S6E09 | Why Sticker Box Changed My Mind About AI Toys

I once told CNN that some AI toys feel like a wolf in sheep's clothing because it can be hard to tell how much privacy you're giving up. While I'm a fan of AI use in business, I've been skeptical of AI toys for quite some time. But in today's interview, the Sticker Box genuinely changed my mind. Instead of using AI to keep kids on a screen, or to get them to develop a relationship with a robot, instead, Sticker Box uses AI to help kids turn their ideas into something physical, creative, and hands-on. In this episode, Arun Gupta, co-founder of Sticker Box, shares how his team built a product that feels more like a tool for creation and not consumption.

For the links mentioned in this episode visit: thetoycoach.com/609

Mentioned In This Episode

Check out Sticker Box at:
https://stickerbox.com

Learn more about Toy Creators Academy:
https://www.toycreatorsacademy.com

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Episode Transcript

Arun Gupta: here with Sticker Box, we're at the beginning of another trend, which is. Conscious, responsible use of AI and iPad alternative products for children. The future of play is creation, not consumption. Azhelle Wade: Oh, Hey there, toy people. Azhelle Wade here and welcome back to another episode of Making It In The Toy Industry.This podcast is brought to you by the toy coach.com. Today's guest is Arun Gupta, CEO, and co-founder of Hapiko. The company behind. Sticker box. this is an AI powered creative platform helping kids turn their ideas into something Arun, welcome to the show. Arun Gupta: Thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be on. It was really honored to get the request. Azhelle Wade: I'm so sad I missed you guys at Toy Fair.I planned to go to you and on my way, I just got pulled a thousand directions, but How was the [00:01:00] show? Arun Gupta: It was a mad house. So I'm not surprised that you got pulled everywhere. we thought our booth was like out of the way. It was like in the corner on the first floor in the back corner, but it didn't seem to matter. We were mobbed every single day. Just people bringing people by. People coming by two, three times to like, make more stickers. Bringing, be like, you gotta see this is what I was telling you about. This is the coolest thing I've seen at Toy Fair. So we were really, yeah, we were really happy and it was really nice to meet all kinds of people, honestly. All and all different areas of the industry. Azhelle Wade: I'm so excited for you. I had one student recently who had that same thing happen where the buyers were telling each other about the company and that's when you've made it. That's next year. TOTY Arun Gupta: Yes, exactly. Yeah. We actually we frustrated a few people because we're not doing wholesale yet. They're still d yeah, we're still D two C for now. Azhelle Wade: Why did Arun Gupta: our wholesale product for, press and we made a lot of great contacts, like manufacturing contacts. We compiled the [00:02:00] list for distribution in the future. everybody was like, where's the wholesale sheet? Azhelle Wade: For sure. man, I wish I'd known that. Do you wanna do wholesale this year? Arun Gupta: Yeah, we're working on it. TBD, whether it'll be this holiday or whether it'll be early next year. But definitely wholesale is on our roadmap for sure. It's just a question of scaling into it. And I think a lot of toy companies, hardware startups have this sort of. Jump right? Where you go from selling D to C and like selling good volume and then make this big jump into Target, Walmart, best Buy. But you wanna make sure you have the right awareness, you have the right contracts, you have the right margin. So it's something we wanna be thoughtful about. But we are in, we're in Brooklyn, so New York Toy Fair, we were like, we can't not be here. Azhelle Wade: Okay. I gotta ask you to finish the sentence for me. The thing that surprised me most about the toy industry was. Arun Gupta: How helpful and excited everybody is to see something new. That was amazing. They were like, wow, like this is different and innovative. And like you could like sometimes think that people would be like, this is strange. Or I don't wanna deal with [00:03:00] this. Different thing that's not what I'm used to. It's not another plushie it's not another puzzle. It's not another collectible, but they were like, oh my God, something innovative. Like something new. how receptive the toy industry is to innovation. I didn't know. So because that is coming into it fresh, it's but yeah, it's that was incredible. Azhelle Wade: Desperate for it. I saw your ad of about, I don't know, like three, four months ago and I was like, oh wow. This is the best use I've seen of AI in a toy. And one of the things I teach is the four Toyetic principles and one of those principles is wow factor, which this product has, and most AI toys don't have. There's like never this immediate. Tangible. Wow. It's usually like a plush with AI or something like that. So that's why people were so receptive. That's why they were so helpful because you created something that's truly different. Arun Gupta: I appreciate that a lot. Yeah. It's it's rare to go from speaking and interacting with a device to holding something physical in your hands. And we like to say that the AI is like not front and center and the [00:04:00] device isn't even front and center. It's the kid's idea that's the hero. And it's like the physical sticker that's the hero. And the AI kind of disappears behind the magic of the device. Azhelle Wade: I love that so much. Let's talk about building AI toys. So sticker box was born after your co-founder Bob was experimenting with generative ai. He was making coloring sheets with his son. Arun Gupta: Yes, that's right. One day his son came up to him and was like, I want a coloring book of Tiger's eating ice cream. And he was like, I don't have that. He was like, but I can go to chat GBT, I can generate a coloring page and I can print it out on my printer. So he like got his printer out from under his bed and dusted it off and his kid was like, what is that? What is a printer? Printed out the sheet and then he went off, happily coloring it and came back in a few minutes. And he was like now I want lizards riding skateboards. And he was like, okay, I'll make that too. And then that moment was like the magic moment and he was like, wait, I can say anything. Then you'll basically make it for me. He's that's insane. So then you started rattling off things, the coloring was pushed aside for the moment and he was just like, I want [00:05:00] this and I want this and I want this. And my co-founder, Bob, great guy very principled and definitely the epitome of a hacker in like the great sense of the word. And he was like, how do I get myself out of this loop? How do I make it so that I'm Azhelle Wade: a true parent. Such a true parent. How do I take a coffee break? Arun Gupta: Exactly. So he basically made it voice activated, put it in a little cardboard box, put arcade buttons on the top, put a screen on it, and put a little Bluetooth label printer in the back and cobbled it together with a raspberry pie and made this demo box that. It could just be operated by the child. And that became one of our core principles for the company is autonomy for the child. Right? Letting them use the stuff independently of parents and in a safe way, right? Because like in order to have autonomy, you have to have two things. You have to have one, the device has to be usable by the child. Without parent intervention, but two, the parent has to be comfortable letting the child have unfettered access to the device. So whether that means guardrails, whether that means data safety, whether that means, [00:06:00] only listening when the button is being pushed. All of that stuff really factors into it. But yeah, out of that sort of like genesis moment came the sticker box this really exciting. Azhelle Wade: How do you communicate safety to the parents First? Arun Gupta: Yeah. Safety is number one. So it comes both from the hardware side and also from the software side. So from the hardware side, we had BPA and BPS, free paper. Obviously that was a big deal with thermo paper. Azhelle Wade: I was actually wondering, am I allowed to ask about the risk of thermal printing? Arun Gupta: please, we are again, safety first. So welcome all questions. We have, an open book but it was difficult to do. It was not super easy to get B-P-A-B-P-S free paper, so we worked really hard on it and actually ended up delaying our launch a few weeks and order to get it right and not compromise on that position. So a again, the hardware piece of it is super important. And then safety also from a psychological standpoint, right? Where it's like when you don't want the child to be like, falling into the box and just like mind, like numbing, just like using the box constantly and not really. Developing, and then also safety from [00:07:00] traditional guardrail sense, right? So if I ask for something that's, above my age range or is not safe for work or graphic or anything like that we keep the box very pg. And that is a difficult thing to do as well. We're actually in the process of filing a pattern for that because it's hard to create. Yeah. It's hard to create an image generation pipeline that is. Both COPA compliant for a data from a data perspective, and also incredibly safe from a child perspective because a lot of image models are, sorry Azhelle Wade: No. Go. Arun Gupta: a lot of image models are trained on a variety of data, all kinds of data. You don't know what kind of data is in there, so you have to spend a lot of time figuring out what model you want to use, how you wanna tweak it, how you want to put guardrails on it. And it has to be multilayer. Like it starts from the ground with the model that you choose, but then it's multilayer from there as well. Azhelle Wade: So I'm also building an AI tool. It's called the Toy Matchmaker. So it's designed to help people find retailers that are a good fit for their product. So I say that to say I do understand this like multi-layer building 'cause I'm trying to do [00:08:00] it too. And I'm realizing the same value of what you build on the backend is the secret sauce to how this whole thing works. But I'll ask this question, but feel free to say I can't answer that. So when I was thinking about safety, I was like what are they doing? Like hard coding term? What are they doing? Hard coding terms that are not allowed because that can only protect against so much. And then. Once kids start making up new terms that mean certain things, now you can't even protect the other side. You have to continually update this like red line list. Or are you letting the AI decide what's dangerous, but then like to do that's a whole other risk. So I guess I'm curious, how much can you share to, to make parents and retail buyers feel comfortable that this won't output anything naughty that kids shouldn't see or bad, that kids shouldn't see. Arun Gupta: Yeah. Great question, honestly, and like a very detailed understanding I think of like how these things work on the backend. Obviously, as you're building a product yourself. And the answer is similar to how aircraft safety works, right? So aircraft safety [00:09:00] works through overlapping protocols, right? So you have one protocol, you have multiple redundancies, right? So you have 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 redundancies. Like this gets checked, the math gets checked, and this gets checked in a different way, and all of that stuff. So the answer. Sorry to bring it back to exactly to your question is it's both right? It's both hardcoded and it's also AI checked. And there's also a little bit of a secret sauce in there that I won't divulge. So maybe it's more than that. But definitely hardcoded and also AI checked as well and very. It's a very comprehensive scoring backend basically, where we like track a multi, like it's not very binary where it's this is safe and this is not safe. There's a lot of confidence intervals on it where it's this is violent, this is potentially an ethnic concern or something like that. Or this is potentially this concern or that concern. So there's all these vectors and variables. And then you have. Basically scores on all of them. You can tune them all up and tune them down. And we're very conservative, obviously, 'cause, we're a product for children. [00:10:00] And maybe the most reassuring thing I can say for parents and for potentially buyers is we've had, a million, over a million, million and a half maybe more than that, stickers generated since launch and every single one of them has been safe. We haven't had a single incident of unsafe and image generation. Everything has been perfect. Azhelle Wade: is one of your tests like, all right guys, team, today we need you to come up with some really naughty stuff and ask the sticker box to make it and then see what happens. Arun Gupta: We've done that, we've done that. Everybody in private so that, you're not hearing what other people are saying, but definitely. Pre-launch, we were we did an exercise where we were trying to, break it as much as possible and then give it about to a bunch of people, in the industry as well. So there's a bunch of like model safety people that we know through our network and a bunch of customers who are ended up in the AI industry and every report back we were like, they're like, we tried to break it, we tried to get it to do something unsafe. We tried to be clever and get around it and they just weren't able to do it. one of our main strengths. Azhelle Wade: I have this like other vision to build like a tool for [00:11:00] the toy industry. I wanna build a tool for the toy industry to help like generate packaging. one of the things I was thinking about is okay, yeah, I can use nano banana as a base or I can use whatever as a base. But the problem is I don't know what it's getting trained on and there's different styles of packaging in the toy industry. So what I realized is I'm going to either have to hire and create some like base images to be my, like obviously I'm not gonna replace all Arun Gupta: Training data Azhelle Wade: Yeah. It's not gonna replace everything from nano banana, but it's gonna say this is the style you're following for this. And then and then other layers from that. But also I'm like, oh my God, this is gonna take way longer to build than I thought. Okay. It's gonna be fine. I'm gonna be okay. Arun Gupta: It's gonna be fine. Azhelle Wade: I'm so relieved, honestly. 'cause it wasn't until I think last year when someone told me about the dangers of thermal printers. Arun Gupta: So then when I saw this, I was in love and then I was like, wait a second. Thermal printing. So can we talk a little bit about the safety of thermal printing? Absolutely. So the reason why it's the paper is because the printer itself is just a heat it's a resistor but it's basically just applying heat. So the paper is coated with this like heat sensitive coating. [00:12:00] And basically when you apply heat to it, it darkens. And that's why it's only black and white because it only, or it could be any color. It. White and blue, or white and red or whatever, but it can only, it's only one color. And basically the paper is coded with this special material. And then when it goes through the printer basically heats different areas of it, pixel by pixel in order to create the image. So basically what goes into the coating on the paper is. Chemical, obviously. So you wanna make sure you have safe chemicals and not unsafe chemicals. So that's why it's the paper it's like the developer, that's more of a, the risk, but honestly this is also a little bit, I don't want to downplay it at all. But this was much more of a concern 10 to 15 years ago. And then there was a big outcry and a big outrage about all of it. 'cause all receipt printers were basically had BPA and BPS in them anywhere you got a receipt. And then the industry basically almost entirely turned over. And they started using different stuff and they started eliminating it all. Our entire product is California Prop 65 compliant which is a pretty stringent standard. So [00:13:00] every, I think you can feel safe using us and that we've put a lot of thought and care into testing and sourcing safe materials. Azhelle Wade: for people listening, if you don't know what the sticker box is with a sticker box, a kid can press a button, say what they want to create a sticker of, and then a sticker will pop out. A thermal printed sticker will pop out. The kit also includes eight colored pencils to color in your sticker design. So the play doesn't end with just your imagination and creation. It also extends like coloring it in. How, so I kind of wanna talk about how important it was for you guys to pull kids away from just the screen or pull kids away from the tech and get them doing something with their hands. Arun Gupta: Yes. So our whole philosophy here is unruly creativity, right? And like we don't want you to be constrained, and we also don't want the box to be the hero.The box is not doing anything. The box is a creative tool. It's your imagination. That's the hero. It's the stickers that are the hero. So for us, in an ideal situation. A kid prints a bunch of stickers and then they leave the box behind and they [00:14:00] go off and color them. They create a little story and they paste them on a piece of paper and they color them in and they like write little things underneath them and they create more stuff. But I think for us it's like we, we think about the future of play and like what play looks like. Children creating things as opposed to handing them pre-made things is very exciting. And I think that's why we get lumped into the screen free area because the screen is really just a, what it's meant to be used for. It's just a display, it's just an interface. And it's not really very low tech. It's not moving, it's not absorbing, the attention of the child. It's really about what comes out of the slot the sticker that comes out of the slot and, it doesn't come out finished, right? It comes out unfinished on purpose so that you can color it and make it your own. it's very intentional that was a a product decision we made that the coloring is super important. Azhelle Wade: my whole career before the toy coach was in arts and crafts. Arun Gupta: Oh, Azhelle Wade: or, yeah, I worked for Toys Us. So I can see all the opportunities. one of the big sellers. Ba way back when was their [00:15:00] scrapbooking kit for tweens. And I had redesigned this whole big scrapbooking kit, lots of like glitter and foil. And I'm like, how cool would it be to be able to integrate custom stickers into the scrapbooking set? So I'm like, there's opportunity there. you could print your own fashion doll and then imagine her outfits. There's so many directions you can take with this. And I'm like I almost, part of me is like. they might be better served, licensing it than producing it and taking the risk of product themselves. I don't know if you've ever considered that. Arun Gupta: It's interesting, right? 'cause like when you license the product, you give up some control over it, right? Unlike a, maybe a more traditional toy, we have to power the backend, right? So like the software that goes into the device, the software that we have on the server, the safety features and all of that stuff. So we can license like the hardware and the printing aspect of it. But we can't really license the software because we'd have to give everybody the capability. Yeah. But we have to control it. One, to make the experience work properly and like to be safe, but also then we'd actually have to give everybody the capability to stand up their own which like isn't really Azhelle Wade: feel [00:16:00] like this is a new opportunity for licensing because like an arts and crafts company. It's oh yeah, we wanna use this to make a fashion line. Can you guys pitch us a fashion direction? So then essentially you develop the software, the hardware for that. They say yes, you don't give them your software, but you give them the hardware and then they can reproduce it. and you don't have to go into the wholesaler at all. I just feel there's so much you could grow so fast. Licensing this yeah. Arun Gupta: Yeah, it's really interesting. We should talk more about Azhelle Wade: Yeah. Arun Gupta: Yeah, it's great. But on the other licensing front too, it's like we're also having conversations with people about characters, right? can you get your favorite character in the box? And you can be like, me and my favorite character having a picnic on the moon, or like me and my favorite character, like having a, singing a concert on stage. So that's another licensing aspect of it, where like in the, we have a iPhone app for the parents, like, where they can see all the stickers that are being created and explore all the features of the box. Like we are adding new features constantly. But there, you can buy sticker packs potentially of these licensed characters, or you could imagine like a box that is [00:17:00] of that character, like a branded box basically. Azhelle Wade: we were talking about the AI integration and I wanted about cost because having developed a product like this in the backend, I know there's API costs, I know there's AI costs and this is not a subscription product, Arun Gupta: Sohow do we manage to do that The answer is twofold. The first answer is that our engineers are very good and they do a really good job optimizing the pipeline for generating the image. And then the second answer is the paper rolls. Azhelle Wade: What? Oh, so genius. I didn't even think about that. The Arun Gupta: So you print with the paper or you print with the paper rolls and that generates the stickers and covers our costs basically. Azhelle Wade: are they custom sized? So it's not like you would use like generic paper rolls Arun Gupta: Yeah, they're custom sized. Custom size, custom safety, and also custom quality where you can't get the kind of quality print that you're able to get from our stickers. off the shelf anything, won't fit. And it might jam up the printer. Azhelle Wade: That is brilliant. Arun Gupta: but honestly, these costs are [00:18:00] only, these costs are only dropping, even since we launched, the costs are dropping. Azhelle Wade: I assume because of the environmental impact and the cost of like gener generating anything, I assume the cost would increase. Arun Gupta: Maybe it depends on the area, I'm sure. And I don't wanna put myself out there as like a AI cost expert or anything like that. But definitely I have experienced in our specific use case the cost decreasing. you're gonna have to ask your engineers if that's because of them or if that's because of Azhelle Wade: the industrylet me know because I'm find myself hesitating on things and bumping up margin because I'm like. If this generative cost goes up, Let me get back on track. you've taken me far off the roadway, but I am enjoying every moment Arun Gupta: Great conversation. Azhelle Wade: Thank you so much. I'm loving it. Okay. Alright. What have kids shown you about how they actually wanna use ai that adults often misunderstand? Arun Gupta: One of the most interesting things about it is that the kids don't. Care so much that it's not perfect when they make a sticker and let's say [00:19:00] it doesn't come out exactly as they expected it to. They love it. They're like, oh my God. Like I thought it was gonna be this, but it was this. And then the faces that they make, they're like giggling. They're laughing. They're like, oh my God, that's so crazy. It's so silly. That I think is. A surprising thing, for me, and I think for most adults, we're like the and then what you see them do is redescribe, right? So like they'll say, I want a a bear eating a pizza on a surfboard, but I want a bear wearing sunglasses, eating a pizza on a surfboard. I want a bear. In an astronaut suit, eating on with sunglasses on a surfboard, on the moon, or so they'll start to redescribe and like change basically what they're saying and basically iterate on what they're doing, which has become really exciting. And it's just really fun to see kids like level up. More and more. ' cause you can say as much as you want to the box. Like you could be as simple as like a butterfly, or you could be like a butterfly in like ancient feudal Japan. There's a samurai standing in the corner and a green field and rose petals, falling [00:20:00] everywhere, right? You can get like very, you can talk to it for a while and you can get very descriptive. So it's very cool to see how kids, are taking to it. I think at first they, they look at their parents to be like, how do I use this? And what do I say? And then once they get it in their hands and they're a little bit more comfortable. Like they just start to go wild with the imagination. Azhelle Wade: That. Dude, like this is so good. that's like a communication tool, so the kids are learning communication, so that's great. earlier when you said kids can get whatever they want, you said something like that. I was like isn't that almost bad because we're in this generation. If they get whatever they want, whenever they want, now this is showing them get whatever you want. But then what you're just describing, like the iteration to really get exactly what you want is really interesting. That's actually a lost skill because of the way that we communicate digitally. we're less able to explain ourselves because we don't communicate enough. So that's actually a really interesting benefit that I didn't think about. Arun Gupta: It's a springboard. Honestly, Azhelle Wade: And there's other Arun Gupta: it's an imagination. Springboard. Azhelle Wade: Yes. Arun Gupta: Yeah. Just because you ask for something and you get it doesn't mean you're [00:21:00] done. And again, that's the same thing with a sticker coming out and then you color it, right? You're not done. You ask for something and you get it. And then you have another idea, and another idea. And it basically becomes this feedback loop where you're inspiring yourself, right? Which is really exciting. And you get the creative juices flowing. Azhelle Wade: if a kid goes, I want a pizzaro, rocket unicorn. Have you seen them like get it, color it, and then say now I wanna make her go to the store and almost build stories with their sticker box stickers. Arun Gupta: That was the very first thing that we saw is basically kids making little, like little comics, I guess I would call them of the very first one I saw was Stickman and Cap Vera. And Stickman and Cap Berra are like hanging out and then they're like going to the city and then the UFOs come and attack the city and then they fight them off and then they have a party at the end. And now Stickman and Cap Berra have gone on multiple adventures, but that was the first one. But yeah, it's incredible to see. Azhelle Wade: following the hashtag sticker box, hashtag, wherever the kids are posting their stickers would be enough data for people like they keep making stickers of six, seven, so that must be like, what is trending? Arun Gupta: that was a hilarious story. 'Cause the box [00:22:00] didn't do six sevens when we first launched it. Yeah. And it was so funny 'cause it was making like five in one and seven for some reason. And it would come out sometimes, AI is non-deterministic so it wouldn't come out every time. So we ended up doing some fancy, I don't know, prompt engineering or like Laura Magic on the backend. And basically did a, I don't know what the technical term is for it, so I hesitate to call it a fine tune. But basically made it so that six seven works properly. But it's a really interesting thing where you can like, guide the model in different ways and be like, oh, hey, this is how kids are using it. Let's make it better for this use case. Azhelle Wade: what are some six, seven stickers that came out? Arun Gupta: Like six, seven on the moon, like 6 7, 6 7, underwater, six seven. But it's on fire, 6, 6, 7, riding a motorcycle. All of that stuff, it's just it's crazy because like otherwise it would just do bland six, seven, and you couldn't really change it. But with the model and like that, yeah, we're able to do all that stuff which is Azhelle Wade: This is so cool. Man, do you feel like you have something special? Arun Gupta: It feels pretty great. Like I see this box and like [00:23:00] I look at the images on the screen and I look what comes out and I see the kids' faces, and that's something special. Looking at the kids' faces is something special. It matters a lot. And as an entrepreneur it matters a lot. 'cause it's hard, it's hard to build a toy company. It's hard to build a hardware company. It's hard to build any company, and you have to have that passion. You have to have that drive pulling you forward. And without that it's really difficult. But to see every kid light up is just, nothing beats that. It's the fuel, it's the inspiration for everything. Azhelle Wade: let's shift over to our next topic. I wanna talk about designing products that families can actually trust. So I often talk about when I teach my students and then when I work with my clients, we're not just designing for the kid, we're also designing for the parent who has the money to buy the thing. So how do you balance designing and delighting and exciting a child with something this magical, but then making a parent feel safe and also feel like they can afford it? How was that balance? Arun Gupta: Great question. It's interesting because you speak to two consumers, as you mentioned, right? You speak to the parent and you speak to often the mom and sometimes the dad. And then [00:24:00] you speak to the child. And the way we've approached it is that our marketing kind of focuses on the parent and then the product focuses on the child. Yeah so all of our sort of social media and all of that is look how I'm using this with my child. Look at what my child is creating. And just showcasing the capabilities of it. And then. Heavily messaging it from a safety perspective. 'cause obviously kids aren't looking at it from a safety perspective. So all the safety messaging is like very much geared towards parents. One thing that was like super important early on is the box only listens when the button is being pushed down. So if the button is being held down, the box is listening to you. If it's not being held down, the box is not listening to you, it is not hearing you, it, it's, there's nothing going on. So that was super important. And then messaging all the guardrails and the safety around it. That was also really important for parents and making sure that we listened to all their feedback and gave them the right information that they can feel comfortable letting their kids be autonomous with this device. And I think that, success for us is a parent saying, Hey, I can give my [00:25:00] kids sticker box at the kitchen table. I can go make dinner for 30 minutes, 45 minutes, and my kid is occupied playing with sticker box coloring and having a great time. And I feel okay, I can focus on dinner. I know they're there, I know they're playing with a box. I'm not worried, I'm not looking over their shoulder, about what's gonna happen or what's gonna come out because I know that it's gonna be safe. And I know that whatever they're gonna get is gonna be within, approved by me or something that I would be comfortable with. Azhelle Wade: I, I think this is a much cleaner. And more fun use, like they're not sitting there talking to a non-human person. They're like doing a craft and using their imagination and feeling like that sense of success. When you can't draw or you don't draw fast enough, like that sense of like your imagination Arun Gupta: could not draw. Azhelle Wade: You could, I this shows me like my imagination is worth printing. It's worth being tactile. It's worth coloring. That's cool. You could have a dream and see it like that's. Arun Gupta: yes. Azhelle Wade: That's cool. What do you think too many companies get wrong when they design AI toys for kids? Arun Gupta: [00:26:00] Great question. I think that the AI toys for kids have. Fall or followed the mold of social media. Social media was built for adults. It was built for adults to use it, but then kids ended up using it because you can't stop them from using it. And potentially to detrimental effects 'cause it wasn't designed for kids. There's casino mechanics in there, there's dopamine hits in there. And again, for a developing brain, it's different. It's different than it is for adults and ai, like very similarly, but like more powerful is also built for adults. Honestly a lot built for businesses, right? Built for businesses and built for adults. So as you were saying, if you take a chat bot and you stuff it in a plushie that's adult ai. That's adult AI that you put in a kid wrapper, right? So for us, I think. When we were looking at this product and we were looking at what does our kid-centric AI company look like? It's what if AI were made specifically for kids, not adult ai, not AI made for adults, specifically AI made for kids. And that's what led us straight to imagination and [00:27:00] creativity. Azhelle Wade: Yeah. Oh, I love Arun Gupta: And that's image printing, right? Um, yeah, and it's, it's, creativity. It's it's expressing yourself, expressing your imagination, validating your imagination, like you said. And saying yes, look at what I made like this matters. Let me color this in. Let me personalize this. Let me make something for myself. Azhelle Wade: I started many businesses when I was a kid. So if I had a sticker box, I would definitely have my own business of custom stickers. I would have stickers themed for my age grade, like I'd be like fourth grade stickers for the fourth graders, and then I would make custom stickers. If it's your request, this would've been like my business, right? This would've been Arun Gupta: A quarter. A quarter a Azhelle Wade: yes. A. Arun Gupta: Absolutely. Absolutely. We see kids doing this, they're bringing it to school. They're bringing it to lunch. They're trading them. They're exchanging them. Some of them are fiercely protective of them. Yeah. They're trading them. Yeah. It's incredible. Azhelle Wade: I wanna tell people like, your career didn't start in the toy industry. So you worked on Wake Mate, something with sleep technology, Grailed identity and style. Where did you start? Arun Gupta: So when I was in [00:28:00] college, I was lucky enough to hear a talk by this guy, Mitch Kapo who was the founder of the original spreadsheet. It was called Lotus 1 2 3. It was the very first spreadsheet. And he made it for very early like computers. I don't even remember, what computer it was. But basically he gave this talk and he was like, before he was doing that, he didn't have a background in anything specific. I think I remember him saying he was like a radio dj, before he like invented this thing. And. It was like a magic moment for me where I was like, if you have creative ideas and if you're like a motivated person, like you can just go do things, like it's not nothing holding you back, you can just make it happen. And that kind of put me on this path and with Wake Mate. We were building a sleep tracker. So it basically, it was a wristband you wore while you slept and it tracked your sleep cycles over the course of the night. And then it woke you up in the morning at like the right time in your sleep cycle within like a 20 minute window that you set. this was like 2010. There's Fitbit that was just [00:29:00] coming out. There was Jawbone that was coming out and we were riding this wave of quantified self personal intelligence, like tracking basically that was happening which was really great. But, I was like 20. So it was it was my first my first company. And then. A little bit later after that, I started Grailed. And that was again, ahead of the whole resale movement, the whole circular fashion resale, vintage movement. 'cause when I first started Grail people were like, I don't wanna buy your old clothes. That's gross. And then I'm like. What if it's Gucci? And they're like, okay, now we've got something Azhelle Wade: Oh my gosh. Arun Gupta: But it took a while 'cause I was facing two headwinds. One, it's do people wanna buy used clothes? And then two, do people wanna buy, do men even wanna buy clothes? 'cause Gud was like 70 30 men, women. Both things like ended up exploding. Both resale and men's fashion obviously both ended up exploding. And now I think here with Sticker Box, we're at the beginning of another trend, which is. Conscious, responsible use of AI and iPad alternative products for children, and also the future of play [00:30:00] being, creation and not consumption. Azhelle Wade: that leads me into our, my closing, one of my closing questions. based on your history going from like tech startups to now, toys Toy, I mean it's Toy and Tech, what would you say to other founders who might be considering pivoting out of their original industry and doing something a little bit different Arun Gupta: Go for it. Trust yourself. What made you successful in the first place is gonna make you successful again, I think don't listen to the people who are like, oh, stick to your strengths. there's a lot of inertia obviously pulling you there and if you want to do that, like that's, there's nothing wrong with that. There's lots of like lifelong fashion people or lifelong toy people or anything like that. But if you feel the pull to another category, you feel the pull to another idea That pull is what entrepreneurship is, right? I think of entrepreneurship as. A series of brick walls, right? You're standing there, there's a brick wall in front of you. There's a brick wall behind that. There's a brick wall behind that. And what you need is an anchor on the other side of these brick walls that just pulls you through them and just helps you break through all of these brick walls. [00:31:00] And more important than historical expertise, more important than domain expertise, more important than any of that is that pull. And if you feel that pull and you feel like you know where you're going, or you feel like you have a drive inside you to get somewhere, follow that. That's the most important thing. Azhelle Wade: Thank you. Appreciate that. What are you hoping to achieve one year from now with Sticker Box? Arun Gupta: One year with sticker box helping kids express their imaginations. That's really what it's all about. Grail was about expressing personal style, and sticker box is about kids. Learning what's possible. Learning what's possible, and making things right. And like I think a lot of kids are stuck in this consumption loop where they're watching tv, they're watching iPad, they're playing That's where we are right now. And tech is, that's what tech is being used for. Tech is being used for creating finished products that kids then consume. And what I hope a year from now is sticker box starts this revolution or this movement of. Of creative tools being used by children to make things they're still consuming, I'm sure, but they're now also adding their own creations into the world. Azhelle Wade: you guys have really unlocked [00:32:00] something. First of all, my mind is so inspired I'm like product line extension idea. Like the I'm so inspired. And then the fact that you've built a team that can execute all of this, How how long has Sticker Box been around? Arun Gupta: So we started working on it about a little over a year ago. And we just launched last November 18th. So still early innings. But we're really excited about the reception so far, and we're excited about iterating on the product. We are releasing new features constantly. We have a fortune teller feature, so there was a basically be like sticker box, tell me my fortune. And then we have bazar, the bunny. Azhelle Wade: What? That's cute. Oh, kids love like Arun Gupta: it'll tell you. Azhelle Wade: features, Arun Gupta: Yeah. And then it'll print Azhelle Wade: oh my gosh. Oh, that's so cool. Arun Gupta: this one says, your creativity grows bigger every Azhelle Wade: Oh, love that. Oh, that's Arun Gupta: Magic numbers and the date. Azhelle Wade: new features being launched all the time. It's really exciting. does my sticker box have that feature already in it? 'cause the software, yay. Arun Gupta: yes. Every sticker box is constantly updating basically every time you unplug and [00:33:00] replug it, it gets a new update if it needs it or stuff like this is just on our servers, so you don't even need to, you don't even need to update your sticker box. It's just on the Azhelle Wade: And if there are consumers listening, retail price point. Arun Gupta: 1 29 99 sticker box.com. It comes with the three rolls of paper in the sticker box, and then it also comes with an extra free three pack if you buy now. So sticker box.com, place your order. We're shipping April 3rd right now, but then after April 3rd we'll be in stock. We'll be shipping continually and paper refills ship free. Buy one for your kids, buy one for your teacher, buy one for your nephews, nieces, your friends. Azhelle Wade: my last and most important question for you, Arun, what toy or game blew your mind as a kid? Arun Gupta: Man, so many. It's hard to pick one. I love toys and games. I would say I'll do a low tech one and then a high tech one. Maybe Maybe the low tech one that kind of blew my mind was, a Frisbee or like the Nerf Ball. I also love Simon says the the buttons the light up, right where you like push the buttons. I [00:34:00] recently got that for my nephew for Christmas, and he loved it as well. And then I would say probably the most mind blowing toy for me, though. I don't know if this is like. the first game boy color of Pokemon was incredible. Just the portable game Boy. The portable game boy. And then the Pokemon RPG aspect of it, it was like, and the fact that you could share with your friends yeah, you could battle or you could share with your friends. That blew my mind. And I was like, this is incredible. And then they went even further with the Nintendo Wii and then we tennis. I remember that also blew my mind. So Nintendo definitely a big inspiration for Hapiko as well. Azhelle Wade: I asked that question and thought. Your product is probably in 20 years gonna be the answer to that question for some people. That's really nice of you to Arun Gupta: so our dream is to inspire the next generation of storytellers, right? So like our dream is that in 20 years or 15 years, somebody's on stage at the Oscars accepting the best Director award, and they're like, I got my start creating things with sticker Azhelle Wade: Arun. Thank you so much for joining us today. I love this conversation. We got to explore the sticker box, how much [00:35:00] safety went into it from the paper to the prompts and how much creative play there is. You're not just imagining your favorite stickers, but you are gonna illustrate them and color on them. You can share them with friends and family, you can trade them. this is the first product I've seen integrate AI in a way that's tangible So if you're Arun Gupta: interested in sticker box, head over to sticker box.com or you can check out the episode show notes@thetoycoach.com slash 609 . Azhelle Wade: Make sure to leave us a rating and review your ratings and reviews. Keep amazing guests like Arun coming back time and time again. It inspires me to keep doing these episodes for you. Arun, thank you again for joining us here and you listener. Thank you for listening to this podcast. I know there are a ton of podcasts out there, so it means the world to me that you tune into this one. Until next time, I'll see you later toy people.