Why my search for meaning led me to start KidCulture

Have you ever had that feeling that something’s missing in your life? That something’s not quite right? Like noticing that a big piece of your life puzzle is suddenly missing? For me, it feels a little like a hole in my chest. It doesn’t go away. I feel restless. Insecure. Empty. When it happens, I get desperate to fill it in. It hit me hard a few years ago. I’d been working for a couple of years on Dwelo, a company I started, and after years of struggling and countless sleepless nights, Dwelo was finally turning a corner. Things were really looking up. For the first time, I could see an actual path to becoming one of those lucky founders riding a unicorn. I had every reason to feel better than ever. Years of hard work were finally paying off. Our company was growing and I could even see myself being named one of Inc’s 40 Under 40 (it was too late for 30 under 30) or being a guest on the popular podcast “How I Built This”. But instead of excitement, I had that empty feeling settling in. The hole was there. How could this be? I had made it, hadn’t I? After weeks of wrestling, I started to understand. During a sleepless night, I realized that I had spent years of my life, including late nights and weeks at a time away from my family, on work that had almost no direct impact on the things that mattered most. At the end of the day, Dwelo’s work was helping apartment dwellers live a little more comfortably and apartment owners make more money. But as I sat awake in the middle of the night reflecting on the issues around me — raising my kids, political conflict, corruption, racism, wars, and so much more — I asked myself “Does Dwelo really matter? What difference am I really making?” Now, don’t get me wrong; there’s nothing bad about helping apartment dwellers and owners. But my soul needed something more and if I was honest with myself, I wasn’t going to find it at Dwelo. Sure, I could have ignored the feeling. I could have treated it as a mid-life crisis and bought a Tesla, or justified the work I was doing as a means to build up wealth and experience to help solve the bigger problems. But that didn’t feel right to me. I couldn’t wait. I needed to do something right then. I needed to make a change.

It’s strange to be a founder of a young company that’s growing, yet hasn’t hit any major milestones, and to suddenly have the feeling that it’s time to leave. Luckily, we had a great team and great leadership and I knew Dwelo would be in good hands. We worked out a transition plan and after a few months, I was totally removed from the day-to-day of Dwelo. I’d continue to serve as Chairman of the Board but most of my time would be put towards searching for a new purpose. Searching for that missing piece. At the time my wife, Amy, and I were talking a lot about our kids (4 of them at the time) and how we could help them navigate our complex, conflict-filled world, and what we could do to give them happy, meaningful lives. To do this, we felt drawn to moving abroad and giving them international experiences. We felt that by getting them outside of the comfortable life we’d built and experiencing life vastly different than ours would be a major growth experience. Life changing. To be clear, we love America. We love our home. But there is so much prosperity here that it can be blinding. On top of that, we were growing very concerned about increasing conflict, intolerance, and lack of respect for differing beliefs. We felt that if we could give our kids experiences living in different countries and cultures, we could help them grow more accepting of diversity, more respectful of differing beliefs, and ultimately more prepared to thrive in our world as happy, compassionate adults. We felt they’d be more capable of developing meaningful relationships with all kinds of people and this would enable them to more effectively tackle the problems they’d face. We felt it was the right thing to do for our family. That’s when it hit me. This isn’t just something I want, this is something?every?parent I know wants. This isn’t something that only my kids need. This is something?every?kid needs. The entire world needs it, not just the privileged few families currently living abroad. The reality is that most kids will never live outside of their home country and many will never make it out of their hometowns. Most kids will only experience living in their small community bubbles before they become adults and life hits them. Globalization and technology are changing the world. As kids grow into adulthood, they are going to encounter people of different backgrounds, values, and beliefs. Are they prepared? Will they show empathy and understanding? Most of my generation is showing just how unprepared we were, exemplified by the strife and lack of tolerance. Can we learn and give the next generation something better? Most families won’t get to live abroad, but what if we could use technology to bring world cultures to their homes? What if we could expose them to different beliefs, traditions, and ways of life at a young age? The idea for KidCulture was born.

Pulling it off wasn’t going to be easy and I couldn’t do it alone. We’d need authentic content and activities that would be as close to in-person, international experiences as possible. Since we wanted to bring the experience into homes, we’d need the right technology to deliver it. I got lucky with the technology. Taylor McGann was one of our first engineers at Dwelo and we built a great relationship and I knew early on that we’d find ways to work together. I’d thought it would be much harder to find someone to run our content, but we got lucky there too. Right around the same time the idea was forming is when Gavin, an old high school friend, reached out to express similar “missing life puzzle piece” feelings. He’d published academic research on kids’ media and had plenty of video production experience. He was the perfect fit and as soon as he heard the idea, he was in.

We started work on the concept in December of 2020 and it consumed us. We spent the next six months building a prototype and were able to raise $250k from a group of wonderfully supportive angel investors. We were ecstatic! We had a team, we had some money, and we had an idea that would change the world. We were off to the races.

As with any idea worth pursuing, ours was soon confronted with the difficulty of reality. Building KidCulture was going to be hard. We were building something that’s never been done — a way for kids to learn about and experience world cultures right from home. We knew early on that we didn’t want to follow the same depressing path that so many other kids' apps and social media had gone; growth at all costs so we could sell ads to the highest bidder. So, we defined our values and made commitments to ourselves about the toxic components of social media and technology we would avoid: no advertising, addictive algorithms, or popularity contests fueled by likes and followers. No mindless entertainment. It would be safe and meaningful, but it also needed to deliver value and capture attention in the crowds of apps, programs, and content that overwhelm parents and kids. It also needed to do more than just glue eyeballs to screens. Our content needed to be purposeful, real and original, starring their peers — everyday kids from around the world. We wanted to nurture the whole child — the heart, body, and mind — so it would need to be interactive — getting kids off the screen using their hands and feet. We wanted to build something that would help kids learn and grow but that was also entertaining. We wanted for every kid what we hoped our own kids would experience living abroad.

As expected, the year flew by in a whirlwind. Every day was precious and we had to make the most of it. There was so much to learn to get the product right. On top of building KidCulture, Dwelo received an acquisition offer. And while I had left the day-to-day, I was still on the Board and it required some of my attention. On the home front, Amy and I had our 5th child, a daughter we named Rosie. But we kept at it and KidCulture made huge progress. Over the last year, we’ve had hundreds of parents from around the world join our beta to test our app. We created hundreds of videos showing what life is like in over 40 countries. We also learned a lot and made some important decisions. We learned that we can’t be everything for all parents, so we narrowed our focus and decided that right now, we need to do one thing extremely well: teaching kids world cultures. We are patient and know that the future will open additional opportunities for us to help kids grow. Most importantly, we learned that parents want more than just another app — they want to provide their kids with meaningful experiences. They want to see their kids grow in healthy ways. An app can only do so much so we determined that a better way would be through a structured experience for kids with measurable outcomes. So we took the best of what we had built and created an immersive culture course with content, an activity book, and so much more.

Today, the momentum is palpable and growing. I feel called to this and have found something I can really stand behind. I feel that the work I’m doing today will really make a difference. No, I won’t solve all of the world’s problems but I’m doing something that might help in a small way. I’m beginning an exciting new journey and have discovered that missing life puzzle piece.

You can support KidCulture by backing us on Kickstarter. Thank you!