Learning Activities + Educational Games for Kids and Babies with Gustavo Rodriguez of BabySparks

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Gustavo Rodriguez 0:00
It does parents in very sophisticated primate trainers

Alexander Ferguson 0:09
Welcome to UpTech Report. This is our applied tech series. Applied tech is sponsored by TeraLeap. Learn how to leverage the power of video at teraleap.io. Today I’m excited to be joined by my guest, Gustavo Rodriguez, who’s based in the Miami area, Florida. He’s the co founder and CEO at BabySparks. Welcome, Gustavo, good to have you on.

Gustavo Rodriguez 0:29
Three here. Thank you for the invitation.

Alexander Ferguson 0:32
Now, maybe Sparks is a software platform and mobile application, you guys are focused on helping parents and caregivers support their children’s early development. Help me understand that well, what was the problem that you saw and set out to solve?

Gustavo Rodriguez 0:47
Well, Alex, it’s a great question because it started it this is a case study, a human design. This was a prayer problem that I first face. When I was when I became a parent myself. I was working at a time in investment banking, I was living in London, and my first son, Nico was born. And very fast, I realized how ill equipped I was to support him. So as I tried to figure out how to do it properly, how to get the right tools, the right information, and it proved to be very time consuming. which then lead to the idea of doing something that was much smarter, and get parents a much greater level of support.

Alexander Ferguson 1:32
errands definitely needs support. And there’s so many things of ways that technology can be used to to help us in our lives, make it easier, make the things do faster. So being able to apply, alright, how can we bring an app bring bring bring technology into to help when you’re trying to raise your kids? How to understand just give me some context? Like is it just an app that these got a bunch of activities that they can do, just give me some world world examples here?

Gustavo Rodriguez 2:01
Absolutely. The best way to put this is imagine that when you’re going to a gym and you have a private trainer, and this private trainer a everyday you’re gonna explain to him or her your objectives, you want to lose some fat, you want to flexibility, increase muscle volume, whatever it is, right? They’re going to design or routine or a program of exercises for you to achieve those goals. Now, when you think about our young children, those goals are set by my bite size are the masters they are they are they need to be able to work at some point crawl a develop a cilium different things a because they are changing very fast during the first years of their life. Now, what baby sparks does, is that it gives it turns parents into very sophisticated private trainers now it learns the development profile of each child identify specific needs, and then deliver content for parents to support those specific needs. Now for the our child of the age of your child, for your very unique Nico Max, Sophia, a

Alexander Ferguson 3:11
baby, we’re definitely in an age of of customized experiences, both from browse on Netflix, you want to watch the show that you want to shop at Amazon, you want just the item that you’re interested in and even going to your bank expect a customized banking experience now for helping your kids. Yeah, you want to be able to make sure you’re giving them exactly the right training. So that’s kind of where you’re focused on being able to say right, based on where they are, who they are as as an individual, you Here’s Activity, can you help me extend my like, what’s what’s one of these kids activities that you would do with with with a toddler?

Gustavo Rodriguez 3:44
Absolutely, they’re very simple, you get eight to 10 of these activities array for which we recommend parents pick five, the each one of them is done by an explainer video 45 second video, they look at the activity, then they put their phone down this is not to give the phone to your baby. And they turn around and they replicate what they just saw with with the baby what they just saw done by the by the extra, for example, if you’re building your child, right, one great activity that you can do is that you can introduce some of these little floating toys and give your child a kitchen strainer, a standard kitchen strainer right and teach him or her how to fish them and put them outside. We are not a nine month age, this is an exercise for that age stretch more or less. This example is incredibly entertaining for your child is going to be super happy. You’re really engaged with him or her when you bought him or her and you’re going to be supported in this case, fine motor

Alexander Ferguson 4:42
development. And how long are these activities you say each of them are?

Gustavo Rodriguez 4:46
So the video the illustrative video to teach you how to do them. Plus three to a minute 45 seconds on average. A usually most of them it takes for you to do like three to five minutes if you if Usually during three to five minutes, there are some that are longer. There’s different types of activities. But most of them, if you do our program that will recommend the five activities that I was telling you, in a no non consecutive, they should take you less than 20 minutes. No consecutive minutes. Okay,

Alexander Ferguson 5:16
so I have a whole lot of time. So it’s, it’s nice to do like a quick thing that you’d be able to pull up and and execute very, very quickly. Is it? If, if when you were were kind of thinking of this concept early on, we just weren’t finding anything else out there. And so like, is there not? What are the options? Like what are what are parents doing prior to this?

Gustavo Rodriguez 5:35
You absolutely hit it on the hour, it is like when I went looking for this, Alex, he was taking so long, I was going in Google, I was trying to find the REAL science, not the one that was like the person that the ANOVA was trying to fake it, like I was trying to find the real, the real sources of information, and then apply those to my unique child. I mean, to give you an example, a child can start working as working as early as 10 months, or as late as 16 months and be completely typically developing. So every child, they have different crystal, you not only have to find information, but applied that information to the needs of my child. So what we tried to put here was something to say a lot of that the platform automatically every time you do these activities, these activities are extremely work behind quarter’s. So every time you do them, we ask you simply Was it too difficult, too easy, are just right. And because we know what the content that we’re presenting to you, and we know what the way a baby develops, now, we start matching those plotting the dots, and then in what areas your child might be ahead, and what areas your child might be behind, or right in, right where he or she should be, based on that iterate and have you do more of these activities in a better way.

Alexander Ferguson 6:54
But I was looking at on your on your websites and apps that said that smart adaptive technology, learning their their needs. And for those that listen to the series, there’s different forms of artificial intelligence, you know, higher forms of using machine learning and to great depths. I guess, in one essence, this is a form of AI being able to plot the course, can you just share a little bit more like what went into building that algorithm that mentality to be able to figure out and plot the course.

Gustavo Rodriguez 7:24
Yes, it has been evolving over the years and become more and more sophisticated. And we see where we are going because we can see the power of now feel that Ada into the whole process. But when when it started, it started like a I sat down, I had a team of experts in different areas. I have a preschool teachers, a psychologist, a PTs, OTs, a speech pathologists like different areas, and I talk to them. And I basically try to learn very well in America where we might develop a team, they were they were picking every single activity that they will recommend in their patients during therapy, how was done by Dan now. And we did what this map we create different, different verticals, you might be a little bit behind in speech, or in or in or in cognition, but you might be a hair interest model. So we create different verticals. And we organized all of these activities by prerequisites in each one of these verticals now. So when you start telling us that in one area you are behind, we started looking at all the processes that are involved in the activity that you are trying to do. And if you are behind, we move you up, like a step behind. But if you say it was too easy, I’m going to move you a step forward and make it more challenging for you in the processes related to the activity that you did, and so forth, and so on. So at the end of the day, you’re gonna have babies that are behind and ahead in a bunch of these different processes. And using that information, the algorithm is going to pick the perfect activities for you to do next to support those needs of your child. Now, as we get, we by now more than 30 million parents have used by this park around the world. So as we get also the data from all these children that have gone through our process, we are starting to learn to apply higher levels of artificial intelligence with how to use that journey that we’re ready. So for the benefit of our new

Alexander Ferguson 9:24
students. It’s it’s basically once you have the data that then you can do even more learning off of that and be able to kind of reinforce and help that exactly. It’s not yet quite a, an AI assistant that’s gonna like, tell you what you should be doing by by conversation like with an Amazon

Gustavo Rodriguez 9:42
data. The predictive part of it, being able to say Listen, your child is for some reason nourishing these muscles at a certain age. Well, the probability that this oil muscle becomes a red flag down the road in a year because 20% hire, and then you can not start only supporting developing, but you can start anticipating predict predicting any kind of red flag that you that you can preempt and intervene even before it shows up is terrible.

Alexander Ferguson 10:13
What age range are you covering?

Gustavo Rodriguez 10:17
So the Rena probe, which is the one that we have been talking so far, our zero to three now, which is the age at which you most parents have kids around home. And they get into this after, after the third year, many of these kids start going to preschool settings, they start being enrolled in classes, a piano classes, swimming classes, soccer, so it gets it gets more, it gets more broader in the type of experiences that you’re looking for your child. But what we have for that age range, because we many of the parents that were used in various parts are requested, requesting that we continue to support them is that we created a marketplace, a marketplace in which experts world class experts around the world can come and offer their expertise and their services to our community of millions of parents. Basically, they can monetize expertise using a offering on demand classes, like pre recorded classes, like a Netflix or a peloton of parenting, if you will, they can offer also live group classes. And if and they can also offer private coaching one to one coaching to the to the parents, that was launched a year in January of 2021. And it has been going amazing parents have been a big enough company.

Alexander Ferguson 11:32
Having content is always helpful, but curated content to exactly what you’re interested is the next big thing. And I can imagine with your future of machine learning and be able to even give curated content to the next degree of different things in your marketplace where people look at. I mean, as a parent, I have two kids actually a third one on the way that come in. So I feel like actually, I need to download this app. So I can I have two kids, but I still don’t really know what I’m doing. You know, it doesn’t come with a manual. But it’s helpful to have something going along this way. I even feel like you have something about parenting classes too. I mean, are you are you trying to teach parents how to be better parents? Are you just like, to what degree are you helping the parents versus just the babies? And like, what’s the balance there?

Gustavo Rodriguez 12:18
Every every journey is different, right? And I’m not pushing anything to parents, I’m actually trying to help with the pain that they that they come to us with, right? So if you are just looking by guidance, for guidance, you’re just gonna use the parent, we have been talking the first part of this of this conversation, right? But if you want to learn about a specific topic, like listen, my kids might not be sleeping the way anything to sleep to be able to go to office, I’m not or I’m trying to potty train my child, or oh my goodness, I see some signs of ADHD, a autism, whatever it is right, then perhaps you want to get more information about it, you can get our on demand, our pre recorded classes about that. If that’s enough, and you’re okay, it seems that everything’s fine, just stop there. But if you still want more support, you can get in one of our live group classes with the expert that you just saw on the on demand class and ask questions and say these are this is what is going on. And if this becomes a major concern, you can even hire the expert for one to one private coaching.

Alexander Ferguson 13:23
This this idea of a parent’s being able to have this on demand be able to learn and grow. It’s also comes to the concept of doing a lot more at home like often we go to a class or seminar somewhere, I feel like with our first gear, we actually went to the hospital had something and we went to this class prior to the kid coming and then a little I think a little bit after. But we’re definitely more into the online learning everyone’s used to this ea COVID and beyond. Do you see the home learning for even for your children teaching them and online learning really being a key piece of education going forward

Gustavo Rodriguez 13:55
is is is key. B as you were saying before, our lives are getting only busier and busier, we have less time. And if you think about any parenting concern that you have now you’re young, you’re gonna have something like this, you’re gonna start talking to your partner and say, Wow, we are seeing these, perhaps we should go to the pediatrician, you are going to make an appointment. Two weeks later, you are seeing the pediatrician, the pediatrician when I say there might be some merits here to see a specialist. So he tells you to go to a PT or to IoT or to whoever whoever is the next step which takes another month to get there. So Matana has after several co payments down, you are finally starting to get your answers and you are very busy. You are escaping work and you’re doing because your child is the most important probably thing in your life, right. What we are trying to do is take away all the steps or the process. Your concern is in this area log into various parts for a berry for a fraction of the cost of any of these components. Find a berry, world renowned expert in that area. Big learn from his on demand classes. And if you weren’t even talk to that person a few hours this afternoon or even tomorrow, like text, saves time, saves money and gets better head faster to the to the chiller. So it’s a win win situation. Just for

Alexander Ferguson 15:16
fun for those who are listening to podcasts that have you have toddlers and young kids, educational games are just like fun to do with them. If just what comes to your mind, one that is probably part of your app, or someone could do anything that comes to your mind that you could say, right, this is something fun, educational game you can do with it with your kid.

Gustavo Rodriguez 15:33
This is one of my favorite activities that we have, do you see this movie of Catherine Zeta Jones, in which entrapment in which there was a bunch of lasers, and she had to go into cross to cross the cross. So they one of my favorite activities that indicated that you find like an iron in your house, and literally just a piece pieces of a string, right? If you can make them read even better. And what you do is that you tape them diagonal, horizontally, more vertical, throughout the aisle, and a piece of tape on each side and you put like 20 of those another at the end of the aisle, you put like a little stuffed animal and you say Listen, your mission is to get them without a like crossing without touching any of the strings, right. And it’s so much fun. They feel like they’re in a special mission there, they have to go down, up move in so many ways, which is great for them or TriCity for the gross motor development. But at the same time, they’re having a blast and you as well. That’s one of my personal favorites.

Alexander Ferguson 16:31
I love that. But my kids are five and two. So I think I’m gonna do that back because I think the five year old like oh, yeah, Bishop, let me do that. But my two year old, a lot of qualifiers can be great. I’m gonna do that back. Yes,

Gustavo Rodriguez 16:41
yeah, no, there’s those there’s always we changed the amount of things that you can do. Yes, putting your your your room dark and putting yourself arm behind you, and getting them to manage their minds to create different shapes of different organs. It there’s we have tons of activities that I think parents will enjoy a lot.

Alexander Ferguson 16:59
There’s two things that I love, and it’s technology and business. And when the two come together of being able to build a business around technology to help and solve a problem I’m fascinated with and you’ve done that. With this, you’ve realized that there was a challenge and built this whole technologies app around it. You’ve got after let’s talk about the business side a little bit. You’ve got after consumers directly. You started what year did you start? This is 2000. We

Gustavo Rodriguez 17:24
launched the first pilot real pilot in December of 2016. We Yes, exactly.

Alexander Ferguson 17:31
And you went directly after consumers at that time of like here, here’s an app and it was a website and an app or just an app. Yes,

Gustavo Rodriguez 17:39
yeah, we bootstrap as a matter of fact, until until early 2018. We were cash positive. And we will start from the beginning, we were only always Beckett breakeven, it was just when we saw that there was so much traction, and so many people wanted the service and that there was a real need for the service that we went after venture capital money to be able to scale really, but we were profitable for the from the from the beginning, you start out we’re not anymore now that we’re growing for that reason you raise capital to be able to afford burning capital. But But yes, we follow what we’re we’re Apple cash positive.

Alexander Ferguson 18:16
Did you begin this to with the idea of one day being like the the billion dollar childcare development app that’s going to cover everyone around the world? Or what was your What was your mind when you started?

Gustavo Rodriguez 18:29
I love that idea. This is the classic question to answer. I love to solve a pain. Right? I my background was in a completely different industry. I was in financial investment bank in the financial services industry, working in mergers and acquisition. So a complete different side of business. And these gave me so much purpose. Like I knew I have experienced that myself. And I wanted to solve this and I wanted to create a product, the idea of creating a product that was not just my aunt and my cousins buying it because they are kind to me. But that really was adding value to the world. Like the idea of not just doing business for business. Like you said two things, you love business, you love and you love technology. I love those two, I also love impact. I wanna make sure that that business that I’m that I’m that I’m building is having a positive impact in someone around the world. And that was my goal. I didn’t know if I was going to have a tremendous amount of impact in a small community of children, or legal impact in many, many millions of children around the world that for me wasn’t clear when I set out to build various parks. If you go back

Alexander Ferguson 19:41
to yourself when 2016 When you first launched that had that at first MVP and you could say something to yourself that that you know now what would you share?

Gustavo Rodriguez 19:52
i It’s so interesting because i i bootstrap for a while and I think that some of the reason we have been successful in raising capital for many for many funds is because they love a scrappy entrepreneurs that that get things done with very little resources now, and they saw that in us No. But I do believe that if I had been able to start the journey of putting serious capital, and building capital, and building the proper team, with the proper resources around these, well, we would have started to accelerate the journey of the business earlier and will be far along so so I would say don’t always knows is great to have revenue to have some of the elements to raise capital in place. But just like with any technology product, don’t wait for everything to be perfect to go and look for this capital if you think that you require capital if you don’t require it. By the way, I’m so yellows are good for you. But if you feel that you’re going to need it, a don’t wait until everything everything was alive to undo it. It’s gonna help you was it?

Alexander Ferguson 21:06
It’s kind of a leading question, but was it easy to go and find parents and get them to use your app?

Gustavo Rodriguez 21:14
I actually find the the parents we would start doing this is not like now that you know, like advertisement in Facebook is over the Instagram and all that online that everybody knows how powerful it is. But back then it wasn’t as clear. So we tested a bunch of feeds. After being our anchor for I don’t know how many years I was going to these Manya me a chose like a week, and I was putting a little Stan and I was talking to parents. So it took us a while to experiment with different channels. But when when we got to eat a we were able to skate and find the product very easy. They wanted us

Alexander Ferguson 21:53
if you had to think of one tactic that’s worked for it other founders and entrepreneurs out there that are trying to build apps and solutions and solve problems for parents and childcare. What what type of work is it? Is it Facebook marketing? Is it you know, SEO practices? what’s worked for you?

Gustavo Rodriguez 22:16
You mean what? The thing that that that’s a loaded question. And it’s because there’s the most important thing, because I don’t care how much money you put into Facebook or Instagram, if you don’t have market fit, you’re not gonna work now. So so so the first thing that I can tell you and that’s also another thing that I will tell to myself if I have the opportunity to talk to my self back in 2016 is is Don’t Don’t rush to try to make it big and scale fast iterate with a few clients until you get market feet until you know that the pain that you feel that you are solving you’re really you’re really truly so solving it and then scaling is very easy because it doesn’t matter what you’re gonna do every dollar that you put into marketing is gonna go so much farther because so many people who are have mail and people are gonna come in and love your product when you grow fast without having done market fit actor you are coordinating yourself because you are going to be burning more capital you are going to have met economics that don’t work right and then a because you are reaching more people because you grow that market feet that means you are wanting more capital and problems are bigger. So various market feet then a scale like is where I would say no so that if what works is market fit after that. The Facebook Instagram whatever. Those are all equally powerful tools. Yes market

Alexander Ferguson 23:47
fit. If you scale before the product market fit you’re just scaling your problems that you’re having to deal with the When did you feel like you you found Product Market Fit Are you still fine tuning that

Gustavo Rodriguez 23:58
you’re always fine tuning like that, I think that you never finish I think that Facebook, who were any of the Amazon all of them are still finding improving and improving the market fit every day is a never ending task. But I believe that when I realized that the people that no matter how much money I was putting into marketing, the people that were a downloading the app was overwhelmingly a organic i and and our conversions were of the roof versus most of the pros that I could compare out there that when I realized that we have found a something and that we were delivering something that was a meaningful to them. The second part of that of course is not just getting them but how long they have stayed with you. We have been since a our retention rates have continuously improved since like the second quarter of 2018. So I can tell you that every single quarter we do better at keeping People are longer with us, which means we are delivering more value to them.

Alexander Ferguson 25:04
You said earlier that you’re focused on the the one to three market a child from ages one to three, and then they move on to other things. Does that mean you’re always having to acquire effectively? New parents? Because their kids grow up? And then you got to get new ones? Or what’s what does that light lifecycle look like?

Gustavo Rodriguez 25:23
Yeah, you again, right. That was the issue, one of the issues that we saw with our marketplace of parenting classes, because the easy answer to the question is, yes, if you are, you are, you can be great at acquiring parents, and you can be great and converting them. But zero to three, that means that on average, you get them when they’re 18 months old, that means that you have a year and a half to window with them. And that’s not great. After all that war to get them right. So, so so so they see as it could have been just expanded program, and is easy, but it’s not the right one, because the behavioral patterns of families change after the third year, when you and I were talking before parents start sending kids to preschools, can parents and draw them in different classes. So the same, they set up with the same activities is not gonna call it as it did when the kid was six months old, for example, right. So what you do next to support those parents is you get them the information that they now need for the new problems that they are facing. And that’s the parenting classes, that’s the age 3456 years are Asian, which they might discover that there’s ADHD, that there’s a there’s some nutritional problems. So unexpected nutrition in challenge reason that there might be some autism in the in the mix, for example. So you get them unexpected notice and how to navigate those uncertain waters. So that’s where the classes come into place to continue to grow and serve them. throughout that journey of party.

Alexander Ferguson 26:54
You’ve built the relationship with the parent, assuming that they’ve gone to the classes, the activities and things with their child that now when they need information, I didn’t really go back to the what they’ve trusted with, if they know that you have that available. So you’re probably getting some slight clues all the time of hey, when you need it, we do have other things. And now and now you’re able to keep up with them. Yeah,

Gustavo Rodriguez 27:17
and we know your child, you you We try to be smart, we don’t try to be a lot, we try to know what is going on in the life of your child. So we can serve that information to you. Right, if your child starting to crawl, or not just then sending you activities are crawling, I’m realizing that your child is mobile for the first time in his or her life, which means that I should give you for example, an article about how to baby proofed your house. So as your baby’s not in Greece, and your house is not in risk, right. So so so that that that knowing that journey really well. Not only a from a big picture perspective, allow us to continue to insert get you relevant information that you are going to value in that journey.

Alexander Ferguson 28:01
Baby Sparks is a freemium model set, right, a premium model. Exactly. Gotcha. And if you’re always just measuring the the the changeover for those who upgrade and be able to use more the the whole parenting the marketplace that people get that is that subscription then part of that premium model or is that bait you purchase as you use different different ones?

Gustavo Rodriguez 28:26
So right now we started with just like a buy one class at a time, right? But I I think subscription models are much more powerful. When you look at psi, look at peloton look at Spotify. Look at Netflix, look at everyone that is selling something comparable to what we’re doing in our areas peloton for fitness. But it is subscription. If you want them to have our Disney experience in which they pay one time at the interest of they don’t worry about Monday after right even if they Bezos having to pay for every class. And I love that is not the only way you see out to that they have been extremely successful in charging for each class one at a time, right? So so everybody has different ways to do it for us. subscription is what suits our expertise. And when so we have to leave it on subscription, we have a basic subscription that only covers the activities, no access to the expert with that one. And then a premium subscription that covers the activities that they access to unlimited access to the to the experts live and on demand. But if you come to us and you’re like listen, I don’t want to subscribe or anything. I don’t want the commitment. I just want one class about anything, right? You can just pay for the class. So that’s a little bit hybrid a at the moment. If we just look

Alexander Ferguson 29:47
at the future, I’ll kind of end on this. I love anything of the future and you were to predict how technology will play a role in in child development and in parenting and being able to raise your child Well, what do you what? What are we gonna see in five years and 10 years from now?

Gustavo Rodriguez 30:06
I think a as we as our technology gets better and better, less is going to be more and early is going to be the the biggest value that we can give parents, let me explain that less is going to be more because you keep getting busier and busier, we already talk about that, right? Which means that if you have a magic technology crystal ball, that only tells you hey, Nico, needs support in this very specific area, so that you know, the most important thing that you need to do for your child. Every day, I will pay for that in a while, if someone tells me this crystal ball will tell you the one most important thing, read him a book, explain what he has on our building Legos, if the other one is just go out and try and get him some physical activity, wherever it is, if I had a crystal ball, instead of having to immerse myself in information and information and information to figure out, less is going to be more, and technology that enables us to do that, are they as we learn about every child. And the second one is a earlier is better. A every single expert in parenting or whether it’s a physician or an educator, will tell you that when you discover that a child has an issue. If you don’t, if you find out about that issue in the first year, you will take one month of therapy to fix it. If you find it in the third year, it’s gonna take a couple of years of therapy to fix it, you find it by the fifth or sixth year, you might be therapy for life, like like there’s, like time is, is of the essence here. So we can learn to predict those issues that are going to happen and not only a relative as soon as they are observed by one, but before they’re observable, then we’re gonna do a great a great deal of good to our future generations. So for me those two things, when I see the role of technology in parenting is technology that enables to perfect that enabled parents empower parents to do what I just said.

Alexander Ferguson 32:09
And I feel like as you get more and more data, and you start to apply more sophisticated artificial intelligence, such as machine learning, you’ll be able to make better predictions sooner, so that parents can be able to get right on it.

Gustavo Rodriguez 32:23
There you go. There you go. Want to do less is more, and do it, start doing it earlier. Because

Alexander Ferguson 32:30
love it, love it. For those that want to learn more, you can go over to baby sparks.com Obviously, you can also find it in the app store and the App Store. Thank you so much. Who’s that was great to have you on and thanks for sharing your knowledge.

Gustavo Rodriguez 32:43
These last great, thank you for the invitation again and happy to be here any time. It was a great conversation. I enjoy it a lot.

Alexander Ferguson 32:49
We’ll see you all on the next episode of UpTech Report. Have you seen a company using AI machine learning or other technology to transform the way we live work and do business? Go to UpTech report.com and let us know