Building Reading Confidence
December 27, 2017
What is Bookbot?
- Bookbot helps children build confidence in reading. As a child reads aloud, the app follows along and highlights and helps with missed and mispronounced words. (Basic)
- Bookbot augments the eReader with accurate speech recognition and an ML/AI eco-system that learns how children learn, supporting them as they develop reading confidence. (Tech)
What is our Vision?
- To help any child build reading confidence and improve literacy for tomorrow’s world.
Why is this our Vision (what problem are we solving)?
- Learning to read is one of the most significant stages of life and it is challenging for everyone.
- Over half of all children truly struggle to read; either through learning difficulties or a lack of support from a competent adult.
- As a result, today 1 in 5 adults globally still cannot read or write.
Who is our target audience?
- Initially our early-adopter audience are mums with Dyslexic children. We believe if we can make it work for Dyslexic children it will be a powerful tool for all children.
- Next, we have started to engage tech-savvy teachers and tutors of Dyslexic children.
- Once Bookbot has a proven track-record with these audiences we will broaden the target.
How will it make money?
- Provide free printable books to schools (use your stationary budget instead) to drive awareness and credibility.
- Paid download of app – subscription based (like Netflix with access to full library over time) for parents.
- YouTube channel advertising – secondary content channel of video of adults reading our decodable books in a story-time-style (with our Bookbot words highlighted Karaoke-style).
What have we achieved to date?
- We have an initial demonstrable MVP that is 20% off a full working product for initial launch.
- We have bootstrapped to date plus pre-order funds to get us to today. We require funds for MVP completion and an increase of marketing in readying for launch
- Core team of four people and a solid network of parents, educators and academics.
- Over 10k highly engaged users (mainly our primary target audience of early-adopter mums) via our Facebook page, plus a crowdfunding campaign, featuring this video:
Why is it called Bookbot?
- The Bookbot philosophy is one of test-and-learn. Everything we have built and created to date has been put to our engaged audiences for testing and feedback.
- The same approach is true of the name, we asked for suggestions, developed our own and then put a bunch of options out to vote – Bookbot was the clear winner.
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December 2017 Update:
Bookbot Kids have just completed the first round of pre-seed funding which is an amazing! As a thank you, they have given me one of their first decodable books – starring my daughter, Nakita: