Inquisitive Minds is today formally launching Zoodles, a safe way for kids to play and learn independently online. The company is also anouncing it has raised $2.6 million in seed funding.
The Zoodles Kids' Browser product sits on top of Adobe Air software and locks down a safe-browsing experience for children ages 2 to 8. The Inquisitive Minds team has created a platform that filters out bad stuff and lets kids play educational games on approved web sites. Parents can also add their own favorite web sites for their kids to view.
The product competes with Glubble and Kidzui, which have also created safe-browsing options for children. But Zoodles organizes its offering for kids in a different way. Upon signing up, it asks a parent to set the age level for the child playing. Zoodles then puts web sites that are geared toward that age on its menu. There are no URLs or other complex words for kids to decipher. There are just pictures of the apps. The kids click on them and they start playing. The approved sites are chosen by a team of education experts. The older a kid gets, the more the menu changes. Parents no longer have to constantly search for appropriate web sites.
Zoodles offers a free version but also has a premium subscription version. Mark Williamson, chief executive said the subscription fee of $55.95 a year is a lot cheaper than taking the kids out to see a movie. And Williamson said parents no longer have to look over the kids' shoulder to see if they're being safe. There is a 14-day free trial for full membership. With the subscription version, there is a dashboard for parents to view. My youngster tried it out and I got an email report of the applications my kid used. You can set play duration, choose the subjects for children, block violent games or certain sites, and set other preferences.
"This lets kids play independently, without them having to constantly ask questions of a parent," Williamson said, who previously founded Shelfari, a book social network that was purchased by Amazon. "We tried hard to preserve simplicity. We realized we had two customers: the parent and the child."
Williamson, a father of two, founded Inquisitive Minds in late 2008 after trying to get his oldest child to manage her own play time on PBSkids.org. But the child frequently clicked out of the web page and had to get help. Williamson wanted to find something, other than TV, that the child could do without any supervision. The company soft-launched the Zoodles beta in April 2009 and today is formally launching it. Tens of thousands of kids have logged more than 500,000 hours playing it so far.
Harrison Metal Capital led the round. The company has 6 full-time employees and is hiring.