Like many parents, Zigazoo founder Zak Ringelstein worries about his children’s screen time. His worries only grew when COVID-19 led to school shutdowns and kids came home to a world of remote learning. Now, as lockdowns extend, Ringelstein is learning to embrace screen time as a way to sneak education and entertainment into his kids’ digital diet.

Ringelstein, the former founder of UClass (acquired in 2015), launched Zigazoo, which he describes as a “TikTok for kids.”

Zigazoo is a free app where kids can answer short video-based exercises that they can answer through video and share responses with friends. Exercises range from how to create a baking soda volcano to making fractions out of food, and targets kids from preschool to middle school.

To ensure the app’s privacy, Ringelstein says that parents should be the primary users of the app. Users have to accept a friend request in order for their content to be seen, a move Ringelstein sees as key to avoiding bad actors or potential bullying.

Additionally, Zigazoo uses an API through SightEngine to moderate content.

Ringelstein’s first users were his own kids, a test he says was very rewarding.

Ringelstein’s son participating in a Zigazoo prompt.

The testing process made him realize that kids like to create longer videos, and watch smaller videos, so Zigazoo is figuring out an attention span for viewing. Currently, average time on site per user has gone up to 19 minutes and 43 seconds per day.

Ringelstein pointed to “Sesame Street” as his inspiration. Mixing education and entertainment has proven successful for a number of businesses. Kids were drooling in front of the screen watching the characters of “Sesame Street,” spending mindless hours staring at the television set, he recalls.

“The creators of Sesame Street…used the medium to educate kids and entertain them at the same time,” Ringelstein said. Vox described “Sesame Street” as a “bedrock for educational television,” bringing loved characters to the table with former First Lady Michelle Obama or using a silly song to teach kids about recycling.

In one month, Zigazoo has had 100,000 videos uploaded to and downloaded from its site.

While Zigazoo claims to be a “TikTok” for kids, it is competing with the platform itself. Some teachers have turned to TikTok to create lessons on solar cell systems and experiments.

Others are putting together guides of “kid friendly” TikTok creators. And TikTok itself recently let parents set restrictions on content, DMs and screen time for their kids.

Video-based learning is a better way for students to engage actively in an educational activity, versus passively reading a paragraph from a Google doc, according to Ringelstein.

Combining education with entertainment comes with a set of risks around child safety. Last March, The New York Times wrote a story about how “kidfluencers” has grown as a concept, where parents put their kids online, touting brands, and make money off of it. The resulting ethical concerns are why Ringelstein is confident that Zigazoo is needed.

“Zigazoo is a not a kid play date smack dab in the middle of an adult party like YouTube and TikTok, it is a universe tailor-made for kid safety, learning and enjoyment,” he said.

Ringelstein sees Zigazoo’s “friend” versus “follow” feature as key to the safety of kids: Unlike TikTok, where there is a public feed and users can follow everyone, Zigazoo requires users to opt-in to being followed, similar to Facebook.

The partnerships will allow Zigazoo to post verified content using favorite and well-known characters to teach kids about the subjects they care about. And in a world where digital detoxes are no longer a reality, a smarter screen-time activity seems much needed.

Recently, Zigazoo partnered with The American Federation of Teachers for a capstone project directed at millions of K-12 students. Students are invited to submit a video using Zigazoo to encapsulate their learning experience over the past school year, which AFT says is a “far better way to sum up learning than a high-stakes test.”

This summer Ringelstein is launching “Zigazoo Channels” with a select group of major children’s entertainment companies, podcasts, museums, libraries, zoos, social media influencers and more.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Zigazoo launches to be a ‘TikTok’ for kids, surpasses 100,000 uploads and downloads

French startup Majelan is pivoting a year after launching a podcast player and service. The company, created by former Radio France CEO Mathieu Gallet and Arthur Perticoz, is ditching the podcast aggregation side of its business and focusing on premium audio content going forward.

Like many podcast startups, Majelan faced some criticism shortly after its launch. Aggregating free podcasts with premium content next to them à la Luminary is a controversial topic in the podcast community. Spotify has been going down the same path, but Spotify is also an order of magnitude bigger than any other podcast startup out there.

Some podcast creators have decided to remove their podcast feeds from Majelan to protest against that business model.

Podcasts remain an open format. Creators can create a feed, users can subscribe to that feed in their favorite podcast app. You don’t have to sign up to a particular service to access a particular podcast — everything is open.

“We have decided to stop aggregating free podcasts — free podcasts mean podcasts, period. For us, podcasts are RSS feeds, it’s an open world,” Perticoz said in a podcast episode. “We need an app that is more focused on payment. We can’t aggregate free podcasts given that our strategy is paid content.”

The result is a more focused service that is going to launch on July 7th in France. After a free trial, you have to subscribe for €5 to €7 per month, depending on the length of your subscription. You can then access a library of premium audio content — Majelan rightfully doesn’t call them podcasts.

“Going forward, we’re going to focus on original content, we’re going to focus 100% on paid content,” Gallet said in the same podcast episode.

And in order to be even more specific, Majelan will focus on personal growth, such as creativity, activism, mindfulness, innovation, entrepreneurship and health. According to the co-founders, some content will be produced in house, some content will be co-produced with other companies, and the startup will also acquire existing podcasts and repackage them for Majelan.

That move has been in the works for a while. The startup pitched it to its board of investors back in December. Premium subscriptions have worked well for movies, TV and music. Now let’s see if subscriptions will also take off with spoken-word audio.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Podcast app Majelan pivots to premium audio content around personal growth

In today’s new world completely engulfed by COVID-19, all sorts of innovations are emerging to help the world overcome this difficult time: 3D printers are cranking out medical supplies; rapid advancements in testing have been made — now providing results in five minutes; teachers have transformed curricula to be taught entirely online. It’s humanity vs. the virus, and innovators around the world are acting as fast as they can.

Yet I was recently chatting with a leading Silicon Valley investor about what incentivizes entrepreneurship. To him — and his Silicon Valley peers — the answer was obvious: People are motivated to become heroes. Their ambition stems from an unquenchable thirst for being recognized as the victor and reaping the riches that come with it.

This view is troubling. It excludes many of the innovators responding to COVID-19 — people who are passionate about solving complex problems like poverty, public health issues or education. Working closely with over 100 global social entrepreneurs at MIT Solve, I’ve noticed a very different profile than the Silicon Valley hero. The entrepreneurs I know want to solve real problems — not become influencers or Netflix stars.

Take Luis Garza, Founder of Kinedu, an app that provides parents with tools to promote their child’s development. Working on a child care chain in Latin America, Garza could sense the anxiety that first-time caretakers felt when it came to raising a baby. He wanted to find a solution that would help everyone know what to do, and “feel like a good parent.” Since its founding, Kinedu has impacted 4 million lives, and now, in response to COVID-19, Kinedu is offering free subscriptions to any parent in need of support while they self-isolate at home.

A recent experiment measuring drivers of innovation we ran with Columbia Business School and Carnegie Mellon, points to the same conclusion: Not all entrepreneurs are motivated by fame and fortune. If we assume they are, we’re excluding those who aren’t — limiting opportunities for these “helper” entrepreneurs.

We emailed 11,000 innovators across 76 countries and asked them to apply to Solve’s Global Challenges. Global entrepreneurs can submit their business solutions to be selected for funding, mentorship and support. Each individual randomly received one of three messages: one emphasizing social impact, one emphasizing prize funding, and one neutral control message. We measured their email engagement to determine which messages resonated the most.

The findings convey that women are more driven by social impact, while men are more driven by funding. Country culture also matters; people in more altruistic cultures were more driven by social impact, while those in less altruistic cultures were more driven by funding.

To be truly inclusive — of gender, culture and background — we must be intentional in how we inspire and support entrepreneurs. We must speak to both instincts: the hero and the helper. But speaking a language that invites diverse participation is only the first step. Here are three guidelines for investors and supporters who want to intentionally motivate diverse innovators.

Lower entrepreneurship’s barrier to entry

Strip industry jargon from your application. Coach innovators to prepare for a pitch. Tailor your language to appeal to mission-driven innovators — not just money-driven innovators. These are all ways to make your program feel accessible to an innovator without an MBA or tech background — someone like Arturo Hernández, a comedian turned startup founder who created Supercívicos, an app whose 1.5 million users geolocalize urban challenges and crowdsource support for public officials to address them.

Expand the definition of a “promising” entrepreneur

When did we decide that hoodie-wearing founders building the next unicorn with “hockey stick growth” is the gold standard for promising ventures? What’s wrong with zebras? (They’re real; they have two-color stripes: for-profit and for-purpose; and they collaborate to survive). Nicole Bassett who co-founded The Renewal Workshop — which provides zero-waste, circular solutions for apparel and textile brands — is now part of the $51 billion secondhand clothes industry. She turned a new business model for recycling and upcycling clothing into a rapidly growing, for-profit startup, saving over 100,000 pounds of textiles from landfills while driving revenue.

Support beyond funding

While financing is a crucial part of launching a new venture, we must recognize that other resources such as technical expertise or mentorship are just as important to social entrepreneurs. Founders that are mentored by a top-performing entrepreneur are three times more likely to lead top-performing companies themselves. Consider Ram Katamaraja, creator of Refactored.ai, a data and analytics skills training platform. He needed marketing and branding support to scale and notes that a mentor “made what could have been a turbulent and intimidating process gratifying and extremely productive.” Refactored.ai has upskilled more than 6,000 users.

If we don’t expand our understanding of a promising entrepreneur, lower the barrier to entry to our programs and provide tailored support, then we will ignore many of the game-changing ideas that will get us through this pandemic — and ultimately, leave big problems unsolved and large communities unserved.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | What motivates innovative entrepreneurs: Money or altruism?