and also proclaim more that we're actually selling Kobe.
• 46:11
  And we'll also then use all the different
• 46:15
  strategies that one gets in this TikTok shop. Right? But the main
• 46:18
  part, I think it's less about marketing
• 46:22
  and ad strategies and it's more about trust.
• 46:26
  It's like for us, it's important to build trust with the community,
• 46:30
  to keep them updated, to show them how we're building this product,
• 46:34
  how we care to bring. Also the experts, like we're doing videos with them
• 46:38
  and showing like, hey, these are the people that are building this product.
• 46:41
  This is the actual way we want to go to. And we also
• 46:45
  see these are all the type of customers that we get that
• 46:49
  really see that we care about this and engage a lot
• 46:53
  into our products and our mission. I was
• 46:57
  wondering, a lot of VCs are talking about defendable modes.
• 47:01
  So what mode matters most in your market?
• 47:04
  Proprietary, child safe, AI, brand trust or
• 47:08
  distribution? Actually all of those are really Relevant
• 47:12
  distribution. We got it. That's one of the most
• 47:16
  important modes. So we could sell directly quite a
• 47:20
  lot of cobies. Then the next
• 47:23
  thing is proprietary AI. There are two parts of it. One is
• 47:27
  making child safe AI. But the other thing that we're doing, and it will be
• 47:31
  the first one in Europe I can tell for sure, is making
• 47:35
  also expert trains. So we're also using rack traffic training and so
• 47:38
  on. We'll have our own library for it. So
• 47:43
  we want to be the most trusted and
• 47:46
  safe AI toy in Europe, trained by
• 47:50
  experts. So really having both of that to have this expert trained AI,
• 47:54
  you also need the expert network to do so.
• 47:58
  Also a big proprietary mode. And besides that we
• 48:02
  have. And I think like from all the other toys
• 48:05
  I've seen, they don't bring this. We have a real story.
• 48:09
  Koby is a chameleon dragon. He comes from the forest of
• 48:12
  colors where colors are emotions. And he comes to
• 48:16
  help kids to learn those. And stories are what
• 48:20
  really drives kids and families. And the
• 48:24
  Kobe character that we're building is building up
• 48:27
  this brand and storyline. It's not just the next plush toy
• 48:31
  next to the other 15. He really has a
• 48:35
  character and we want to build a personality behind it that people
• 48:38
  can relate to and remember also as a
• 48:42
  real entity. So these are the main ones,
• 48:45
  distribution AI innovation
• 48:49
  and also story, character and design to say so
• 48:54
  and we have a patent that's on top. But yeah, we have a few patents
• 48:57
  also that I mean maybe to make it more investor
• 49:01
  friendly. Thinking about like all the hard
• 49:05
  decisions you have to do. What is the hardest compliance
• 49:08
  expectations you are designing for and what
• 49:12
  did it force you to change? I mean the hardest
• 49:16
  compliance is really. And that's what we're getting
• 49:20
  asked most in investor things is
• 49:25
  the, the safety, the safety warriors when it comes to
• 49:29
  AI. What we had to change, I already
• 49:33
  said a bit. We had to change the strategy of going from the clinic, going
• 49:37
  to the other. We had to learn a lot about what does a high risk
• 49:40
  AI system even mean in the European Union.
• 49:44
  And also a lot of. We had to do tech things
• 49:48
  right. So having cloud based models that are on
• 49:51
  European land that apply all these
• 49:55
  security measures, having anonymization and third anonymization
• 49:59
  meaning that you don't get any type of personal data of the
• 50:03
  user. We only need the email address and bank account one day. But
• 50:07
  all the other things get abstracted. Having the technical
• 50:10
  layers like what I said before or screening the conversation.
• 50:14
  So I think this was the biggest thing, like seeing how
• 50:18
  important it is to have the secure AI
• 50:23
  system and what you have to therefore do on
• 50:27
  a tech base to to really achieve that.
• 50:37
  You always have to do important and difficult decision.
• 50:41
  As an entrepreneur, we just talked about modes, we talked about
• 50:44
  compliance. But what wretch
• 50:47
  do you most serious do you take most seriously over the
• 50:51
  next 12 months? Is it a competitor, is it regulation,
• 50:55
  is it manufacturing or just erosion of trust in your
• 50:59
  product? That's a good one. It's not
• 51:03
  competitor. I can tell that directly
• 51:07
  we focus on the customer and the most important thing
• 51:10
  is that we are building a product that solves
• 51:14
  a problem for our customer that our customers love. That's the
• 51:18
  first thing that we're doing. That's the point where we want to
• 51:22
  be with our first own made in house
• 51:25
  prototypes. That's the first big thing.
• 51:29
  Once I see really there's a high engagement for a long time and customers also
• 51:33
  give us back that they love it and it solves a problem. I think that's
• 51:36
  the first big milestone. Once we have that then it will be
• 51:40
  manufacturing. That's also a funny one.
• 51:43
  I'm really happy to get to know anyone. I mean we are
• 51:48
  startup we. No one of us has really built a
• 51:52
  big manufacturing process through for example China or
• 51:56
  others. I think it will be the next one. But still
• 51:59
  the main focus is really the customer solving the problem for them, building a
• 52:03
  product they love. That's the most important part. And then
• 52:07
  the second part will be the manufacturing part for sure. Also
• 52:11
  translating our hardware requirements to Chinese or
• 52:14
  Vietnamese requirements. We have experts on board
• 52:18
  that will help us in this process. But still it's a big
• 52:21
  thing. We know that. We're looking forward to it.
• 52:26
  I was just thinking, I'm pretty sure one of your competitors is
• 52:30
  listening. And I was laughing when he said, oh,
• 52:34
  we're not worried too much about our competition. Okay, I see
• 52:37
  that's some self confidence sometimes.
• 52:43
  You're a parent. I'm a parent. So I was watching, I was wondering what
• 52:46
  belief about parenting did you hold early
• 52:51
  that you had to abandon as CEO
• 52:54
  slash father. Mostly a CEO. But also give
• 52:58
  us a hint about being a father from your point of view. Yeah,
• 53:03
  I think that maybe. Let's talk about being a father. I thought
• 53:06
  really like I'm quite an empathetic fat person. That's all
• 53:10
  that have this little daughter. And one thing
• 53:14
  was I thought like I will figure everything
• 53:17
  out. I will kind of feel what she needs or wants or
• 53:21
  whatever. She will tell me that's not the case. Like
• 53:25
  I was really like kids, they say they
• 53:29
  want this or that. But actually what lies behind is a need that
• 53:33
  you really have to understand. And, and I, I was impressed how important,
• 53:37
  how difficult it is to get back to it. My daughter
• 53:41
  always asking for milk at night. She was not needing a milk like
• 53:44
  there was another strategy of doing it. And that was something I really
• 53:48
  had to learn as a parent and it was not that
• 53:52
  obvious. I was really astonished about that
• 53:55
  and was also thinking that I think also my parents
• 53:59
  there might have been many needs that I wasn't able to
• 54:03
  communicate in the right way and they didn't even see. And I think this
• 54:06
  leads to many yeah, maybe not that
• 54:10
  that happy memories
• 54:14
  of how things could have been done. And I'm trying to do my best as
• 54:18
  a parent to really understand like my kid, the,
• 54:21
  the who she is, how she is, what she actually needs.
• 54:26
  Make the right interpretation but also behave in the
• 54:29
  right manner to, to yeah let's
• 54:33
  say race her to, to the most beautiful and powerful
• 54:37
  woman she could ever be.
• 54:43
  Talked about difficult situations here. What mental
• 54:46
  model do you use to stay decisive
• 54:50
  when the product sits inside? Vulnerable
• 54:54
  moments.
• 55:00
  You always have to be positive.
• 55:05
  Vulnerable moments. I think it's, it's also
• 55:09
  a bit of abstraction of yourself of the issue itself. So
• 55:12
  really analyzing what are the key
• 55:17
  problems or issues that you actually have
• 55:20
  prioritizing is extremely important to really understand what
• 55:24
  should I spend most of my time with what is the
• 55:27
  most important problem to tackle right now?
• 55:31
  I think these are some of the parts of the
• 55:35
  mental model also not taking every
• 55:39
  hit as a low. It's always a learning journey. I think it's
• 55:42
  so important to learn about from each
• 55:46
  mistake but on top of that and I
• 55:50
  think that's the difficulty as a founder is you have to do it in the
• 55:53
  team. So it's never enough if you learn alone. You have
• 55:56
  to take the other people met on your journey and that
• 56:00
  starts with the co founders that are extremely important and also
• 56:04
  give you a lot of resistance when, when one tackles these
• 56:08
  issues and problems that come along the way
• 56:11
  and I don't know, I've heard once and I think this, this helps me
• 56:15
  sometimes a lot to think of that the brightest,
• 56:19
  the best moments they will pass and the
• 56:22
  worst and, and really baddest moments they will
• 56:26
  also pass. So all will pass. Just take it like
• 56:30
  that. It's never as good and it's never as bad as you think.
• 56:34
  It's always a part of the journey and you just have to
• 56:38
  keep walking there. There are two sayings that
• 56:41
  always helped me was doing projects and I Was doing international
• 56:45
  high pressure, high stakes projects for one and a half
• 56:49
  decades. One of them is the typical saying. It works in
• 56:53
  German, it works in English. Sometimes you're the tree, sometimes you're the dog.
• 56:59
  It always helps to put this in perspective. And the second one,
• 57:03
  I read it in the book five years from now. You laugh at everything
• 57:07
  that annoys you, that stresses you out, that keeps you up
• 57:10
  awake at night. But why wait?
• 57:16
  Absolutely. Absolutely. Let me add one of these from
• 57:19
  my father always. I think it's a Chinese one.
• 57:24
  If you have a problem, there are two ways.
• 57:28
  Either you can solve it, then you shouldn't worry about it, or
• 57:32
  you cannot solve it, then you also should worry about
• 57:35
  it. Good one. Good
• 57:39
  one. We'll close with the two frequent questions.
• 57:44
  Are you open to talk to new investors? Yes, we are super
• 57:47
  happy and open to talk to new investors. We're funded
• 57:51
  with exist now also applying to other fundings in Germany,
• 57:55
  but really people in the field also angel investors
• 57:59
  also told about manufacturing and so on. Would be
• 58:03
  super happy to talk with them and bring some people on board
• 58:07
  that also care about what we're doing. Also about the B2C products.
• 58:12
  Something not that usual at least in Germany. And
• 58:16
  yeah would like to join our
• 58:19
  impact journey. Awesome. Great. I think you
• 58:23
  are also looking for talented employees to join you.
• 58:26
  Yes, that's always the case. Talent employees.
• 58:31
  The focuses that we always are looking for is AI is always
• 58:35
  super interesting but also people that
• 58:38
  are good into hardware, mechatronics, robotics.
• 58:43
  But even up to things that go into design or
• 58:47
  interaction for children is also super interesting for
• 58:50
  us. Child games, conversational games. I mean
• 58:54
  we're a voice AI system. So everyone from that field is
• 58:58
  always super happy. Even as an employee, but also as
• 59:01
  partners as chameleons. We are super collaborative and
• 59:05
  cheerful collaboratives in the market. Second,
• 59:10
  this interview will go live as the Last1 in
• 59:14
  January 2026 but we're recording it pre
• 59:17
  Christmas so I skipped saying Merry Christmas, Happy New Year because
• 59:21
  it's all in the past for us now. David,
• 59:24
  thank you very much with such a pleasure having you as a guest here.
• 59:28
  Really enjoyed it. Jan, thank you so much
• 59:31
  for giving us this opportunity. It was a pleasure to talking to.
• 59:35
  You Is building emotional technology
• 59:39
  for children with a screen free companion
• 59:43
  privacy first AI hosted in the EU and parent
• 59:46
  control routines designed to reduce conflict at home.
• 59:50
  David Link is clear on the category line. No
• 59:53
  entertainment, no therapy, not a toy. Emotional tact that
• 59:57
  translates feeling into calm and predictable closure.
• 1:00:01
  You can find Coby at Cobie Care if you want the next layer,
• 1:00:04
  the decisions you don't publish publicly. Founders World is where
• 1:00:08
  that lives.
• 1:00:14
  That's all folks. Find more news streams,
• 1:00:18
  events and
• 1:00:19
  interviews@www.startuprad.IO.
• 1:00:24
  remember, sharing is caring.
• 1:00:33
  Sam.