Founder's Story - How Kyle Wallgren Got Shaquille O'Neal as an Investor | Founder's Story with Kyle Wallgren CEO Edsoma

Episode Date: January 6, 2024

Edsoma is an AI reading assistant that helps students develop a love of reading. Their technology guides students at their optimal learning pace and curates their reading preferences with our vast library of resources. Subscribe to our newsletter so you don't miss out on exclusive interviews and special content: https://foundersstory.beehiiv.com/subscribe For more info on guests and future episodes visit pix11.com/impact and https://fox5sandiego.com/fox-5-partners/impactful/Our Sponsors:* Check out PrizePicks and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: www.prizepicks.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: www.rosettastone.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to Founders Story, the podcast where trailblazing entrepreneurs share their extraordinary journeys, uncover the passion, grit, and vision that drive the world of business and innovation. Especially on the reading front, my next guest has created a game changer for that matter, to ensure that every child has the opportunity to become an excellent reader. Hello and welcome to another episode of Founder Stories. I'm your host, Nadia Atwal, and I'm joined by Carl Wahlgren, CEO of EdSoma. Welcome to the show. Thank you. I appreciate you having me.

So, Carl, many people have this title, serial entrepreneur, but you really deserve it. You are one of those that really deserve that title tell us a little bit about the various industries various industries yes that you went through sure so uh little backstory very basic i fell into entrepreneurship 100 by accident i never thought i was gonna own a business i got kicked out of school in grade nine um but you know it seemed like every system crash everything that we'd gone through as a accident. I never thought I was going to own a business. I got kicked out of school in grade nine. But, you know, it seemed like every system crash, everything that we'd gone through as a nation, you know, molded my life into more of an entrepreneur opportunity. The first company I started was by accident in 2008 when the financial crash took place. The next company I started was in 2000, or when I moved

to the United States to build a business was in 2015 after the oil crash started, leaving me no option but to try something different. So over my career, I've played in the oil field. I've played in landscaping and construction. Since moving in the US, I owned and sold an entertainment company and built a manufacturing facility all during COVID lockdown, 200,000 square feet of manufacturing and safety products that we built. But most recently, I guess three years ago, I fell into something that I couldn't put

down. And it's changed the way I do things, but it's a reading app that I built for my kids. So my journey has been all over the map, but I try and find a common ground between all the businesses that I've been involved in. And obviously you are a problem solver, and that brings us also to your new big passion and project and company at Soma.

How did that happen? So it is a fascinating app that solves a problem for each and every one of us who has children. But tell us, how did you come up with that? Why are you reading up? So I'd love to take credit for it, but it was through struggles with COVID. I was separated from two of my kids. I'm a statistic. I'm divorced. Two of my kids live with their mother in Canada. But during lockdowns, I was separated from my kids for over 18 months.

And during that time, my daughter's like, wouldn't it be great if you could read me bedtime stories again? And I felt like, you know, with it being 2020, that that should be a simple ask. And we found some cool products, you know, that were really taking off during COVID because of the situation that we're in. But in the middle of using one of those products, my daughter said, Dad, wouldn't it be cool if the book told you what you were getting wrong? Because she seemed that I was struggling to provide a reading resources. And I'm like, actually, you know, Sadie, and I think, I think you're onto something. And that night, I couldn't sleep. And it just something compelled me to want to dive into this deeper. So after identifying like how big the problem was 54 million Americans can't

read the menu at a restaurant, I decided to sell my company, I walked into work that next day. And I was like, Hey, I've got the deal of a lifetime for you guys. You can buy me out right now for pennies on the dollar so we can make this easy and I could go start a new company. It was still a huge amount of money to go start something, but the company was just on its way up. We had signed a $48 million deal with one of the largest grocery chains. The week before, everything was buzzing. So for my partners to see me wanting to walk away was just completely awe-striking to them.

They're like, why would you walk away now? We're about to take off. So, but everything with EdSoma has been a blessing and looking back, it's all the right decisions, so. Tell us about EdSoma because it is not just any other reading app. I mean, my children have grown up with reading apps, but there is something much different about your app. It brings so much more to the table than

just teaching reading. Tell us a little about it. Yeah. So as a kid, I was always really good at getting out of things. You know what I mean? So I say to my kids all the time, you're never going to get away with anything because I pulled every story there is to pull. But when I was diving into what made me scared of reading and why I shied away from it, I kept all that stuff in mind. So what it is, it's an app. We have over 12,000 books on our platform or under contract that we're adding new books to every day. But we use voice recognition to identify how a reader is doing. So as you read out loud, the words start lighting up, letting you know you're getting them right. When you get one wrong, it stops you. It'll allow you to try again. It'll break it into syllables for you. If you continue to struggle, you can select

it or play it for you, letting you know and hear how the words are actually supposed to be said. But when I built it, I thought that I was building a product just for me to be engaged with my kids. That's all it was ever supposed to be. And after putting it in front of a few people and getting their feedback and then seeing how times have been changing, you know, it's became something so much bigger. Now it's a data tool to really identify where kids or adults are in their reading journey. But instead of like tricking kids today into doing something with games, we provide content. So because there's so much different content in our platform,

they can always find something they align with. And once you give kids the opportunity to pick how they're going to learn, their engagement levels increase dramatically. And early on when we were doing product testing, we were seeing, you know, anywhere between five to seven minutes on the platform. Now, because we're letting the kids pick the books that they want to read, we're seeing, you know, anywhere from 25 to 27 minutes.

So that, you know, question, how do we get our kids to read, has changed dramatically because we don't have to trick them to do it. We just, you know, ask them to do the reading and they go find something that interests them. So it's just a different spin on it. I was sick of reading Old Yeller as a kid, I guess, and I didn't want my kids to have to do that either. So we created a different spin on it, and the data has been amazing, and now we're seeing schools adopt it because the support that it's bringing new teachers that are coming to the market.

We're suffering a major teacher shortage nationally. People that are willing to do it are coming with little education in that space. They're no longer, you know, experts in the literacy space. They're warriors willing to help teach our kids. So our product will help those new teachers or new parents that aren't so familiar with reading instruction and assist them to provide the proper support. So there are different features. It's amazing. You have the ability to interact with your child reading while one person is in one city and the other one is in another city, even another country.

So you can also keep the family strong together. So the child can read with grandma grandma even though grandma is thousands of miles away so it's strengthened also the family bond and you have the tracking system of really tracking um the improvement on the child's side and you can have the teachers involved so it is it is very multi-dimensional yeah we knew that you know it was more than just teachers teaching reading or more than just teachers teaching reading or more than parents teaching reading, but how to hold everybody accountable in the journey of that.

We can give, you know, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. So we wanted to make sure that everybody there would want to drink, and how do we do that? You know, a lot of parents that are struggling from literacy issues, those are the parents that are working two, three jobs. So how do they stay engaged if they're at work? So we added a video streaming platform to it,

or a connective platform for where you can share and engage with everything. But maybe it's grandma that's the better reader in the family, you know? So she wants to be a part of it. Or maybe she just wants to be a part of that memory of reading a bedtime story when they're on the other side of the world. Today, we've been downloaded in 32 countries. So, you know, it just tells you the level of connectivity that we're having between our families globally. But also we're seeing a huge increase in adults downloading the app because it's helping them learn English as well.

We're not claiming to be an English learning product, but people are using it for that. Well, and then it comes as no surprise that you got one of America's most popular stars excited about it. And actually, pretty early on, I'm talking about Dr. Shaquille O'Neal, who is well known for being passionate about companies that are adding true value to people's life and who is a champion for children, has been for a long time. So a man like that gets bombarded with business ideas, with business offers. How did you entice him to join at Soma? I can imagine the offers that they get, because I know how many people reach out to me every day trying to get an introduction or, you know, hey, how do you navigate through this? But

I've been blessed. Like teaching kids how to read is bigger than me for what i am and our company has been gifted a lot of opportunities but i literally was like how you know my head of sales at the time suggested that we reached out to shaquille and i'm like yeah let me just pick up the phone and ironically that night his agent was connected with me on linkedin so i'm like you, the door is there. You might as well walk through it. So I sent him a message to Perry. Perry loved the idea, but he just didn't think the technology existed yet. Some of his kids, you know, were having reading problems.

So he wanted to see it, you know, from that standpoint. When I showed it to him, he's like, I don't know if you guys could really afford to bring Shaquille on, but this is so interesting that I think you should show it to him. And so he set up a meeting, allowed us to meet with him in person. And when we presented it to him, Shaquille's over seven feet, I'm five foot six or five foot seven. And when I handed him the product, I realized that I'd never tested it on somebody with as deep a voice as he had. And we were standing up in the room, so I didn't know if it worked until his eyes lit up and he got excited. And's like you know i'll help you guys in this but i don't want to be a marketing partner i want to be your partner um so all of a sudden they started you know we we did

that deal on a handshake to start with and they started helping us right away they were making introductions you know into people that had you know years and years and years and in the space um from great companies like simon and schuster you know all the way people that had, you know, years and years and years in the space from great companies like Simon & Schuster, you know, all the way down to AVG, Shaquille's branding group. So we've had a lot of professional help early on. And because of Shaquille's reputation and, you know, what they've done, great people at great companies are willing to listen and hear us out. So, you know, we have people from Google's speech department that are helping us now and all kinds of things.

So it's been great. Well, so you're expanding, you're scaling the business. Is that just purely exciting for you, or is it still also a scary journey at this point? Is it a lot of unforeseen navigating? You're still enjoying the process of building the business? I think, you know, early on, a guy by the name of Tom Rayal told me that the only reason I've got here this far in this space is because I have no clue what I'm doing. And that like brings so much

to it is because I really don't. I don't know what red tapes are in front of me. I don't know the proper direction to get an introduction. I'm just, you know, out trying to make things happen. And because it's bigger than what we're doing, those people will respond to me. And that's been a great experience. As far as scaling, it's new. You know, we learn new issues, bandwidth issues, you know, in rural America is a real thing. So we're trying to figure out solutions on the fly some days. But for the most part, everybody understands the mission. So when we go into a school and there's a little bit of a hiccup, they see the value in the product,

so they're willing to work through those things with us. They're willing to learn with us and then adopt and then make sure that it's working for the people that it means the most to, you know, the kids, and making sure that they have access to it. My kids are using it. They know all the reading apps. They love it so much. And I'm so happy.

Whatever more reading time I can get out of them. I know Roblox is one thing, but we don't just want gaming. We want reading. And I'm so glad that you delivered this product. So what are the plans for 2024? Ooh, 2024. We've got some really cool concepts that are rolling out in 2024. We've got some really cool concepts that are rolling out in 2024.

We're doing some live reading sessions where our athletes or celebrity athletes are going to be reading within classrooms, partaking with kids. We just did a reading event where we had one of the readers from our platform be in a commercial with Shaquille. So we did a sweepstakes where if you were a reader on the event, you could put in a video submission to be a part of the commercial. And we filmed that in San Francisco the other week. So we'll see all that stuff starting to come out

and the marketing materials start to hit the shelves. So scaling and growing is first and foremost. We got, you know, my favorite thing to do in the world. We're going to be raising more money. You know, that's always a challenge, but it's creating good and people are willing to listen. So it's been fun. It's a wonderful product and products that add value to people's life.

That is usually an easier product to sell, especially to high-profile people also like Dr. Shaquille O'Neal. So I think you're a fantastic team together. Well, Kyle, it was so nice having you here. I enjoy talking to you. I can't wait to see where you are taking it, Soma, next year. And yeah, giving every child an opportunity

to become an excellent reader. It's just beautiful. So thank you so much. No, I appreciate it. And everybody that wants to give it a try, they can get it in Google Play Store or in the iOS App Store. And there's a free version,

so everybody can benefit from it. You can read three books a month without having to get behind a paywall. So we've made it so it's accessible to everybody. But we're seeing a great conversion on people that are becoming subscribers to our blog. And if they just want to have more information, what website should they go to? EdSoma.com. So E-D-S-O-M-A.com and everything's there. Fantastic. Thank you so much. That was another episode of Founder Stories. See you next time.

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