The Jennifer Kamara Podcast

Melissa: My co-founders had a handbook. My executive team had a handbook.

Everybody else had another one. So there was nothing left to chance or question. Like nobody had to text me for a password or for like, what do I do in this situation? I had a list of like, if anything on this list happens, you call me. If anything on this list happens, you text me. If anything on this list happens, you can email me.

Jennifer: All right,

y'all. So happy to introduce you to Melissa Cash.

She is the co-founder and c e O of POC P, which is an award-winning company dedicated to helping raise the next generation of creative thinkers through play. Poc Pock launched their first game in May, 2021. The app is Montessori inspired and encourages kids to learn through independent play. They launch with six digital toys that grow with the child as the child grows up, specifically to play.

Wanna specify that puck. Puck is, they're not games with objectives and levels to beat. Rather, it's solely focused on the joy of play kids. The toys are designed to be open-ended. There's no right or wrong way to use them. The team is also focused on developing new toys with an eye on diversity and for older kids.

Soon. They raised 3 million seed in the summer of 2020, so last summer. And my understanding is there were about 10 people strong back then. I'm sure Melissa will catch us up as to how they're doing today. Prior to Puck pock, Melissa designed toys for babies and toddlers at Disney before joining Snowman, which is a studio that designs artful experiences where she helps lead operations.

I'm so happy to have you here,

Welcome.

Melissa

Melissa: Jennifer, I'm super excited to chat today.

Jennifer: Wonderful. So I'd love to start by inviting you to tell us in your own words, who is Melissa today?

Melissa: That's a good question. do I begin? I mean, I think for the sake of this podcast, I should start off by saying I'm the c e o and co-founder at ppo, and I'm, I'm many other things too. But, uh, PPO has definitely taken a front seat in my life for the last several years, which is something I'm super excited about and happy with.

Um, and outside of work, I'm, I'm a.

Taken a lot of my time and, uh, I think for me, a big part of who I am is also my family, my friends, my hobbies, and just trying to retain a little bit of identity beyond motherhood and being a c e O as well. So, um, for me that means like getting in touch with nature and spending time outside. Spending time by myself, which I really love to do.

Um, And yeah, just trying to remember that like I'm not always somebody's, uh, leader, somebody's parent, somebody's wife, somebody's friend, sister, daughter, and just kind of like being me. And um, yeah, that's easier said than done sometimes, but I'm doing my best.

Jennifer: I love the emphasis on also preserving your own identity of self. What are some of the ways you spend time with yourself currently that you enjoy?

Melissa: For me, ironically, commuting into my office is really a peaceful time. So I, I usually try to bike in, it's about 30 minute ride and I usually use that time to either like, listen to music and think, or listen to a podcast and try to learn something new. Um, And for me, this is just time for me. Like I can't be doing anything else really other than cycling.

So I'm pretty focused and let my mind wander something.

I am coming into the office fairly regularly, so I, I have to spend time getting there somehow. So for me that I've tried to use that as like purposeful me time. And then outside of that, it's honestly hard. Like some weeks it just doesn't happen at all. But, um, when I do, when I am able to, I try to spend time.

Like going to a yoga class or going for a walk. I live near a beach, so just trying to spend time outside and like, yeah, just really, um, finding space for me and sometimes in, and the worst possible weeks when everything else doesn't work out, it's just being at home alone. Uh, or not alone, but like in a room in my house alone.

Even just like watching TV or reading a book and. Or cooking something and trying not to remember that there's like a baby in the next room and a husband in the room after that, me do things. So, um, yeah, it's hard, but it.

Jennifer: I will say, it sounds like you are incorporating it at least every day with your commute to work, and that in of itself is already a lot more than most people are getting, so you're crushing it. Melissa? I actually so resonate with it because I grew up, my brother is 12 years older than me, and so since I was age six, I grew up as an only child and I spent a lot of time with myself and with my thoughts and I have come to.

Find out that that's really helped me get to know myself better. Uh, really have a strong of self. What do I want? What do I need in these moments? When am I full? When am I empty? Uh, when do I need others? Things like that. And so it's super valuable to me, and I kind of wanna use that as a segue to learn more about what were some formative experiences for you growing up that you felt led to the human you are today

or the adult.

Melissa: I think, I think being, I was super lucky, still am, but very lucky. I grew up in a, in a loving, safe.

Jennifer: But very

Melissa: Household where my opinion and ideas were really valued. And one of the most formative experiences is something that happens throughout my childhood, which is just being connected to my family as, uh, as an individual, not just as like my parents' daughter or my brother's sister, or my grandparents' granddaughter, like we spoke at.

They, they, my parents and grandparents always met us at our level. Like they didn't talk down to us and they encouraged us to follow our noses and explore and do whatever we wanted. And sometimes that was like, Crazy stuff. Like my brother and I would dress up in all black outfits with like his best friend who lived across the street, and we'd go into the flott at the end of our street and like spy on the whatever was, nothing was going on.

We were like spying on taking information in our notebooks. They were starting, what was actually happening is they were building a suburb, like, and gonna knock down that forest. We didn't know at the time, but they were coming in and like serving the land. So we would. Like hide behind trees and like write down what they were doing, which was, we had no idea what they were doing, but like little things like that, we were just super encouraged to explore and be curious.

That's something that my grandfather taught me, especially he's, uh, he was always extremely curious and so whenever we spend time with him, it was always, he always asked us a thousand questions and introduced us to really unique things that maybe most grandparents wouldn't like. Instead of taking us to the park or to go shopping or, um, just playing inside.

He would take us to art galleries or. To con like classical music concerts and like really unique experiences that made sure, um, we were, our, our horizons were being expanded. And him and my grandmother did a wonderful job at making sure we, we got time away from our parents to just like, be us and, and, and, um, Let out the odd swear word accidentally and not get in trouble for it.

Like I think just that the I, I think to summarize is the most formative experience of my childhood was being encouraged to explore, to be creative, and to be figure out who I was through whatever it was, whatever the thing was that I was interested at the time.

Jennifer: And sounds like you definitely took this creative thread into adulthood and all the work you did. So was that a part of how you wound up at Disney working on toys or was it something else

that contributed to that?

Melissa: Yeah, I think that was a huge thing. I mean, I was raised with the idea of like, Do, do whatever you want and, and you can do whatever you want. So we were never, like my brother and I, were never pushed in a certain direction. If I walked downstairs one morning and said, I'm gonna be a professional dancer, my parents would've been like, okay, great.

Like, how can we help support you in that dream? And then the next week I would say like, I wanna be a travel writer and I wanna be this, I wanna be that. And so after university I ended up, um, Falling in love, moving away. And I remember when I, the moment I decided I wanted to move to Germany from Toronto, where I'm from to be with my now husband, I remember being like, shit, what are my parents gonna say?

Um, and, and they were like, yeah, okay. Go see, see if this guy's like something, you know, see if this relationship is worth following. And, uh, it was. And so I ended up living there for six years, learning German, working at Disney. Um, and then, you know, 12 years later, we're married, we have a child, we're gratefully happy.

And those, those things would never have happened had my parents not said. Sure go. You know, I, I don't know if I could be, I, I hope I'm gonna be that open as parent with my son, but, um, I think that like curiosity, creativity, and empowerment really came from being raised by parents and grandparents and family who lifted me up instead of tried to make me think realistically.

Definitely, uh, a dreamer sometimes, um, sometimes that's not so positive and can kind of bring me down, but usually it's a good thing.

Jennifer: When you said you were so fortunate to have parents who weren't tying you into the reality of things, it made me think of, I think most of us, I. Are much, are capable of much more than maybe we think is realistic and like society tends to say, oh, you need to do this to have this stable career, or you need to follow this path based off of various influences that other folks have had.

And it's so interesting because every single person is so much more capable of what they believe they are. And for instance, you are very fortunate to have parents like that and for other people they find it through different means. But it's such a wonderful thing to open up your world and your horizon and a lot of like design thinking that comes from that.

Um, I'm curious, your German, what, what led he is? That's lovely. My

husband's polish and

Melissa: Nice.

Jennifer: lot of time in Poland, so that's awesome. Do you still

go back to Germany?

Melissa: Yeah, I just got back yesterday,

Jennifer: Ah, that's where you are. That's what, okay. I fully, I think you'll be in bed very tonight and you probably

didn't get as much sleep.

Melissa: No, we got up at five too. It's okay

Jennifer: okay, so, so you were in Disney at, in Munich, working on toys, and what did you learn there and how did that progress to going to Snowman prior to

starting Puck?

Puck?

Melissa: So at Disney I was designing physical products for babies and toddlers and my, not so much toys, but like bottles and apparel and strollers and all kinds of different things. And what led me there was a very serendipitous. Meeting, I met a woman at a bus stop in Berlin where the city I did not live in.

Um, I was on a little on a business trip for the company that I was working at at the time, which was startup. And I was waiting for my bus back to the airport, back to Munich, and I. Someone started walking toward me and I was like, oh no, she's gonna speak German. And I couldn't speak German yet. So I was in my head starting to think of like, what am I gonna say?

And then in English, she said, Hey, do you know what time the bus is coming? And I was like, oh shit. She speaks English. And she ended up being American and was also on her way back to Munich. And so we chatted the whole way back and she was working at Disney and I ended up through her. We just stayed connected and about a year later, I.

I was sitting next to her in an office, um, as a designer. So it was a very cool experience and I learned a ton there. I think one of the biggest takeaways I learned there was how to, how to work with a lot of different personalities and, and how to navigate the red tape of a giant company. I think, um, sure I built creative skills and communication skills, and I learned about licensing and product and design and children and all of those things, but those are a little bit.

Um, maybe obvious things that I probably learned, but I think the, one of the biggest things was how to navigate your place in a giant company when you are truly a cog and an enormous machine and what that means, how your value comes through or doesn't. And then how you can carve out a path for growth in a place that has everything written down in a folder, in a, in a, in a computer somewhere.

And that's just like the path, you know. And then how to work with all these different people who were from a culture I didn't understand yet. Um, when I started there, I spoke almost no German, and when I left I was completely fluent. So I was really lucky to have a team that supported that. But, Yeah, no, it's really hard.

Um, but I made a, a ton of mistakes, like super embarrassing ones. I once told the entire, my entire department that I was constipated accidentally. I wasn't constipated, I was congested. I had a cold. And it was

Jennifer: know

Melissa: so many things, like, so many slip ops, so many, I'm, I walked out of a meeting once. I thought it was over, but we were just on a five minute break, but I didn't understand, so I just disappeared.

And then hours later my boss was like, where did you go at the beginning? So I learned about how to find my place, and I think a big, a big takeaway there was just self cation and trying to remember that like, you are the protagonist in your story, but not in anyone else's. Even for your partner, for your best friend, for your parents, your the secondary character for them.

So if you wanna find your way through something and you wanna grow, you have to take that into your own hands. No. though there was kind of like a clear path for growth at Disney, I really had to learn how to advocate for myself. And it took me a few years to actually figure that out. I was, I wasn't stagnant, but I wasn't really going where I wanted to go and doing the things I wanted to do every day.

And I was extremely unsure of myself 'cause I was navigating a new career in a new language. So I, I definitely held myself back for the first couple of years. Started to figure out how to pave my own way and ultimately ended up leaving to move back to Canada. But um, yeah, I think that there's like a lot to be said for trying to find ways to push yourself forward because no one else is really gonna do that for you.

And if they do, amazing, you're lucky and you've probably built relationships really strategically.

Jennifer: Definitely.

I also wanna share something else that I noticed is you deciding to move at that young age to Germany from Toronto, and that you just mentioned some of the slip ups, how tough it was to learn this new language, et cetera, assimilate in a new country. And I think however hard that was, it also contributed a ton to your growth, to your perspective in life.

And I'm sure that there are perspectives that you bring into POC bock. As a friend, as a daughter, as a mother, as a partner, cetera, and as you, as a human to yourself, uh, that come from that because you've expanded your world in that

way.

Melissa: definitely. I think moving to Germany was, was one of the most pivotal moments of my life because, or it goes back almost even further. I, I studied abroad in university. That's why I actually met my now husband originally, and I was living in Helsinki at the time and also totally thrust out of my.

Day-to-day life and world in, in Canada. And I wanted that so badly. I worked really hard to save the money to get to go and do all those things. But had I not done it, I probably would just, not just, that's the wrong word. 'cause these are not poor jobs or careers, but I would probably be doing something that was a little bit below my potential.

So I would be, I would've taken a safe choice. I would've probably, I was working in restaurants a lot in university, and I. I probably would've stayed there, or I don't, I actually dunno what I would've done, frankly, but I know it would've been safe because I hadn't built the resilience and the confidence yet that came with throwing myself into a foreign country. I had no friends, I had no idea how to speak the language. I had no real career plans either.

I, I was like fresh outta university, thought I'd maybe be a travel writer, realized that it's expensive to travel, so that wasn't really ideal in starting up. Um, just kind of trying to figure out what my path was and, um, it definitely defined a lot of who I'm now, and I'll, I'll encourage anyone else to do it, especially our employees.

Like we just had somebody last year, he'd never left the province of Ontario mid twenties and had the opportunity to go and I, I remember talking to him about it during the pandemic and saying like, as soon as things open up, You should really go live somewhere else for a while and you can still work with us.

But we don't have a remote culture really. But, um, he did, he went to Italy for three months and came back different for the better, I would say.

Jennifer: It's beautiful. I'm half Ukrainian, half Sierra Leonean, grew up in Sierra Leone,

moved to the us, also worked and lived

Melissa: Right? Yeah.

Jennifer: I understand and appreciate, and I personally have also grown so much from the cultural exchanges. I think it's so beautiful that we get to share the world with 8 billion other humans with their own journeys and their own stories, and there's so much to learn another.

So, uh, Encouraging folks to push, push past your comfort zone. There's tons of learnings as long as you're safe and doing it safely. All right, so coming back.

So you moved back to Toronto and you joined Snowman, which your brother runs, and you were helping run operations there. And through this you had some team members that came up with the idea for Pok Bock that resulted in Pok Bock.

Tell us more about this. And this is always helpful for other entrepreneurs who may not identify right now as entrepreneurs may not feel like they have idea or whatnot. And so I think these experience shares are always super valuable for folks to hear how others came into

entrepreneurship.

Melissa: What you just said there, I think is very important about how a lot of people wanna be entrepreneurs and.

Jennifer: Yeah.

Melissa: I didn't have the idea. Um, and that's totally okay. So I moved back to Toronto and my brother owns a company called Snowman, like you mentioned, with his childhood best friend, the guy we were running around in the forest with and, um, who has now become, of course, a lifelong friend of mine as well. But they, uh, they were just about to launch a new video game called Altos Odyssey.

And my brother asked me for some help doing pr, which I had done before Disney. I was fresh off the plane, didn't have a job yet, and I was like, sure, I'll help you for a couple of months. And my brother and I have worked together over the years. We delivered newspapers together. We worked in a restaurant together, in a toy store together.

Like we've, we've kind of always been side by side in so many ways, so we were like, we shouldn't build our careers together because then that's all we're gonna have. We're gonna just talk about work all the time and it's gonna be close. So we an end on it. We said three months, I'm gonna help with the lunch.

We worked. Super closely on on that. And while I was helping him out, I ended up getting hired to work at a, a startup in Toronto. So I left to go do that, but just in the final days helping out, uh, my brother's company. With that launch I met, um, Esther and Matteas, and they are husband and wife artists from Belgium and.

Brought over to Toronto on his latest visit, a couple of scribbles and ideas of an of an app that he and his wife wanted to make for their oldest son to introduce him to technology in a healthy way because they couldn't really find anything out there on the app store that they felt comfortable sharing with him.

He was too, at the time, spoke only Dutch and. They wanted him to find something that they, he could do independently, so that they could tend to their newborn baby. And so they had this idea to make a digital busy book. So you know those books that we all had growing up, like a bunch of images and you can just look around.

So they were gonna digitize that idea and they had just a first few ideas and I wanted to show them to my brother Ryan and. My brother called me into the room and was like, Hey Melissa, you should see this because you just worked at Disney for five years. Like you might have some, some insights. And I was just blown away by the first illustrations because they were so unique.

They were only done with six colors. Very simple. It was the kind of thing like I would hang on my wall as an adult. It was just so beautiful and I loved the idea and that sparked. Our whole conversation about digital play, where it's going, what's out there already. And we talked a lot about kids and how we're all gonna be raising our kids to have jobs that haven't even been invented yet.

And so many of the jobs you and I have today will be taken over by technology and you know, how are we supposed to prepare kids for that future? And it all for us, you know, really boiled down to creativity and. That's something that right now, like AI cannot do, like it cannot think in a way that humans can.

So we thought, you know, if everything else goes to hell, like at least we want our kids to be really creative and curious and empowered to think differently. So we started thinking about that in relation to this idea that they had to make the busy book. App and, um, I went off, took that job and, and we just kept in touch.

We just kept talking about it, kept thinking about it, and then we decided. This was a problem we wanna solve and we wanna solve it all together and we're the best people to do this. So quit my job after only nine months, um, Esther and math started working on more ideas for, um, ppo. We decided that we wanted it to be more of a digital playroom.

Not just one activity, but a collection of digital toys that would spark. Creativity and curiosity and all of those beautiful things that build foundational life skills, not just like the ABCs and the one two threes. And so the first few months were very slow and we realized like there wasn't that much for me to do just yet.

So I decided like I need to learn everything I can about the app and games business. So I started working at Snowman as head of operations, and it was perfect timing. They needed a lot of help. They were scaling as well. And so I. I joined and was kind of like my brother's right hand helped scale the team.

I think they like tripled in size while I was working there. Um, launched a couple of projects and, and really started to build key industry relationships, which then helped fuel POK pock during our launch and that, so I did that for about a year. And then we officially launched PPO as like a separate company.

Um, it was always a separate company from the beginning, but we publicly announced and did all of those things and in the meantime hired a couple of people to help us build our, our first version of the app, which like you said before, was six digital Toys in 2021 and is now I think about 15 or 16. So yeah, it's been a kind of a wild ride, but yeah.

Oh, awesome. My, my biggest takeaway I would say for other entrepreneurs in, in that sense is, You, there is no conventional path to entrepreneurship. Like of course you can go do an Ivy league and, and surround yourself by with other entrepreneurs in and go down that path, and that's kind of the most traditional way to do it.

But there's so many. Corners of the world where entrepreneurship is hidden and it doesn't have to be in like crazy startup land. It can also just be like an amazing business and it could be a, what they call like a boring business. It could be like realizing that you can optimize the long system and like coming up with a great business for that or meeting somebody who inspires you and together building an idea.

Like there is no way to do it. It's just like, You just have to care about it because it's gonna take everything outta you. So if you don't care about it, you'll be you'll be the business pretty quickly, I would say.

Jennifer: Yeah, don't, uh, no, but for me, I feel like the takeaway here is just stay curious. Totally. There's no conventional path and just stay curious and, work with people that you enjoy working with, admire, respect, and to your point, work on something that you're super passionate about. But essentially you and your brother were curious in this state you had this.

A couple who were super passionate about this idea, you were curious about it, you had complimentary skill sets, and that's what happened. And oh, the other thing I would say is with entrepreneurship is just your job is to add value to whoever your customer is. And to your point, you can add value in whatever industry.

You don't have to be in Silicon Valley to be able to do that. So stay open-minded and look out for the opportunities. But that is super cool story. How is it going now? My latest understanding of the operations was from last summer,

how is it going this summer?

And also knowing y'all entrepreneurship is not glamorous. There's ups and downs, et cetera.

So feel free to share.

Melissa: Thank you. Yeah, there are a million ups and downs. Like, I just got off a call where we realized like there's, there's always something and there's a lot of growing pains with, with a, with a new company. So just when you solve one, a new one pops up. Um, but how is it going? It's going really well. Like from a growth perspective.

We're doing everything that we wanna be doing and we're doing it pretty well. I would say. Um, we have, we have a lot of users, like our growth plans are being our growth. Goals, sorry. Being hit like we're on paper, like everything's going quite well. Um, we are, we just hired a few new folks. We're hiring for one more role.

I think managing people and the team is probably the biggest, um, time piece for me where I spend a lot of my time is just making sure everybody's happy in their jobs and doing what they love to be doing and, and working in their area of genius. And.

Jennifer: Mm-hmm.

Melissa: supported by our company to move forward and help us grow and be better because I think happy staff make happy products and, and make things so much better.

So a big focus for me is, is the team. Um, and then of course the business. So we, like you said, we raised a series. Seed in 2022. I had to think. Yeah. Sorry. I'm like, how old is my son? Because he was born four days after we closed. Um, so yeah, I raised, I raised our seed round fully. I was totally pregnant. The entire raise.

Um, Which was wild. Uh, we raised on, on video calls, so not everybody even noticed, uh, but it wasn't a secret either. I mean, and we, um, so we raised just over 3 million US last May, and since then we've been using a lot of that money to scale marketing. So, and, and before that, we hadn't done any marketing at all.

All of our growth was organic, and that was very intentional. So the seed round for us was all about scaling marketing and testing user requisition and figuring out like the best way to acquire customers and retain them and all of that stuff. And so right now we're in that phase of fine tuning all of that, making sure all of our systems are working and continuing to grow and expand the app in terms of content so that we can go in and raise, um, our next round, next year.

So it's extremely busy, but um, things are going pretty well.

Jennifer: Are you at liberty to share what your revenues are, how many FTEs you have right now, and then what your growth plan is? Is it more toys, older ages,

things like that?

ages

Melissa: Yeah, I can share something. So right now we have 15 full-time employees at Pock, including myself. So it's a really good size team for what we're working on. It's totally split. So half of that are people who work on the design and play and engineering part of the actual toys. And then the other half work on marketing, growth data, that kind of stuff.

Um, for us right now, like our, our core growth plans are really in terms of users, like that's where we're focusing most of our time versus revenue. Um, but we're still very pleased with revenue and our, right now we're only available on iOS, so we launched there. Exclusively, which was intentional. And so in the next 12 months, we'd like to bring puck puck to Android scale, some developing markets for us.

Um, the US is our biggest market, but China's also very interesting and has been growing organically since we launched. So we wanna, um, investigate that a little bit more. We wanna continue to actually grow the, the toys in the playroom. Something very interesting that happened was, So we launched sort of toward the end of the pandemic.

We started Poppo before the pandemic, but we hadn't launched in that like critical key screen time panic phase that most parents went through. Uh, for better or for worse. I mean, and we, we designed the choice in poppo to growth kids between two and seven years old, and that is information that we build the company on, and that came through.

Tons and tons of play testing with kids and families in schools. And what's really interesting is that that's always been true for us, but only in the last maybe three months, we're starting to get a lot of feedback from parents with kids under the age of two who are using the app and. This is very controversial because I think a lot of people are anti screen time for kids in general, which is, you know, their prerogative.

Of course, our whole goal with Puck was to make it feel like as least digital, as little digital. That's not even grammatically correct, but like not, I guess, as least digitized as possible, so it feels more like a wooden toy kind of come to life.

Jennifer: Mm-hmm.

Melissa: Intentional for us. We want kids to not feel overstimulated or addicted.

Topo, we don't want them to play with it every hour of every day. We want them to be outside in the mud, getting dirty and throwing balls around the street and stuff. So, um, but. What's very interesting is that since we launched the company, a lot of people have been questioning the fact that young kids actually do use it, especially around the age of two and three, where their attention spans are naturally quite short, and we have quite good play time.

So our average session is about 30 minutes, and if you're picturing a two year old, like my one and half year old, do anything for than 10 minutes. Pretty wonderful thing. Knowing that we're doing that without that like addictive kind of candy like component that most apps have with like all of the bells and whistles and levels and scores and dancing rainbows and all those things.

So, um, when we found out that we have even younger users on the app and parents who want that, we were kind of shocked honestly. And so what we're thinking about now for the next year is how we can, how we can expand the demographic in a. Are very, very, very different. Like children's brains develop so quickly, even on a day-to-day basis under the age of five. But under two is where you see really, really rapid brain development and the needs of children change constantly. So we're now just thinking about do we wanna expand PPO to that age range more mindfully, and if so, how?

Because right now, you know, we do get the feedback sometimes that like, oh, my one year old can't really use it or is. I see it because I was on an eight hour flight yesterday with my 15 month old, and at some point I was like, oh, let's try Uck. Um, because he, he does love looking at it, but he doesn't interact with it too much.

'cause his motor skills are just not developed enough to manage the touch screen. And so, of course, like of course we have people turning because their one year olds can't use it, quote unquote. And, um, so we're trying to think about that and, and how we, how we continue to grow.

Jennifer: I was, playing with the toy where you can like, draw with the lines and I loved it. It almost felt soothing to me, and this does resonate with me. It does feel a little bit like a coloring book, but it's mobile. It's on your, you can have it on your phone, you can have it offline.

I loved like that. There weren't, like, to your point, all of these da da, da or all these noises and like

the pings and

Melissa: Yeah.

Yeah.

Jennifer: what's happening? and it was so calm and normal. I opened the toy which was, I believe what your co-founders had originally came up with, which was probably this digital, painting almost.

And I, it was, it was beautiful to look at the world and I was like, wait, what do I do? Oh, I just look at it. I, I was playing the two and three year old to game, so I completely understand what you're talking about. And it just felt super calming. Um, what else?

Just speaking of like today, obviously we have all of this talk about screen time, especially contributed by the covid epidemic.

For instance, my brother has a 16 year old and a 12 year old, and we do try to limit screen time for them, and we're seeing in the news about mental health of teenagers, et cetera. What else comes into account when you think about creating a calm and safe app for kids, what should

parents be considering?

Melissa: That's a really good question. I think the most important thing that we, we keep in mind is visual and auditory stimulation. So with, with most kids, apps, kids, TV shows, YouTube channels, it's very bright, very fast. And typically pretty stimulating. So there's a lot going on. Um, you'll see animations that move pretty fast across the screen.

You'll see bright colors all mixed together, and you'll, you'll. A lot of auditory simulation. So something we wanted to do was the exact opposite. So Pak is slow. Like if you tap on an animation in the busy book toy, it moves slowly as an adult. You're like, why is that apple still falling from the tree?

Like it? Um, but for a child, It's that is the pace that they live in, right? And so making sure that it's not overstimulating is a huge piece of pop box. So the animation pace is a little bit slower. Our sounds are very gentle, so we record all of our sounds by hand, which is very, you know, strenuous and time consuming and expensive, but makes it soft and gentle and, We have our sound designer, literally, like he just posted on Slack yesterday that he was doing an interview with a sponge, but he just had a sponge in front of his microphone and he was just squeezing it.

And that was, that's a sound in pack back. And it's probably not for a sponge. It's probably like a person walking through water or something, like who knows what he's working on. But like that, those are the details that I think parents should look for is, is, you know, how does it make them feel if they feel calm and relaxed while looking at it or playing with something.

It'll probably have the same effect on their child. And one, one tip I always like to mention is think about when you have a, when you see a young child play with a cardboard box or a button on someone's shirt or a zipper, and they can do that for several minutes. They don't need much to be engaged, so you don't have to actually like attack them with a lot of different things and a lot of moving parts.

Simple is best because it also means that the motivation for them to continue is intrinsic. It's not coming from a dancing bear jumping across the screen saying hello, like, do this. You know, it's, it's just coming from them being interested and saying, oh, I wonder what would happen if I touch this thing.

And I think that is really important to look for in, in digital content. That all being said, of course there's a time and a place for everything. I don't want parents to feel guilty for putting their child in front of the TV and just throwing on whatever, because of course we all do that. Like this morning I cut my son's fingernails, which meant we were watching TV and like, that's okay.

You know, I, I'm not a bad parent for that and I don't want parents to feel like they have to police it, um, to the extent that it makes them lose their minds a little bit because I think there's a lot of guilt that comes with this. I think, um, people should just follow their, their own gut as a parent, and if you feel pretty good about it, it's probably fine.

And anything in moderation I believe is honestly okay. We would become zombies if we watched too much TV and we watched a decent amount of TV and we're both fine, healthy, functioning adults. And people used to be afraid of books. You know, they didn't want people to read books. They were afraid of how it poison their thoughts and, and look at us now, you know, I think so any new technology is scary.

And of course we don't want children who are too young to. Screen too often just for their own like visual development. But I think, um, in moderation and with the right content, it can be beautiful.

Jennifer: Yeah, absolutely. I wanna talk Melissa, about, I'm so curious, how do the toys come together? You just mentioned the sound engineer. How your team thinks about making sure that, or just trying to create this calming environment. What else goes into the development of a toy that goes into a playroom

like poc?

P?

Melissa: A lot of things. So typically our usual development time is exactly, is about three months, three to six months, depending on the toy. Um, we work with a lot of kids, first of all, like what we think is fun and cool. For kids doesn't always align with what kids think is fun and cool. Um, so when a child hands the iPad back to you and is like, nah, and they wanna go to something else, you're like, okay, we need to go back to the drawing board.

So for us, we think a lot about how kids play and, and we, we do whatever we can to give them as little as possible. So, Uh, that just means like when we're thinking about design and how they interact with the toy, we, we try to strip away all the fluff. And that also means no language, no menus, no rules, no instructions.

It's just there. And kids can explore it. And that often actually freaks out parents. 'cause they're like, how do I do this? How do, what's the point? You know? And I'm like, just give it to your three-year-old. They're gonna show you how to use this. And so when we build something, We think a lot about design, user experience and, and test it with a lot of tiny hands and, and tiny humans.

And then we, we work really hard on the arts to make sure that it feels and looks very aesthetically pleasing to kids and to parents. So it's very simple. We use only, I think now it's nine colors, but very, very minimal and leaves lots of room for the imagination. We also think a lot about diversity, so,

Very predominantly. We also highlight all different kinds of cultures. Um, we are preparing now a Ramadan update. Like we have a lot of, of very unique cultural content and different body types, people with different abilities and disabilities. It's really important to us because kids are forming their biases and assumptions about the world right now, and everything that they see and do affects that.

And so we wanna make sure we're doing our part to. To try to show them what's going on in the world around them. Who are these people? And so that is a huge piece of building an at toy as well, is some of, like, for example, in the drawing toy you mentioned there's no people, so there's no room for that.

But like how do we make it accessible? How do we make it, um, you know, really user-friendly for children who might be neurodivergent? And so we're always trying to think about accessibility, diversity, inclusion. Um, another big piece is rounding up the playroom, making sure that we have all sorts of toys.

So if you, if your kid's really into sorting right now, there's something there if they're really into stem and cause and effect and learning how things work. So if your kids wanting around the house, clicking on the lights constantly, like we have something for them to do, or if they're really into art and wanna create something or build, make music, like we have everything.

And so we're, we're. That's not true. We don't have everything yet. We're trying to have everything so, um, so that kids are, um, you know, 'cause kids get sick of stuff, right? Like there's so much toy rotation that goes on. And so we wanna make sure like, okay, if your kid's loving storytelling right now, we have a bunch of toys for that.

But then they wake up tomorrow and they think that's uncool and they wanna go build a tower and knock it over and they can do that in PPO as well. So those are really the big things we keep in mind when building the toys.

Jennifer: Beautiful. And it takes, you said three months-ish to go from design, drawing, board testing with the kids, figuring out what actually is sticking to then creating the toy and including all the

sounds and other elements.

Melissa: yeah, we have what we call big toys and small toys. So some of them are take much less time. Some of them take way more. We just launched a toy a little while ago called World Puzzle, which allows kids to build their own world out of puzzle pieces and then every time you click a piece in the world expands and you can actually play with it then.

So that was a very complex one to build. It took us a lot longer than three months, I think it was nine months even, um, from like original concept to completion. That's important too because we need time to come back to things. We often try to split production cycles, so our team will work on something really heavily for a few months and then they'll step away from it for a few weeks and come back with fresh eyes and a lot of play testing data so we can, um, make sure that we see things from a 360 view and, and don't get too deep into our own world and, and like step out ourselves a bit too.

Jennifer: Makes sense.

I wanna transition into you running POC B. You had mentioned you fundraised while you were pregnant. we're starting to see more and more of that happen today, like kudos to you. Huge. Any advice for other pregnant women or women going to be pregnant who are fundraising? Did you find some things to be helpful for you that

you'd share?

Melissa: Yeah, I think, um, it's hard. I won't, like at the beginning I was very afraid. I thought, okay, like my, I wanna be one of those women who can just be super open in public and tell every, stand up on every Zoom call and be like, look, I have a growing.

but um,

Jennifer: Um,

Melissa: But I didn't, honestly, um, because I thought about it a lot and it actually didn't matter.

Like, and it's none of anyone's business except for my own. So I decided not to, um, you know, run around screaming that I was pregnant during the fundraising process. I didn't hide it either. I tweeted even about it a little bit, like it was not a secret, but I didn't throw it in anyone's face either because my focus was not on that fundraising and. For me, I think it was, it was a very positive experience. Our investors were fine with like, what, what, what are they gonna say? Like, everyone was supportive, lovely. Got lots of nice gifts. Like everyone was very, very nice about it, super supportive. Um, I remember even saying like, we had closed the round, and then I told, like, we, I told them like they knew about it before with the closer.

But, um, I was like, okay, so like if I go into labor, like this is what, These are the contingency plans. And then I'm like, okay, I'm gonna take two weeks off. I'm gonna go totally dark offline and then I'll check in. And they're like, are you sure? Only two weeks? Like, don't you need more time? I'm like, not all, I'll be fine.

And of course I had no idea what was coming first kid. Like you're just like, yeah, I'll be okay, but you need time. And I, I ended up taking more time than two weeks of course. So I think the, my biggest, um, my biggest. Now I have a lot of female who come to me and ask for advice about this, and my most valued piece of advice that I. Planning, you have nine months to figure out what you're gonna do. So, um, making sure you have a lot of runway for yourself to, to sort out how you want the company to run while you're not there. What about childcare in the future? How are you gonna manage not sleeping with running the company? When are you gonna work and how is that gonna affect your team if you're only online at night?

And you're pinging them on Slack, they're gonna have anxiety about having to feel like they need to answer you. And there's so many little nuances to it, but you have time. And so I think just speaking to other women who've been through it was really helpful for me. And then I found my own way. I, I took some of their advice, some of them, some of it I ignored.

I built my own tools. Um, I think the biggest, the biggest thing that helped was just setting myself up for success with a very, very, very detailed handbook of. This is what, what's up with the company? And I had different handbooks for different parts of the team. My co-founders had a handbook. My executive team had a handbook.

Everybody else had another one. So there was nothing left to chance or question. Like nobody had to text me for a password or for like, what do I do in this situation? I had a list of like, if anything on this list happens, you call me. If anything on this list happens, you text me. If anything on this list happens, you can email me.

Like so I was very clear And that

Jennifer: on this list, don't call me.

Melissa: Yeah, that was the longest list. Um, so it was very, it was very clear and, and simple, but it was stressful, honestly, like I, I don't recommend the, our closing date got a little bit pushed as they always do. And so like, I was supposed to, we supposed to close maybe like a week before I, my due date and which was already cutting it fairly close.

But I ended up being late and um, every day I was like, please don't come out. Please don't come out. Just gimme one more day, one more day. And then obviously like the baby is not listening to that and is like, I'm ready, let's go. um, the second I went into labor and contraction started, I just texted my co-founders and was like, it's happening.

I'm offline. Good luck. Godspeed. And, uh, and then I only found out the round close. I remember when I got a text, I had like, my phone was like probably in a drawer, frankly, I was so out of it right after my son was born. And then I got, like, I pulled it up and saw, I had, I don't know, like 50 unread messages from my co-founders, but it was all just like, Emojis emoji and being like, we're done.

We got the final check. And I remember looking at it and just being like, uh, okay. In the moment I just, I honestly didn't care. I exhausted. And then the next morning I woke up and was like, holy shit, we did it. Like, and so I think, um, I would love to really take more time to enjoy that moment.

I mean, it's definitely not like, It's a win in some ways, but it's actually also not. It's just the beginning of like a new phase of the business and it just means like, okay, now shit, it gets more real. You gotta get down to business. So yeah, my advice would be like, it's totally doable, it's stressful, but what isn't in life?

So if you wanna have kids, just go for it.

Jennifer: do it. Thank you so much for sharing that. Again, the more stories like this we hear, the more we normalize it and my personal hope is we have more and more of this, it's very natural thing, childbirth, and it just happens that now we, we are as women getting more opportunities and more of the chances to get funding, et cetera.

So I. Strongly predict this will only go on the rise. And to your point, it's nobody's business but your own and plan well like you did. And stresses are honestly a normal part of life and you'll get through it with your village around you and and your So again, that was huge.

Kudos to you. For forgetting that, but I feel like the next one's gonna be a

breeze.

You're gonna be like, ah, I'm not

Melissa: I think so. I hope so. We'll see actually my, my co-founder co-founder Esther had the best advice 'cause I was really worried at some point when I. Was like, shit, we're raising, I'm pregnant now. Like, what are we gonna do? And she was like, Melissa peop founders get pulled outta their company every single day for extenuating circumstances.

No one could predict, like health, family emergencies. So many things. Like this is one that you can plan for. You have nine months to get ready. Like, why are you working? And I was like, shit, you know what, you're right. Like, and I have been pulled outta my job for family emergencies before and it's much, much, much harder and more stressful. Going into labor, wealth, fundraising. So I think, um, if anything like, uh, venture capitalists and investors should be happy because there's no better planner than a pregnant woman, in my opinion.

Jennifer: And there's no better worker than a mom who needs to juggle

motherhood and work. They, y'all always get

Melissa: in my space, like being a mom made me a better c e o, hands down.

Jennifer: right. Exactly.

Exactly

Melissa: it was a great personal development, professional development moment for me as well.

Jennifer: Huge.

And how about, you had also talked about how the team is so to you. Love that. How are you finding, again, experience share for other CEOs ways to empower them? I had read recently that you started implementing Black Box Friday for creativity. It's the last Friday of the month. No one's allowed to do anything except a new project.

What other types of systems have you found to be able to empower your team to excel?

Melissa: I love Black Box Day. That's definitely my favorite. Um, we a big thing or two other big ones, I guess are Thank you. I highly recommend it. Um, I, I think two other big ones for me are we have Share Day, which is also hap so Share Day is something we started, yeah, like maybe two years ago where. Every month, um, which coincides with the black box day, no coincidence.

So every month somebody on the team shares something with everyone else. Kind of like show and tell. So you can, you can share what you're working on or teach the team how you do your job, or you can share, like, I did a share day a few weeks ago. I made ice cream and taught the team how to make ice cream.

It's one of my hobbies and I brought in ice cream to the office.

Jennifer: cream?

I love ice cream.

Melissa: It's so easy. Honestly, I

Jennifer: do a Loom video and send it

to me?

it

Melissa: should have totally loomed it. That's a really good point. Um, and then we had like a, Our sound designer showed the team how to make syn, um, the sound of a hummingbird's wings flap, but synthetically.

And that was like such a cool one. Um, one of our, like our creative production director or head of creative and production taught everybody. Woodworking, which he does in his spare time and like made this really cool project and like, it's such a cool thing. It takes everyone under the work. It shows everyone on the team that we're all more than our jobs.

And it also, for those who do share what they're working on professionally, it, it definitely adds a layer of respect and understanding. For those who are like, Hey, where's that last sound? And you see, then we had a 30 minute demo on how a single sound can be made. And you're like, oh shit. Okay. I understand why it might be 10 minutes late this week.

You know? So I think it adds just a lot of, um, understanding and empowerment for everyone on the team. Empathy, and it also empowers people on the team who don't. I normally like to speak up or a little shyer to get out of their comfort zones and, and talk and share something important to them, which I love to see, especially from the women on our team.

And um, and then another thing we like to do is, so we're a pretty small company. We don't have any like official budgets for personal development or anything like that yet, but we do have an open policy on um, if there's something you wanna learn. Just pitch it to us, just send me a slack and say like, this is a thing I wanna do, this is how much it costs.

And I've never said no once. So there's a, a nice, like open policy on that. We try to encourage everybody to upskill and, and try new things, go to conferences, read a book, you know, it doesn't take much, honestly. I think just like creating a culture where there's no wrong answer or no bad question and people can really. Um, feel, feel, feel safe coming to you with whatever it is and, and showing who they are. Yeah. And, and like we all spend most of our lives working, so I want everyone to enjoy what they do and it'll make them better. It's selfish, it'll make them better employees, frankly, but it'll also just make them happier, which helps me feel better about employing them.

Like, it, it's a, it's a, a flywheel of awesomeness and I I'm trying to get better at that

Jennifer: How about you, Melissa? What empowered or helped you navigate being a C E O and I'm, that's just an ongoing journey that you'll continue to

evolve, but what has there been something that's been super helpful for

you?

Melissa: I think my, my fellow founder friends or like fellow. Startup-y friends who like, just get, get it. Um, they've been great. My brother is a huge support for me. Like, we're very close. We, we both run two companies, so we're, we're busy. And um, he's the one who told me like, I could do this when I was like, I don't know, maybe we should get someone else.

And he's like, what are you talking about? Like, you are the c e o. You're gonna be the c e o I like, am I like, are you sure? So I think, um, having other people who you respect and who understand what you're going through. Lift you up is really important. So on the days when you're like, why am I here? Who put me in charge of this company?

I am making all the wrong decisions. You have people there who are like, okay, maybe you screwed up today, but like tomorrow you'll be fine. And so that is huge. Like I couldn't imagine going through this without a co-founder. Esther has been a huge rock for me. Luckily we never to meltdown at the same time.

Have totally different jobs actually. I think having a partner who gets that and understands you and your own weaknesses and strengths is huge. And then, um, personally just having wonderful family and friends who are there to cheer you on because there's so many days where I've just felt like giving up or crawling under the blankets and not coming out.

But, um, My husband has been awesome and just reminding me at the end of the day that like, it's all okay. Like this is just a job and just a company. And if it doesn't work out or something goes to shit, the world's not gonna end. And not that I'm trying to screw anything up, but you know, the, the worst case scenario isn't actually. Having that perspective, like my therapist told me, like it, when you're worrying about something, think about the worst possible outcome and, and really think about what that is and what that means. And like, is it actually as bad as you think it's gonna be? And that's always helped me too. So when, whenever I'm panicking, I try to think about that and, and realize like, oh, you know what, even if that happens, we'll move on.

We'll get better. We'll pivot, we'll survive. We're smart. And, um, Yeah, it's good to have people, people. That's my answer. Helpful. Helpful people.

Jennifer: Great. answer. The entrepreneurship is a lonely journey, and it makes sense. It's one like each. Every single entrepreneur is adding value in some way to some particular customer. And each of those, the value you're adding and the customer, you're adding value for.

In the industry you're in will differ from all these other entrepreneurs. It's not like there's one entrepreneur that exists, and so you are, regardless of what you're doing, figuring it out. Sure, there's ways to grow your company, build a product, et cetera, but it's going to be specific for your industry and.

Of course you're gonna have times when you feel like, oh, I don't know what I'm doing, or I need to figure something out from scratch or get help and these people to lift you up and share their experiences of how they've done it. And I love what you said about you and your co-founder have never quite had a meltdown at the same time.

That is huge. I so resonate with that. It's so nice to have the other person to have your back and vice versa. Um, so what a lovely way to end Melissa, and also emphasizing play through all of it. I had such a blast with you today. Thanks for coming on and sharing about your journey and ppo, and I can't wait

to keep in touch.

Melissa: Jennifer. I love the pod and really appreciate you having me on.