Andrew Saunders (0:11.916)
All right, all right, all right. Welcome into another episode of the DadBurb podcast. We're gonna do a quick bonus episode here for you following up on our screen time theme that we've had going over the last few weeks. Adam is back from Wisely ⁓ and he has brought his co-founder and president, ⁓ Isla, who happens to be his daughter. So I don't know how you feel being bossed around by your kid, but it's a dynamic you two can adjust in the company, I guess.
⁓ We're gonna do a ⁓ quick sick check and then we are gonna talk about the AAP's recent updates that Mom are discussed over on the DadVerb channel. And then Isla is gonna give us a bit of her story around what it's like being the president and co-founder of a screen time app for kids ⁓ that's not letting her watch as many movies as she wants. I don't know, it seems counterintuitive to me, but let's get into it. Adam.
Isla, you wanna go first? Who's sick? Everybody healthy? No cabbage-packaged kids with scarlet fever?
Adam (1:16.312)
You're not sick, right? The little one was a little bit sick, huh? Stuffy nose. ⁓ Yeah, the little baby, we have two years old, so she was a bit sick. She's still going every week to play gyms and mommy and me classes. So basically, I never make it a whole month without. ⁓ Nothing severe, lucky so far, nothing too crazy.
Andrew Saunders (1:36.150)
I, ⁓ it's an ongoing joke. I don't think we make it two weeks. ⁓ I really don't. ⁓ We are happy and healthy over here. ⁓ The newborn's good. The toddlers are good. Everybody's healthy. It's not going to last long. Like that's a, ⁓ uh-oh. But ⁓ anyway, ⁓ all right, let's get into it. Ila, you want to start us off with,
Adam (1:39.639)
Thank you.
Adam (1:50.818)
That's awesome.
Andrew Saunders (2:1.110)
Your dad kind of gave us his side of how this app became a thing and invented, but why don't you give us your side and what it's like being the president of a company. ⁓ At five? What are you, six? How old are you over here? ⁓ Ten. All right. ⁓
Adam (2:9.836)
Yes. ⁓
then.
Adam (2:17.004)
Really, so basically the real story was when I was little or I would always go on the screen and I would really like it just like any other kid. And basically I would use a regular screen time app that lots of parents and children use. ⁓ And so when the time is off, it just shuts off and you can't do it anymore. I, any other parent, I would run to my dad and say, dad, please give me more time, please, please. ⁓ And he would ⁓ say, I love.
Why don't you just do schoolwork and I'll give it back to you as a reward system. And so I said, well, why isn't there an app that just makes me answer the questions to unlock the device instead of having to fight with you. And that was really how it started.
Andrew Saunders (3:1.964)
And you guys couldn't find that app, right? And so here we are. All right, so if you're the president and co-founder, ⁓ what's your dad here? Co-founder and chairman of the board, ⁓ CEO?
Adam (3:5.805)
Yeah.
Adam (3:15.342)
⁓ He helps me ⁓ with the app and he helped me design it but I did put in a lot of work but he also helps with other things so he's like my manager. ⁓
Andrew Saunders (3:26.825)
⁓ all right. ⁓ I mean, because president's like an SEC term, right? Like, like on the paperwork?
Adam (3:33.367)
Yeah, she's there. She joins the calls every day. She probably spends realistically like two plus hours a day. And in kid terms, that's probably like a full-time job. So she's very involved. Yeah, she drew out the logo. She comes up with the design of how the questions should be. ⁓ she's the test product for basically third and fourth and kind of like fifth graders that like... ⁓
Andrew Saunders (3:43.980)
Yeah, it's fair.
Adam (3:58.755)
that model in that like niche of age category, she falls right in there. So she kind of knows if the questions seem ridiculous, if we need to talk back to the AI and say, Hey, this is crazy, which it was like that in the beginning. And now it's very refined and it's kind of on auto.
Andrew Saunders (4:12.472)
⁓ No, no high level calculus for a fifth grader then that's all right
Adam (4:15.468)
We try not to, we try not to, you he could stick his way in there to test them to see how advanced the kids are, but right now it's pretty spot on.
Andrew Saunders (4:23.320)
All right. All right. I'm trying to think of what else is coming up. mean, you pulling in a salary, like you saving up for college or a car, Barbie Dreamhouse. What's your, are you getting paid? Or is he going with child labor here? What's the, no? Nice. All right.
Adam (4:37.294)
⁓ She's got a piece of equity. She's working for the future and she's got a big chance that maybe this will become something good. And I think it's a good, ⁓ very good learning experience for her that she gets to be involved in something that's such an early age. For me, it's very rewarding that my own daughter is a part of it. ⁓ And she gives a lot of good feedback. And without a kid involved, as ⁓ funny as it might sound, guess for old school business people, they think kids, maybe that's not a good idea.
It actually made the app a lot, a lot better. She's really improved a ton of.
Andrew Saunders (5:9.730)
Just the generic feedback and the kind of no BS answers that come straight out.
Adam (5:15.116)
Yeah, you know, if a button should be here, a kid's expecting to press this, that's crazy. Why? You know, it's designed, the adults are coding it. I'm not a coder. We just have a full-blown team that's all in-house. So the people actually do respect and answer to her and she tells them, hey, we should do this or that. Of course they make suggestions and she also respects them and listens.
Andrew Saunders (5:33.282)
Nice, all right. Well, it sounds like you guys are having a blast over there creating this app and ⁓ developing it. And then you guys just passed a few thousand subscribers, right? Like you went over that limit recently. ⁓ It wasn't, was it just before we recorded or just like, I saw it on the website and I was like, ⁓ why didn't we talk about this? ⁓
Adam (5:47.042)
Yes.
Adam (5:54.861)
Yeah, so we released it and we went to CES and we were featured at CES in early January and then we publicly released it. It was just being like tested by friends and family. And now we're getting thousands and thousands of downloads. ⁓
every couple of days and weeks and it's really starting ⁓ to catch some fire. I mean, big credit to you guys and being featured on many things. Isla will actually be on Fox on this Wednesday, so three more days from today. ⁓ And she was on NBC maybe a week or two weeks ago. ⁓ So people like this story ⁓ and it's just such a unique app and a real value proposition to parents and kids and designed by a kid like Isla. So it's catching some fire.
Andrew Saunders (6:37.078)
Nice, nice, I like it, I like it. ⁓ So let's get to the kind of the American, what is it, American Association of Pediatrics, which I don't know why I can't articulate that well. ⁓ They just updated their screen time recommendations and that is both good and bad, right? I mean, I think it's gonna work out really well for you guys, because that makes the whole time limit thing kind of ⁓ neither here nor there, but I know Mamar did.
was it 10, 20 minutes on it? ⁓ He did a very in-depth overview of what they said. And I just kind of wanted to get your guys' opinions of ⁓ how that changes and what that looks like for you guys going forward. ⁓ Do you think this is movement in the right direction? Do you think this is movement in somewhere you weren't expecting? How does that fall out for you guys? Because as a parent, I kind of went with my mom. was like, yeah.
Okay, I should be reading to my kids after they spend three hours on the screen. Duh. Like, interaction, that makes sense. ⁓ But ⁓ I guess that's not intuitive for everyone.
Adam (7:44.621)
Yeah, I think ⁓ the healthy balance is still the most important. mean, I'm sure they have access to information that I don't. I'm sure that these, ⁓ from a pediatric standpoint, they have a lot of doctors and mental health and behavioral health experts. ⁓ We also have one on board with us too, and we've done a ton of research on it. I do think that it's still very healthy for parents and children to have, like you said, balance of actually reading a book. ⁓
whether it, depending on the age, course, coloring with them, playing actual board games, whatever you might be doing outside of just pure screen time. But ⁓ exactly right. Yeah. And I took some notes on that too, and I remembered it. So it still said, think from like up till 24 months, it should be like highly limited. ⁓ So like sub an hour a day, close to zero, if they're like below 18 months, which I think is ⁓ probably intuitive for parents, but maybe not, maybe even like a 12 month old, they're still doing it.
Andrew Saunders (8:17.464)
building a small business, know, just the side activities. ⁓
Adam (8:39.853)
And then from the six years old and up, which actually is exactly wisely, wisely is pretty much from six to 13 kindergarten through around sixth grade ⁓ is what we offer it for. It says that there is no limitations. And for us, ⁓ we think that the limitations are actually ⁓ kind of toxic, which how the other apps were limiting it. So we just turned that into a positive to where we said, Hey, the parent, still can make your decisions of how much you want to limit it or not.
But instead of just gifting it to the child via a fight and you're surrendering, right, and losing that battle, which I always lost to Isla, now the child actually has to earn it by getting some type of enrichment, education, and experience that betters their life. So for us, the more time on the screen, the more questions you're going to ask, the more likely you are to earn that time via enrichment. So we think it's great. ⁓ What do you think, Isla, from them having a lot more time and then having to use wisely versus anything else?
Yeah, so I think that it's you really have to have like a good balance. You shouldn't just stay on the screen all day, which is what I think. ⁓ And that's what I do. I don't stay on the screen all day. Yeah, ⁓ I think that you should really have a nice balance. And I think parents should play with their kids and interact because really it's really good for them to interact instead of just learning off of the screen.
Andrew Saunders (10:6.211)
So what's your favorite kind of downtime out of the screen, right? You're not small business saying, you're not sitting in the board meetings or leading your team of developers. What's your favorite ⁓ non-screen thing to do? Like what are you and dad like to go out and when it's break time and you're not talking to some weird guy on a podcast. ⁓
Adam (10:25.739)
I like doing gymnastics.
Andrew Saunders (10:29.497)
All right. ⁓ Is that a team sport? Is this like you out there doing cartwheels, Adam?
Adam (10:34.457)
Tell them each other. Yeah, I'm a competitive gymnast, so I'm out there a lot. Competing and training.
Andrew Saunders (10:39.235)
Nice.
Okay, fun. My sister did gymnastics pretty competitively as a kid. I don't know why she's still.
Adam (10:47.523)
Yeah, Isla's traveling. She's traveling all over the country. She's on a very competitive team, the best team in South Carolina. And she trains at the gym six days a week, three to four hours a day, every day, a lot of private coaching too. And she was just in Georgia a couple of days ago and in a competition. And then she's ⁓ all over the country every couple of weeks. And so I travel with her and so does my wife sometimes, but with the baby, my wife stays at home more and I take Isla.
to the practices and watch her. got, I don't know, maybe thousands of videos in my phone while she's doing the moves. I'd say free time is ⁓ either doing some homeschool work and if it has nothing to do with education or wisely, then she's outside in the backyard doing handstand presses and whatever else. ⁓
Andrew Saunders (11:21.421)
Hahaha
Andrew Saunders (11:34.969)
⁓ All the fun things that you go, ⁓ yep, I can't do that no more. Or I ⁓ wish I weighed 60 pounds and I could stand on my hands again. Yeah.
Adam (11:43.014)
I wouldn't.
Adam (11:47.543)
I would be in the hospital if I went for it.
Andrew Saunders (11:49.049)
⁓ Right? Right? I watch my toddlers and sometimes I'm just like, no, ⁓ can't do that anymore. ⁓ I know that's an injury waiting to happen.
Well, is there anything else you guys want to leave the listeners, the dads out there, the parents? ⁓ I don't know that we have many kids that listen, but ⁓ a message with or a thought that we haven't already said, something that has resonated for the two of you.
Adam (12:15.599)
You want to give him anything else? Sure. Go ahead, tell him anything else you want about the app. New features maybe that are coming out that you thought of? Go ahead. Yeah, so I also thought of a new feature that is coming out. It hasn't gone out yet, but it's coming. It's an avatar that you can create your own avatar.
for it ⁓ and based on how you're doing your progress on the app, that's how many points you get for the rewards of like the different customizations of the avatar.
Andrew Saunders (12:45.662)
⁓ so a macroeconomics lesson inside the app. I like it.
Adam (12:49.967)
⁓ Yeah, Aila's got a bunch of good features coming out. People are using it and ⁓ so far the rewards based system like Learn to Earn has been very well received. ⁓ And ⁓ yeah, we would love to just have people keep using it. Any feedback they could give us, it would be awesome. ⁓ We make a lot of improvements that way and we share the feedback with Aila and Aila is telling us if that makes sense and we should actually spend time and money fixing whatever the others recommend. And we've made a lot of improvements from that.
Andrew Saunders (13:18.851)
Nice. All right. Well, again, ⁓ Adam and Isla from Wisely here talking about screen time in this bonus episode. Since we're now on a two or three episode stint for screen time, plus Mamar over on the main channel, ⁓ don't forget you can like and subscribe on anywhere your podcasts are heard. We are now out there on as many channels as possible. ⁓ If you leave us a comment, we do our best to get back to it.
And you can always join us on Facebook or over on our Discord server. ⁓ We also have the Father Figured program for pregnancy through year one for those of you who are new fathers out there. This has been a fun, quick little bonus episode of the DadVerb podcast. Thank you again, Ilan Adam, for taking the time.
Adam (14:5.775)
Thanks again for featuring us. We appreciate it.
Andrew Saunders (14:7.226)
⁓ No problem. Peace.
