Ep 185: Kieran Donovan
Raising $45M from a16z & Lightspeed for a 14-Month-Old Startup to Protect Child Privacy Online
Kieran Donovan is the Founder and CEO of k-ID, a company dedicated to protecting children and teens online. Earlier this year the company raised a 45mUSD Series A round led by A16Z and Lightspeed Venture Partners. With a background in privacy law, Kieran combines his expertise with a commitment to creating age-appropriate online experiences.
On this episode we talk about:
Challenges of trust and safety in digital spaces for kids
How traditional controls often fall short of creating safe online spaces for children.
Why parent involvement is critical in creating positive online experiences for kids.
Insights on navigating legal, ethical, and technical challenges in the trust and safety space.
How advancements in AI and tech can support safer digital environments.
We are on YouTube and Linkedin as well
Watch select full-length episodes on our YouTube channel > https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP6ueaLnjS-CQfrMCm2EoTA
Connect with us on Linkedin > https://www.linkedin.com/company/pursuit-of-scrappiness/
Read the full episode transcript below
Uldis Teraudkalns (00:02.413)
Hello, hello, hello, dear listeners. Welcome to another episode of the Pursuit of Scrappiness podcast. Whether you're building a business, running a team, or just starting out in your career, we are here to bring you scrappy and actionable insights to help you become more productive. My name is Uldis TΔraudkalns and my co-host is JΔnis Zeps
Janis Zeps (00:22.25)
Hey everyone.
Uldis Teraudkalns (00:23.957)
And you should see what the AI transcript usually puts out as my name and the answer's name. It's every time something new and funny, good stuff. Yeah, we could actually make a post about that for sure. So before we start, a quick reminder to follow us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts. It helps more than you know. And in return, you will see and hear more than 180 episodes of Ageless Wisdom to become a scrappier and better...
Janis Zeps (00:32.31)
We have to publish this.
Uldis Teraudkalns (00:53.153)
version of yourself in life and in business. So plenty explore, go there, subscribe and be the first one to know every Tuesday when we come out. About today's topic. Trust and safety is a relatively new term in I would say at least tech company building, but an age old problem. And companies can go out of business if this is neglected.
Or in some cases, maybe help electing US presidents. don't know, it can work also in the better direction, but mostly you should be aware of that. So most cases, it's smart to have regard for trust and safety and much more important than what happens to our companies, it happens to our kids. Are they having age appropriate experiences online? What are the right amounts of digital exposure?
Are they not lagging behind if we limit them? And many other such questions bother parents, disregarding their career, whether you're running a starting a company or just starting out in your career. It still is a big matter for everybody. So let's talk about this today. And to do that, we have invited Kieran Donovan. Hi, Kieran.
Janis Zeps (02:05.14)
haha
Kieran (02:16.565)
Hey, great to be here. Super excited to talk all things trust and safety.
Uldis Teraudkalns (02:22.019)
So Kieran is the founder of KID or Kid, a company dedicated to protecting children and teens online. So earlier this year, the company raised a 45 million US dollar Series A round led by Andresen Horowitz and Lightspeed Venture Partners. You might have heard of those guys. And with the background in privacy law, Kieran combines an expertise and also a commitment to creating age appropriate online experiences. So let's dive in and find out.
what's all about. kids are spending an increasing amount of time online. I can attest that from personal experience. I feel somewhat uncomfortable about it, but I also want my kids to stay in touch with the technologies, you know, not to be the only kid without a phone at school. And is that a trade off that you hear often?
or maybe people are thinking about these matters differently than I am.
Kieran (03:24.406)
Yeah, it's a great question. And so I think one of the weird things about where we are today is that when our kids go online today, their first interaction with that online environment is typically like a pop-up that asks them to confirm how old they are or to input their date of birth. And they know after that first try, they have to be over the age of 13, right? Even if they're eight, nine years old, they know.
Okay, if I want to get into this thing, that's how I do it. And so their first interaction is having to lie about their age. That's their very first interaction with the internet, which is kind of crazy, right? When you consider how much online gaming have kids and just kids are building more of their identity and their community online earlier than ever. And yet the internet hasn't quite caught up, kept up with the fact that the kids are
inhabiting more and more of that space. so I think kind of when we zoom out, what I think about is, well, what if we flip the script and we acknowledge that kids are in these spaces and how do we empower them in those spaces where they often already exist? Rather than having to be that hidden user, right? I better make sure I don't get found out because as soon as the platform finds out, like I'm eight or nine, then that's it. My account gets
You know, my account gets needed, my history gets needed. Well, you know, I, I can't interact with my friends anymore, all that sort of crazy stuff. So, I, that's how I think about it is, you know, by building trust and safety in it at the, at the outset, you're actually doing the right thing for the kids who, who want to be there and that you want, you want to spot a new platform.
Uldis Teraudkalns (05:13.731)
Yeah. And I think I've heard multiple times, kind of like a punchline is like less control offline and more control online is what's required. Sounds great, but you know, like how to do it in a reasonable and responsible manner.
Kieran (05:35.279)
Yeah, it's a balancing act. think part of it is education. And so historically, when you think about parental controls for anything, it's really binary. It's like it's off or it's on. That's pretty much it. But when you redesign that experience and you think, okay, well, what do parents actually want in terms of understanding what their kids are up to online? A lot of the time it's fear of the unknown.
And so how do you bring that into the light? And so lot of what we do is around, well, how do we let the parent know that their kid's building this incredible community online, that they're a good online citizen, you know, they're building an amazing reputation score, that they're helping others in online games, maybe they're now moderating a community and they're becoming a leader in that online space. As soon as you can educate parents on...
on lot of the good things that are happening. And we can deal with a lot of the chat about some of the other risks. But I think that is what we've discovered is that you really have to rethink and move away from parent controls and to parent engagement.
Janis Zeps (06:49.091)
And in terms of just risks that are out there, maybe to discover like the main ones, I think we all can imagine some, you know, kids, protecting kids kind of from themselves, what they can find and also protecting them from somebody who can find them, I guess. What are those main risks that parents all over the world are concerned with now?
Kieran (07:14.17)
Yeah, so here's an interesting stat and this kind of blew my mind when I learned it, which is in terms of under 13s who go online onto social media, 70 % of those users under the age of 13 that sign up are actually doing so with the help of their parents. And so that means that the parents are cool with it. The kids are interested in getting into that space, but there is no way of knowing.
that there is a kid, there is someone under the age of 13 on that online platform. What does that mean? Well, that means that all of the rules of the platform are built for teenagers and up. They're not built for that younger audience, even though the parents are cool with them going online. And, you know, maybe they have an open dialogue with their kids about, hey, you know, let me know if you get any strange messages or things like this. But they're doing it almost like offline in a way, because the platform doesn't know they're there.
And so I think that's, that's kind of wild that the platform can't be in a position to support that younger audience and have all the good stuff in terms of, you know, preventing, you know, over 13 accounts from messaging under 13 accounts and stuff like that. if everybody who's going on has to lie, even with the help of their parent. and so that, that's kind of where you sort of start rethinking the model, right? Where when you
dealing with under 13s and you're building out under 13 account systems and should they have access to chat? Can they chat with friends? Should friends be approved by a parent? Are there limits? there geo limits, time limits to when they should have access to certain features and things like this? When you start thinking about a lot, the fundamental like first piece of it is, okay, well, let's acknowledge that under 13s are there. And as soon as you do that, then you can actually build all of those tools to address what,
you're getting at, which is these risks, because it's a terrible situation if, as I say, 70 % of the under 13 year olds are lying about their age with the help of their parents to get online on social media, and now they're getting messaged by random people online. Well, that's because the platform doesn't know they're under the age of 13.
Uldis Teraudkalns (09:30.409)
Okay, but if I guess it's going to be laying maybe it up for you and your business, but like if Apple or Google doesn't solve it and the big social media platforms don't solve it, is it even possible to somehow address it and go with Like the stuff that I have seen, it's like spying on your kids, right? How like...
how many minutes are they spending on that and what can they do and what can't they do. But it doesn't sound like what you are suggesting that is the solution, right?
Kieran (10:11.594)
Yeah, for us, we actually, the term parent controls is actually banned within the company because to us, it's about every time we're building an interaction between a parent and a kid, we're thinking, how can we make this experience better? How does the interaction with mom or dad help gameplay? And that could be, okay, well, you know, how do we let the kid tell the parent, hey, I'm overperforming in this game. Like I'm amazing at this and...
You know, I'm building a community and I'm respected by the community. And maybe I want to share clips with mom or dad or mom or dad can see my highlights real. They can see, my gosh, like my kids amazing at this today. There's no visibility at all. It's just, you know, you buy a gift card and you're like, I don't know what my kids up to in that online game. So that that's where I think the big shift needs to happen is moving away from what you're talking about, which is that very binary. And again, this, this,
absence of knowledge. Where you're like, don't know, I'm a little bit nervous and so therefore I'm going to set some controls without any understanding of what the actual experience of my kid is. so education is a big part of it.
Uldis Teraudkalns (11:25.591)
Yeah, it sounds like more like not parental controls, but maybe parental trust building that an involvement. I never thought of receiving some kind of highlight reels.
Kieran (11:39.714)
Yeah, I mean there's lots of things in it. Yeah, yeah, you're honest
Janis Zeps (11:41.777)
How to kids.
Janis Zeps (11:46.29)
No, no, just go ahead. was thinking, how do kids feel about that? I mean, when we were kids and gaming on the PlayStation 1, I was not even thinking about sharing, you know, like my gameplay with my parents. They wouldn't get it. The generation divide was so big. Now it's smaller, I think, because we are online as well. do kids even wanna? Maybe they're happy about hiding their age or...
Kieran (12:14.525)
Yeah, so you it's a good question. So we see it as an 80 20 where based on all of the research that we've done in our parent community, 80 % of kids are totally cool with mom and dad being part of that because you can bring mom and dad into the conversation. You can help educate mom and dad. As you say, it's a different generational divide today. We, you all of us, we grew up with the internet, we played games online. So for our kids, it's like, okay, we get it. get
the positive and we get some of the sensitivities in terms of risk. So how do you reinvent parent engagement in that sort of model is where our heads at. And I think there's a ton of exciting things and I don't want to sort of spoil the whole roadmap, but bringing in, this is how your kid is contributing in a positive way to their gaming community. by the way, did you know that
You know, your kid is ranked in the top five in terms of, you know, their, their friendship group and their matchmaking and, whatever game they're particularly playing. You know, that sort of information is the stuff that just doesn't exist today, unless you manually go and learn about it. And what we've discovered is that when you put that in front of the parent and particularly given the digital acumen of parents today, you just have to show that. then, kids get excited because we've actually seen an uptick.
in allowances. It's like, well, okay, I'm cool with this because I now understand that this is great for your social development. I understand that, you know, you're maybe at school, you're a little bit nervous or a little bit shy, but online, you're building this incredible community. And as soon as you convey that to the parent, it's a totally different experience for the kid. You're helping on the kid with being able to present that convincing argument to mom and dad that, hey, this is a good thing.
Uldis Teraudkalns (14:13.695)
We've been kind of dancing around all the time this topic and what you think about it, but I don't think we have directly heard of your company and your kind of at least first steps on the roadmap, what you're doing to address this matter. So maybe we can hear maybe not an elevator pitch, but something of that sort.
Kieran (14:44.166)
Yeah, totally. I mean, the biggest challenge today, if you're a game publisher or you're an online platform, if you're a dev and you're going to build anything and you stare down the risks associated with an under 13 audience, it's crazy. You you, you hear about all the crazy penalties. You know that if you're going to open up to an under 13, under 13 audience, you need to have limits on chat interactions, friend listings. If you have leaderboards like
Can a kid's name be public on a leaderboard? There's so many things as you go down the rabbit hole, even if you're dealing with, say, advertising, needing to turn off targeted advertising if you've got younger audiences on online platform. In-app purchases, making sure an in-app purchase is approved by a parent. Dealing with even AI now, it's a big thing. If you've got an under 13 player or an under 13 on an online platform.
and they're interacting with an AI chatbot, you don't want that data from that kid being ingested into the model and being used to train the model. And so they're all the issues you deal with. And so it is much easier if I'm a dev today to say, do you know what? That's insanely hard. I just want to get my product up and running. I can't deal with all that. And so I'm going to make a decision today because I'm launching tomorrow to say, I'm 13 and up because I don't have the bandwidth to manage all that. And the problem with that is
everything that we kind of started the conversation with, right? Yes, under 13s will be on that platform. Maybe it's 10 % of audience, maybe it's 50%. You don't know until you launch. And so now you've got all these kids on this thing. And now you have to reverse engineer your way around it. And you're to be concerned about what does that mean for my MAU? Am I going to get a drop off? Like, is this going to like make the experience terrible if I'm bringing in this stuff now retroactively? And so what we do is
our platform enables you to address all of that out of the box. And so you as a dev can go on our platform and say, hey, these are all my features. These are the markets I'm launching in, and I want to access and empower the under 13 audience or the kid or teen audience. And out of the box, our APIs will automatically age adapt all of those features that I mentioned. So what it means is that chat, for example, for an under 13,
Kieran (17:08.937)
we have a whole parent approval flow. So the kid can get straight in, chats off, and then when they go to turn chat on, it delivers them a QR code so that mom or dad can come and go like, yeah, sweet, okay, I'll get this. I'll switch this on for you. And we would do that for feature flagging for hundreds and hundreds of different things.
Uldis Teraudkalns (17:28.653)
So it's like an SDK for safety. It would be like a simplification or.
Kieran (17:36.231)
That's it. That's it. I mean, it's all API based because we want to be fully cross platform. But that's it. It's one API that you plug into your game or your online product. And now you can access the youth audience in a safe and empowered way.
Janis Zeps (17:55.339)
So basically now how it works if I lie about my age and I put in, I'm 11 but I put in that I was born in 1905 or something, the platform is legally all good. If something happens, they don't have any responsibility.
Kieran (18:15.915)
Yeah, so historically I would say yes, that's how lot of the internet has worked. We're seeing that change in a lot of countries now. So Australia and the UK are introducing requirements around validating age, whether it's through ID or facial age estimation and things like that. So that world is changing. But here's the thing, and this is why I say we operate in a world of 80-20. 80 % of kids that are coming in,
Janis Zeps (18:22.506)
Yeah.
Kieran (18:45.067)
provided they're not going to be kicked out, a totally cool saying that they're 11. The only reason they say that they're 15 or born in 1905 is because they're like, yeah, sure, about, I can't be honest. There is no, there is no option for me to be honest.
Uldis Teraudkalns (19:02.999)
Yeah, it just reminds me of these websites where you have some kind of adult content and there's basically only one button. It's like, I'm 18 years old. Yes, I'm 18 years old for sure.
Kieran (19:16.234)
Totally. Totally.
Uldis Teraudkalns (19:18.871)
Well, speaking about the business itself, mean, it's a kind of scary space to go, you know, sensitive topic, et cetera, at least from the outside. And maybe you can talk about some unique experiences or challenges that you have encountered while building in such a, I would say, high risk space or I hope you haven't gotten into any trouble yet.
Kieran (19:44.438)
Yeah.
No, mean, we our company is 50 % engineers and 50 % lawyers, which means we're 100 % paranoid about everything. We Yeah, it looked as is. It is a sensitive space and we sit at the intersection of all of the regulatory complexity, parents, kids, platforms, and a variety of other stakeholders that we see get involved like education is one way.
Uldis Teraudkalns (19:54.883)
You
Kieran (20:17.159)
We've had requests saying, hey, like, well, what does this mean when my kid's at school? Can I have a version of this that my kid can play or that the teacher can approve in school? So you start going down this rabbit hole where you have a lot of different stakeholders and a lot of different use cases that you need to manage. What I would say is clearly this is a challenge and it is an area that's ripe for disruption. I was desperately hoping someone would solve it.
And after spectating that for a long time and not seeing a solution present itself, we decided to build the company and take on the challenge. And I think some of the early lessons have been...
you very quickly get thrown edge cases. You know, when you're building tech, when you're building a business, you typically will focus on, what is most, what matters to most of my users? But when you're dealing with kids online, it's the edge cases that, that pop up really quickly. So I'll you an example. Divorced parents managing a single kid account. Another one might be, well, what happens if I have
multiple adults who want to manage an account and it's not the parents, it's mom and a teacher from school or a coach or something else where the kid might be spending a lot of time, right? And so, you know, someone else would be there helping to manage and unlock these things. So you very quickly run up against all these edge cases because they get thrown at you and parents are pretty vocal.
Uldis Teraudkalns (22:02.355)
Yeah, I I was exactly wondering about that. Like, who has the rulebook of what should be, you know, included in that safety kit, right? It's completely, completely, I mean, there might be some kind of legal acts that you can rely on a bit, but mostly it's basically your own life experience, right? And then these edge cases, which I can imagine are just...
Only you have seen the tip of the iceberg.
Kieran (22:34.928)
I can tell you now we have a long, long roadmap of all of the edge cases and we're taking some time to focus on a lot of those because it turns out that in certain cultures or in certain countries or sometimes because of regulation, some of those edge cases are something you need to manage out of the gate. look, I would love to say that I've seen amazing examples of
this, but you're right, we're having to invent a lot of new ways of doing this and rethinking again. I hate the word parent control as we ban it in the company because everything and all of that mentality has to be steered towards, how do we empower? This isn't about controlling, this is about empowering.
Uldis Teraudkalns (23:25.599)
Okay, and let's assume that I'm building a game or social platform and I'm not smart enough to get services from you yet. What would be like the absolute minimum things that I should think about in terms of trust and safety to even, you know, start and not get into... I'm 18.
Janis Zeps (23:46.079)
This button, I am 18.
Kieran (23:48.815)
Yeah, definitely don't do that. So there are a handful of things. One is the second you have any social features, there's always going to be sensitivity around that. based on all of my experience and my other founders, one of my founders built out Trust and Safety at Google and then at Facebook. so we've got this like a lot of collective knowledge around building these.
The earlier you invest in tools that help the community have positive interactions, the better it will be for the platform. If you launch, say, chat, and there's no moderation, no reporting functionality, nothing, watch how quickly that gets toxic. And then all of a sudden people end up turning it off. Do remember, like, I remember when Xbox Live launched back on the original Xbox and
Within the space of two weeks, I wasn't even connecting my headset anymore because it was so toxic, all the audio chat. was just why, you you'd have people playing music or shouting abuse or you'd just have just random stuff. And so people end up turning off the feature because it gets taken over by toxicity.
Janis Zeps (25:12.053)
We actually covered it in of the previous episodes, the founder of a company that deals with it, especially for women. Apparently, there's also lot of bullying and this hate goes on, especially if they know that the girl has joined the game chat group or a room.
Yeah, it's interesting world. I'm not a big gamer these days, but I can imagine because I know people on the internet and I can really imagine. And I know myself, especially at that 12 or no 12 maybe too early, but at 14, you know, it's when internet appeared, I think a lot of us, you know, were very kind of vocal on what we say there. wasn't much moderation back in those days.
Uldis Teraudkalns (25:36.087)
and you know yourself.
Kieran (25:56.944)
Yeah, I mean, I remember it was self-regulating, right? That's what ended up happening, was the community was self-regulating. I think given how, you know, that was before, you know, broadband internet, that was back in, you there were these almost like these checkpoints that prevented these bottlenecks that almost functioned as something that would almost self-regulate the individuals as well. It's like, gosh, like,
Janis Zeps (26:12.128)
Yeah.
Kieran (26:23.856)
I have my audio chat on and I'm just using my audio chat all the time. My downloads and my other stuff, I'm going to be very fast, so I better not use that. And so now we're in the world of everyone's interconnected and everything happens in an instant.
Uldis Teraudkalns (26:38.861)
So that's today and how do you see where this is going? Once again, we're trying to pull your roadmap from you, but yeah, what do you see as the main direction where this trust and safety for kids is going besides enabling access and building trust with parents?
Kieran (27:08.048)
Yeah. So, what I can say is there are, once you solve, start solving the trust and safety piece of these platforms for particularly for under 13s, under 16s in Europe, you start realizing that there are tons of opportunities that come with that. One is bringing parents into these online experiences directly, which is pretty cool.
And that's a really compelling value proposition for a platform. So you're like, OK, so you're telling me this kid has signed up and now mom or dad's going to come and sign up as well. So you're increasing your MAU. It's a great metric to demonstrate for the platform. Another one is spend. So you think today your kid will ask you, hey, I want a gift card so I can have my $50 to spend in this online game. No visibility over what's being spent on. No idea what's going on, right?
Well, you know, why can't you see wishlisting and why can't you see things where it's like, hey, this is the stuff that my kid actually wants. And you think about Christmas is a great example where, you when we were kids, it's like, there's a physical thing underneath a Christmas tree. Kids today, you know, my son is way more interested in virtual hats than he is in real hats. And kidding out is an avatar.
So if I can, if maybe I know what's popular, maybe I can even craft it, right? I can mod something and deliver that to him in game. That's where I get excited because now that's just reshaping the whole landscape of what it means to be a kid and get your parent involved in like an online game.
Janis Zeps (28:53.928)
This reminds me of South Park episode about Warcraft. Kids were like, I don't know if you're a fan of South Park, but you know, the parents started showing up there as well at some point. It a good episode.
Uldis Teraudkalns (28:58.762)
Hahaha
Kieran (29:03.828)
Yeah, yeah, totally.
Uldis Teraudkalns (29:06.051)
I just remember other scenes from that series, okay, that was not touched. But it kind of sounds to me like it warrants a complete change of mindset because currently I think very often gaming is seen as a necessary evil. And I think we've gone like a...
Janis Zeps (29:08.572)
Yeah, me too, it's like, you know, but...
Yeah.
Uldis Teraudkalns (29:30.783)
a big circle because when we were growing up, I don't know about you, but like I had no limits basically, you know, if I had my homework done, I could play as much as I wanted. There was no, no controls whatsoever because they didn't even understand, you know, most of the things we were doing, you know, shooting people's heads off and things like that. And now
parents see have this ultra anti digital, you know, it's like, okay, you know, kids have it, other kids have it. Okay, we should get it also for our kid and, and they're spending so much time there when they should be outside. Let's, you know, give them an hour a day or hour every two days. And what you're talking about, it sounds like the, next, next iteration where we
accept that it is not an unnecessary or necessary evil, but it is a part of our kids' life. I also already heard some Christmas wishes about 200 or 2000 V-Box or whatever that's currency from Fortnite. I haven't played myself that much, but it just...
means that you have to see things a lot differently, but it's very hard. As you said, there's huge barriers, right? Kid comes to you and asks for 50 euros or dollars for gaming, you're going to say no. It's just an automatic no. And you're just going to be worried that they somehow haven't gotten their hands on your credit card to just start, you know, splurging. So, yeah, I think it requires a big shift.
Kieran (31:15.093)
It does, it does. It's a big philosophical shift around it all. remember, you know, I would play online games pretty late. I remember LAN parties, you know, there's tons of positive experiences that I remember as a kid growing up and playing games. So here's a funny thing that someone told me recently, which is when the printing press first came in,
there was a lot of negative news media at the time because kids were going to be stuck in books all day. it's, you know what, it's, it's, you know, the buck, the buck is passed to, know, the, new, the new thing that kids are into in each generation. And so I think that kind of helps put it in perspective. It's, are a lot of positive things that come about from online gaming.
Uldis Teraudkalns (31:55.011)
Terrible. Absolutely terrible.
Kieran (32:13.786)
I've, you we've done a ton of research. We've sponsored a range of different projects. And, know, when you hear about how, for example, like, you know, kids with autism and now all of a sudden, certain online games are the way through which they can build a community that they couldn't build in the real world. And we want to make sure that all of that can happen. And we're not, we're not coming down on it. You know, there's a lot of fear mongering.
I saw the news that Australia is now looking to ban social media access for under 16s. And so there's some big hammers coming down. what I've seen, if you look at markets where they've introduced strict age limits for online games or social media or whatever, and verification, just like throw things, like make it really hard, make it like really strict.
countries that have introduced ID verification before you can sign up for an online game, the number of grandparents playing online games has jumped by an order of magnitude.
Janis Zeps (33:24.742)
Yeah, I was also thinking like they're all their brothers and in the worst case you just find like a dude in the street and give him like a few bucks
Kieran (33:33.275)
Totally, totally. So you bury the problem even further down and make it even harder. So we, you know, to your point, we'll just like, we need to rethink. We need to rethink it.
Uldis Teraudkalns (33:48.451)
Well, it seems that you're not the only one thinking like that. Correct me if I'm wrong. The company is barely more than a year old, right? Or is that not correct?
Kieran (34:01.051)
Yeah, we're super young. 14 months. know, 14 months ago, I still had my job as an attorney.
Uldis Teraudkalns (34:07.843)
So yeah, and you have raised almost $50 million in this time span. like, what do you like, is there like huge traction from the clients, the technology is so great or the story so appealing? How did you manage to pull off such around in so short period of time?
Janis Zeps (34:08.319)
Well, that's a ride.
Janis Zeps (34:28.723)
in this climate.
Kieran (34:30.587)
In this climate, yeah, I know. look, I think it's a confluence of factors. I don't want to, I don't want to undersell, you know, the amount of work I, I've been in a lawyer in this space for a decade and a half. So that's kind of like, that was my training to get to the point where I knew this problem so inside out that I knew how to build the technology platform to do it. So wasn't like I came out of the cave. I'm like, well, what's a cool idea. So, you know, that, that's kind of like the
the prelude to kicking off the actual platform. But yeah, it has moved super quick. is definitely anomalous in this macro environment. I think it's a compelling challenge. I think it's one of those rare blue oceans where you think, hey, yeah, that does suck. That is an area that no one has solved that, right? And yet it impacts everyone.
Uldis Teraudkalns (35:20.323)
And nobody is solving that.
Kieran (35:25.86)
everyone like irrespective of culture, country, age, you name it, this is global. And so I think the compelling nature of the challenge, the fact that nobody solved it, we were coming in with a novel way of looking at it. We had a really, I think, strong bench coming out of the gate with, you my founders and I had all orbited different aspects of this challenge. think we also, I'm a lawyer, right? So I'm
I'm naturally very cautious and so I had de-risked it somewhat by knowing that there are a few clients, a few big gaming publishers that were going to sign up early. And so I was able to hit the ground running and we do have significant traction. I think we've now signed five of the top 10 mobile publishers. We're integrating with platforms with
online games within excess of 250 million MAU, we're now integrating with some really exciting other partners outside of strictly gaming, which we'll be announcing soon, but that's going to be huge. It's kind of crazy. I actually have to pinch myself that we've solved this challenge. And you know what's funny is I have a lot of these conversations with platforms and online games and stuff.
And at some point, I assume I'm walk in and someone's gonna have solved this. Like I'm gonna go to pitch my thing and someone's gonna be like, it's all good, man. Like we solved it. Like this is how we did it. And so we don't need it. That's cool, but we don't need it. And that hasn't happened yet, weirdly enough. Like we're coming in with this stuff and people, genuinely resonates. So that's cool. That tells me that what we're doing is pretty meaningful and it's the right moment in time for it.
Uldis Teraudkalns (37:19.701)
Yeah, I guess the story is less extreme as I thought because I saw that you are a lawyer and suddenly you end up building such a company. was like, wow, that's a pivot. But then I understand that this is the type of lawyering that you were doing. obviously, rarely there are such coincidences, right?
Kieran (37:45.492)
Yeah, I think that's it. was a very natural extension of what I was doing and almost productizing my career, taking everything that I advising. I did a lot of work for clients like Tencent and when they were launching global games and I was having to think through, how does the UX need to work for these 40 markets that it's launching in? How do you fork features dealing with all these regulatory issues? So it was...
It was a very natural step. I'm glad I did it because now things are moving so fast and there's so much change. Like there were two countries last week that changed the age of a child. That's the kind of pace that we're moving at.
Janis Zeps (38:27.717)
Actually, your story is inspiring to lot of aspiring also founders. mean, there's a lot of people also listening and want to start their business. They may be working at the moment, they're thinking of the next step. Can you describe it a bit like you were working as a lawyer and now you're a founder, completely different roles. What has, in that sense, what are the biggest changes, don't know, positive or negative as you feel like, what are the biggest differences in your life as a professional now?
Kieran (38:56.482)
I would say it's so much more fulfilling, so much more meaningful doing this. Almost every meeting I have, I go and I explain what we're doing and I pitch our stuff and someone in the room will say, well, I'm a parent and I've got like a seven year old or I've got like an 11 year old or even like, when my daughters were younger, you get told those personal stories. So that is one of the most fun parts of it is.
you like, you kind of, in my head, it was this kind of complex regulatory thing and we were going to go and do this. I didn't realize how much it was going to personally resonate. that's, that's really cool and really meaningful for me. It's a lot of hard work. I mean, I was working pretty long hours as a lawyer, which is pretty typical. I think as a founder, it's super intense. And part of the success we've had early on is because
we are all operating and working super, super hard. You have to almost operate on the basis that the oxygen's about to run out. And so everything could be the last breath. so you're putting every bit of effort into every pitch, every partner opportunity. I spent a lot of time on the road. think this year I'm based in Singapore. What are we in? We're in November.
I've probably spent nine weeks in Singapore this year. Every other week I've been on the road, meeting people, networking, talking about what we do, being on panels, just getting the word out. And I think we're definitely seeing the results of that because there's a lot of momentum and it's a result of all the hard work the team's been up to.
Uldis Teraudkalns (40:47.347)
There yet remains one unsolved mystery on your resume as the lawyer and KID connection was revealed. You also have done some screenwriting in the past. So maybe you can comment if and how is that helping you shape this story and build the company.
Kieran (41:07.972)
Hahaha
Kieran (41:12.389)
Yeah, I I love film and TV. I loved writing when I was growing up. So when I finished school, I wanted to go and do creative writing. I wanted to write for film and TV. My parents convinced me that that would be a bad idea to just do that. So I did law school in parallel, so I'd have a real degree. Exactly.
Uldis Teraudkalns (41:35.555)
Better be a doctor or a lawyer,
typical.
Kieran (41:41.7)
So, you know, I like did the law school thing and then got to the end of that and so tick box and I said, yeah, that's cool. But I'm not, I'm not going to do that. I want to go and do this film and TV thing. It's a, yeah, I, I, you know, to this day, I absolutely loved it. I think ended up writing a good couple of dozen scripts, options, some stuff had like amateur, you know, motorcom of success early on, but there's not.
It's a very competitive industry and there's a lot of people willing to work for free. So it's very, very hard to get paid. So once I ran out of money, I needed to go back and do the law thing. I think the creative experience, characters and all of that whole thing has definitely helped me, particularly in terms of product design and mapping stories and like, do I want our technology to do in terms of impact?
Definitely sits there at the DNA of it all of that time creative heart
Janis Zeps (42:44.932)
And I mean, as a founder, you need to tell the story, I guess, a lot of times when you meet all those people that you mentioned. that must also probably have an impact that your previous experience allows you to be, I guess, more articulate. It's a skill. I didn't appreciate it until a few years. Like, you start thinking about the ability to express yourself, tell the story. Some people are naturally talented, but not all. And it takes some time to craft.
Uldis Teraudkalns (43:13.847)
Like bake it till you make it.
Kieran (43:14.486)
it does. It does. Yeah. Well, and actually, it's funny you say that because part of I took every VC meeting every VC that reached out to us, I said yes. And everybody thought I was insane for doing that. In total range of VCs, you know, small, large, everything, some independent angels, whatever. I took every single meeting because of exactly what you just said, which is I wanted to get better at articulating the story. And after hundreds and hundreds of
articulating why now, what is this, why are the challenges, understanding what resonates when you're talking to someone. Part of the reason I talk metrics and statistics is because then it makes it real and tangible. And I never used to do that. And I learned that as part of that storytelling over and over again. You're like, that's interesting. That resonates with someone.
Uldis Teraudkalns (44:08.341)
stuff. I mean it's great to see that almost as if all of this was intended to build your story, right? I cannot believe that it's accidental. it's exactly... yeah. You should... you can start writing that down. Anyways, thanks a lot, Kieran. It was great talking to you and...
Janis Zeps (44:20.645)
That's a screenplay into making, you know, like...
Kieran (44:22.664)
Yeah, it's it's
Kieran (44:30.456)
Yeah, it's yeah.
Uldis Teraudkalns (44:37.059)
Actually, I wanted to thank the team at Slush for putting us together and it's right around the corner, I think start 20th of November. And sadly, I don't have a promo code for you guys because they have been sold out so long ago. So if you don't have a ticket, then sorry, you have to like get one on 22nd of November for next year. So yeah.
Thanks Kieran, thanks Slush, thanks JΔnis thanks listeners, good stuff.
Kieran (45:11.178)
Thanks so much.
Uldis Teraudkalns (45:15.147)
and see you next Tuesday. Bye!
Please note that the transcript text is AI-generated. We apologize for any potential errors or inaccuracies. Thank you for your understanding.
