Tell us the story of how and why you started your company.
Aneela Kumar was on a family vacation in 2006 when she came up with the idea for Kid Around Town. The kids were so zoned out with their handheld video games that they missed the beauty and wonder around them. It was an idea that never left her and has evolved into an iOS app that combines kid-friendly city guides with trivia hunts, note-taking and photo op suggestions so that kids can create digital memory books that can be printed or shared.
In addition to encouraging kids to look up from their screens and interact with the real world, Kid Around Town serves to give today’s digital-native children easily accessible memory books to look back on their childhood. When Aneela was 17, she lost her father to cancer. Her memories are few & far between and the photos that remain are locked in a box in a basement in her hometown of Syosset, NY. She is building Kid Around Town because it is something she wished she had: a tool to help families create special moments together, but also a tool to help those families look back on the fond memories later in life.
Michael Cameron & Aneela started Kid Around Town because we believe:
(1) when kids are empowered to choose where they want to go and to curate memories from their point of view, they are more engaged with the experience
(2) smartphone addiction can encourage families to build bonds through playful exploration to create lasting memories.
What’s your most recent success or milestone hit?
In June 2015, the Kid Around Town team launched their first guidebook app for Minneapolis.
Where do you see your startup in 1 year?
The Kid Around Town is working to release guidebook apps for a number of major domestic and international cities in the next one year. Whenever a family goes out together to travel, or explore their own backyard, we want to be the go-to app that helps children engage in the vacation and capture their family memories.