Over a year ago, former Session M exec Eben Pingree received the news that his mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Two days later, his father-in-law was given the same diagnosis.
To create lasting memories and help his three young children bond with their grandparents, Pingree — along with his co-founders Mike Gerbush, Ashley Hawking, and Brianne Baker — developed Kinsome, a communication platform designed for kids and grandparents to share daily updates and preserve cherished memories.
The app has been in public beta since last year and officially launched to the public on Thursday, just ahead of Grandparents Day.
Alongside the launch announcement, the company revealed to TechCrunch that it secured $1.2 million in pre-seed funding. It’s backed by an impressive roster of investors, such as Wattpad co-founder Ivan Yuen and angels with backgrounds at CashApp, Doordash, Draftkings, GitHub, HubSpot and FitBit, among others.
Numerous family-oriented private messaging apps, such as Honeycomb, Kinnect, Kinzoo and Stars are aimed at recording memories and saving conversations. Engaging young children in phone conversations with their older relatives can be challenging due to their short attention spans. Furthermore, it can be difficult for younger children to connect with grandparents whom they don’t see frequently.
However, Kinsome believes its main differentiator and selling point is “Kinzey,” an audio-first AI companion (powered by OpenAI’s GPT API, OpenAI’s Whisper and ElevenLabs Speech Synthesis) that aims to support kids and grandparents with expressing themselves, which could be helpful for younger kids and grandparents who find it difficult to keep the conversation going due to the generational gap.
Kinzey can suggest conversation starters, provide questions, as well as provide real-time explainers for terms the grandparent might not know. For instance, if a grandchild talks about Taylor Swift, Kinzey can explain who that is. The company claims its AI also remembers previous conversations, so it can use the information to expand on topics and help form stronger connections.
Kinsome offers a variety of features to keep kids engaged, including warm-up activities, icebreakers, and other interactive games. For example, “Emoji Chronicles” encourages kids to describe their day using emojis, and Kinzey guesses their answers while asking questions to learn more. For instance, if the child uses a dog emoji, Kinzey might ask, “Tell me more about the dog,” and they can then respond with a voice recording.
Kinzey continues asking questions as a way to keep the conversation flowing and gather enough information. The AI may suggest questions for grandchildren to ask their grandparents, encouraging the grandparents to reflect on their own lives and share stories relevant to the child’s specific daily experiences. For example, the questions may prompt the grandparents to share if they ever participated in a talent show.
Once the kids finish recording all their responses, Kinzey sends off the highlights for the grandparents to listen to.
Kinsome is designed to be simple and accessible for grandparents, which is why they aren’t required to download an app or remember a password. Instead, they get a text or emailed a link to see a written transcript of all the questions Kinzey asked and the responses were, including all voice recordings.
Parents (who are required to sign up their child before using the app), also receive a text notification when their child sends a message.
Grandparents have the option to record a reply. The replies will then appear in the in-app messenger for the grandkid to see. Both parties can either type or voice record messages in the chat.
“We’ve heard from some people concerns about usability with an older demographic, and by and large, we have not seen that play out at all,” Pingree told TechCrunch. “I think we benefit because we’re targeting six to 11-year-old kids, and so their grandparents, on average, are kind of younger, 60s and 70s, and have been using smartphones and tablets for a decade plus. For the most part, they’ve been very adept at using the grandparent side of the platform, which we’ve designed in a way to be very accessible.”
Kinsome is working on some new features, one of which will allow kids to upload photos from shared family photo albums. This will give kids more ideas for conversations and help them feel more comfortable communicating, as they can add a voiceover to the photos their parents take of them. (Parents have the option to choose which images their kids can use.)
“The idea is that it’ll be another warm-up activity for kids, where they can look at photos that their parents have shared in a specific album and give the voiceover of what’s happening. So much of what you need to do with little kids is give them fodder of what to talk about, and then they’ll they’ll open up,” Pingree said.
In addition, Kinsome plans to introduce a premium $4.99 per month subscription and additional monetization features, such as a gifting option for grandparents to send birthday presents that their grandkids have requested. It’ll also offer multilingual support in the future, allowing users to interact with Kinzey in different languages.
Kinsome is currently only available in the App Store. An Android version is launching soon.