Poke Pokea children’s app maker focused on creating play-based learning experiences for preschoolers has made a name for itself in the iOS developer community after winning both App Store Award for Cultural Impact and one Apple Design Award. But now the company is ready to expand its reach by bringing its app and new STEM-based activities to families with iOS and Android devices, thanks to its latest funding.
The app, Pok Pok Playroom, currently offers seventeen different play experiences that are more like “digital games” than games, allowing children to explore through creative play. There are touch responsive “games”, drawing tools, these for interaction with shapes, dress up games, dinosaur gamesand many more.
Originally hatched inside Snowman, the studio behind award-winning iOS games like Alto’s Adventure, Alto’s Odyssey, Skate City and othersthe idea for Pok Pok came from the company’s culture of tinkering.
Snowman employees Mathijs Demaeght and Esther Huybreghts, now Pok Pok’s VP of Design and Chief Creative Officer, respectively, were looking for an app to entertain their young son James when he was young. However, the co-founders didn’t find many options they liked. They wanted something playful, but not too technical and not gamified. After prototyping a product, they showed it to Snowman co-founder and creative director Ryan Cash, who saw the potential. Ryan’s sister, Melissa Cashwhose background was in product development at Disney for babies and toddlers, joined the team and is now CEO of the Pok Pok spinout.
In the years since its May 2021 debut, Pok Pok has added new learning experiences to its app, raised a $3 million seed round, and reached six figures in terms of monthly recurring revenue. Over the past year, the business has grown by 5x and its subscriber base by 9x, though the startup is not yet ready to share hard numbers. The app itself has over a million downloads.
The startup’s growth caught the attention of investors, leading to a $6 million Series A. The round was led by Adjacent’s Nico Wittenborn, who has also backed other subscription businesses like Oura, Calm, Clue, and Blinkist. Also participating in the round were Konvoy Ventures, MetaLab Ventures, Banana Capital and other angel investors, including Instacart’s Brandon Leonardo.
While pleased to have raised an oversubscribed round, the team realized they didn’t have any women at the table, which worried them since the female-led company makes products for families.
“That wasn’t right,” explains CEO Melissa Cash. “So we decided to make some allocation changes. We set aside some cash from the round. We did a first close because we didn’t want to keep everything, but we took cash and did a second close, which actually took us longer to raise than the first close because it was very difficult to find women investors to participate in Series A and beyond.”
The team found that many of the women-led VCs tended to be pre-seed or seed, or those that participated in funds but were not the decision makers and check writers.
“This nuance was very important to us. And then we’d find a lot of great angel investors, but they didn’t have the capital or the wealth, frankly, to be able to invest in a Series A because, obviously, there’s a minimum check size. So it was a really impressive experience,” says Cash. “We thought if there’s any company that can have female support, it’s Pok Pok.”
Their second round took longer to close than the first because of these challenges and includes investors like Michelle Kennedy of Peanut.
Another of the new investors ended up being Pok Pok’s fractional CFO, Julie McGill, who is also an LP at several larger venture funds. Like Pok Pok’s team, she was frustrated by the company’s difficulty finding women to add to the table. McGill ended up setting up a brand new fund, the Julie Change Fund, just to invest in Pok Pok. The fund will now focus on attracting wealthy individual women investors to the Series A stage and beyond.
“Pok Pok is the catalyst to start a fund I’ve been thinking about for years – this fund is my commitment to breaking down the barriers women face in accessing, driving and accumulating capital,” said McGill, in a statement. “We are thrilled to partner with Pok Pok, a company that excels at driving efficient capital growth, led by two amazing women.”
With the additional funds, Pok Pok is set to expand its offerings to include more STEM-based activities in response to parents’ requests for more traditional learning experiences on the app alongside more playful ones. The new activities will still be aimed at the preschool crowd, though Pok Pok knows that even younger and older users continue to use the app and its designs accordingly.
The company will also be able to address demand for Android later this fall. Notes Cash, many families have Android tablets for their children because of the more affordable prices.
“We want to make sure that Pok Pok can be accessible to everyone. And we had that waiting list it’s been growing for quite some time, so we have thousands of users…we’re just waiting for it,” he says.
