The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Kinoo Booth Interview CES Show 2022

Episode Date: January 7, 2022

Kinoo Booth Interview CES Show 2022 Kinoo.com Kinoo is a totally new way for families to connect. It’s a video-calling app with fun, shared activities built right in – designed for grandparents and grandchildren to play and learn together, even if they are far apart.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks response here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with another great podcast we're on the road so if you're missing my big nice studio mic booms and all the fun stuff we have in the studio we're on the road off the laptop here and we're covering

our CES 2022 coverage here. You've been seeing all the multiple videos we've been putting up all over the place and our coverage of the live CES floor. And we're doing many companies virtually because of course the Omnicron and all that sort of stuff that's going on. And today we're doing many companies virtually because of course the Omnicron and all that sort of stuff that's going on and today we're going to be previewing and talking with Canoo. They're going to be talking to us. We've got the CEO Jim Margrave on the show with us and Michelle Hodgson on the show with us and welcome to the show guys. How are you? Very well Chris, good to be here today. Thank you. There you go. Did I get everyone's names pronounced correctly? Yeah, you got it.

Thank you. We always try and get that right. So welcome to the show, guys. And give us your plugs so people can find you on the interwebs, your dot coms. Sure thing. We're canoe.com, and that's canoe, as in kin, like kinship for family, K-I-N-O-O, canoe.com. There you go. So why don't you give each of you maybe a brief bio,

who you are, what you do, and what you're doing there at Canoe. Sure. Michelle, would you like to begin? Sure, I'll begin. My name is Michelle Hodgdon. As Chris said, I run the business and people operations here at Canoe, but I also have a background in startup marketing, so I help show off Canoe wherever we can and I'll be helping Jim with our live demo today.

Awesome. Jim. I'm Jim Margraf, so I'm CEO and founder of Canoe. I've been creating hopefully interesting things for children for many years and decades. If anyone knows LeapFrog, if you know LeapFrog is learning products for children, I years and decades um if anyone knows leapfrog uh if you know learning products for children i invented the leap pad uh the leap pad and uh along the way as well or my shoulder anyone has video there's a sphere with a sphere it looks like a globe it is a globe

it's an interactive globe sits on a base you can touch with a stylus it created that more recently i co-founded a live scribe to make a smart pen that captures ink and audio. And the last company I did was for eye tracking, eye interaction for augmented reality and virtual reality called iFluence that I sold on Google in 2016. So this is a passion and a way to connect families in a very new way, specifically older loved ones with younger loved ones. And we'll speak about that in just a moment. All right. All right. So what is the product service you guys offer and how does it work?

Well, I always like to start with a problem. So the problem to solve for us, we observed, is as you have called the Johnny problem. And this is for little Johnny, who's four years old, and he has a at home with his parents, and they have a remote grandparent, or aunt or uncle that really want to stay in touch with them. And at this time with COVID, this is more serious than ever. But even without this 50% of grandparents live more than two hours from their grandchildren, they want to stay in touch, and they can't see them frequently enough. So here's what happens. They get on a phone call or now Zoom call with a grandparent and it goes like this.

Hey, Johnny, how are you? Good. What are you up to? Nothing. And then Johnny runs off and mom chases after him with a smartphone, trying to keep him in frame for the grandparent, the grandma to see him.

And at which point Grammy feels dejected. She feels sad. She feels like she's not able to see him. Can at which point Grammy feels dejected. She feels sad. She feels like she's not able to see him. Can you speak to that, Chris? I don't have any kids, but I know my grandmother loves her grandkids. And yeah, it's hard for them to interact because they don't, you know, it's really impersonal, the screen thing. It's the challenge is kids at that age haven't yet developed social skills, nor do they know how to talk. And this is normal. It's the challenge is kids at that age haven't yet developed social skills, nor do they know how to talk. And this is normal. It's fine.

But the issue is at that time, you know, they're interested in here and now they run off. And the grandparent, again, if your little parents feels a little guilty and it creates chaos, they love to see each other, love to see smiles. Those first few seconds are great. But typically the calls last a minute, two minutes or so. And then there's a lot of loss and sadness, frustration. So we said, what if we could address this in a way that goes beyond video chat, well beyond FaceTime? So take FaceTime and go FaceTime plus. What would you want? Well, first of all, you want those kids to be really engaged with the grandparent, not just not just to potentially play a game with them, but to actually bond with them. So when they're doing something, when they're playing an activity,

that both of them are engaged with one another. So we have to design something we call co-play, where it's more than just a game, but they're playing something together and they're both engaged with one another. So we're directing it. So the way we do that is we have activities and games, but they're supported by characters on the screen in the video chat that facilitate discussion, ideas, and bonding. That's a first step. So now video begins and a character introduces themselves.

They facilitate the selection of games, guidance, and more. Wow. It's very cool. We'll show you this live. And the next thing, so that's character. Then we bring AI into this and ar so there's some artificial intelligence and augmented reality now i say that but for the for the grandparent it's simple it just works they're having a good time they're playing the

kids are smiling and laughing but behind the scenes since we're at ces there's some real interesting technology going on now one of these is uh is uh is a handheld device i'll hold it up for you right now but we'll see this live in a second. This is a wand. We call it a new wand. It has buttons on it, a speaker, a microphone. And for the child, it's very ergonomic. They hold it in their hand.

The lights come on. And when that happens, it comes to life. Now, that supports the gameplay that they have in the video chat. So they're having a video chat. They're playing with their finger on the screen. They're both taking a rocket ride to the moon together, and their videos are of moonbees and they're dancing. Then they decide to play another game, and Grammy says,

would you like to make cookies? And Johnny goes, cookies? At which point he grabs his wand. The wand now allows him to pour flour into the batter, to crack eggs, to slice the batter. And he does this with his wand with his hand physically and so it's right there with grammy it's and then he takes he whisks it and they put the cookies in the oven and this is all happening physically as he's waving the wand around and doing these things and she sees him doing it so the knife slicing the cup pouring

and eventually they have the cookies they come out out with their fingers, then they eat them off. Oh, wow. And it has an app that integrates with it too as well? That's right. So the system is an iOS app for an iPad or an iPhone. It works in conjunction with this wand. And some of the apps are just fingers. Some of the apps are the wand.

The wand is used by the child. So the child has the wand in their home, which gives them this extra added benefit of something that there's physical that they can move with that makes them uh even more engaged with the type of play we create we've created some amazing new forms of play with this ar and there's some ai running behind this all to hold this all together and this is really cool the one lights up in its base and uh lets them know when uh you know someone's calling. And so the kids can just grab it. They can see grandma or grandpa's on the phone.

They can pick it up and answer the call. That's coming right now. It lights up when they're playing together. And so when they're pouring the batter, it changes color and sounds come out of it. And you'll see in a little while you can fish together and they cast a line a virtual line with their hand and their arm moves and you hear that goes in the water and the grandma puts fish on the hook and the child gets to then reel it out and see what they have and the fish of course talk to them and play and do other things ah so what ages what ages is this recommended for it's's interesting. We started out at three to seven, and we've got a lot of families using this for their two-year-olds

because they just want to get them exposed to the grandparent. And the two-year-olds are already starting to touch the screen and to play. And they hold the wand, but they're not too sure of that. But they sure have a good time with the grandparents. I remember when the iPad first came out, seeing six-month-old babies mastering this know, mastering this, touching the screen. I'm like, well, there you go. It's pretty extraordinary.

So would you like to see it? Yeah, let's see it in action. Okay. Let's, I guess you can pull it up. Let's go ahead and share that screen. So anyone watching, what you're seeing right now is this is a call that's established on an iPad. So I'll hold it up. Here it is. I'm holding the iPad. There's Michelle. And she's on. So Michelle, in this case, is Little Michelle. And I'm Grampy. So Little

Michelle has her canoe wand that she can hold up in a second. And there it is. And she'll turn that on. There it is. You can see it. It makes sounds. So we're going to kick off with an activity, a really simple one. But it's interesting because one thing I didn't mention, I said, you'll see Cody and Kadu. So there's Cody. And we're going to kick off with a very simple game, which kids adore, where together the grandparent and the grandchild can decorate a pizza, but it goes beyond pizza. You know what I mean? Okay, so Michelle and I can both at the

same time be putting things on the pizza. And you can see each other, too. We can see each other. So I'm putting olives on and mushrooms, and we're using our finger to do this. Ooh, cheesy. And you'll see, Cody keeps popping in. He likes things. See, he talks to us as well.

And for those of you who are listening on the podcast, the podcast is audio, definitely go to youtube.com. Forge has Chris Voss to see the video version of this. Thank you. So you see, Cody pops in again. So I started putting broccoli on. I'm going to put some...

Do you know that Cadou loves pickles? I'm going to put some pickles on. Pickles on a pizza? Uh-oh, there's Cadou. He came in and swiped one off. I can tell you, Chris, when kids see this, you get peels of laughter. They just resist.

Three to seven years old, This is perfect for them. I can clear the pizza off now and there's whipped cream on it. Of course, every kid wants whipped cream. Bring that whipped cream over here. Whipped cream on a pizza. And Michelle just and now she's feeding

Cody. Cody just loves it. Okay, so that's one example of a game that's very, it's novel, it's fun, and let's move to another one. And the cool thing is, for those of you who listen to audio, during this whole graphic design, you can still see each other on the screen, so you're still connecting, you can see each other's faces, you're still having that rapport. Well, in fact, this activity will show not only can you see each other, but you become part of the activity.

Let's go on an adventure. Oh, rocket ship time. You can do that by taking pictures for your space passports. Oh, wow. Okay. First, put your heads into the window frames. There we go. Smile.

And now we're going to take a picture. Take a picture. Take a picture with the green camera button. Do you like it? If you do, next, make a silly face. Like this. And take the picture. You got some hilarious smile.

Now, we can open mouth surprise face. Like this. And take the picture. Now, we can open mouth surprise face like this. And take the picture. So Cody's facilitating this. Here are your passports. And now on our screens, we each see a different view. We each get our own passport.

And if you look up in the corner, on my screen, I'm the adult. And I have a slightly different view because the other thing that we do, and this this is very exciting we give little nudges and prompts that can be pushed or pulled so the adult can ask for something if they're not quite sure what to say to the grandchild so in this case I can touch this and it says count the number of steps you must perform before liftoff space travel requires planning and these are things for instance what would you like to take a picture of on the moon and this is a quote so it suggests that I asked this to Michelle Michelle would you like to take a picture of on the moon as dancing in our spacesuits okay well let's see if we can do that so now let's go ahead and now at this point we're gonna go to the moon and you'll see we have some activities to play we have to smiles to read to get ready to the moon and you'll see we have some activities to play.

We have to switch to red to get ready to blast off and we're each touching these at the same time. Now we do countdowns and I'm touching numbers so a child learns counting in numbers and the grandparent can help them. And we're both sitting with videos in the rocket on the launch pad ready to lift off. Ready, here we go. Woohoo! And notice the prompt came up. Launch pad ready to lift off. Ready, here we go. Woo-hoo!

I noticed the prompt came up. It said, talk about what you both would leave on the moon for next travelers to find. So, again, it's an idea. And we're moving. This is great. This is cool, Chris. Thank you. So, Michelle, what do you think we might find on the moon or leave there? I hope we see some aliens.

Oh, that would be cool. You never know what you're going to see in space when you fly by and you're on your way to the moon. Uh-oh. See a little alien comes by. Look at our faces. When kids play with this, they play for hours. The challenge we have is we have a way for the grandparent to end the call because the kids won't be playing. Now you can do it on the moon, and we're in our little school students.

Yeah, that's cool. We get to dance. To me. Dance and dance. And we touch this and play different dance moves. And I'm tilting and stretching and hopping and floating. And Michelle's doing the same. We can do it in sync.

Wow. So there's music. same. We can do it in sync. Wow. So there's music, there's emotion, there's play. We're doing something together and we're creating memories. Because this is about memories for the child and the grandparent that they'll have. And of course, you'll see what happens next. Because it now gives the opportunity to, Michelle pulls out a flag, plants it,

and we get to take a picture so and now that gets saved automatically if we like it it gets saved in the camera roll on your iPhone and you can share it on Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter and Instagram and other places and then we click to go home. We lift off. There's our countdown again. Ten, nine. Oops. Eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. And off we go.

And each time, different things happen on the way to the moon. So there are surprises and kids come back. And we've got a ticker tape parade back on Earth with a lot of applause. Wasn't that fun? this is really cool you know i honestly i remember calling my grandparents back in the day and they would put us on and you would be like you you wouldn't have really anything to talk to you're like hi grandpa grandma how you doing and they're like they're like, good. And you're like, how was your day? And it was really hard to connect with them out of the phone. Chris, that problem exists nationally. It's just a big challenge everywhere.

And we saw this and said, and it actually grew out of my wife's work at NASA. We were looking at, she's working on a project to help connect space travelers and people on Earth when there's a latency of 20 minutes when they're heading to Mars. And we're working on, that actually was the genesis of this company. She was working on it at USC and it's called time shifting. And we'll be bringing some of that product for, for as well. Last thing, can we show you really quickly a KC, but this is our, this is our canoe wand. Michelle's holding it now. Put this back on. We'll do one activity.

I'll talk about making cookies before. Here it is. We'll slide down our activity selector. We'll go past beach, place it, dogs, pump, cookie maker. So when this one starts up, first Cody's gonna guide us on what to do. So Michelle waves her wand. She's setting it.

And there we go. Here we go, and there's Cody coming on. Let's make cookies. Cookies need sugar and butter and chocolate and more. So notice Michelle and I have different shaped video windows now. She's the large one, so I see her as my grandchild because I want to see her and a lot large and live and suddenly we get some music the shell fills up with

ingredients and let's see i get to choose it michelle let's put some sugar in that so i drag the sugar over and michelle takes her kc and she pours the sugar and she takes this listening she takes this wand and pours it and it fills up a cup on the screen. The light splashed the color of the sugar. She puts two cups in and says, okay, Michelle, how about some butter? We're going to have to slice that. Can you take your KC? Now she's slicing with the KC in a slicing motion.

And she's slicing the butter. And let's put a little more butter in, Michelle. Slice that one up. That's a lot of butter, Michelle. Oh, yeah. What do you think this bottle is, Michelle? Do you know what it is? It's vanilla.

Vanilla. Okay, we're going to put that in. And notice the KC wand is vanilla colored. And lastly, we're going to crack this. Yeah, it changes color. And there's sound coming out of it you can't hear. Okay. And I'll put one more egg. And there's sound coming out of it. You can't hear. Okay. And I'll put one more egg.

And there's sound coming out of the wand that people see. There's sound coming out of the wand, too. And lights change. And now she gets to stir it up. And notice the prompt comes up on my window. And it suggests, can Michelle guess what ingredients will go into the dough next? So it's giving me ideas on things to talk to Michelle about. So Michelle,

thank you. Can you guess what might come next? And then these ingredients come up and we will continue on. I'll tell you, I'm going to stop this one because I want to let you tell us what fish you want to catch. If we could catch two fish. So we'll do one last activity. By the way, we would have made the

cookies and baked them with a timer and they'd come out and we'd get to eat them. So we're going to go on to another activity called fishing fun and in this case here's again we have different screens so there's michelle and you're seeing my screen as a grand that's hilarious chris what fish would you michelle is going to move her sheep with her wand she moves the fishing line back and forth, as you can see. And she's ready. She's going to cast it in. The starfish, the goldfish, pretty much whatever.

A catfish. Which one would you actually – there's a catfish, a starfish. The shark looks pretty good there. You want to catch the shark? Okay, so I'm the grampy. Michelle, can you hook the shark? She moves her fishing line around, and I move the shark? Okay, so I'm the grampy. Michelle, can you hook the shark? She moves her fishing line around, and I move the shark around. I see you're playing with each other.

She reels it in. The shark's all happy. That's funny. Somebody comes out of the shark's mouth and hops in the water. But here's one Michelle, can you catch the clownfish? Okay And I get to, I'm the grampy I just move it to the hook

And she moves her hook and I move the fish And let's see if I can hook it on And Cody says she gets it What kind of fish Only comes out at night? A starfish! By the way, kids get these jokes, Chris, and that's what runs in the house for the next week or two.

What do you like to pick a fish? Actually, you see the garbage floating by? You got a bite! Let's see. So there's not only- Ow! Oh, shit. Oops.

There's a boot and a tire. Oh, she caught a swordfish. Let's see if she catches a boot. You found some garbage. I'll take that. Oh, there you go. So again, it's environmentally focused and a little prompt comes up for me michelle doesn't see this says what do fish say when they clean up their home

what do they say when they clean up their home michelle not sure so chris you get a little flavor of the many things that we can do with a new type of co-play that connects grandparents and grandkids and and when they come back they tell us previously their calls were five minutes or less than five minutes and now typically their calls tend to run 30 minutes wow they just love and even more so rather than the parent having to say okay we got to call grammy and uh the child running away the child says can we canoe can we canoe can we canoe? Can we canoe? Can we canoe with Grammy? That is awesome. All across the country. So excited.

This is really cool. And I like the fact that what you mentioned, this is about making memories because I don't remember the calls with my grandparents. And like you said, I used to, you know, call grandpa and you're like, I have nothing to talk to him about. But I remember all the times i spent with my grandparents i remember the activities we did uh and so this is really cool and it makes memories and like you say it saves to the phone as well so they have a recording something they can look back on years from now the memories that's right that's right chris and you know And you know what? We get some really poignant letters from users. We had a letter where the grandmother said, my husband her nephew. And she said, you saved Christmas for

us. The nephew, somebody had COVID in the family and they couldn't keep up. And this allowed them to talk in ways they'd never talked before, because it's not just playing a game. There are some apps out there that put games and books just on video window. And what happens is people play the game. They look down and they play. What we've done is we've designed because of the experience that I have from LeapFrog and one of our co-founders, Mark Schlichting, had created Living Books, another hugely successful product for kids back in the 90s. We know, we understand what engages children and adults and how to engage them together and how to really make sure that each one is contributing and that grandparent feels relevant

feels like they're giving something to the grandchild they're helping them learn and grow with letters and numbers and social emotional skills and the child as you said there's memories that are being created for that child and the parent watches on kind of awestruck going i never knew that my child could play with my career. It's a screen time that parents feel good about. Their kid isn't just consuming material here. They are actually engaging and involved with their grandparents.

It's great for parents. It also gives parents a moment to be able to go do some other things because they know and they feel good that their child is connecting with the grandparent and they're going to be entertained for at least 30 minutes, if not more. So we've heard great things about that as well. That's big for parents, too, and great for grandparents.

Now, what is this cost? It's fairly inexpensive, right? It is indeed. Right now we have a Christmas holiday special still on. We just launched just before Christmas, and it's all about getting the word out because the parents that use this and grandparents tell us. So right now it's on special for $49, gets the new wand and a year's subscription. Normally it's $10 a month for subscription and the wand will be roughly $79. But right now it's a $49 price for everything just so that early adopters can gain exposure to this and begin to share their experiences with this. And so it's an amazing price. One grandparent said, are you kidding? You give me one good phone call with my grandchild with some photos that I can remember and share with my own. And it's just, I don't even think about it.

That's awesome, man. I've never seen anything like this. I mean, I've seen special, you know, portals like Facebook's portal where you can just talk. But having the interaction, having the rapport, making the memories, having the activities where you're actually doing something with each other, and having that suggestion because, you know, if you're 79 a grandparent and you know you have a three to seven year old child it's a little hard to talk to him i don't know maybe some are better than i am with kids but but uh sometimes you're just like you know there's the rapport difference of you know like you're like so did you watch the politics today you know

this is the rapport so this is really great it's been funny we've watched we watch a grandparent try to teach their three-year-old how to play chess you know they think really and of course the child has no idea what turn taking even means they don't know what it means to swap taking turns so what we do is we also we teach the adult that the grandparent learns about play end up learning the most important thing that important thing, the takeaway from this is we create fun memories and moments for grandparents. If you're a grandparent and you want to have an incredible time with your grandchild, we've not found a better way. Even when you're in person, sometimes talking can be difficult. Easier for grandmoms usually than

granddads. But in this case, case remote connection it just works as you saw it smiles and laughter and and we've not had ever a grandparent or a grandchild begin playing with this without immediately the music the characters cody comes on smiles the grandkids eyes just light up and then suddenly grandma or granddad has superpowers. You know, they're putting fish on a hook. They're moving ingredients for making cookies. And the grandchild just adores it. I love it. It's awesome.

Anything more we want to touch on before we go out? Just a basic reminder, canoe.com. This comes from, again, I've got a team of people from leapfrog for people that know leapfrog and i was again i created leapfrog leap pad so we helped over 100 million kids uh back uh back in the early 2000s um learn to read and we're bringing uh bringing this fun and enjoyment and quality um to experiences now for grandparents and it's canoe k-i-n-o-o.com and uh and hope uh hope we see some of your viewers uh at our website soon and being able to try this out and extend their time together in this really difficult period where people are separated and would love to be with one another closely

definitely definitely this new omnicron uh outbreak i was looking at the numbers and it's just exploding and if you're a parent you definitely want to grab this and give it to your grandparents and stuff because just being able to have them take some time to, like you say, go play and stuff. So, guys, it's been wonderful to have you on. Give us the plugs for the website. Kinoo.com, K-I-N-O-O, as in kinship, and Kinoo, K-I-N-O-O.com, and there and kinoo, K-I-N-O-O.com. And there you'll find all you need to know.

And you can order away. We're shipping now. Started just before Christmas. And if you're a grandparent, give a gift of love and memories and fun to yourself. There you go. There you go. Well, it's been wonderful to have you both on the show. Thanks for coming on and sharing this with us.

Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Michelle. Yes. Thank you both. It was fun to see you guys on the show. Thanks for coming on and sharing this with us. Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Michelle. Thank you both. It was fun to see you guys go to space. So, thanks to everyone for tuning in. We certainly appreciate it. Be sure to watch for our continuing coverage of CES 2022.

That's a lot of twos. And all that good stuff. Be sure to watch the video version of this, because you want to see what we did on the screen there at youtube.com forward slash chrisfoss. Go to goodreads.com forward slash chrisfoss. See my book and all we're reading and reviewing over there. Go to all of our groups, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok,

all those different places. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.