More than a year ago, Eben Pingree, a former Session M executive, received news that his mother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Two days later, his father-in-law received the same diagnosis.
To help her three young children build lasting bonds with their grandparents and create lasting memories, Pingree, along with co-founders Mike Gerbush, Ashley Hawking, and Brianne Baker, developed Kinsome, a communications platform designed to help kids and grandparents share daily updates and preserve cherished memories.
The app has been in beta since last year and was officially released to the public on Thursday, just before Grandparents' Day.
In tandem with its launch announcement, the company told TechCrunch it has secured $1.2 million in pre-seed funding and is backed by an impressive roster of investors, including Wattpad co-founder Ivan Yuen and angel investors with previous venture capital roles in CashApp, Doordash, Draftkings, GitHub, HubSpot and FitBit.
Image credit: Kinsam
Private family messaging apps like Honeycomb, Kinnect, Kinzoo, and Stars are designed to record memories and preserve conversations. Getting young children to talk to older relatives on the phone can be difficult due to their short attention span. Additionally, it can be difficult for young children to get in touch with grandparents they don't see often.
But Kinsam believes its main differentiator and selling point is “Kinzey,” an audio-first AI companion (powered by OpenAI’s GPT API, OpenAI’s Whisper, and ElevenLabs’ voice synthesis), which aims to help kids and grandparents express themselves, which could be helpful for younger kids and grandparents who have difficulty carrying on a conversation due to the generation gap.
Kinzie can suggest conversation starters, ask questions, and explain terms grandparents might not know in real time. For example, if a grandchild mentions Taylor Swift, Kinzie can explain who she is. The company says the AI also remembers previous conversations and can use that information to expand on topics and build stronger connections.
Image credit: Kinsam
Kinsome offers a variety of features to keep kids engaged, including warm-up activities, icebreakers and other interactive games. For example, “Emoji Chronicles” encourages kids to use emojis to describe the events of their day, while Kinzey asks questions to guess the answers and learn more. For example, when a child uses the dog emoji, Kinzey asks, “Tell me more about dogs,” and kids can respond with a voice recording.
Kinsey continues to ask questions to keep the conversation flowing and gather enough information. The AI suggests questions for grandchildren to ask their grandparents, encouraging them to reflect on their lives and share stories related to their children's specific, everyday experiences. For example, questions might prompt grandparents to share if they've ever participated in a talent show.
Once the kids have recorded all their responses, Kinsey sends the highlights for their grandparents to listen to.
Image credit: Kinsam
Kinsam is designed to be easy for grandparents to use, so they don't have to download an app or remember a password — instead, they're texted or emailed a link to see a transcript of every question Kinsey asks and answers, including all the audio recordings.
Parents (who must register their children before using the app) also receive text notifications when their children send messages.
Grandparents can record replies that will appear in the in-app messenger for grandchildren to see, and both parties can type messages or record audio in the chat.
“We've heard some concerns about usability for the older demographic, but by and large we haven't seen any of those concerns,” Pingree told TechCrunch. “We're targeting kids ages 6 to 11, and their grandparents are on average younger, in their 60s and 70s, and have been using smartphones and tablets for over 10 years, so I think that gives us an advantage. For the most part, they're very familiar with the grandparent side of the platform, and we've designed it to be very easy to use.”
Image credit: Kinsam
Kinsum has some new features in the works, including the ability for kids to upload photos from a shared family photo album, which will give them more conversation ideas and help them communicate more comfortably by allowing them to add narration to photos taken by their parents (who can then select the images their kids can use).
“The idea is that this is another warm-up activity for the kids. They can look at the pictures their parents have shared in a particular album and narrate what's going on. A lot of what you should do with young children is give them something to talk about, and then they'll open up,” Pingree said.
Additionally, Kinzey plans to introduce a premium subscription for $4.99 per month and additional monetization features such as a gifting option that allows grandparents to send birthday gifts requested by their grandchildren. It will also provide multilingual support in the future, allowing users to interact with Kinzey in different languages.
Kinsome is currently only available on the App Store, with an Android version coming soon.