Sproutable Sidekick

Parents need trustworthy, science-based solutions when they are dealing with challenging behaviors. With a million new millennial parents each year, the need for instant information has increased rapidly. 

Sproutable’s Sidekick solution allows parents to find vetted research-based parenting info via a parent coach chatbot. Our content is uniquely focused on social/emotional development, 21st century skill building, and relationships. Our solutions are educational, science-based, entertaining, non judgmental, and fun. 

Sproutable is based on Positive Discipline, which are currently being taught in 60 countries. Our information is globally relevant and it changes lives, both for children and parents. In our current classes, parents are finding that their home environment is “more mindful and respectful” and there’s “less fighting, power struggles and happier children.” Parents are “less stressed” and “more peaceful and connected” to their children.

We see challenges as opportunities to teach life skills. We teach that behavior is purposeful (Adlerian Psychology) and that you can understand what the child is trying to say, just through their behavior. We provide tools parents can use to connect to children and find solutions to their challenges. This is about changing the way they think about discipline from punishment and consequences to SOLUTIONS and TEACHING. 

These solutions are about teaching social and emotional skills, but they also tie to all developmental milestones. When children feel capable, they are more cooperative. 

Sproutable's solution is helping to enable parents and caregivers to support their children’s overall development (particularly social & emotional) and provide positive and safe surroundings. When parents are less stressed, when they see this opportunity to teach, they are able to increase the positive learning opportunities for children. In turn, their children will be more skilled and will grow to be remarkable humans. 

Every parent in the world deals with behavior challenges. We've personally taught classes with refugees and immigrants, other various language and cultural groups, low-income families in urban and suburban environments, wealthy families and everything in between.

The Sproutable Sidekick Chatbot was created based on years of teaching and coaching parents and being asked for "a little Julietta Skoog on their shoulder." They wanted to know what Julietta would do in every parenting scenario. They wanted a way to get specific answers quickly. So we started conducting customer interviews and chatbot research and birthed this new product idea. 

We are just piloting our chatbot this summer. Our current focus are mothers between 25-40 who speak English. We are working closely with faculty and interns from the University of Washington Human Centered Design Masters program to design our chatbot in a meaningful way with potential customers.

Our Sidekick Chatbot has both push notifications and user search ability. We are able to anticipate challenges parents will be searching for based on years and years of data asking about parenting challenges. It's always the same. Our initial pilot will be via Slack and text message. Parents will receive a push notification at specific times a day where we will ask if they need help with a list of challenges. They can then follow that flow, or search for something else. Each flow will provide, solutions, science-backed information to show the WHY behavior is happening and links to further information. We have a blog, YouTube channel and web content that we have created over the last few years to provide further learning. We are using a service provider, Flow.xo, to run our initial tests and beta product. 

For further services and products, we offer in-person classes, online video series, and in-person/phone parent coaching. 

The Sidekick Chatbot is an innovative way to get our content and information to our customers. It is about being in the moment with parents, truly supporting them whenever they need us. This chatbot for parenting solutions does not exist and truly could be a game changer for the future of parenting. It removes the barrier of trying to carve out time to get to a class, read a book, schedule that coaching call. Sidekick can be in every parents' pocket whenever they need us. 

The core technology that our solution uses is a rule-based chatbot. For now, we will use a Flow.xo software to launch but will eventually build our own.

The Sidekick Chatbot gives parents solutions to behavior challenges instantly via a chatbot available on their phone. When parents have these solutions we see healthier relationships, more playful & connected families and increased school readiness in children.

95% of students who have taken our class stated that there were positive changes in their home. They are finding that their home environment is “mindful and respectful” and there’s “less fighting, power struggles and happier children.” Parents are “less stressed” and “more peaceful and connected” to their children. 100% of students said they have increased their number of discipline tools. (Data based on 7+ years of parenting classes)

Our goal, is to utilize technology to deliver the same phenomenal content, that we know changes lives, in a more scalable way. 

When children are given the opportunity to learn these important life skills through relationship in the first five years, the most important foundational years for brain development, they are more likely to be successful in school, life, and even have better health outcomes (Kaiser ACE study, 1997). When every human is able to grow to their full potential, we can create a more equitable, peaceful, innovative and emotionally intelligent future generation.

We have over 2000 parents/caregivers in our current community. For the chatbot, we are currently serving 0 customers. We hope to serve 25,000 customers in one year and 5M customers in 5 years. 

Our goal in the next year is to launch of first MVP of the Sidekick Chatbot. It will be in English for English speaking markets. For the next five years, we will replicate the chatbot in additional languages, creating culturally relevant information. At this time we've determined these top 5 languages: Chinese Traditional & Simplified, Spanish, Hindi, and Arabic based on population data and prevalence of Positive Discipline in country. 

Our first goal is financial. We will either meet this goal through fundraising or through the success of our product launch. We will definitely meet cultural barriers as we look to launch our product in other languages. We will overcome these through our founder's expertise in creating culturally relevant translated material, through partnerships with Positive Discipline educators globally, and continual customer feedback. 

Financial- We will either meet this goal through fundraising or through the success of our product launch. 

Cultural - We will overcome these through our founder's expertise in creating culturally relevant translated material, through partnerships with Positive Discipline educators globally, and continual customer feedback. 

2 full time founders. Two part-time interns. 

Alanna Beebe is a communications leader with a passion to make information accessible. She is the Sproutable videographer, editor and CEO. She has 10 years experience in public health and early learning communications. She was the external communications lead for King County during the H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic and she crushed it. She created the Public Health-Seattle & King County’s Translation Policy and Community Engagement Policy. She was the Outreach Lead for WA state’s first quality rating improvement system for child care programs. She is now a professional videographer, producer, editor and certified Positive Discipline educator. LinkedIn profile. 

Julietta Skoog is our early childhood expert and the face of Sproutable. She has a Masters Degree in School Counseling, an Ed.S Degree in School Psychology from Seattle University and is an Advanced Certified Positive Discipline Trainer. Julietta has extensive experience in her 15 years with Seattle Public Schools including leading the Childfind preschool assessment screening team. She created a successful business providing parent education classes and workshops with a strong following  for over 10 years. Specialties include working with children with autism, learning disabilities, and behavior disorders, as well as leading friendship groups and classroom meetings based on Positive Discipline, Social Thinking, and mindfulness. LinkedIn profile

We are currently working closely with a faculty advisor from the University of Washington Human Centered Design Masters program and two recent graduates as interns. We also partner with local non-profits to provide classes to low-income parents, including immigrants and refugees. 

Our key customers are millennial parents with children birth to 5 years old. They are middle to upper income. Our chatbot will be monetized via a subscription model with a freemium version to convert paying customers. Will go as follows: download free version, upgrade, purchase additional support, become and advocate and connect new customers. We are still researching exact pricing with our customers. With current data, it seems that $9.99 a month is an appropriate price point and this is what our financial projections are based on. 

Our path to financial sustainability is through selling products and services, (our customer lifetime value is over $500 USD) and through raising investment capital to scale quickly. Our goal is to become financially sustainable in the next 5 years without raising any additional investment capital. 

We would benefit greatly from mentorship and expertise in fundraising, marketing and go-to-market product launch. Business and fundraising is not our expertise. We are content experts. We have phenomenal content to share with the world that will truly make an impact in the lives of children and families. However, we need your help to make this a fundable, scalable and successful business. 

We would love to partner with Sesame Workshop on content creation and customer acquisition. We would also love to partner with Harvard's Center for the Developing Child on our impact model. We are open to your ideas on other organizations that we could partner with in selling or marketing our product. 

Our chatbot uses AI to create a seamless conversation via chatbot with our customers. We will use this prize to build our chatbot and leverage the best AI technology to create a chatbot with a personality that feels supportive and accessible to busy parents. We cannot make the customized features that our customers will expect without building our own. 

85% of our customers are women. Women are still overwhelmingly taking on the burden of child discipline, even if they are working more or the same as their partners. Our product decreases stress in women's lives, it keeps women in the workplace and it creates a safety net where they can feel supported and get the information they need quickly. We are also teaching parents how to talk and teach consent with young children. How to talk about gender and gender roles. How to teach advanced social, emotional and relationship skills to our children. Our parents will teach both girls and boys theses skills, but it is the women who will benefit the most. 

Our chatbot is a innovative AI solution working in education of parents. It will have disruptive impact for our society, but changing the way we discipline our children. We will use these funds to leverage AI technology that not only creates the best product but also scales to reach as many parents as possible.