Company Performance Metrics
Alysia Finger: Co-Founder
In 2012, Alysia and Niko had their daughter, Aedren. When Aedren was one, Alysia had a moment of realization – two overpriced electronic toys, that were advertised as being “smart”, were simultaneously calling for Aedren’s attention in the loudest, most repetitive manner possible. Yet, Aedren was content playing with her wooden blocks a few feet
away.
Based on her experiences at Carnegie Mellon University, Alysia knew there were more inventive ways to use technology. She started noticing that many tech toys weren’t built with children’s development in mind – they simply aimed to distract children, not entertain or enrich them.
That night, Alysia couldn’t sleep. Her mind was whirling with ideas for how to use technology to encourage children to play with more creative, hands-on activities. She took those ideas to her design professor and created an independent study to explore the possibilities.
Niko worked with Alysia to expand her ideas and create visuals and prototypes. After getting an extremely positive reception from parents, kids, peers, and even investors, Alysia and Niko decided to continue their work as a formal company. Since their daughter was the inspiration, they named the company after her: AE Dreams. Shortly after joining Project Olympus, a CMU incubator, they pitched Turtle Mail to a Pittsburgh hardware accelerator. Through these resources they received seed funding and mentorship to flesh out their business and manufacturing plans.
They built a team, recruiting from CMU’s talent, with backgrounds in design, engineering, child psychology, business, and marketing. Many team members are parents, and each member joined the project because they believed in the vision of using technology to make kids’ playtime more meaningful and magical.
Turtle Mail is a wooden mailbox for kids that receives and prints digital content using an embedded thermal printer. Turtle Mail is WiFi-connected, so family and friends can send kids messages from a mobile or desktop device, and kids get their mail printed out each day from Turtle Mail.
Parents can sign their children up for daily activities from AE Dreams, like word searches and drawing exercises. Parents can also help their kids connect to their imaginary worlds by subscribing to content from fictional characters and by building toy profiles for their kids’ favorite toys. Just set up your preferences and we’ll do the rest!
Turtle Mail’s content adjusts based on children’s age and reading level, and children’s preferences can be modified at any time by their parents.
