Online safety for kids has only become more important over time, and it's become a thorny compliance topic for games teams to wrestle with. Fortunately, talented entrepreneurs are creating solutions that make it easier for games teams (and beyond) to tackle these challenges. 

To help explore this nuanced topic, host Aaron Bush is joined by Kieran Donovan, co-founder and CEO of k-ID (which recently raised a $45M Series A, led by Lightspeed and a16z), as well as Dylan Collins, serial entrepreneur behind Demonware, Jolt, and SuperAwesome.

We dive into what’s changed in the kidtech market over the past decade, k-IDs new approach, lessons learned from SuperAwesome, where the market and k-ID are headed next, and how games teams can benefit from these emerging solutions.

This episode is brought to you by CleverTap Gaming, the all-in-one platform for creating personalized player experiences. Visit https://clevertap.com/gaming/ for more details. 

This transcript is machine-generated, and we apologize for any errors.

Aaron: Hi everyone. I'm your host, Aaron Bush. And today I am delighted to be joined by two wonderful guests to discuss the past, present, and future of online safety in games, kid tech, and lessons learned building companies in this space and beyond.

My first guest today is Kieran Donovan, the co-founder and CEO of KID. KID just raised a 45 million Series A, led by Lightspeed and Andreessen Horwitz, in order to build and scale compliance software that simplifies online safety and privacy management for game developers, parents, and their kids. And he'll tell us much more about that in a moment.

Our second guest is my friend and serial entrepreneur, Dylan Collins. Dylan built and sold Demonware, Jolt, and of course, Super Awesome, which has also played a leading role in creating solutions for online kid safety over the past decade. And you've, hopefully you remember him from an episode he recorded with us several months ago, where we dug into his entrepreneurial journey over the course of all of his businesses.

So anyways, what we're going to talk about today really is an important topic is relevant to many corners of the games industry. And I think we have the perfect two guests to break down lessons, learn, and share where this is all going. So with all of that said, guys, welcome to the Naavik Gaming Podcast.

Dylan: Thanks, Aaron.

Kieran: Yeah, great to be here, Aaron.

Aaron: Awesome. Dylan, I'll go ahead and start with you. You founded Super Awesome 11 years ago, and for those who don't know its story, maybe you could quickly tell it. Most importantly, what were you trying to solve for at the time and how did super awesome make a difference over the past decade?

Dylan: Wow. That sounds like a very long time when you say it like that, and you actually put numbers to it. But we started super awesome fundamentally to build digital tools for companies that were interacting with young audiences online. So really responding to the first digital privacy law which came out of the US, which was COPPA about 10 years ago.

At the time, no company, be it content or technology company was really thinking about kids in the internet and everyone was happy to pretend more or less that they were all adults. I think, and so we scaled Super Awesome up over, the bones of the decade and it was acquired by Epic Games about three years ago.

I think, maybe being slightly more philosophical about what we did, in 13, when we started, we were to a large degree, I think, try to tackle the internet's cold start problem around kids, right? Cause it was fundamentally like, there was no real sustainable revenue model for kids content, creators, which meant there was no real investment that was going into kids functionality, which mean in turn.

meant in turn there was no sustainable revenue model for kids content. So I think we brewed like super awesome brute forced its way through that problem by fundamentally hacking and advertising business model to be able to finance other areas like community and parent verification.

So we ended up building a full suite of tools, but I think most people would probably know us for our kid safe. Advertising I think that probably it's sort of fair to say that like after the Epic Games acquisition, we stepped up a lot in terms of what we were doing with parent verification.

So that, that became a completely free service as part of Epic, which was a huge step. But I still think to this day, it doesn't get enough applause, in terms of what Epic we're willing to do in terms of literally underwriting. Every game developer in the world to be able to have parent verification and to be able to make it easier to support young audiences.

And, I think, 10 years ago when Super Awesome was started, the internet was an absolute dumpster fire for kids. I think today And this is probably an excellent moment to segue across to Kieran, like it is slightly less of a dumpster fire. And I think, we're just getting to the point now where like enough conditions are in place where very important and special things can happen, which is it's why it's so cool to see KID doing what they're doing.

Aaron: Yeah, for sure. And Kieran, our mutual friend, Moritz Baer Lenz at Lightspeed, who's now on your board of directors, he wrote a great piece on Lightspeed's blog about why he invested in your company, KID. And of course, a lot of it is built on your team's results so far and the traction that you're seeing, but There was also a more heartfelt element to it too, as a new parent, he talks about the feeling of responsibility of setting your kids up for success online.

And he even noted about how at the World Economic Forum, there was discussion around child safety measures regarding games. And how that's really become a bigger priority on the world stage. So I get the sense that your business actually really matters at a core human element to a lot of people. And that people are not just rooting on your business, but your mission.

So I'm curious does that resonate with your vision or like what's left to be solved from taking the torch. From Dylan and Super Awesome here and why Chase this specific vision?

Kieran: Yeah the first thing that you said to Dylan there about 11 years ago gives me a bit of a vision of my own future.

Aaron: And what's ahead.

Kieran: But you're right, look, I think the philosophical journey that we're on is one where we want to empower those spaces that kids and teens already inhabit online. And in many cases with parent approval but not necessarily in a space where they're technically permitted today. And there's a typically that I confirm I'm over 13 spaces where, you know we all know that the kids alive at their age to get into those online spaces.

Spaces we all know that they click through it and yet as a parent often and sometimes it's licensed kids content and sits behind that it's totally okay. It's the only reason that pop up that, bit of friction exists is because of the regulatory complexity. And so if we can work backwards and help solve that piece so that developers aren't afraid to engage with that youth audience and as you say, really take the torch from everything that, that Dylan's built with Super Awesome, I think that's where we see the opportunity to have a lot of impact.

And a lot of the conversations that, that I've had over the course of the last eight months, two years typically begin, whether it could be a regulator, it could be a platform, it could be a publisher, and it'll, I'll hear those first four words. I am a parent. And then, you just struck that chord and someone will say yeah, my, my son, this, my nephew, this, my cousin, this, my, and everyone's got their stories now.

And I think, there's so much, we're so much more aware of the impact of the communities that, that kids are building online now whether it be through mental health or, the impact of things that can happen. And so I think there's this, there's a cute feeling that something needs to be done.

Aaron: And I guess before we go deeper, I should ask what exactly does KID do? Like what is your product and how does it benefit the various stakeholders here?

Kieran: Yeah, it's a good question. The challenge that a lot of publishers in particular face today is once you get, say an 11 year old in Japan onto your game what are you going to do with their ability to add friends?

What are you doing with chat? What about loot boxes? What if it's real money loot boxes versus just virtual currency loot boxes? The way that you have to program each of those different functions differs depending upon Where that user is and how old they are. And that the complexity around that today in terms of regulation is nothing like it's ever be everybody has picked up what's happened in the U S or Europe and in other countries, we're seeing more and more of this regulation pop up.

And so you're a publisher, whether you're in India or AAA, you're staring down this, really challenging task of just figuring out what do I do? I want to do the right thing. It's not that I don't want to do the right thing. I want to do the right thing. But getting to that answer is getting more and more expensive and it's more and more fraught with risk.

And so that's what our API solve is answering those questions. And why now? Yeah, be curious to hear from Dylan about the same question back when super awesome was started. For us, it's really the pain that I think publishes a feeling both in terms of complexity, in terms of cost.

And in terms of risk, has reached an inflection point where it can't be ignored. Or if you do want to ignore it, you're sacrificing a youth audience that is, is going to persist one way or another.

Aaron: Yeah, and Dylan, maybe you could respond to that, see what you were thinking back in the super awesome days, or even just if you have any interesting observations about What you're seeing right now and how this market has changed.

Dylan: Yeah. I think when we started there was. It was not a question of like, why now? Because clearly it wasn't then, because it took so, so much longer to push through. Like we were obviously early. Like I think that, I was ruminating on, on, on this kind of earlier today, and we're going to paraphrase, paraphrase like half of what Kieran just said here, but I think there's, you've got like the beginnings of kind of what I would call a lot or what Charlie Munger would actually call a Lollapalooza effect, where you've got, this sort of. This emerging new class of young internet users what is, who is. The Gen Alpha of today is markedly different from the Gen Alpha of 10 years ago, right? Like in terms of like how empowered they are with payment, like their comfort with sort of digital tools and devices, etc.

And that just makes them like a much stronger internet force. Secondly, completely repeating Kieran's point, like I think the density like of digital laws for children around the world is just, I don't think we could have really imagined like that sort of, even five or six or seven years ago.

I think the fact that you've got, fairly prominent authors like Jean Twenge and Jonathan Hayes, who've been writing like a lot about the impact of sort of social and smartphone on kids and teens which the, that's been over the last sort of 18, 24 months. I think the fact that you've got like some, but probably not all of the main technology companies who are very politically motivated to try and figure out some solutions to this.

And then I think finally, the fact that I don't think it's just like investors who had grown up and had kids, but I think it's a lot of the founders of the biggest technology platforms in the world have become parents. And I think. All of these things are combining, in a way that we just haven't seen before.

So that there is real, not just momentum and not just a sense of need, but I think a sense of willingness to actually make some real step changes here. So I was saying this before we started recording I genuinely think it's probably the best time in history to be starting a kid tech company right now.

Aaron: Hopefully that sounds good to you, Kieran. But Dylan, another question to tie this together. The last time that you were on the podcast, we discussed the complexities of all that's left to solve regarding issues of, kid online safety, the technology around it all. And essentially your reply was like, wow, like there's a long list of complexities to still try to solve for.

And so I'm curious when you look at KID, like how do you see that, like this new solution fitting into all of the complexities that you laid out before and whatever might be left, but also, like one of the potential issues you talked about last time was how these companies can be hard to fund and incentivize investors to be excited about this space.

And clearly, Kieran has done something right, and I'll get to you, Kieran, on the fundraise and stuff in a bit. But anyways, Dylan, I'm curious what your reflections are of connecting the dots here.

Dylan: I think, my perspective on this which I think is pretty similar to Kieran's is that the ideal, um, the ideal way the internet works is that when a kid, lands on a digital surface, like it automatically reconfigures.

To whatever age that user is right in the same way that if you land on a sort of a non English site and you're not an English speaker, like Google Chrome today, we'll do an auto translate for you. That's essentially, the metaphor and. And there's no particular reason that can't happen.

KID's solution, you can think of that as a very important slice, like in that stack for developers to essentially be able to enable that magic. There's, I think last time we talked about, and I still believe that there's three broad pillars that kind of contribute to this, certainly at least three.

I think one, like this has got to be supported by. Sustainable. And by that, commercially viable kids app stores kids, content creators have got to be commercially viable. And I don't just mean kids safe advertising. Like they've got to be able to have real monetization within there.

I think there needs to be, some kind of trusted digital brand for parents, to. Be able to bridge that sort of knowledge time gap, with kids. Cause that's and it's an interesting reflection actually on what are today's parents like versus the parents of 10 years ago, but we might come back to that later.

And then the last one which I really do shout about a lot, and again, anyone who knows me knows my view of this, like there needs to be some sort of universal age API, like an actual source of data birth truth, like that is probably done at an operating system level, that is available to, and I'm certain this is on.

I don't know this, but I would guess this is probably on Ciarán's roadmap somewhere, but the age gate remains probably one of the most powerful incentives to lie that human civilization has ever invented. And, I think age APIs are now definitely a possibility which we will get to.

And again, I think that's both sort of a technology point and a sort of a political point as well. So you can see how hey, I think fits into that stack in a very compelling way. And I think, Whether it's five years or whether it's 10 years, I think that sort of, auto magic reconfiguration to age is how we see, parts of the internet working.

Kieran, would you disagree radically with any parts of that? Or would you add any others into it?

Kieran: I totally agree. I totally agree. And I think the age signal piece is the one that is at most risk today. With a lot of the debate around age verification and age assurance there's going to be a lot more noise coming into that than there ever has been.

If you're just relying on self declaration historically, you're doing that once per, whatever sign up that you're going into a particular platform. And so sure, like you might use a different database or a kid might lie about their age in different ways on different platforms. You add to that now that you might have age estimation checks that give you a variable that will give you either your, maybe above a band or below a band or you within a certain range.

You're now passing and that's happening, ostensibly the platform level it's happening at the developer level. There's multiple layers that are impacted by that age assurance piece. Age verification, I think is a fascinating one because in theory that is, the highest confidence signal you would get a true.

Age verification. And yet what we've seen in markets that have introduced age verification is that usually the number of optogenarians playing an online game jumps by an order of magnitude because kids will go I want access to the full experience. I want to chat with my friends. I want to, have access to full monetization, et cetera.

So they'll go and get Nana or Grandad's ID card and sign up for things. So I think Dylan is right. That challenge is, I think, a really fundamental one. Because unless you get that H signal right the rest of it may not really be able to have the impact that you want it to have.

Dylan: And this is why when you look at all the discussion that you've seen from June Twangy's book and Jonathan's book and everyone is saying, okay social is terrible and screen time is terrible and everything else. Like I do. It's one of those rare moments where I had sympathy for a lot of the major technology companies, because again, there are like to Kieran's point, right?

There are limits to what they can do, in terms of preventing kids from lying about their age. So I do think, and it probably is a combination of, technology and law, and probably someone managing to convince, several squadrons of lawyers that this is a doable thing.

Because technically, it is absolutely doable, right at this point. And, but I think I'd be willing to lay down a bet with both you that this has happened within 10 years. And I think I'm confident. Saying that out loud in public

Kieran: Yeah I would take that bet. I would, I would within, with within 10 years. Look.

Dylan: Yeah.

Kieran: Yeah. Within 10 years. I think that's right. And you're right. The technology exists to, not just the technology, but I think the appetite yeah. Exists today to do something about it. The question is whether we can coalesce stakeholders in a way that we could build that momentum sooner than later.

And I think that's the challenge right now is where does that first movement come from? Does it come from platforms? Does it come from we've done this with CSAM detection, right? We do, we've, there have been spaces where the industry has coalesced around a mission and solved huge technical challenges.

So it's. It's something that we do. The question is where does that spawn come from?

Dylan: I think, it's funny what, one of the things that, that, parents and teachers still corner me in meetings and ask me why the internet isn't fixed yet. And but one of the interesting things to reflect on is that 10 years ago You didn't have the concept to trust and safety teams by and large.

So to your point, like we have companies now put hundreds of millions of dollars annually into trust and safety teams, like they weren't doing that 10 years ago. So I, again, obviously I agree, but just to reiterate how much I agree, like that this is absolute, not only is this a solvable thing, this is going to get solved, there's no doubt about it.

Aaron: Dylan, previously you mentioned how parents today are maybe different from they were 10 years ago. What did you mean by that?

Dylan: I think it's like, when I think about some of the things that we didn't do and could have done differently or might do if we were redoing Super Awesome today or something like that I do think that there is a qualitative difference in parental attitudes.

To their kids and digital and social today versus 10 years ago, I don't know if it's, if you'd call it better, or you call it worse, or whether it's more comfortable or more accepting or more resigned, but it's definitely like they have, there is I suppose you're almost looking at like millennial parents now, sort of coming through. And I do think that there is a when I talk about the need for sort of a trusted digital brand. Like at the family level, I still believe that's needed, but I think it's probably a slightly easier thing to accomplish today because there is, there's just a higher level of comfort level that parents have generally speaking with technology, like they're much more fluent than.

Parents of a decade ago where, and I do think, that making them which I think Kieran is like making them part of the solution and part of the mission and building them into, to, to the go to market is very important because they can just be more useful than 10 years ago when, you were still really on, on the first generation of a tablet, let's say, floating around the household.

And so I, I do think that matters. I don't know specifically what the other ramifications are going to be but I do think there's a difference there. Kieran, you must be much closer to, to, to that sort of phenomenon though. Is that, do you think that's the case or is it like, are there other nuances there?

Kieran: Oh I totally agree. I, as a kid grew up, I remember when Xbox Live first hit and all of a sudden, like everybody had their headset and it was complete and utter chaos. Xbox and that kind of persisted, I think, in a big way, but people adapt, right? And I was young at the time, and then all of a sudden, you're like, okay like, when I, if I go on, I'm not going to have my headset on, I'm going to switch things off, but you would, people's behavior adapts as a kid to the toxicity, and I think the risk, because you just don't want that, you want to have fun with your buddies online.

And so I think, for me as a parent, a lot of the parents that we're talking to now they come, you're right, with that sort of maturity about it okay I need to educate and equip my kid with, one, the skills to be able to react to a lot of that online but also I, I think there's, What we've learned a lot over the last 12 months is that really where I think the industry has moved in terms of trust and safety is away from like the nuclear option where you might have one player report another player and then all of a sudden that player gets banned or it gets escalating and in some cases it's, it's this nuclear option to involve the parent as part of that because often what we found is that those social communities online are among friends from school.

And so people are chatting with their friends outside of school hours. And then all of a sudden someone hits report and they don't necessarily want this nuclear option where all of a sudden someone's account gets killed and so just being a little bit more mature about how we deal with that and involve parents in it I think dylan's right is there's a different attitude to it now.

Aaron: cool before we get into some more reflective Topics, Kieran, I want to talk about your recent fundraise as I mentioned in the intro you raised a 45 million dollar series a Maybe you could just take a moment to explain, why go so big?

Your company is pretty new, like, how are you able to go so fast? And, what are you planning to do with all of this? So I think three things.

Kieran: One is we hit the market knowing that it felt like the right time. I've been an attorney for 14 years. I've advised and counted clients in the gaming space on these issues for a long time.

So I, I took a pretty good bet on myself that now is the moment where. Companies were really feeling it, and it had moved beyond that point of being able to call your lawyer and, pay them a hundred bucks an hour to give you the answers and set it off to an engineer. The second one is that I think genuinely that to the point we made earlier, the mission resonates in a way where everybody is feeling the pain somehow.

Everyone's reading about the pain somehow. And so if there's an opportunity to get behind someone who wants to try and take that challenge on, I think a lot of investors are willing to take that bet. And so we were certainly able to ride a lot of that momentum there. Yeah. Okay. This feels like the right, perfect storm for someone to take on this challenge.

I think the third one is we didn't plan on raising 45 million out of the gate. I don't think anyone ever does. I think there's historically the sort of the tactic is, pivot yourself to a much lower number and then, see where the market kind of lands and.

I think we knew what we would need to take on the challenge. But as we had more and more of these conversations and and bigger checks got thrown at us, we realized that there was an opportunity to do something pretty meaningful and much faster than we had. And rather than tirelessly working away for three or four years and shipping away at the problem, there were some things, you have that wishlist, right?

Where you're thinking if I had this. I would go and do this. I would go and do that. And being able to bring a lot of that forward, all of a sudden, it's almost becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, right? Because Then by your, 12th investor meeting, that forms part of the pitch that yeah, I'm going to go and do that rather than Oh in a moonshot, I'd love to go and do that.

And it builds and builds on that.

Aaron: Cool. And it sounds like, clearly you've had Pretty great traction in the short time that the company has been operating, which I get the sense is part of why your company was in such a hot deal. And I get the sense too, that because of that, you probably were juggling a lot of inbound.

You had to put your lawyer hat on to, figure out how to wade through and negotiate, like what's, what are the best terms, what's best for your company and such. Any lessons learned for finding yourself in this situation, like from the entrepreneur side, it's such a scale for the first time that maybe like you would look back and do something different, or you would at least give us advice to, you know, someone else in a similar position

Kieran: So I can say this now that I'm on the other side of the fundraise, right?

But I wasn't you know, I've never done venture before right? I'd never I'd built a legal team, but I you know, I certainly haven't founded a company or done that's anything close to this But I think it meant that I didn't go in with any preconceived notions of what was or wasn't.

About the challenge, about the way we were going to approach solving it and the team that we wanted to build around solving this sort of monumental issue at a society, societal level. So I think I, the naivety actually served me quite well because I wasn't, yeah, we didn't have an investor deck.

That's crazy to say now, but Because we had this momentum when we got pulled so hard by the market you're able to genuinely hand on heart, say this, I haven't had a chance to go through and, work on my 12 step slide and what that looks like. Because things have been moving so fast and then all of a sudden people perk up whoa, all right.

Okay. If it's moving that quick, what's going on. So I think again, naivety served me quite well. But we were highly intentional. About everything like who do we want to work with what was gonna ultimately accelerate our go to market what was gonna help in terms of the problem you were solving at the scale we needed to solve it because this is such a big issue and I think we recognize the strength of having Andreessen and Lightspeed and Okta as part of.

This journey with us, um, was critical.

Aaron: Dylan you've started a handful of companies that have worked out pretty well. And I don't think we've talked about the fundraising side before in our last episode. Do you have any. Battle scars or things that have been, that have stuck on your mind after all these years of what you wish you could have done differently?

Looking back with any type of fundraising, that is like a five. Any lessons learned ?

Dylan: That is a five hour long podcast, Aaron, right there. Good Lord. I think. We were building with a little bit of a Trojan horse model in that it was like a, a product base kind of land and expand and that we were solving for an ascending hierarchy or descending hierarchy of needs, right?

So we were solving for kids, save up monetization in the community and then verification. So we had to go and it worked well and work badly in the sense that like people love the idea of the mission, but then they were like, Oh, you look like an ad tech company. So there's absolutely no way we're giving you money.

And, it got to a point, towards shortly before we got acquired, where we finally hit the stage where like people were rolling in, saying as they were to Kieran earlier saying, Hey, can we give you money for this? Cause we love the whole idea of it. So I think it was, that's just a timing thing.

And there's a different strategy there. And I do think from a capital strategy point of view, that It's the right thing to raise a boatload of money because, you have got, much stronger momentum. I think you've done the right thing in terms of going for quality at the end of the day, capital is an API to influence and network.

So that's how I think about it. Yeah. And with that sort of cap table there, I think it's the right call. I like. I so rarely give general advice because I think there is so much survivorship bias, like in this whole game. And Aaron, we've talked about this.

I think it's so hard to know, what actually happened because of the stuff you did versus what you didn't do. So I would be reluctant to say too much generally other than look. We're in a weird time where even in the venture space you've got to be growing and you've got to be delivering sort of two units economics as well.

I think it feels like there is maybe a little bit more appetite for a more aggressive growth model. That's trying to sneak back in, which is interesting and good. But I think that, that's we're in general, we're seeing healthier companies emerging, from this sort of, post, post Zerk environment.

But yeah we should just do a whole other episode on lessons learned around capital because we raised, sorry, I will just finish with one final final point, which is like. With super awesome, we ended up raising capital through the entire spectrum. So we did we did venture, we did debt, we did private equity, we did strategic it was an absolute, like the whole thing on our journey.

And I, I don't know which I would do again, or which I would not do again. I shouldn't say too many things, too many mean things about VCs on a podcast.

Aaron: Okay. I gotcha. Yeah. Maybe that can be a deeper conversation for another day. But back to you, Kieran, one thing that you did note is that like you really felt the pull of the market.

And so there probably is an element here of, trying to keep up and ride the wave and, scale as quickly as you reasonably can. And you've done a lot in a year or so, how have you been able to keep up in such a short amount of time and get so much done? So quickly.

Kieran: Yeah. I think because our team is just so incredible and so hardworking and so mission driven every minute, every hour is not created equal.

And everybody rowing the boat feeling very mission driven. That hour I think is like a three X on what a typical hour is. And it has been for the last It certainly feels like it, given the exhaustion at this point. But yeah, look I think the market was ready. I'd socialized it with a few game publishers before I quit my job just to get that pulse check, one, is this something you would be willing to source from a third party and not build? Is this something that you would be willing to pay for? And is the sort of playing that tape forward? Is this something that you could see evolving in ways? It would be pretty cool and meaningful in my view for parents and for kids and teens.

And so I think it was all positive signaling around those three questions. And so when we left off, it was like we left off into a speedboat. And so things are moving super quick. And yeah, I think it's been one heck of a ride to, to try and stay on topic.

Dylan: I think I was going to jump in and pretend to be a VC for a second.

The, the, one of the, one of the fascinating things about the kid space and kid tech space, like historically, right? Is that like for, yeah. The sheer number of eyeballs and the sheer amount of influence that is there, right? Define more or less however you want. There have been very few big exits, coming out of them, like coming out of that space.

You go back and you've got The Penguin and you've got Moonbug and you've got Super Awesome and you've got Epic Learning and like a couple of those. There haven't been, like crazy big like in venture big right type of outcomes, but when you look at what clearly has to be done here at like almost an infrastructure type of level, and when you think about a sustainable, safe economy of young internet users, like that is a multi billion dollar space.

So if you can see cause I suspect some people listening will be like, Hey, like this was just VCs having FOMO and throwing money in, it's no, there, there is an actual okay. So it was probably that, but but no, like straight up. There, there is, we are at the point where like these types of opportunities do become very tangible and there is a very real sort of addressable market here.

And. VCs are in the business of chasing those specific things of exactly why LPs give them invest capital into their funds, so there is there is a real logic in terms of why Kieran, raised 45 million and why he will probably be able to raise more on the basis that this market is like it is By definition, it is only getting bigger.

Aaron: Kieran, for companies that aren't working with you yet, or still maybe just aren't that familiar with KID yet, is there anything else that you would want them to know, just based on the results that you've seen so far with your existing clients, or anything that you're working up next as a team?

Kieran: Yeah, I think one thing is, we're super reactive.

To, to what publishers are very excited to build for their youth communities. And so what we've discovered, we've almost stumbled onto these wishlists that as we've had a lot of these conversations, you meet the trust and safety team, you meet the legal team, you meet the product team, the game team.

And they're like, Oh, I've always wanted to do this. I've always wanted to do this. I've wanted to bridge that, that space between a parent and a child in this particular way or that particular way. And so we've stumbled upon these extraordinary wishlists that we've been able to start building on top of.

So I think while, Dylan's right, like the infrastructure that we built is like the is the, I don't want to say the boring bit, but it's the really hard bit, which is to maintain all the regulatory infrastructure so that all the APIs and signaling going in means that, to Dylan's point, when that user that's 11 lands on the web page, lands on the game, It adapts that's step one everything that happens subsequent to that is exciting because then you're like how can we bridge what you know that parent maybe wants to be more involved in their child's game maybe the parent wants to game with their child maybe you know there's all these sorts of opportunities that I think when you do the infrastructure like it opens up really exciting things and so I think our willingness to explore that and pursue it as our sole focus is our superpower.

Aaron: I don't know to what degree you can talk about what your team has planned, but is there anything on the roadmap that you're most excited about, that you'd like people to know about?

Kieran: So I can speak to one in particular as a parent which is having to approve, my, my, Kids entry into like game after game, even within the same publisher, right?

Even if I can avoid having to re verify because of all the great work that Super Awesome has done just having to pick up my phone. I'm like, okay, what are they going into now? What are they going into now? What are they going into now? We've got a pretty neat solution that'll be hitting in the next few months to help with that and help parents manage multi game approvals within ecosystems, which I think is pretty cool.

Aaron: Sounds cool. Let's go ahead and shift gears we're getting towards the end of the conversation and I want to spend the last 10 20 minutes just talking reflectively about Dylan, maybe some lessons learned that you've had across your companies, and then we can go off path and talk about some other stuff in the games industry, some other things we're excited about, but Dylan, you, Started touching on this earlier, but I'm just curious if you were building Super Awesome or something like it today how would you go about it differently from the past?

You named one element, but curious if there are more.

Dylan: Yeah I think I alluded to this or mentioned it maybe overtly I think I would bring in strategic investors much, much earlier. I think when you were trying to build something or solve for something where you have a lot of people that care about it, but you have like part, one of the biggest challenges we always found was the sales cycle, with a compliance product, because it doesn't have a defined budget. It doesn't have a defined champion. No one knows who's meant to sign it off. Legal thinks they should own it. There's a product person who probably definitely thinks they shouldn't own it, but also doesn't know who else should take it. You've got all of these things when you're battling through that, and to some degree, like part of the sales process is just trying to, an organization and sometimes the best way to do that and literally get them on your cap table.

So it's it's a fait accompli or at least, it maybe gets you there in, in a few less meetings. I think I talked about the parent thing already, but I do think, I don't quite know how we would go about doing this, but I do think we would.

Take much more of an active parental approach. And I think thinking about sort of parental champions, within a lot of the customers for these types of solutions and these types of vectors, I think, to be honest, we would probably also have an office in, in, in DC. I think this has become, it was never not a political topic, but it now is much more a political topic and I think it feels again, going back to that sort of notion of it being a moment in time. It feels not just like everyone's looking for a solution. It seems like everyone is looking for the figurehead to drive this home because for various political reasons.

Meta can't do it because they want Apple to do it. Apple aren't going to do it because of whatever number of other things. But there's, everyone would like it to happen, but it just, they don't want it to be them. So I think we would probably spend a bunch of money on that.

I think we would absolutely have to raise a lot more capital and I think we would probably be more acquisitive, like to some degree that reflects my own personal bias, because I like to look at M& A and I tend to think in tech. And early stage tech is a little sort of underestimated. We acquired a couple of things when we were scaling and invested in a couple of other places too, but I think we would look to get more aggressive because at the end of the day, like scale matters here, right?

Like people will want to do business with the main partner, with the biggest company in the space, and sometimes I say this with caution, but like hacking your way into being number one, just opens all the doors. And it can save you money. It can save you time. So I think those are definitely areas are on that, that would resonation in how we might do this differently.

But it's, look, this is why I'm going full fan boy on, on my current on the team. Like it's going to be so interesting to to watch the casual factual play out. Like it's awesome.

Aaron: Yeah. That's a great answer. And it seems like a lot of what you said is what KID is doing here at any plans for the DC office.

That's maybe like the one thing we haven't hit on yet.

Kieran: It was. Yeah. If Dylan's willing to go and head the office and we can definitely have the chat.

Aaron: Awesome. Um, well, Dylan, similarly in our last conversation, I asked you for your top lesson learned. Yeah. And each business that you founded and just to quickly recap what you said for demon where you said you sold too early for Joel, you learned that if incentive structures in the acquirers executives are not aligned with the acquirees mission, it's probably not going to work out as well as it could.

And then for super awesome, you talked about the importance of not just dying, obviously and, but also about how tech leaning investors often underestimate great sales teams. And I guess I have a question to, that maybe connects to this, which is do you have a top lesson learned about scaling a business in this specific area?

industry segment that maybe would be helpful to Kieran as he's thinking through his next steps or anyone else who's listening.

Dylan: I don't think Kieran needs any lessons from me, but and to be clear, I think that last one, Super Awesome was about not dying rather than dying important distinction on that.

But Oh yeah. My bad. The I think We built a reasonably good, I've talked to this a little bit, we built a pretty good flywheel. Again, I think to the degree that like super awesome at a dirty little secret it was the fact that we built it around an extremely talented media sales team.

Lee Leach was co founder, like he ran global sales. And we were able to use that as our go to market, getting into all of these customers and, it becomes a combination of sales and like, information gathering. And I think we were doing like, to some degree If you refine super awesome right down, like it really was an education business because we were going in and we were educating the entire space on what you could and couldn't do or should and shouldn't do and again you were just.

Battering and battering. And it was a constant battle to try and increment like by degrees, like a general sort of sense of understanding around that, but that was fundamentally a sales driven motion. So we had these very, we, Super Awesome still has today. A very uniquely cultured sales team, which are, yes, on one hand they're enterprise sales and enterprise, like media sales at that, but we put people through a lot of training, a lot of onboarding these are folks that can speak to digital privacy laws, and most media sales folks.

Perhaps not totally unsurprisingly cannot, but I think we probably went through two, two main phases when I think about it, like first was what I'm describing, right? Which was knowing more about. about compliance than our customers and being the perfect partner and being the literal educational resource.

And then it gets to a stage where you've got traction and you're going in or your, the products are being used and it becomes more of a, like a customer success motion. And that's when you have to know more about the company than the company does itself. Know more about the customer than the customer does itself, right?

You have to know where their skeletons are buried. . And, and I think those were sort of two discreet phases that we went through. But I think this and again, this uncanny ability to ask questions that I would happily speak about for three hours. 'cause I do think like sales in a compliance based market is such an interesting and nuanced sort of strategy.

So I, I think those are like, in so much as that was a coherent. Response. Those are things that that, that jump to mind.

Kieran: Cool. Yeah. I think, I think the the interesting thing about what you just said, Dylan is. I think the compliance driven sales motion and the the internal champion that, you want to find that's really gonna to push it forward.

I think that, that, that resonates. And I think that resonates even in my previous career as an attorney, where ultimately, you know, as an attorney, it's a very, Re reactive business clients are coming to you because they're already acutely feeling some sort of pain. And now it's Flipping it the other way around and you're saying like before you feel the pain.

I want to help, inoculate Against that risk.

Dylan: What are the just small anecdotes like when epic made And that the game is made. Um super awesomest parent verification service available, completely free for developers. Like it obviously moved, completely all the pricing friction.

And our initial assessment was going to be, this is incredible. We're going to just sign up the world and everyone's going to come rolling in. And to a certain degree, that was true. So what happened was that like, it removed all the friction from top of the funnel. But what it didn't do was solve for who had to sign off the thing.

So even though you were rolling in, which with what was fundamentally a free product, like the sales cycles are where possibly still are quite long because you've got to go through all of these approvals throughout the company. So it's just fascinating. The things that you learn as you go and do it.

So again, it's a battle against other companies org structures.

Aaron: I don't envy the compliance heavy enterprise sales that you guys have had to tackle. But before I take us over the finish line I just want to, offer up the opportunity. Do either of you guys have a question for each other about either what you're working on or thinking about or.

Any other lessons learned from the past?

Dylan: Kieran, when you like going, you've raised one of the largest rounds in kid tech history and or in safety tech history, either, depending on what you're defining it as, how do you think that the venture world is thinking about this more broadly than KID like, because to some degree KOD very much appeals to you as an investor, if you're a parent, or at least you can relate to some of it, right?

But how much of that do you think that was you and the company, everything else versus like more broadly? Do you see a general sort of is Roblox having an impact? Cause like you, you now have much bigger platforms that are very youth focused, let's say more so than maybe 10 years ago.

What's the general sort of temperature, do you think?

Kieran: I think when we first approached the venture market Q2 last year, there was resistance, confusion maybe a lack of education around how complex the space was and what was coming down the pipeline. That's totally changed. And the recent, I was going to meetings and folks, we even using terminology, right?

You say okay, we've looked at these four providers in age assurance. Like how where do they fit in your stack? That level of intellectual engagement is like totally different to 18 months ago. So I think the investors the ones that are interested in this space know that there are.

Macro challenges to be solved, but also individual challenges that are popping up because a lot of the regulatory push in various different directions and not one, it's not going to be that one, one company solves it all. And I think that's the more mature thing that I've seen more recently.

It's no, we get why, how you're different to that and how they're different to that and whatnot.

Aaron: Cool. I will go ahead and wrap up with one question, the same for each of you. Dylan, the last time you were on, we talked about your growing interest in all things UGC, UGC gaming.

Is that still what your head, what you're thinking about most excitedly about today? Or is there, other corners of the market where that have a grip on you now?

Dylan: It's sort of Concentric circles radiating out from that UGC space, right? I think it's very interested in what's going on in the ecosystems of, Roblox, Fortnite, Discord.

Partially because I think a lot of the venture market doesn't quite get it. I think some of it does, but a lot of it doesn't. And that's, it's always interesting to me when people write off spaces. So I'd like to go and play there and also because like, it's where Gen Z and specifically Gen Alpha are spending their time.

So yes, I've been looking at a lot of companies doing a couple of things, haven't spoken publicly about any of them. Might at some point you do your best to try and get me to say things like this on this podcast. But i'm not quite i'm not quite although i will say that i don't i don't know when this is actually going to air but i did actually sign a term sheet for something a few hours ago so that's pretty exciting i will leave you on that cliff i will leave you on the cliffhanger

Aaron: Maybe we'll learn more next time Kieran, besides the world that you operate in, what else in the games industry are you most excited about right now?

Kieran: I look I think there's a lot of optimism just across the industry about a lot of the next generation of games that are coming through. I think a lot of the, there's obviously, UEFN and what's happening on Roblox, but also some of the indies that I've been talking to over the last sort of six, 12 months with some of the.

The vision that they have for building games and platforms, knowing the audience that's going to be coming through the next generation, I think is pretty cool. It's pretty exciting. They're building it from the ground up for an audience that are going to build more of their identity and the community online at an, at a younger age than has ever been done before, which is really cool.

And that kind of brings me to, to the question I had to deal in actually, which is how. In terms of, and I ask this selfishly for myself the next generation that we're building for not so much in terms of parents, but in terms of kids how do you feel that they are going to be different from the generation of kids who, who came through the technology that, that super awesome initially built to ultimately service them and empower them and what, To the extent you think that the next generation is going to be any different, how do you think that they'll be using games differently?

To how they have a decade or two decades ago.

Dylan: I think that this is partially why I'm remained very interested in the UGC space because again, I don't think this is exclusively true of Gen Alpha is true of Gen Z as well, to a large degree they are all default creator rather than default consumer.

And I think that maybe for Gen Alpha coming through, they are defaults capitalist. In terms of being very comfortable monetizing things early on. So I think I, it's going, they're becoming full stack digital citizens by the time they're eight.

Whether they are, creating and selling skins in some shape or form or they're or something else. I think one of the interesting things that we didn't really talk about, but which has been a factor and I don't think that many people have really thought about it too much, is that we've had a very successful.

Rollout over the last 10 years of payment tools for kids. Whether it's prepaid or like what Apple's been doing in family accounts and things like that. And you really have a fully e commerce enabled younger generation which is just there. And that's created a real gap between parents and kids, which is very interesting.

And, so I think that is a huge difference in a lot of ways. Current to the generation that's come through before, and this is my point around like the size of the opportunity here, because, like kids have been buying stuff forever, obviously. But now they're doing it online and they are doing it like of their own volition and they have their own influence and they've got their own methods of doing so.

So I, I think that's going to be one of the, one of the big changes coming through.

Aaron: Awesome. Final question for you guys. If anyone wants to learn more or reach out see what you guys are up to, what your companies are up to, where should they go? Kieran, I'll kick this to you first.

Kieran: Yeah, you can check us out kid.com. You can find me on LinkedIn by searching my name. And then I'm on tour at TG Donovan. Typically posting on observations around gaming and venture investment.

Aaron: Awesome. Dylan, where can everyone find your musings and anything else you're working on?

Dylan: Most consistently on Twitter. I write a newsletter. You can get it at DylanCollins.com. Which is very rough approximate thoughts. Reader beware.

Aaron: No, I like it. I'm a happy reader. Awesome. Guys, let's go ahead and wrap up here. Thank you both for joining me today. And best wishes to everything you're working on.

And to all of our listeners and viewers, thank you as always for tuning in. And we'll catch you on next time.

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