🎧🍌 Building Non-Addictive Games for Kids | Melissa Cash, Pok Pok
Creating toys at Disney, designing and monetizing non-addictive products, why kids can't avoid screen time, how to get press and influencer coverage, tactics for building your network from zero
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Melissa Cash is the Co-founder and CEO of Pok Pok, a Montessori-inspired collection of digital toys that spark creativity and learning through open-ended play. Prior to Pok Pok, Melissa spent a decade working in marketing and design roles, designing physical products at Designing and driving 9-digits of downloads across Snowman’s portfolio of mobile games.
We get into navigating screen time for kids and how they've designed and built a business around non-addictive games for kids. Melissa also shares her fundraising tactics, how she built her network from zero, and her strategies for getting press and influencer coverage.
Timestamps to jump in:
05:46 Creating a Montessori inspired game
12:18 Why it's impossible to avoid screen time
15:35 Designing a non-addictive product
17:38 Monetizing a non-addictive game
21:47 How to price a subscription game
24:18 Using new features to drive retention
26:04 Marketing a kids game to parents
30:59 Why Pok Pok waited to launch Android
34:12 How getting pickpocketed in Germany led to a job designing products at Disney
39:23 How great products can define a childhood
43:21 Lessons from having a great idea while working at Disney
46:03 First coming up with the idea for Pok Pok
49:00 Advice for starting your first company
50:10 Fundraising tactics from Pre-Seed to Series A
54:08 How to build your network from zero
57:08 Getting the most out of Slack groups
59:07 Melissa’s hack for in-person events
1:01:33 Tactics for meeting people at events
1:03:39 Winning multiple Apple design awards
1:07:07 How to get press for your startup
1:13:17 Prioritizing getting women on Pok Pok’s cap table
1:18:38 Strategies for staying creative
1:21:58 Melissa’s influencer marketing hacks
1:24:24 Lessons from failed influencer campaigns
1:28:19 Growing 5x YoY, adding STEM content
1:30:28 What surprised her about starting a company
Referenced:
Try Pok Pok - use code POKPOK50 here for 50% off an annual sub
The Peel Podcast episode on pitching reporters with Eric Newcomer
More on Pok Pok’s Series A here
Find Melissa on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Transcript
Find transcripts of all prior episodes here.
Turner Novak:
Melissa, how's it going? Welcome to the show.
Melissa Cash:
Good. How are you? Thanks for having me.
Turner Novak:
Yes, thanks for coming on. Exciting for me because just recently invested in Pok Pok after two members of the household has been, probably weekly active users, probably not quite DAUs, but we use it very consistently and then just invested.
I know you just raised the series A recently that was announced, so we'll talk about that a little bit. But yeah, thanks for coming on.
Melissa Cash:
Thanks for having me, and I'm so happy that your kids are weekly users. That's lovely.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, I would say it's probably a 0.8 DAU, something like that? Like I said, maybe four to six days a week on average.
Melissa Cash:
That's very normal and healthy.
Turner Novak:
So for people who don't know, can you maybe talk about what inspired Pok Pok in the first place and then we can get going from there?
Melissa Cash:
So my two co-founders who are husband and wife have two boys. I also have a son, but they had kids first and their two-year-old at the time was a lot as many two-year-olds are. My son's two right now, and he's a lot.
They were trying to figure out how to introduce technology to him while they were also juggling jobs and a newborn baby. They started looking around in the app store for things that they could share with him and honestly found nothing that they felt good about. It was a ton of really addictive and overstimulating, frankly, video games that were not very well-designed for young children. And not really educational either or a ton of pedagogical apps that really just have kids memorizing and regurgitating information instead of really learning, thinking, dreaming, doing.
So they were like, "What about all of those amazing open-ended evergreen toys scattered around the floor of our entire house? Why has no one ever thought to bring those into a digital space?" So that was sort of the first twinge of the idea of, "Let's make something that brings non-addictive, very creative toys into a digital world for kids."
Turner Novak:
It's kind of like a Montessori toy rooms brought into an app, basically.
Melissa Cash:
Exactly. We wanted to find a way to bring all of those toys that we all grew up with as kids, adding that Montessori spin on top into a digital world where kids can follow their nose, explore and experiment without fear of failure, without winning or losing or trying to score points or win or anything like that. It's just a very kind of sandbox-ey environment.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, there's no winning, no losing, no points. There's no in-app purchases either, which is the interesting.
The thing that we found is, I don't know, we've tried a hundred of these iPad games for kids over the years and it's always these ... They're almost like casinos. I don't know if that's the right word for it, but it's like this freemium hack. You get the kids addicted with Crayola or a Disney character and then suddenly you need $18 to play to put a dress on someone.
If you don't have kids, that's the thing. It's almost like they use all those in-app hacks in paywalls that you might fall for as an adult. A lot of the games for kids are littered with those strategies.
So how did you guys think about just building a game that doesn't have that same issue and still make money also?
Melissa Cash:
Yeah. Well, first of all, we're like, "We don't want to be annoying to parents." There's nothing more annoying when your kid's coming and tugging on your shirt and they're like, "Mom," and they're bugging you for something. Especially when we lean on a tool like a device for our kids, we do so usually with a feeling of guilt or with this feeling of like, "Okay. I'm going to let you play on the iPad for 20 minutes because I need time for me. I need to make dinner, I need to go to the bathroom, I need to just breathe for a second."
So we never wanted parents to be interrupted by their kids while they were playing. So we had to make it super accessible and easy for young children, even as young as two to play all on their room, which meant innately there would be no in-app purchases, no ads, no nonsense.
Turner Novak:
And there's no words or language of any kind, right?
Melissa Cash:
None. So what you do see in Pok Pok is if you tap a person, they speak gibberish. And that's actually our sound designer, Matt and his wife Cathy doing all of the voices in Pok Pok. And it's all designed to leave room for imagination. So when you tap on a character and they say, "Hello, I'm going for a walk," maybe that's not what the kid actually intended.
So when you tap a character and they mumble something like ... then the kid can kind of make up the story on their own. So we decided from a very early stage this was going to be totally free of all the garbage nonsense and trash that's already out there on the app stores, and we wanted to make something as pure as our own living room floors filled with toys.
From a business point of view, we figured, "Well, this is what parents really want." They want to feel good about screen time. They want that independent play, which is really healthy for their kids, but also amazing for the parent to get that 20-minute break, and they want to feel like they're being a good parent. So for us, it was honestly a no-brainer. We're like, "Why has no one else done this before?"
Turner Novak:
And when you open the app, there's a couple different circles you can click on to go in to start playing with something. I think when we first started using it a couple years ago, there was six maybe, and then now there's something like 20. I haven't actually counted, but-
Melissa Cash:
Something around there. I think we're at 19.
Turner Novak:
Okay. And then for example, there's a dinosaur world where there's just a bunch of these dinosaur. And every single thing in the product is tappable and you can do something with it. It's literally like you're playing with actual toys.
Melissa Cash:
Exactly, and everything in Pok Pok is real. So in the dinosaur toy, for example, it's a kind of slice of the late Cretaceous period. All of the plants, the flora, the fauna, that's all real. You'll notice the dinosaurs don't talk because dinosaurs didn't talk.
I don’t know. I think there's a wonderful opportunity for anthropomorphized animals all over children's entertainment, but we also need real world stuff, and so the dinosaurs can, yeah, they can fight each other.
Turner Novak:
Oh, wait, I've never noticed that, actually.
Melissa Cash:
What? Oh, my god. Well, your daughters are probably playing.
Turner Novak:
They actually, I don't think they've ever done that.
Melissa Cash:
That's really funny. We actually did get a bit of backlash for that, but we also got a ton of positive messages being like, "Thank you for creating this because my kids want to experiment with conflict, but in a healthy, low stakes way where they're not playing a first person shooter with real people.”
But they're seeing what happens when a T-Rex walks over to a baby brontosaurus, and it's not violent, there's no blood, it's so, so gentle and it's very subtle. I mean, I think a lot of kids don't even necessarily notice it's happened, but we try to just bring reality into Pok Pok, even with the people.
So Pok Pok represents people of all body types, genders, family constructs, races. We have everyone in there, and if there's one thing we get a lot of backlash for, it's that.
Turner Novak:
Interesting. Okay. I think my daughters in the dinosaur, for example, they will make eggs and they'll have the family sitting around the nest together.
Melissa Cash:
That's very sweet.
Turner Novak:
And I think it was interesting, when we first met, we were kind of grappling with this whole screen time issue with kids. I think our daughter was three or four-ish, forget exact age, but it was kind of that time where like, okay, she knows that technology is a thing that she wants to use. And we were grappling with then, "Man, these are not good games."
So it's almost like villainized in a way. I mean, we had this perspective before we had kids. It was like, "Oh, we're never going to let our kids sit there in the restaurant on an iPad," but it's almost like it's a tool. It's something that kids need to learn how to use really and use responsibly. How have you just thought about balancing all that stuff?
Melissa Cash:
Yeah. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said, before you had kids, you're like, "I'm never going to let my kid use a device." Every parent is the best parent until they have children of their own, and then they realize the realities of parenting.
Every parent leans on the tools around them. In 2024, that's an iPad, that's technology. 20 years ago, it wasn't the case and you survive with what you have, and we have these wonderful tools now, so it's no coincidence that we're leaning on them.
We think about it a lot. I mean, this is probably the number one thing we think about in the company is how do we feel about this? And it's why we started the company too, because we felt like crap about screen time always. And there is this huge stigma around it. And it is very taboo in many situations.
But I think it really stems from the fact that, as adults, we are addicted to technology and we are addicted to our screens. And we're given the stickiest, most addictive tools that exists. Look at TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, it's all-
Turner Novak:
The Peel Podcast, people just can't stop bingeing it.
Melissa Cash:
Exactly. Yeah. With great power comes great responsibility, Turner.
We all feel guilty about it. We know we shouldn't be on our phones as much. There are a million apps and products now to get us off of our phone. So it's no coincidence that we feel worried about giving these things to our kids, especially because they're fairly new
So research is young, but I think it comes down to the fact that the technology is not going to go anywhere. 200 years ago, people were scared about their children reading.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, books.
Melissa Cash:
"Oh, what crazy ideas are they going to get from books?"
And then my generation, TV. TV's going to rot your brain, period. But there's a huge difference between watching eight hours of Storage Wars and eight hours of a beautiful David Attenborough documentary about climate change. From one, you can walk away smarter, more inspired and feeling good, and one, you walk away with nothing, essentially.
So there's a lot that goes into the content and how it's being used. I think it's up to the parent, of course, to set boundaries.
When you said your kids are not daily active users, I was almost happy to hear that because our kids should be playing outside in the mud and doing other things. They shouldn't be on these things all day long.
But when there's a time and a place and when the time and a place comes, we really just want to make sure we have the content that feels like an extension of real play. That's quiet. That's calming. And that's not designed to have them foaming at the mouth having a meltdown when it's time to take the device away.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, and maybe if you could go a little bit into that, just how do you design a non-addictive product, whether or not it's for a kid or not, just what are the things that you think through to do that successfully?
Melissa Cash:
The biggest thing is making sure that the stimuli is low.
So most content that makes people addicted to it, it's fast-paced, it's loud, it's flashy, it's bright, it's colorful. When you picture that and you picture a kid's IP, they go hand-in-hand typically.
So we wanted to take the opposite approach. And that really is a testament to my co-founder's creative vision here, but we wanted to make something quiet, something with only ... We started, I think we had only six colors in the app. Now, we've bumped up to 12, but they're all tones of those same six colors.
So it's a very visually quiet place. Auditorially, very quiet. First of all, we have no one talking at you or to you. All of the sounds in Pok Pok are hand-recorded, so they're designed to be gentle and soft. The whole thing is designed to be slow. Our animations are also slower-paced. So if you compare them to say Cocomelon, they're I think a quarter of the pace of a Cocomelon video. So there's a lot of care that goes into the stimuli to make sure it's just low stimulation, and that in itself plays a huge part.
The other big part is the fact that Pok Pok has no levels to beat, no points to score, and nothing to win or lose. So the motivation to play is not extrinsic from beating a level or like, "Oh, just one more try, just one more apple to collect, just one more thing to do." It is coming from the kid within them. It's why kids love Lego or drawing or trying to scoop sand forever because it just comes from deep within them, and they'll stop when they want to stop, and come back to it when they want to come back to it.
But those two things together really build this as non-addictive as possible, let's say, space for kids to explore without any of those distractions and extrinsic motivators to get in the way.
Turner Novak:
You make it very almost muted. Or, you have it a little bit more simple - but then wouldn't that make it worse business because there's a reason that all these companies have created like Cocomelon, I don't know. I think I saw they're worth, it's within the billions of dollars, right?
So technically, isn't this a bad business idea to build something this way?
Melissa Cash:
That's a really good point. We thought about that, of course. I think it's a bad business idea if you are very short-sighted. I think there's a few things that come into play here.
First of all is, yeah, those really addictive things work, obviously. Like, kids and parents, and adults even, we all can get addicted to these things. But everyone kind of hates them, right? No one's like, "I love TikTok." You kind of hate it. But you need to go on it.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, we're trying to ban it right now in the US.
Melissa Cash:
Exactly. There's no brand affinity and loyalty and love for the product you're using. You're like, "Oh, I hate my phone. I hate Instagram. I hate all of it," but you feel like you have to use it.
So we are playing the long game with Pok Pok. Our whole mission with the company is to help raise the next generation of creative thinkers through play, and ultimately become the Pixar of play. That number one digital first kids brand that parents actually love just as much as their kids do. So with that depth and care for the brand comes the parent also encouraging the play.
So just as an example, if it's time, if you're going on a long flight and you're like, "Okay, kids, how are we going to keep you busy for 10 hours?" The parent is more likely to recommend the product that they feel good about rather than letting their kids do the thing that they feel like shit about, but their kid happens to really like. It's not that kids love Cocomelon more than Pok Pok. It's just that it's harder to put it down.
So to get Pok Pok in front of them first is that differentiator. And that's where the parent comes in. And without the parent buy-in, you don't have brands, you don't have longevity. And you don't have that loyalty.
We think a lot about retention. I mean, obviously, we have to build a business here too. So we needed to make sure that Pok Pok was still interesting, still super fun and had a lot of educational value to keep kids coming back to it, even though it is so low stimulation. I think that comes with the diversity of what we have in the app. So kids get sick of stuff every two seconds, as you know, so we needed to make sure that there's a massive collection of toys and everything can be played with in a million different ways.
So there's so much to do and explore and find that, even though it is low stimulation and it's very gentle, there's still something always kind of piquing a child's interest. So it's not that it's boring, it's just that it's not screaming at you like some of the other types of kids' content out there.
So from a business point of view, it works great because, actually, kids like it, but we also have buy-in from the parent, which is very, very rare in digital tools and content for kids. Usually, the parents just tolerate it, they don't actually like it. And so your shelf life on that is very short.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, that's a good point. The parents are basically the customer, but the kids are the user, I guess, if that's a way to frame it.
The retention point's really important too. I remember when I first met you a couple of years ago, you had just launched the app. And one of my things was, I just don't know if people are actually going to stick around and use this. It's the opposite of what you generally would want to do.
So I had my daughter start playing with it and she just kept using it and it was like, interesting, wouldn't have expected that. I mean, I guess you'd hope, obviously, but like, "Huh, it's really interesting."
So I think the retentions huge in that regard. Just in terms of, it's a subscription business. I don't even know what we pay. It's not a lot of money. It's like 12 bucks a month, maybe? $15 a month? Something like that. What's the pricing?
Melissa Cash:
It's much less. It's funny. I'm glad you think that that's "nothing" because we're doing some price testing right now. So I'm going to come back to you, we'll talk about that later, but-
Turner Novak:
Okay. Well, we'll probably upgrade to the annual once it gets too expensive monthly.
Melissa Cash:
Oh, my gosh, you're not on the annual, Turner? Your kids have been already using it for years. What are you waiting for?
Turner Novak:
Oh, so this is an interesting question. How do you figure out your annual pricing? Because usually, someone will have monthly, it's let's say 10 bucks a month. Annual, you would think, $10 times 12 is $120, but no one ever has that annual pricing. It's always a discount.
So how do you figure out your annual pricing?
Melissa Cash:
We actually figure out annual first and then we figure out monthly after, and that's because the annual subscribers are way more valuable to us. We get more cash upfront and we have a full year to engage them, build a relationship and keep them for their second year.
So we think about the annual price first and then we just calculate the monthly backwards. So we'll make annual always be a discount on the monthly. So if you pay monthly for 12 months, obviously, it's still cheaper to subscribe annually.
How do we think about the annual price? Honestly, Pok Pok is priced on the lower end in terms of competition at the moment. Even though it's a very premium Montessori, critically acclaimed product.
We knew when we first started the company we were going to market with something completely different than everybody else was doing for kids. So we didn't want price to be the reason people didn't try it. So we started a little lower to make sure that the barrier to entry wasn't the cost, that it was like, "Hmm, this is interesting. This is a little weird. This is different than anything I've seen before, but let's give it a go."
Turner Novak:
Yeah, there's no Elsa or Disney characters in here. There's no like-
Melissa Cash:
Exactly. So we started a little lower on price, but now, like you already mentioned, we've multiplied the content in the app, maybe like tenfold. We've grown so much. And we've also learned a lot about our users and our customers who, as you mentioned, are different.
So we're continuously price testing also in different markets to see what the final, I mean, I don't know if there ever is a final price, but what the right price for now is.
But we do just try to think about recurring value for the family because, especially in households where you already are paying for multiple subscriptions for, let's say, streaming platforms. And then you have a bunch of other things going on, we want to make sure it Pok Pok is really valuable for them.
So right now, it's $45.99 US a year, but we are planning to raise that in the coming months.
Turner Novak:
So if I'm listening to this and I'm like, "Man, this sounds interesting," I better sign up before you raise prices.
Melissa Cash:
Today. Don't hesitate. There's a free trial, so no stress.
Turner Novak:
Okay. Maybe we can figure this out later, but we'll throw it in the show notes, just like a link to get something. If you sign up, I don't know if you do special deals, but...
Melissa Cash:
Totally. Yeah, we can. Happy to shoot everyone a deal. If you'll throw in a banana, then everyone can get 20% off on a banana.
Side note: use code POKPOK50 for 50% off an annual subscription here.
Turner Novak:
Well, so digging in a little bit more, it's interesting because you think about the retention and the in-app purchases, usually someone would say, "Make more money, launch a new game, or launch a new thing to purchase in the app."
You think of it more as, because it's a subscription, you want people to continue coming back. You just want to keep adding new features or new toys, basically new worlds for the kids to explore in the game. Is that a fair way to think about how you just think through the general business model, it's just continue to launch new experiences for the kids?
Melissa Cash:
Exactly. It's just adding value all the time for the kid and the parent because we have this unique problem where our user isn't our customer and this is actually a problem that radiates through so many other industries, especially in B2B companies.
So I think it's often very forgotten that when your user isn't your customer, everything is more complicated, but there's so many cool things that you can do when that's the case. So we're always thinking about what's the value for the kid, what's the value for the parent, and where's the overlap?
Because if the parent doesn't know that the kid loves all the new updates, then they're going to unsubscribe. And if the kid doesn't care, doesn't find them, if their parent maybe doesn't mention it, then they can also become tired.
So it's a very symbiotic relationship and it's probably the biggest challenge with Pok Pok is connecting the parent with the kid and the parent back to us. Because the pro is you don't need your parent to play with Pok Pok. A 2-year-old can do it all on their own. The con of that is, you don't need a parent.
So if your 2-year-old is savvy enough to find the iPhone or iPad, pick it up, turn it on, the parent may never even notice what they're doing. So yeah, we have a lot of unique challenges in that.
Turner Novak:
I think the interesting thing about your marketing too is it's not screenshots of the game. It's moreso families and kids enjoying, you're more seeing their reactions, and seeing them play. Because you're ultimately selling it to the parents. A couple seconds video of the game, they're like, "This doesn't look fun... this looks lame, this looks boring."
But then when you see it for a kid, watching them play, you're like, "Oh," The kid's really into it. He's having fun.
Melissa Cash:
Thank you. Yeah, I think it's so important. If you show a 40-year-old parent a kid's game, they're going to be like, "Who cares?" They're not going to be like, "Oh, awesome. You can drive cars into a car wash. Sick."
Turner Novak:
Yeah, you can scrub the soap and the sponge on the car to clean off the mud over and over again.
Melissa Cash:
Exactly. But kids love that, of course. One of the biggest things that shocked us is what kids actually do in Pok Pok sometimes. I'm just like-
Turner Novak:
Yeah, what do they do? In terms of the data, what's the most common use case or couple top activities that kids do?
Melissa Cash:
Well, the town is our most popular toy. It's the one with the car on the icon. And my son's actually really into it right now too and it's very funny to see.
So we have the toys heat map, so we can see where kids are and what they're doing. And it's so funny because there are little pockets where they tend to lean. My son will use the car wash for a 30 minutes straight. He'll just bring vehicle upon vehicle upon vehicle through the car wash-
Turner Novak:
Because you can go and find the fire station and pull a firetruck on the other side of town and bring it to the car wash and put it in.
Melissa Cash:
Totally. Same with the garbage disposal. So there's a garbage dump and a recycling center, and same if you put those trucks in, they dump garbage or recycling and then move on. And you can put anything in there. You can also put a digger through or a firetruck through, and that is some of the most interesting play that we see, which is so cool.
Because kids do love that repetition, especially the youngest children. It's really important for their brain development and for them to understand cause and effect and problem solving. So it's a really cool one.
We also see kids just wandering around looking for mail, and they'll find all the letters. We've hit a million Easter eggs in the town, but they'll just collect them. Or we see kids just line up cars by color and that's their play.
And so the whole beauty of it is they can do whatever they want. The limit is not in the app, the limit is within themselves. So it's quite funny to see that.
But again, when it comes to marketing, we don't get that as parents. We've lost all of our senses of wonder. We're old, we don't see the fun in that the way kids do. So we have to show parents the value add for them, which is feeling safe, knowing their kid's, doing something healthy and that yes, it's using technology, but it's doing so in a really mindful and beautiful way.
Turner Novak:
So then in terms of more the landscape of other games, kids could play, I mean there's a bunch of other toy companies, a bunch of other apps. What do you think is one of the big differentiators? Maybe you've already explained this, but...
Melissa Cash:
Yeah, I think the biggest thing, of course, is the type of play Pok Pok offers. It's this open-ended, real creative space where kids can do whatever they want.
And most children's apps have levels, menus, goals. They're either an academic workbook that's been digitized where you go through, you match the circle to the circle, and you move on to the next thing. And it takes you through that rote learning you would be doing in a classroom, just digitally.
Or you've got the video game, which is you've got your 10 classic games for kids, and they've just been given a different IP and a different packaging. So that's memory, matching, etc.
And there's nothing inherently wrong with any of those things. But what we know from research and many, many years of working on this is that kids learn best through play and experimentation and pushing the limits.
So when they're just trying to memorize and spit something out. Or they're just going through the motions. It's fine, but there's so much more that can be happening.
So I think the biggest moat for Pok Pok actually is the fact the content and the play that's going on, is as close as you'll get on a screen to what you get again on the floor of your house when your kids are opening a bag of spaghetti and spilling it all over the floor. That is such a cool learning moment. But as a parent, you're like, "Jesus Christ, why is this all over my kitchen?"
I think that's really the biggest differentiator. And then when you add on top the aesthetics, the quiet, the beautiful art and sound, that just really drives the whole thing home.
Turner Novak:
Then where do you think this goes over the longer term? What other things are you going to do?
There's 19 toy rooms right now, couple of years from now, 10 years from now, what all are you guys thinking about?
Melissa Cash:
It's a great question. So for the immediate future, we're going to be launching on Android later this year, which is something we've been holding off on for the last two years. So we're really, really excited for that.
Turner Novak:
Why did you hold off so long?
Melissa Cash:
So there were a few reasons. The biggest one is, we really wanted to nail every aspect of finding product market fit on one platform before diversifying. Because launching on Android, it's a very complex move in the sense that you have way more devices to support. We have a really high quality, beautifully made app that can be difficult to port properly to some of those older Android devices, which are the ones that kids are actually using. They're not using the newest pixel, whatever. So that came into play.
We also know from an economic standpoint that Apple users tend to pay more. So revenues tends to be about 30% higher on iOS than Android. And when we started the company, we wanted to focus on that so that we could really build a healthy business from the get go and then bring it over to Android later.
And then being Apple exclusive was also a really nice strategic move. We've had a lot of love and support from Apple over the years. We're the first children's app ever in history to win an Apple design award and an app store award for a cultural impact. So all of those things are not because we are exclusive to Apple, but I do think that it doesn't hurt that we were exclusive to Apple. So there are really a bunch of reasons.
And the last thing really is we're a very small team. We're 20 people today. But when we started the company, we were four and we didn't have enough technical bandwidth to do both. And so over the years we could have done it, but we wanted to really just stay focused and make one platform work really, really well so that when we do launch on Android, we can go from zero to a 100. We're not going from zero to five, to 10, to 20 and work our way back up.
Turner Novak:
And speaking about all the awards and all that kind of stuff you guys have won, even pre Pok Pok. A lot of the team members have, I would say, a pretty prolific resume. I know that it's not really public, but it's nine figures or nine digits of total downloads on the team of all their different products that they've built over the years. It's pretty impressive.
Melissa Cash:
Thank you. Yeah, we're really lucky. So we actually have five founders at Pok Pok. So Ryan and Jordan are also the founders of Snowman who created Alto's Adventure and Skate City, and a bunch of other really amazing mobile games in the heyday of mobile gaming.
Between the five of us, we have garnered over a hundred million downloads worldwide. And honestly, when we started Pok Pok, I had zero experience in the apps and games business. I came from Disney, I came from marketing and startups. This was not my world.
So partnering with those guys has been incredible and gave us a big, big, big boost in terms of knowledge, connections, and really getting going. So yeah, we're very proud to be such a diverse founding team, and yeah, it's a cool group.
Turner Novak:
Yeah. I know you mentioned Disney. I know there's a story there. I don't know where you want to start the story, but I think it's probably interesting for people to hear.
Melissa Cash:
Yeah. Well, I'll tell you this. I'm Canadian, I moved to Germany when I was 22, I think, for love, of course.
Turner Novak:
Was this post-college?
Melissa Cash:
Yeah, this was post-college. I graduated. I had studied in Europe for a while, and fallen in love with my now husband, and I thought, "I'm going to move to Europe and see what happens. I'll give it a few months."
I ended up staying for over six years. And when I first got there, I spoke zero German, but I was able to get a job at this teeny tiny, I'm not even going to call it a startup, but a small business run by an American and her husband. And it was really cool, actually. It was a fashion business. It was very interesting.
But the short version there is, I was basically an intern, I suppose. And they asked me to go to Berlin from Munich where I was living for a trade show, a conference. So I'm like, "Okay, sounds good."
And so they gave me literally cash for this business trip, and they gave me an envelope of cash. I lived in the safest neighborhood in Munich. They lived 10 minutes away by bike.
I literally, I am cycling home from work, they've given me the envelope of cash, the next day I'm to fly to Berlin, and this cash is everything. It's my hotel, my food, any other additional expenses. And, I'm like, I'm just going to stop on the way home and quickly grab groceries and I make a pit stop.
And while I'm at the store, I got mugged. Luckily, I didn't know it had happened until I was going to pay for my groceries and realized my stuff was gone, but the envelope was taken, so my whole wallet was actually taken.
Turner Novak:
So someone pickpocketed you?
Melissa Cash:
Yeah, essentially.
Turner Novak:
Wow.
Melissa Cash:
And it was crazy because it was the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, and I was leaving early because I was going to go to the airport. So it was weird. The store was empty. It was a bunch of grandmothers.
I still to this day, don't know who did it. I tried to report it. The store didn't have any cameras, so I lost all the money. Also, I spoke no German. So when I was trying to report it, I was just all flustered.
And I ended up texting my boyfriend at the time and was like, "I don't know what to do. I just lost 2000 euros." I didn't have 2000 euros, I just moved. There was a poor post-grad in a new country. And I was like, "Shit, how am I going to go on this business trip? They're trusting me." I was going by myself.
So anyways, I end up sorting myself out. The short version is that I ended up just telling my boss what happened, and they were like, "Oh my God, don't worry about it. We'll just give you more. It's okay." And they're like, "Just pay for what you can while you're there." I'm like, "I have enough money to pay for my trip." And they're like, "We'll just reimburse you."
So they were very, very kind. Even their children had collected coins in an envelope for me and were like, "It's okay." It was very sweet. I was so grateful.
But what's crazy is, when I got to Berlin, I was really on guard because I'd just been mugged. So yeah, I was just really paying attention and I finished up on my conference there, it all went well. And I was waiting for the bus to get back to the airport. I probably would've Ubered or taxied at the time, but again, I was limited on funds at the moment.
So I'm waiting for the bus. And I'm really aware of my surroundings, and I see this woman and she starts coming to approach me and I'm just like, "Okay, what's going to happen here?" And she just goes, "Hey, do you know what time the bus is coming?" And she spoke English, which I thought was surprising.
We got to talking. It turns out she worked for Disney and we really just hit it off. We spent the entire time flying, taking the bus, then getting on the plane and flying back to Germany.
Turner Novak:
Which she sat next to you on the plane?
Melissa Cash:
No, no. She didn't sit next to me on the plane, but I just kept bumping into her.
And it was funny because I was telling her, she was from New York. It turned out she worked for Disney in Germany. And as my little side hustle while I was doing this internship, I was giving bicycle tours of Munich in English. And I mentioned that to her and she was like, "Oh, you know what? I have some family coming from New York. Maybe we'll come on your tour." So we exchanged information, she gave me her card. I'll never forget it because it had a Mickey Mouse embossed on it, which I just thought was the coolest thing.
And a couple of weeks later, she showed up on my tour. I took her on the city and then she said, "You know what? I might have a job for you."
And about two months later, I was sitting in an office next to her, and stayed at Disney for about five years, designing physical products for babies and toddlers.
So it was just this crazy moment of almost failing, losing all my money, getting to Berlin, meeting this woman. And it really just taught me, you never know who you're going to meet, that might change your life, and so just be open and talk to everybody, everywhere.
And so that was really my first experience with that and then it continued to trickle through my career and I'm still in touch with her to this day. She was an amazing mentor and friend.
Turner Novak:
Amazing. What kind of products did you make or toys, are you allowed to talk about, at Disney?
Melissa Cash:
I made a lot of non-toy things. So I made a lot of baby bottles, clothing, strollers. Yeah, actually my son is using stuff that I had made at Disney and kept, like blankets, stuff like that. So there's a lot of home decor, accessories, that kind of stuff.
Turner Novak:
Oh, interesting. That's where Disney juices a lot of their LTV on customers, right?
Melissa Cash:
Yes, it really is.
And I have to say, there's such a loyalty there. Because there was a time where I was like, "What am I doing?" This is a great job and it's very romanticized to work at these big entertainment companies.
But I also remember as a kid, I had these piglet pajamas, and when I wore them, I felt like I could literally do anything. I just felt so powerful and I was like, "You know what? If I can give that feeling to a kid through these Mickey shoes or whatever I was working on, that's pretty amazing."
And it really gave me the first taste on a visceral level of the power of brand and building it with young children while they're so small and being welcomed into a family. It's a big deal.
And so I think when we started Pok Pok, we thought a lot about that and how can we build trust in brand with families when kids are really, really young and hopefully grow with them for years to come.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, it's definitely true. I just think about with my kids, the random things that they just get so much joy out of, or that makes them feel so powerful. Like a dress that has a certain character on it, and it probably costs about 30 cents to make that dress. But it has so much meaning to them.
Melissa Cash:
You know how, when you buy a new workout shirt or something, and you're like, "Fuck yeah, I'm going to go for a run tonight," Because you bought the shirt. Certain things really do make you feel more powerful and whether that's a clothing item or a brand new MacBook or whatever the thing is that gets your juices flowing. I do feel like there's a lot of power there.
And so it can be very laughable to think about. But I think there's a lot of really defining moments in childhood that happen through product, brand and all of these other companies that you let into your home.
Turner Novak:
Anything just in your childhood growing up, that you think has defined maybe you, Pok Pok?
Melissa Cash:
I had a really creative upbringing. Anything went in our house. You could do whatever you wanted when it came to dreaming or doing. Or if were, my brother and I would be like, "Hey, we're going to make potions out of soap and garbage or whatever we can find and we're going to sell it on the street..."
Whatever we wanted to do, my parents were like, "Yeah, let's do it. How can we help?" And they never held us back.
So I think, even when I remember my brother was saying he was going to be an NBA player and he was five foot six or something, it was just not going to happen. And my parents were like, "Yeah." And I told them I was going to be a professional actress, and they were like, "Okay, we'll make it happen. How can we help?"
Anything we wanted they were game for and I think it really defined our ability to think really beyond the scope of what other people thought was the limit. So it made us almost delusional that anything was possible.
But I think as a founder, if you meet a founder who's not delusional to some degree, I think they're probably not right for the job because you have to believe so fundamentally that what you are doing can actually change the world, that you'll do anything to make it happen.
And so I think just growing up with that mentality really defined who I am and made it possible for me to see through the obstacles, get through the really hard days of running this company and just keeping going because I knew that someone was going to be there being like, "Fuck yeah, let's do it," No matter what.
Turner Novak:
Yeah. Were there any moments during Disney where you feel like you got similar, monumental, very memorable experiences?
Melissa Cash:
Yeah, I think one of the ones that stands out to me the most is when I came up with this idea that I was designing shoes with Ironman on them. And Disney had recently acquired Marvel, and it was a very big deal.
And anyways, I was working on these shoes and I thought it would be really cool to have the superheroes come at you like Marvel. There was this Marvel with his fist in the air... Not Marvel, Iron Man, sorry. Oh my God, I sound like such a boomer. Iron Man flying through the air with his fist.
So I thought it would be cool to make a flip book out of the tongue on a shoe, so that kids could, when they fiddle with their shoes and flip the tongue, there would be a bunch of Iron Mans flipping. And they would be like, “he's flying. !”And I just thought this would be such a cool thing. So it's hard to describe, but I swear it was very cool. Or, at least my 25-year-old self thought it was very cool.
Turner Novak:
So it's one of those flip books where there's like a hundred pages, you flip them and each page is slightly different? So it's like a little animation?
Melissa Cash:
Exactly. But this is the tongue of your sneaker.
Turner Novak:
Okay. The tongue of a shoe. Okay.
Melissa Cash:
So when you flip your tongue, I don't know if you ever fidgeted with your shoes when you were a kid, but where you flip the tongue, and it would be flipping 10 pages of a book. And that little mini book would be Iron Man flying.
Turner Novak:
Did it work? Were you able to create it?
Melissa Cash:
So I had the design, the initial plan, and I remember showing it to someone on my team. She wasn't my boss directly, but she was definitely way higher up than I was.
And the first thing she said was, "Everything you make at Disney is owned by Disney." And it was the first time I realized I had made something really interesting that they were like, "Oh, shit." And they really wanted to make sure that I knew that whatever I made there didn't belong to me, that it was actually Disney's. And I had created something novel and cool.
And the shoe never got made while I was working there. But it was that clicked for me where I was like, "No matter what I do at this company, it's not going to be mine." So it just stuck with me in the back of my head.
It wasn't a tipping point, but when I ended up moving back to Canada and meeting my co-founders and thinking about, "Should we start this company?" That really stuck out to me because I realized, "You know what? If whatever I do here, it's going to be mine and I'll have full control over it," - or control with my co-founders of course, I'm not crazy - but it would be something that I could own. And that was a really interesting moment for me.
Turner Novak:
Interesting. And then how did you meet all the co-founders? There's five of you, I haven't met everyone yet. How did that all come about? Were you in Germany? Did you move back first? What was the order of operations?
Melissa Cash:
I moved back to Toronto. And my older brother, Ryan, is the founder of Snowman with his childhood best friend Jordan, who I've known since I was three. So when I came back to Toronto, they were about to launch Alto's Odyssey, which is a very successful mobile game now. And they asked if I could help do a bit of PR for the launch.
And Ryan and I had worked together over the years. Whether that would be a newspaper route, or whatever. And we always knew that we shouldn't work together because we're really, really close siblings. And if we work together, that's all we're ever going to talk about.
So we both agreed, this is super temporary. So I'm like, "I'll help you for three months and then I'm going to go get a job." I had a job lined up at a startup to start and build a marketing department. It was very cool Series A startup, very excited for it.
And I went there. But the whole time, I was thinking about this other little idea, which had come up when two of Ryan and Jordan's freelancers flew over from Belgium. And they had this little idea to make a digital busy book for their son. Like I mentioned, they were trying to figure out how to introduce him to technology, and his favorite toy at the time was just a big busy book with no words and just lots of images and they wanted to digitize it.
So they asked Ryan and Jordan, "Hey, do you guys mind if we work on this on the weekends? It'll just be a hobby project. We're just going to make it for our son, but it could be a conflict because it's technically a video game." And they were like, "No, we love this idea. You should talk to Melissa. She just worked at Disney and maybe she can help you."
And then from there it was just very, very clear that they were onto something really unique. I saw the artwork first and had just never seen anything like that for children. It was so bespoke and beautiful and something I would actually hang in my house as an adult. And I realized this is going to be something really interesting.
And then we talked a lot more about how all of our kids are going to grow up to have jobs that haven't been invented yet and we have to prepare them for that world. And technology's not going anywhere and we have enough rote learning coming out of our ears that there's just so much more we can do for kids.
And it was just really clear that we had to start this business, but that it didn't fit into Snowman and what they were building with their video game studio. So we decided to start another company essentially, and that ended up becoming Pok Pok. So we're all very passionate about it, but at the end of the day it just felt like, yeah, something we had to do.
And five Founders is a lot, but it works for us. Ryan and Jordan are really still invested in Snowman, but they're also really present in Pok Pok and help with many, many things over here. And Esther and her husband, Mathijs, are our heads of creative and lead the product charge.
Turner Novak:
What was the first steps then of just getting the company started in just the first couple months? Anything interesting that happened?
Melissa Cash:
A lot of interesting things. I think the biggest thing was trying to figure out what to do honestly. It was like-
Turner Novak:
Yeah, because you'd never started a company, right?
Melissa Cash:
No. For any founder listening who wants to maybe do something and has no idea how to start or where to start, this will maybe make you feel better. Which is, yeah, I had no idea what to do. I had a lot of work experience. I'm a smart person. But I never started my own company. I knew nothing really about the apps and games business.
So I went to Ryan and Jordan and we decided I'm going to go through a crash course. I moonlit as head of operations for Snowman, helped them launch some games, helped them scale their team. I think we tripled the team size in a year. And I just went nuts trying to learn that business really, really well so that I could take everything I learned and bring it to Pok pok.
And during that time we hired two people, an artist and a developer to help start building and working on Pok Pok with Esther and Mathijs. After that first year of what I'll call exploration, where I learned the industry and they made the first MVPs of the product, we then decided to scale up. We raised pre-seed. We hired a couple of people and really got to work.
And that pre-seed was interesting. I think we were in a very comfortable position thanks to the support of Snowman at the time. So we didn't have a gun to our head to raise money, but I really wanted to practice before we actually really needed it.
And so that pre-seed round was my way of learning, how do you raise money? What does this world look like? And it was really successful. We raised in two weeks. It was so quick. We got very lucky. We got some amazing investors in and that really was also a crash course in how to raise venture capital.
And then when it was time to raise our seed, I was ready and now just did a Series A as well. So I think you learn more and more with each step, but you have to just start anywhere and figure it out.
Turner Novak:
Well, I guess because you've raised money a couple of times, different phases of where the business was at traction-wise, any learnings or frameworks you think you'd share with people who've never done it before? Or maybe the most actionable things that you've learned in terms of fundraising, and why you think you were able to do it a couple of different times?
Melissa Cash:
Yeah. I think in the earlier stages, I would say the best thing about raising money in the early stages is you're raising on a story. So if you don't have any metrics, all that matters is your idea and you. And those are two things that are really easy, in my opinion, to curate and build. Because one is you, no one knows you better than you.
And the other thing is your idea. And if you have a great idea and you are convinced that your idea is going to work, that's already I would say three quarters of the battle.
It gets a lot more difficult when you actually have numbers and sales and metrics because that's when you're looked at with a whole different... You're held against a different level of standard, and people look at your entire deal in a very different way.
So that pre-seed was really easy because I'm a really good storyteller. I have a great network, I can sell myself well, and I knew that our company was a fantastic idea and made a lot of sense from a business point of view but also from a problem-solving point of view.
I think in the later stages it's all finesse. Network, as I'm sure you know Turner, is everything. And so I'm always fundraising. Yeah, we just closed our Series A, but I'm always fundraising. You're never done, because it's the entire business of fundraising is relationships. So just like I met that woman on the street and ended up working for Disney, I'm constantly on the lookout for interesting people who I can help but who can also help me. And I think you just never know who those people are going to be.
And so what I learned really quickly when we did that seed round was that was the really foundation for my network building and I spent the last few years cultivating it. And so when it came to raise a Series A, it was much faster, easier, and I would say less stressful actually. Because I had already known a lot of these people and I had a reputation.
And so I think if you hate networking, if you're not an outgoing person and if you don't like getting to know people, frankly, then I think it's really tough. It's still very possible, but you have to push yourself a lot further.
For me, I love the pitching phase, because you just get to meet interesting people. And hear about their lives, and their funds and what they're doing and why they are passionate about it. And you get to share your story and what you love doing. And it's kind of like dating. I don't know, I find it really fun.
But I think my biggest advice to anyone is it's never too early to build your network, and it's probably the most important thing.
Turner Novak:
What do you think worked best just for you in terms of your process for doing it? If that sounds scary, “building my network”, there's some people that's probably like, "This sounds miserable. I hate networking." How do you think through or how would you advise someone that's maybe not quite as excited or doesn't know where to start with building their network?
Melissa Cash:
I would say start where you're comfortable. So think of a few things that you really, really love and care about that are related to your business.
So for Pok Pok, just as an example, I really am passionate about play in general. How kids play, why it's important, how they learn through it. So just going to events, reading up on the latest trends and reports and just staying in the know will naturally lead you to people.
So let's say you read an article in Forbes about play. I don't know, email the journalist. Just be like, "Hey, I love what you wrote. Thank you for making this known to the world." And just slowly start sharing your appreciation of others. So that's one really easy hack.
Or if someone puts out a tweet or a thread that's really interesting, don't only comment, DM them and say, "Wow, I really loved this. It really hit home for me. I've saved it. I'm going to look back on this. What else are you into?" And just see if there's any common ground or share something with them. "You posted about this, I actually just posted about that. You might find it interesting." And just really try to share what you care about. If you don't care about it, it's just so boring and terrible. So you have to actually like it.
And if you're somebody who enjoys going to events, I would always encourage people to do that. I always try to do something at least once a month and just put myself out there. And for me, where my passions lie outside of the Pok Pok ecosystem is just in women and underrepresented founders.
So I'm regularly trying to be part of those networks. And so at least just going to a female founder's coffee. Usually you won't hit it off with everyone, and that's totally fine. But you might get one contact, who six months later, you may notice is connected to the one VC at the top of your list, and they happen to be your way in. So you just never know.
And then the other thing is just to surround yourself with multipliers. So if you personally hate all of this, and everything I just said sounds like shit, then find a co-founder or find someone else in your network who maybe you don't even work with, who's just really good at it and loves it. And try tagging along and let them drive the bus, but just go for the ride. Because I think it's exhausting and it can be very, very draining even on an extrovert who enjoys it like me.
So I would say the easiest way is through that passive more digital outreach. And if you can stomach the in-person stuff, then I would try to go.
And maybe one last thing is there's always a Slack group for any industry, for any niche. So if you can find the one that's most relevant to you, that also can be a waste of time but can also be a really valuable place to meet interesting people.
Turner Novak:
How do you get the most out of the events or the Slack group? Those are two totally different things, but what's your approach? Because there are some people that will say, "Oh, you're a seed stage founder, why are you going to these networking events?" Or someone could say, "You're in all these silly Slack groups." or something.
So how would you recommend somebody approach those things to actually get tangible progress or traction or something out of those, aside from just going to them for the sake of going?
Melissa Cash:
You have to put in what you want to get out of it. So if you are in a Slack group, I've been in so many dead Slack groups where nothing happens and I just end up leaving.
But if you are in one where there's a spark of action going on, be helpful, number one. If you help three people, then they're so much more likely to help you when you need help. Or if you see somebody post something about their company, give them a shout-out, be like, "Congrats, this is awesome." Just make your name visible in the threads so that people recognize you. And go read people's intros and find a couple of them that sound interesting to you. DM them, see if they want to hop on a quick call, get to know them. Maybe one out of those five people will actually be interesting. But it takes time.
It's definitely a bit of a grind. But I think you're not going to get into it what you don't put into it. So I definitely learned that very quickly, if I'm not active in these places then I'm not going to get anything out of them. And that's honestly fine. Sometimes I just don't have time. I'm a mom, I'm running a company, I don't have time to be pitter-pattering on Slack every day.
But there are a couple groups that are really valuable that I am in. One is Hampton, founded by Sam Par and Jo Speiser, and the other is Venture Backed Moms. And those two are my personal favorites. They're both you have to be invited, you have to apply. And Hampton, you have to pay for. But because of that, the caliber is just so much stronger.
So I think I would also focus on the paid or application-only groups because that's where people actually want to be. They're not just sliding in for fun and it's free.
And then in-person events, my biggest hack is wear something crazy.
Turner Novak:
Whoa, okay. Was not expecting that.
Melissa Cash:
I usually try to wear something where people are like, "Whoa."
Turner Novak:
I've seen you wearing this suit jacket in conference picture things before, is that true?
Melissa Cash:
Yeah. So I have my notorious yellow blazer, which I wear a lot. And I have other versions of it of course, but it works so well.
It seems like the dumbest thing if someone's like, "Wear something bright." But I cannot tell you how many times I walk into a room and people actually turn their heads because I'm just wearing a yellow shirt.
It's literally this most simple thing you can do but at 90% of these events, everyone is wearing black, navy or gray. So if you wear any other color, people will literally just see you with their eyes and be like, "Interesting." And then they'll be able to track you throughout the room.
I was recently at the Game Developers Conference. I was wearing my yellow jacket. I went to a big, big event hosted by one of the most famous VCs in the world. I walked in, I was wearing my yellow jacket, and there was one other person wearing a color, and everyone else was wearing black or neutral. And it was actually crazy to see.
I had four or five people come up to me and be like, "I love your jacket. Oh my God, I saw actually saw you two days ago on the street. Was that you?" And I was like, "Yeah."
It's so crazy but it works really well. Especially if you get lucky and you end up giving a talk at an event, wear something memorable. So after the talk people can find you and come talk to you.
Again, the simplest thing, but everyone kind of just looks the same. So if you can make yourself stand out visually, it's 80% of the battle and it's the perfect conversation starter.
If you're at an event and you're just like, "Ugh, I don't know anyone here, everyone's wearing a lanyard. I don't want to talk to people, I'm just not in the mood." Go find someone who you can compliment something about them like, "Hey, I love your shoes. Those are really cool." And then just start the conversation from there because it can be really hard.
And also remember, everyone else feels just as awkward as you do. So if you are the one to go talk to them, usually they're super relieved, like, "Oh, thank God someone's talking to me and I don't have to stand here pretending to do something on my phone." We've forgotten because of technology, but people love human connection and really appreciate being engaged with, I think for the most part.
Turner Novak:
Okay. You're at a conference, you walk up to someone, you're trying to make it easy for them by you say something. How do you usually approach those so it's not super lame and it's actually fun?
Melissa Cash:
I think the big thing is getting people to talk about themselves is really easy usually. And that will give me ammo. So I just ask them a bunch of questions about themselves, like where are they from?
It sounds so simple, but everyone loves to talk about themselves. And if you give them the opportunity, usually they'll say something in the first two minutes that you can kind of bite on and go down a rabbit hole with them. Sometimes you're just like, "No, this is a wet sponge." And you just move on.
But I think trying to find a genuine connection, and I wouldn't focus on the business of it all. I would really just focus on meeting the person and getting to know them.
Just as an example, I was at WWDC two weeks ago and surrounded by execs from Apple and some of the best developers in the world. And it was lunch, there was a bunch of tables, nobody knows each other. I was alone. It's like, "Oh my God, where am I going to sit? There's no free spot." I see this table. I'm like, "Hey, do you mind if I sit here?" A couple of women scatter, a guy moves over, I sit down. I start eating, I turn over, the woman looks at me, and I'm like, "Oh, hey, how's your lunch?" "Good."
We start talking, turns out she's been subscribed to Pok Pok for two years and she's a very high-up executive at Apple. But we didn't even get to any of that for half an hour because we were just talking about a million other things that were really cool. And now I have her direct email if I need something.
So I think building a relationship based on just the person and then worrying about the business part later really matters and can be helpful. Because I mean, we're all just people at the end of the day. Yeah, you're a VC and yeah, I'm a founder and we have our worth and our connections. But we're also just two people who are interesting. And so I feel like if you focus on that, then the business part will come if it's meant to.
Turner Novak:
That's true. We're both just getting over being sick.
Melissa Cash:
Yeah, we have so much in common.
Turner Novak:
Another thing I wanted to hit on, you talked about sitting with all these executives at Apple. I think you won Game of the Year Award or something? Not just you, but just the whole co-founding team.
You guys have won so many of these game and design awards and app awards. How do you do that? As a founder, if I'm like, "How the heck do I get an award from Apple?" How have those come about and just so many times?
Melissa Cash:
That's a hard question. I mean, it's an annoying answer, and I apologize for this, but there isn't one way to do it and you can't apply for them.
I think the first thing you have to do, honestly, is just make something amazing. Because Apple does not get out of bed for mediocrity, so you have to make something incredible. And then you have to make sure that they know it exists.
So it's two steps. The first thing, the hardest part is to make the really amazing thing. And then once you've made something that you feel is really amazing, then you need them to notice you. And there are over 2 million apps out there, so it is very hard to get noticed but I think there are a lot of ways to do it.
Press is one of them. I think that's one of the most accessible ways, because you really can't just call up and ask to speak to John Geleynse, who's the head of design evangelism, and be like, "Hey, can I have an Apple Design Award?"
Turner Novak:
Talk to Tim Cook, just be like, "Hey, Tim."
Melissa Cash:
Exactly. Yeah, you can't do that. I mean, you can try but nothing will happen.
And you should also know Apple, from what I understand, has whole departments dedicated to finding these gems every year. So they are looking, they want to find the best of the best. But of course, the better business you're doing and the more well-known you are, that does really help.
So if you have the ability to network with folks from Apple in any way, whether that's through your local country or their business development team, that's obviously helpful.
But I think the bigger thing is to just make something really, really amazing and try to get as much heat drummed up around it as possible. So with Pok Pok, we won an Apple Design Award two weeks after we launched the company, which was the biggest shock to me ever.
Turner Novak:
Oh, so you didn't even... They just picked you, like, "Hey, you're going to win this."?
Melissa Cash:
We didn't know. We had no idea. I got an email saying, "Hey, can you hop on a call?" And then they're like, "You're nominated for an Apple Design Award." And I was like, "What? The app's been out for two weeks. Seriously?" So we were in total shock and awe. It was incredible.
And then once you win one, you're on the radar. So that definitely helped. But still, I will admit, when we got the call last year that we were nominated for an App Store Award for one of the best apps in the world, we were just as shocked.
Winning one is already crazy. Winning two is just so unexpected to the point where we were like, "What? What do you mean we can have two?"
So I think there's no secret. It's not a secret formula. There's a number to call. You just have to make something really, really good and do whatever you can to get them to notice it. And I think one of the best ways to do that is through networking and press, because they're looking.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, okay. So you nailed the networking side.
Getting press, how do you get press? I'm a founder, never gotten anyone to cover or write about me. No news stories about my startup, how would you approach just getting your first piece of press and then is there a strategy to keep it going? You've gotten a lot of pretty good press for Pok Pok over the last couple of years, so take us inside how you do it?
Melissa Cash:
I listened to your episode with-
Turner Novak:
Eric Newcomer.
Melissa Cash:
Yes. That's a great episode for people to listen to if they want to learn how to do this from a journalist's point of view. Happy to share mine.
So it goes back to the networking thing. But for me, one of the biggest things was if you have something that's not on the market yet, a really powerful thing to do is to get journalists looped in early to get feedback.
For example, you're making a fitness app, reach out to a bunch of influencers and press who cover fitness and tell them, "Hey, I'd love your feedback. I'm going to give you a free beta of the app. What do you think? I'd love to just hear your thoughts for 20 minutes."
Turner Novak:
So you're not pitching them, you're just giving them-
Melissa Cash:
You're not pitching them, you're just showing them. And then what you get is this beautiful thing where if they give you feedback, you reply. They give you more feedback, they reply. You launch an update, they give you more feedback.
And suddenly, when it's time to launch your product, they feel like they helped you make it and they feel ownership over it and they want to help promote it. So that was one really powerful thing that we did with Pok Pok, especially with influencers.
And then the other thing is, if you already have a product on the market you can do something similar but most journalists are allergic to that because they catch it. So I would say the best thing to do is to start the networking early. So again, read a bunch of stuff that they've written, find things that are genuinely interesting to you. Write them, let them know you read their piece, you loved it, why you loved it, and don't ask for anything. That's it. They're going to answer you because everyone loves compliments, like I said.
So when they reply, you're like, "Cool, no problem." And then if you feel like it's the right moment, you can do a quick "PS, this is what I'm working on. You might find it interesting based on the thing you wrote last week."
If you don't feel like the time is right, you don't have a hook for them or an angle to cover, then I would say nothing. But then a few months later, hit them again, "Hey, I just saw you wrote about that. I really liked this one too. And by the way, I'm working on this." So finding the moment to hit them.
But I wouldn't waste that chance with no news. Telling them you have a company is not news. It's just not. No one gives a shit. So you have to have the angle and you have to know the beat of the journalist really well. If you pitch the journalist something that's not on their beat, they'll ignore you for the rest of their career probably because you wasted their time. I mean, it's a bit harsh, but if you-
Turner Novak:
Yeah, it's kind of true.
Melissa Cash:
If you cover parenting and you pitched me Banana Capital, I'd be like, "What??" But if you pitched me Banana Capital because you invested in Pok Pok and there's a story there, that's different.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, my kids helped me do diligence on this company that I invested in.
Melissa Cash:
Exactly. That's a beautiful story. We got to pitch that around.
Turner Novak:
Well, I think one of the stories on the series A was Nico at Adjacent who led, he's like, "I've been doing diligence for two years. My kid helped me suss this one out."
Melissa Cash:
But honestly, I don't know if you noticed, I tweeted about it. And I would say 60, 70% of our investors in this round were all parents whose kids have been using Pok Pok. Like Brandon Leonardo from Instacart. Before I even met him, his son was using Pok Pok. And I was like, "Oh my God, this is crazy."
Yeah, it's funny but those are the stories journalists love. So that's my approach, it's relationship building early, just complimenting their work, reading their work, staying up to date.
Part of my homework every week as a founder is reading the news because I see who's covering what, who switched jobs, following them on Twitter and just keeping an eye out honestly. And sharing them other news that might not be your news, but that you think they might care about is also kind of cool. If you see a piece that you think that they would really love, just ping them with it.
I mean, then there's the obvious more formal pitching that can be done. And I think that's a whole other podcast probably. But the TL;DR there would be just have a really good angle for the right journalist and get right to the point.
And then, yeah, I mean some of the relationships we have, like with TechCrunch who did the exclusive on our series A, I'm very grateful to say but it was literally one email, "Hey, it's me. Do you want to cover this?" "Yeah, cool."
Turner Novak:
You already had a relationship?
Melissa Cash:
Yeah, so Sarah Perez who wrote the piece has been covering Pok Pok since we started the company. So I knew she's going to be my first call. And her house burned down a few months ago, and when I saw that on Twitter, I messaged her. I mean, it was insane, and thank God her kids were okay and everything. But when you care about these people as people and not just as the thing that they can do for you, I think it goes a really long way.
If you happen to know a journalist's birthday and you remember, that kind of thing goes a long way too. So just trying to keep them in your CRM, treat them like you would a friend, and hopefully, they'll take care of you when you have news.
Turner Novak:
Well, because so it sounds like you almost treat it like a process. You have a spreadsheet or some kind of mechanism of tracking, and you just stay up to date, and it's a very intentional thing. You're not just like, "Shoot, I need press. We're announcing the Series A next week. Let's just message some people." It's like you're very much... you're thinking about this months ahead of time.
Melissa Cash:
Yeah, for sure. I have a very big spreadsheet I've had for my entire career. And I do keep it updated, not all the time. There are seasons of press for us just because we don't do it full-time. But yeah, we do pay close attention, and before we reach out to anyone, we recheck them to make sure they still work at the place we thought they did and cover the thing they think we do because it does change.
Turner Novak:
Another thing I thought was really interesting, just about the story of Pok Pok. Your PR and press around this round, you raised - it was a $7 million dollar, $6 million dollar Series A? But you specifically had something that you intentionally did putting the round together. Can you just kind of talk about what that was, why it was important, and then how you did it?
Melissa Cash:
Thank you. Yeah, I'm glad you brought this up. So yeah, we are very fortunate in this round to be almost finished, the fundraise within a couple of weeks. But it occurred to Esther, and I who... her and I really run the day-to-day of the company, that we had no women coming into this round. And we've always had women on the cap table.
So we pitched a bunch of women, it just didn't happen to work out with some, and the round was filling fast, and we realized if we don't make a move now, we're going to be closed without any women.
And it was a really hard decision because this market is not an easy one. And we had so much momentum, and we were essentially oversubscribed. And then we decided, though, we just couldn't do it. We had to make room for women.
So we decided to make a few allocation changes. And we did a first close because we didn't want to lose our momentum, and we didn't want to hold up the big process of it all. But then we set aside just a few hundred thousand dollars to prioritize female investment for, and we were really grateful that our board and Nico, who was leading the round from Adjacent, were all super supportive of this.
And you were very supportive as well. You made intros, and Michelle ended up investing, and she came through you. So thank you again.
And it was just really important. This is a women-led company, our core customer are moms, and we have to make the sacrifice to take the leap, I think, sometimes. And it would've been really easy to just close it up and kind of forget about it and not mention it. And no one would probably even notice or say anything. But we would know.
And I think a huge part of pushing venture capital forward in general and the lack of equity and cash that go to women is so insane. It's 2% right now, in the entire world of venture capital dollars, that go to women. We just have to change that.
And I think a huge part of changing it is having more women be able to invest. So we did do it.
It took way longer than filling the $5+ million dollars just to find women to fill a few hundred thousand. I think the biggest blocker was that so many women tend to tap out their investments at the seed stage. So there are a lot of fantastic female-run VCs, but they tend to live in the pre-seed to seed stage. A lot of angel investors who are women also tend to invest up to about seed, and then they tend to sort of tap out. And I think the biggest challenge is wealth gap.
And so during this entire process, I confided in our fractional CFO, Julie McGill, who's been an incredible tool for us internally but also sort of a mentor to me. And she was like, "Melissa, I've been living this for my entire career." She's also an LP in a bunch of funds and has been doing investing her whole career.
And she's like, "You know what? I've been thinking for years that I want to do something about this because you're absolutely right. A lot of women stop investing past seed, and we have to change that."
Turner Novak:
It's like the dollar amount, almost, just that the numbers get so big that it's just harder to stack them up?
Melissa Cash:
Exactly. It's harder to get in because you can't. I had so many wonderful women and strategic women offer me $10,000 dollar checks, but at a $6 million dollar round, it's very hard to take a $10,000 dollar check.
So Julie was like, "You know what? I'm starting a fund." And that was really cool. I mean, Julie's wanted to do this for a little while, but she didn't have the right deal in place. She didn't have the right catalyst. And so we talked about it for a while and realized this is the right moment.
So Julie started a brand new fund specifically to bring more women into investing at Series A and beyond. And it’s called the Julie Change Fund. And Pok Pok was their first investment.
She had to scramble to get all the paperwork in order for her to participate because she had just started an entirely new fund just to invest. But I'm so excited that this exists and that Pok Pok was able to be the catalyst for it, because it's going to help continue to fuel sort of the next generation of female founders forward and widen the opportunity for women investors to invest beyond seed, and learn what it takes to invest at growth stage, and really see what those differences are.
And so, hopefully, this will become a bit of a flywheel where more female founders will have very successful exits, who can then sort of reinvest in the ecosystem through funds like the Julie Change Fund.
So it was a really incredible experience. I'm so happy we held out for it, and even though it took a few extra months and a lot of late nights, I feel really good about the decision.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, I'm glad to be a part of it too. Glad I could help.
Melissa Cash:
Thank you. You did. You're wonderful. You've been super helpful.
Turner Novak:
I guess another thing I really wanted to hit on. It's a little bit of a different topic, but just staying creative inside of, kind of a maybe more rigid industry, inside of a startup. How do you keep introducing these new concepts?
You're kind of always coming up with new ideas that are... There's not really a playbook for digital toys per se. Just how do you guys stay just, like I said, creative within... with all these different constraints?
Melissa Cash:
I think the biggest thing is the culture on our team. We have to invest in it kind of more than anything else because we need that creative culture to create these crazy ideas that we're making.
So it's really about just making space for it. And part of the reason why we raise money too was to give our creative team a little more flex so that they can not be working at 105% every day, but maybe 98%. So they have a few more percentages to think outside of the box and rest their brains and spend more time outside coming up with ideas.
I think a big part of it is just how we practice the day-to-day and making sure that there's always space to be creative. The other thing is our sort of internal mantra, which is, "Best idea wins."
So anyone on the team, whether they're on the development and creative team or not, can come up with an idea for Pok Pok Toy. And we take that all very seriously, and we do a lot of kind of company-wide jamming to cultivate that and encourage it. The other thing we do is every month, we have what we call Black Box Day.
Turner Novak:
Black Box Day.
Melissa Cash:
Yes. So it's usually the last Friday of the month. You put a big black box over your whole calendar, you're unavailable. You are not allowed to do any of your day-to-day work. But you must do something for Pok Pok as a company.
So if you are a designer that can be spending the day at a museum. I t could be going to a toy store. It could be working on a new idea for a toy that you just haven't had time to get around to. We had one of our marketers build an AI crawler that took all of the reviews on the app store and spat out tons of different insights. We've had people literally do crazy things, like anything goes.
And then, at three o'clock that day, we all meet up and talk about and share what we black-boxed and what we came up with. And so, sometimes you're working on things for multiple months, and other times it's just a quick one-off thing, like, "Oh, I've always wanted to optimize my inbox, and I finally got around to it." So sometimes it's a little more boring. But, generally speaking, we get a lot of cool ideas, and it's mostly toy-related stuff.
So we try to carve out one day a month for that, and it's becoming a really cool tradition. We've been doing it now for over a year, and the team really likes it.
And then the other thing too, I guess, is just trying to spend a lot of time with kids. So many of us on the team have kids, but many of us don't have kids. So really just making sure we all have time to be with our core users and learn about what they they're into right now and where the obstacles are and what they're playing with and it's no fun at all.
Turner Novak:
And then you've done... I feel like you've done a pretty good job just generally with influencer strategy. Maybe that's similar to press and reporters, but how do you... how have you kind of found what works best just in terms of cultivating influencers? Maybe it's organic. I know you've done some paid. But just broadly speaking, what's been the strategy that you found has worked best there?
Melissa Cash:
In the early days, it was a lot of similar outreach like we do for press. So it was just giving Pok Pok away, but when you're competing against other kids brands who are giving these mom influencers like $5,000 dollar crib combos, it's... a little app is just not as sexy, honestly. So we had to come up with other things. So we've done a lot of things.
One of our biggest sort of hacks, which I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm going to tell you anyway, and hopefully, someone listening gets something out of this. So we knew we wanted educational advisors for Pok Pok from the beginning, and we always have them, and they're fantastic. And it's only good sense to make sure that those people have their own communities because, of course, the more followers, the better.
So we started looking for educational advisors who could also be influencers in the future. So we reached out to a good handful before we even launched the app and asked them to advise on Pok Pok. An advisory rate is much lower than an influencer deal. So we were paying in the hundreds of dollars instead of in the thousands of dollars for influencers to help us with our app genuinely be super helpful. And we got a lot out of that.
But then, when we launched the app, they were so proud to say that they worked on it with us, that they would just promote it for free. And we got a ton of support through that in the early days. And then, we sort of turn those relationships into affiliate deals. Many of them we work with consistently where we'll... they're no longer necessarily consulting on a regular basis, but they've given us this sort of deal of sorts where we'll pay them for content. But nowhere near what other people are paying them for content because they have this sweet spot for Pok Pok.
So that was a really great way to do it in the early days. And now we do both a combination of organic and paid.
And I think the best thing that we did was just test really fast, and test a wide variety of people. Because it's one thing to be like, "Oh, they're an influencer. They have 500,000 followers." But who are those followers? Are they engaged? We made a lot of mistakes early on, with the wrong people thinking that it would work, and it didn't. So...
Turner Novak:
What were some of the mistakes?
Melissa Cash:
A lot of mom influencers whose core audience were more like nutrition, health, wellness. So people who are famous on Instagram for their fitness workouts or their recipes, but also happened to be moms, though those followers are not there for the mom content. They're there for the fitness content. So we realized pretty quickly the niche, the audience has to be there for the parenting.
We tried to work with a lot of dads. We still do once in a while, but none of them have really panned out for us. Unfortunately, the audience just doesn't convert as well. And I think it's because so many of the decision-makers in the household for anything for the kids still tends to be the mom.
And I even had VCs when I was pitching, be like, "Oh, cool, I'll ask my wife about this." I'm like, "Why don't you just open it up and check it? You're the dad. You have authority to do that."
Turner Novak:
That is true. I do that more than I would like to admit.
Melissa Cash:
Yeah, so see, I mean women do kind of run the world.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, I think it's like 70% of consumer spending in the US is driven by women, even if It might be flipped in terms of income, or wealth, or whatever. Women generally drive a lot of the purchasing decisions.
Melissa Cash:
Even my husband. "Hey, should I buy these shoes?" Just buy the shoes if you like the shoes.
Turner Novak:
I don't know. I'm like, "What do you think? You're my wife. You're the one that looks at me wearing this. What's your opinion?"
Melissa Cash:
Yeah. So we made a lot of mistakes. We also overpaid on a lot of things. We fell for the name. And we're like, "Ahhh, they're going to be huge." But actually, no one cared.
I think finding a niche was super important. So we've spent a lot of time at the top of the funnel when it came to parenting education creators. And then we really niched down. And now we work with a lot of Montessori-only creators or homeschooling creators or parent hack creators. We found these kind of niches that work really well for Pok Pok, and now we've living in there.
And the other thing I would say is the very first early experiments that I literally just did from my desk by myself, I didn't do enough work to track any of them. I was so busy to a million other things, I just kind of signed the deal and was like, "Cool, hope this pans out." And we saw a boost, and I'm like, "Great. We saw a boost."
But I didn't really spend time calculating real ROI tracking what worked in that video versus what worked in this video because I just didn't have the bandwidth for it. And I wanted to do a bit of early testing kind of before we raised a lot of money. But now I see that it was probably a waste of time.
I think if you're going to do it, you have to be tracking every single thing and make sure you're taking away a learning from everything, because many of them won't work. You're going to waste thousands of dollars, but it's not actually a waste if you've learned something. It's only a waste if you do it and don't spend time understanding why it went wrong.
So now, we have a very formulaic approach to everything that we do with influencers. We prepare them vigilantly. We sign very detailed agreements. We postmortem every single one. We look at why we think it worked, why we think it didn't work, so that we can either duplicate it or get away from it. And now we've created a much more well-oiled machine to try to duplicate the successes and avoid the failures.
Turner Novak:
And then, how well has it worked? I don't know what you're saying publicly in terms of just the current state of Pok Pok as a business. But what would you kind of, I guess, the highlights that you're willing to share?
Melissa Cash:
Yeah, I can share a few things.
In 2023, we 5Xed our user base. We had a really incredible year. We have well over a million downloads now. And I think for us, we're not really sharing revenue or anything like that at this point. But I can tell you that we are growing at a really strong pace. And something that we're working on now as a company is actually pulling back a little bit on the gas pedal. Where, we were growing really healthily, but we were letting a few things, I would say, slide through that weren't always fully profitable because we wanted to hit those growth milestones.
And now we're sort of switching gears a little bit. So we want to make sure that everything that we're doing is profitable and we're growing really well towards build ourselves that long-term future.
So it's been a really fun experiment actually to see how that changes things. We're also making changes to the way we update content, how often we do it, what kinds of content we're making.
We're really excited to start working on some STEM-specific toys later this year, which are going to really scratch the itch for parents who are eager for a little bit more of that classroom subject-style learning but without the rote memorization regurgitation model.
So yeah, there's a lot coming for Pok Pok still, but we're doing great. And I think, yeah, it's always a roller coaster at any startup, but I'm very happy to say today we're at the top of the mountain.
Turner Novak:
Amazing. I hope you're not at the top yet. So as an investor, I hope there's...
Melissa Cash:
Not like the ultimate summit. But you know some days you just in the valley at the bottom, and then other days you're like, "Okay, I'm back up."? And the real top is you can't even see it right now. It's above the clouds because we definitely haven't peaked at all. But there are days where everything just goes wrong, and you're like, "We're screwed."
Turner Novak:
But you're in a phase where things are at least going well. You're excited about stuff.
Melissa Cash:
Things are going well. Yeah.
Turner Novak:
Yeah. Any ways that Pok Pok has turned out differently, or starting a company has turned out differently than you would've thought going into it?
Melissa Cash:
Yeah, I think as a founder, I mean, it can be so romanticized this whole thing, this whole industry. It's really not.
It's really not that romantic and sexy. It's really grueling and hard and exhausting, and I knew it would be difficult. But I think I underestimated just how high the highs are and how low the lows can be. There's just so many extremes. And on social media and on LinkedIn, people just see the highlight reel, obviously, and some people share more of the lows. But I think it's really... can be a very grueling thing.
I think what's helped me always is knowing that everyone else has gone through the same journey of crazy shit. And usually, it works out if you keep your head up and you stay focused. So I think that's been one thing that I didn't expect to see, to feel as heavily as I feel.
Some days it's like euphoria. I'm the smartest person on earth. I created the most perfect company. Everything's fantastic. And then it's like, "I am an idiot who put me in charge of this business. We are failing."
And these are two obviously very extreme examples, but I think the volatility, I think of the emotional rollercoaster of running a company, is very intense and should not be underestimated.
But on the positive side, I think one thing I didn't expect was the impact. I knew what we were building was important and would be really enriching and educational for families. But I didn't... I could've never imagined the feeling of knowing that it makes such a difference for kids.
We've had so many stories from families about how it's helped their children overcome crazy obstacles. One autistic boy was terrified of lights until he learned how to use the Busy Board in Pok Pok, and now he does all the lights in the house and can use all the switches. And we've had one boy in Australia who has leukemia, and he's been hospitalized for months, and they can't bring him any more toys. And Pok Pok is the thing that he uses every day that gets him through treatments and sitting in a hospital bed.
When you think about the stigma around screen time, I think people forget the reality of life. If you're a bedridden cancer patient and you're four, you do whatever it takes to keep your kid happy. And I just think there's so much hidden impact in all of the work that we do, and there's a lot of very clear impact, of course. But I never could have imagined the types of stories that would come out of this and just the difference we would be able to make in the world.
So that feels great, and no matter how crazy the rollercoaster gets, that's what always keeps us very levelheaded and very focused on the goal.
Turner Novak:
Yeah. It sounds like you clinging to the highs to help get you through the lows.
Melissa Cash:
I mean, yeah. Who doesn't? It must be similar for you.
Turner Novak:
I think so. Yeah. I just try to... I think I'm pretty good at shock absorbing. I'm probably notorious for not embracing the highs and not letting the lows... Instead of being a roller coaster, it's just more of a line.
Melissa Cash:
It's just flat. You're flat lined.
Turner Novak:
Maybe there's a slight bump, or there's a little hole. But yeah, I stay a lot more levelheaded I feel like. Just a lot more neutral, just generally, which I don't know that it's a good or bad thing. My wife would say that I can lean into the emotions a little bit more, which I definitely try to do, but I think, naturally, I just tend to stay a little bit more in the middle.
Melissa Cash:
Life's a journey.
Turner Novak:
Well, this has been an awesome conversation. Thanks for coming on the podcast!
Melissa Cash:
Thank you for having me. I hope it ended up being an interesting conversation for you and for everybody else, and it was a pleasure.
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