• OK Play

  Participated · Equity · Sep 2020

  OK Play is an app built to turn tantrums into play, get siblings to cooperate, and nudge parents and kids to play together in the real world. The product combines behavioral science with features like augmented-reality scavenger hunts, a teamwork drawing tool, emotion-focused games (e.g., "angry parade" and an "angry song" recorder), and calming exercises. The founding team includes former execs from TikTok, Headspace, Snap and Viddy plus child development researcher Dr. Colleen Russo Johnson and advisory PhDs. OK Play plans frequent content and feature updates — Aguhob said new games and features could arrive as often as daily. The app launched with a consumer price of $9.99 per month or $59.99 per year. The company emphasizes teaching empathy, kindness and emotion regulation rather than traditional solo educational screen time.

• Banjo Robinson

  Led · Seed · Nov 2019

  Banjo Robinson offers a subscription that delivers personalized physical letters, maps, stickers and stories to children aged 5–8, presented as adventures from a globetrotting cat. Shipments arrive twice a month and are themed around destinations such as the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China, Indonesia and Iceland. Letters are personalized with each child’s interests (favourite food, hobbies, etc.) via a subscription-based model. The company was founded in 2018 by Kate Boyle and is based in London. Advisors to the brand include Simon Calver (former CEO of LoveFilm) and Richard Moross, MBE (CEO of Moo.com). The company raised £1m in pre-seed funding to support product development and growth of its first subscription offering.

• Kids on 45th

  Participated · Seed · Apr 2019

  Kids on 45th turned a decades-old Seattle consignment shop into an e-commerce service that ships curated boxes of used kids clothing at steep discounts. The company sources “nearly new” garments via partnerships with nonprofits and thrift organizations and sorts inventory into roughly 350 categories at a Texas warehouse. It has shipped about 500,000 items and operates with roughly 15 employees in Seattle plus 15 in the Texas warehouse. Items sell for as low as $1.99 each (an average of $3.29), and the CEO says the business has strong unit economics. The service is designed to be anti-browse—customers select types and sizes and stylists assemble the box—positioning it as a lower-cost, StitchFix-like experience without subscriptions. Kids on 45th recently launched a buy-back program and cites sustainability as a core benefit; it plans to validate the model in kids clothing before exploring other verticals and has no concrete plans to open more physical stores.

• Outschool

  Led · Seed · Jun 2017

  Outschool operates a marketplace that offers over 140,000 virtual, small-group classes for children aged 3 to 18. The company grew its teacher base from fewer than 600 to over 7,000 and reported bookings growth of 1,500%, reaching over $100 million in bookings. Headcount expanded from 25 to 164 as the startup scaled rapidly in response to pandemic-driven demand. Outschool says it is prioritizing expansion and investing ahead of revenue rather than focusing on profitability at this time. In a prior fundraise the company dedicated 2% of its stock to reward teachers in the event of liquidity and launched Outschool.org, which has provided $2.5 million worth of free classes to low-income U.S. families. It is shifting its go-to-market toward schools and employer benefits—employees have spent over $1.1 million in employer-paid credits—and aims for more than half of enrollments to come from employers and schools within five years. Outschool operates a marketplace for small-group, live virtual after-school classes that can be one-off or ongoing. The company has shifted from mostly one-off classes to ongoing classes, which grew from 10% to 50% of its business and support more recurring revenue. Outschool reported more than $100 million in bookings in 2020, up from $6 million in 2019 and $500,000 in 2017, and briefly reached positive cash flow last year before that changed. Teachers set prices and keep 70% of class fees while Outschool takes a 30% cut; the company has dedicated 2% of its stock to reward teachers in the event of liquidity. Management plans to grow headcount from about 110 to 200 by year-end with a focus on international expansion after launches in Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the U.K. The company is piloting a B2B offering with schools, considers acquisitions of early-stage direct-to-consumer international learning startups, and views enterprise sales as a small but growing channel. Outschool operates a marketplace for live, small-group online classes spanning extracurriculars and academic topics, and lists more than 50,000 classes. Launched in 2015 to serve homeschoolers, the platform broadened to families with school-aged children and now reports 87% of buyers have kids in school. Bookings grew more than 2,000% between August 2019 and August 2020, and sales rose from $6.5M to about $54M year-over-year. The company turned its first profit during the COVID-19 crisis and is running at over $100M in annual run rate. Its teacher supply scaled from roughly 1,000 to 10,000 instructors and headcount grew to about 60 employees this year. Outschool plans to develop new types of classes, pursue international embedding, and explore integrating its platform into schools. Outschool operates a live, video-based marketplace that introduces students to a wide variety of online classes created and taught by independent teachers. Its offerings span traditional school subjects like algebra and U.S. history as well as novelty and enrichment topics (examples include learning architecture through Minecraft, Spanish via Taylor Swift songs, and biology through Pokémon). The platform hosts over 8,000 classes ranging from one-time enrichment lessons to semester-long core courses. Outschool provides a way for teachers to supplement their income by creating courses on the platform. Led by CEO Amir Nathoo, the company said it will use new funding to expand operations and hire across engineering, operations, and growth. The company is based in San Francisco, CA. Outschool operates an online marketplace that connects parents and K-12 students with live online classes spanning core academics, enrichment, and practical skills. Classes are guided by teachers via group video chat and messaging. Independent teachers—many of whom also teach or previously taught in public schools—offer courses on the platform. Parents use Outschool to accelerate learning, fill knowledge gaps, or pursue interests not covered in regular schools. The company is led by Nick Grandy and is based in San Francisco. Outschool raised $1.4M in seed funding to continue expanding operations.

• Osmo

  Participated · Equity · Dec 2016

  Osmo is a Palo Alto startup that integrates physical puzzle pieces, board games and blocks with iPad mobile games and content. The company launched in 2013 as Tangible Play and uses the iPad camera in apps like Tangrams to recognize how children arrange pieces and respond in real time. Osmo’s products are used in 22,000 schools globally and are sold in 50 countries. The company will use the $24 million funding to adapt popular titles — Words, Tangram, Newton and Numbers — for the iPhone. It is also partnering with Sesame Workshop and Mattel to develop new character-driven content and has a pending engagement with a research firm to study how its toys impact learning. CEO Pramod Sharma said teachers already recognize the educational value and the company plans to leverage partnerships and product expansion to grow reach. Osmo builds a hardware-based gaming kit that attaches a reflective camera and stand to an iPad and uses physical game pieces (letter tiles, puzzle shapes) to combine real-world play with iPad apps. Its initial titles include Tangram, Words, and Newton, and the company offers customization via my.playosmo.com where users can upload images and word lists. Founded in early 2013 by Pramod Sharma and Jérôme Scholler, Osmo has sold $2 million in pre-orders, including purchases from over 2,000 schools, and hundreds of teachers from over 150 schools are using the product. The kit sold for $49 on pre-order, retails for $99 and is currently sold for $79. Osmo's products are available online and are being rolled into 284 Apple stores in the U.S. and Canada as well as Marbles Toy Stores. The company plans to open its platform to third-party developers and allow further customizations as part of its longer-term roadmap. Tangible Play develops iPad accessories and software that mix augmented reality, animated graphics, and audio with traditional board game elements. The product uses a simple stand with a mirrored cap that lets the iPad camera see the playing surface and recognize physical pieces via computer vision. The company launched two titles at TechCrunch Disrupt — a word-guessing game and a puzzle game called Tangram — and demoed strong engagement, including a mother and daughter playing for an hour. Founders Pramod Sharma and Jerome Scholler bring experience from Google, NVIDIA, LucasArts, and Ubisoft, and the startup was part of Stanford’s StartX accelerator. Tangible Play has focused on games initially but says the platform could enable many non-game applications in the future. The team is running a beta signup and has raised early funding to support the launch.

No current team members are available.