We’ve raised $8m to use generative AI to save our kids from YouTube

It was on a flight to Cleveland from San Francisco a couple of years back that I had the idea for my startup. 

My two-year-old daughter was running up and down the aisle — raising hell as kids often do — and my wife and I looked at each other and knew: it was iPad time. 

Flicking through the various options on Netflix, I stopped on a popular kids cartoon that you’ve heard of but that I’m not going to throw shade at here. 

As I watched my daughter watching these characters bounce around the screen, it was the pace that bothered me: fast cuts, constant scene changes, another burst of action before the last one had settled. I wanted her to have room to wonder what might happen next, and a chance to decide.

I’m in my 40s, so I grew up in a world of Sesame Street, Mister Rogers, Bob Ross reruns — and when we weren’t glued to these shows we were reading Choose Your Own Adventure books like Journey Under the Sea. The ’80s weren’t perfect, but it was a golden age for kids’ TV. 

What bothers me about YouTube Shorts is the habit it encourages: the moment something loses your attention, swipe to something else. We........

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