April 7, 2025 • 29 mins
In this episode of CEOs You Should Know, Adam Kurtz sits down with Lance Neuhauser, CEO of Wendy by The Story Company, to explore how the company is redefining consumer engagement through innovative tech.
Lance shares his journey, leadership philosophy, and the bold vision behind his success. Wendy is a new kind of story company, helping kids rediscover the joy of reading through its innovative reading entertainment app. By providing an immersive story-building experience and the ability to work alongside friends, Wendy helps children reclaim time for reading and creative play, offering parents a valuable alternative to gaming, social media, and passive video consumption.
Recorded in Chicago for iHeartMedia, this conversation offers a fresh look at what it takes to lead in today’s digital economy.
Lance shares his journey, leadership philosophy, and the bold vision behind his success. Wendy is a new kind of story company, helping kids rediscover the joy of reading through its innovative reading entertainment app. By providing an immersive story-building experience and the ability to work alongside friends, Wendy helps children reclaim time for reading and creative play, offering parents a valuable alternative to gaming, social media, and passive video consumption.
Recorded in Chicago for iHeartMedia, this conversation offers a fresh look at what it takes to lead in today’s digital economy.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to CEOs you Should Know by iHeartMedia Chicago, the
podcast that brings you inspiring stories and insightful conversations with
Chicago innovators and business leaders that you should know.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Welcome to another edition of iHeartMedia Chicago's CEOs you Should
Know discussions with local business leaders who are driving and
shaping our city's economy doing wonderful and interesting things. Today,
I'm joined by Lance Newhauser. Lance, thank you so much
for being here, Thanks for having me. In addition to
being the founder and CEO of Wendy the App, is
(00:32):
it safe to say you're also the head make Believer?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
It is safe to say. I have a seven year
old daughter, and when she was little, we used to
tell stories before bedtime. We'd read too, but we would
tell stories before bedtime. And she created these characters Princess Brella,
Dragon Bruce, and Piano the Monkey. And every night we
(00:57):
would start to tell different stories with these three characters
in it. And we had just moved from New York
to Chicago during COVID, and my daughter was only two
years old at the time, and she was adjusting, and
so just so happened. She has a cousin in town,
and so the cousin ended up sleeping over a couple
of years older. He was a sports nut, and we
(01:17):
introduced Xander to Princess Brella, Dragon Bruce, and Piano the Monkey,
to which he put these characters in sports stories, and
the two of them started bonding over these three characters,
and every sleepover the head subsequently they would go back
to telling these stories. And so this was one of
the kernels, the nuggets of realizing how important it is
(01:40):
for kids to tell stories because it's how they make
sense of the world and their place in it. And
it ended up becoming this connective tissue between what we
ultimately ended up building and bringing to market. So maybe
I'm the chief make believer, but maybe it's Quinn and Xander.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Well, first of all, how amazing to have the mind
of the child right deliberating that is. But about you though?
Are you? Are you a storyteller at heart? Were you?
Are you wired to create?
Speaker 1 (02:11):
I believe I am. I think some of that's environmental.
I have a famous cousin, shel Silverstein, the author. Hold
on a minute, yep, Mike drop what yeah? So look,
he was older than I was. He was off doing
what he did. I'm not going to make it seem
like I had some type relationship with him, but his mother,
(02:36):
my aunt Helen, and I used to sit next to
each other at each of the holiday dinners, and so
she was the one who first encouraged me not just
to read stories, so she did, but to also create
stories and tell stories. And my mom and her friend
(02:56):
had a children's bookstore for over twenty years.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
And so.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
I think just taking stories was and creating them was.
Indeed what I said before, how I made sense of
the world, and it ended up translating into my professional life,
in which I have built a few companies. And the
allure in building companies is getting to create a story
(03:23):
out of thin air and being able to have other
people attach themselves to that story, both the people that
work at the company and the people who are believing
in the company from the outside.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
So about your history, your professional history, You had some companies,
you sold some companies my understanding, and so correct if
I'm wrong, But it's afforded you to the chance to
take a step back and come up with something really
that you're really really passionate about, something that became very
important to you. Am I on the right track.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
You are. You are a bang on.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
So talk about how it sort of came about in
your mind to create something like those, and that this
would be a good time to tell us what it is.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Yeah, yeah, sure, I will get to I will get
to Wendy in a second. I I do think it's
important to note that early in my career I happened
to make it just happenstance, happened to make my way
into new technology that was affecting the way we communicate,
so much so that I stumbled in the search engine marketing.
(04:23):
I didn't know what it was really going to be
when I first got into it. And and me and
three others here in Chicago ended up starting a company
called Resolution Media that went on to be one of
the largest of its kind in the world. And we
sold it to Omnicom. And and and there were two moments.
One moment where I just happened to meet this gentleman
the name of Sandy Berdein who was I think he
(04:45):
was that of I's grad school business. And went to
lunch and he like old school. He slides a piece
of paper across the table at me, like what is
this Sady? And I open it up and it says
communication strategies in the digital environment. So what is this?
This is your new class twenty six years old. I'm
(05:06):
now teaching grad school class because I understand something that
very few people understood at the time. And I liked
that moment because I then got to get in front
of the class and tell stories to your point about business,
(05:27):
about creating companies, about how the world may work in
this very slim way. And when we sold Omnicom, or
when we sold Resolution Media Omnicom, I got called into
John Ren's office, who's now still the CEO of Omnicom,
when I was I think twenty seven years old, and
there was no I had no business, like, I had
no business being in this man's office. S men knows
so much about business, and yet he called me in
(05:49):
because like I want to learn about search, I need
to know about search, and you're the person who on
the ground correct And so that that feeling of being
able to help people understand new things through the power
of storytelling became a cornerstone to my career, became somewhat infectious.
(06:10):
Ended up starting another company called four C and we
sold that and ended up in a large role at Mediocean,
and that's a great company with great people. But it
was time for me to take a step back. And
I really had no idea how much of my identity
was wrapped up in my work. I had no idea
until it was kind of gone and I broke it
(06:31):
all down and had the chance to build it back
up again.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Sort of, Who am I right? What's left right without
all these responsibilities?
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Yes, And there were two things that came back more
dominant than anything else. One that I'm a father, and
two that I'm a storyteller. And I had this buddy,
very successful entrepreneur himself, Aaron Black, who who I asked
him a question randomly one day. I said, Hey, if you,
(07:00):
for good reason had to leave your industry, you couldn't
touch it anymore. What would you do to what she said,
I would think out three to four years as to
what my kids are going to be doing, what they need,
and I would build a company around that so that
I could help them most and I can spend my
most amount of time thinking about them, interacting with them,
(07:21):
et cetera. Okay, and so when I had the chance
to step back and start to think about the challenges
my daughter and now my son will face years out
the challenges that kids of that age are facing right now.
One of the things we realized is that they are
consuming things differently now. They are they're telling their own
(07:45):
stories less and less. They're consuming on demand stories, They're
consuming stories and games, are consuming other people's stories in
social media. And that need to create and have a
mad play is how they develop emotional and cognitive strength.
It's how they develop their confidence. And there's just not
(08:07):
enough tools out there to help kids develop and build
their own stories. And that's what Wendy is.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Because you brought that up, the difficulty and all the distraction.
Can you talk a little bit about decline by nine?
Because I saw it on your website and it hit
Can you can you explain? So?
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Scholastic team deemed it. It's called the decline by nine.
It's in one year alone, between the age of eight
and nine, forty percent of kids fall off or reading
for fun and they have it almost never recovers. And
what it does is it causes more anxiety and kids
and long term according to Cambridge University, long term developmental
(08:47):
issues both from an education perspective and a career perspective,
and the book is amazing. I read books still with
my daughter every single night, and yet the book is
falling off in terms of time spent because the other
forms of media are more immersive, more personalized, more on demand,
(09:08):
and we can't expect the book alone to then bring
them back. And one of the things that we have
learned in building Wendy in doing so, which right now
is an iPad app iPhone app comes out in a
couple months. We built it with authors and illustrators, with
experts in early education, early reading, experts in children's book publishing,
(09:33):
in child safety, and AI in order to understand what
can we do in this modern world to actually give
kids the chance to want to choose reading again. How
can parents provide a healthy alternative to gaming, on demand
video and social media for their kids? And we felt
(09:57):
story building, story creating, storytelling is what is already drawing
kids in and so if we can give them that power,
they'll want to read their own stories, they want to
share their own stories, they want to collaborate on the
building of stories with their friends, which was a technological
challenge we had to solve. How do you make it
where everything a kid creates is reusable? And shareable and
(10:20):
can allow that community aspect, that playground play where they're
talking about the same characters, that social currency that comes
when to kids bond over the things that they love.
How can we do that and give them tools so
that they can begin to create a professional quality and
simultaneously give authors and illustrators and IP holders a business
(10:42):
model in the age of AI. Because of my family history,
we wanted to put all that together, and it took
us eighteen months to do it a little longer than expected. Okay,
and now it just released again. You can find in
the app story search the Wendy app and also try
Wendy dot com. Try Wendy dot com.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Okay, so is the app? Are you replacing the book?
Are you? Are you additive to the book.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
So if let's do a hypothesis, if so many kids
use Wendy that they fall in love with storybuilding and
storytelling and thus reading what we I don't even go
to that many kids. We've already seen those kids that
use it become more engaged in stories again and find
(11:31):
themselves gravitating toward.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
The book again. Okay, that's right.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
It's it's you give them tools to fall in love
with the creative process, give them tools to fall in
love with the output that they can take ownership of,
and they now start reading again. Show them the worlds
they can create, have them get lost into story worlds
once again, and then they're going to see, oh my god,
(11:57):
their eyes open up to the greatest story world that
have ever been created by some of the best authors
that have ever walked the face of the earth. And
now we've got this synergistic building between kids having empowerment
over their own stories, sharing it, getting other kids into
stories and story reading, and then all of a sudden
discovering worlds that also already exist in books. So no,
(12:17):
we see ourselves as incredibly complimentary. Okay, okay, I love that.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
So which is.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Why, by the way, we included authors and illustrators. If
I could say one more thing on that, which is
the technology alone cannot create professional quality. It just can't yet.
It just cannot yet. And one of the you know
we learned. You know, first off, it's beautiful to watch
parents have a tool to help them safely engage your
children in AI, which everything through Wendy is choice based,
(12:48):
so that it protects the kid. We know what's going
in we know what's coming out, and that same choice
based flow allows us to protect IP. I don't believe
in a business model that allows people to just take
somebody else's ep I don't believe in a business model
that just cuts out professionals that have been working in
the field for a long long time.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
So the story you got scraping the internet.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
We actually went out and got actual illustrators to design
illustration styles just for us. We went out and got
authors to create what's known as story seeds because the
large language models right now, so we've got in the
app where it's catchy, but we say, there's more story
combinations and grains of sand on Earth that you can
make in the app. Okay, you can make every major choice,
(13:27):
from the genre of the story, to the personality of
the character, the superpowers of the character, the setting that
it takes place in, theme, tone, you name it. You
can make every major choice. And we have lots of
choices available. And despite having more combinations and grains of
sand on Earth, the large language models right now will
still start to converge to the same six or seven storylines.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
It doesn't.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
It does not provide the robustness the expansiveness of that
that equals the imagination, where's the adventure exactly. So we
went out and worked with real authors to create just
thousands and thousands of story seeds for us so that
this human computer creativity collaboration allows for the kids to
(14:13):
get involved, allows for authors and illustrators to get involved
where they don't need to get necessarily paid on full
completed works, which they could do one every so often.
They can all of a sudden just put new characters
into our system as a tool for the kid to
now put a famous character that they love, like nature Cat,
for example, which a PBS kids show that has now
(14:34):
licensed their cast of characters to Wendy, so you could
build nature Cat stories or put your favorite character in
combination with nature Cat. These are just more and more
tools that are going to become available so that whenever's
in a child's imagination can be replicated in what they
create in their stories that represents them, that tells their stories.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
That's I can tell how much this means to you
just the way you're talking about it. How about this,
Let's get in the weeds for one second. Sure on
the app, it's seven o'clock at night, right it's bedtime. Okay,
washed up, Pj's the whole thing. Get the iPad out?
Functionality wise, how does it work? What does mom and
dad kids do at this point? Yeah, so you great questions.
(15:13):
You come into the app and you immediately start. You
make a decision. Okay, first and foremost, do I want
to build a story entirely from scratch?
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Or do I want to use a character that I've
already made that I've fallen in love with? Or do
I perhaps want to use a character that I've seen
on screen that I now want to put into my
own story like nature. Depending on what they decide, you
now go through the process. You choose do I want
it to be a fantasy, an adventurous Borts story? Do
(15:43):
I want to create a new character even though I'm
using an existing character and give that character a name,
a personality, as I said, superpowered job interests? Where do
I want this story to be set? And so you
get to make literally all of these decisions that go
into the story. You get to choose the images of
(16:05):
your characters. You get four choices to choose from. Then
the opportunity to once a book is ready, you get
the stories ready. You get to listen to it in
audiobook format, you get to read it just naturally, or
you can get it and follow along narration, and you
can even choose the voice that you want to read it.
But again, this is just the beginning. This is just
(16:26):
the beginning. We want to literally give kids any and
every opportunity to have every tool in creating stories, all
the way to the point where they can take a
picture of their dog and turn that dog into a superhero,
where they can capture their grandmother's voice so that their
their grandmother can read stories for the rest of their
kids' lives, not just the rest of their grandmother.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Oh, so we and.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Give them every every possible character they've ever fallen in
love with. Is an opportunity, you know, We've seen this
in the media world, where when there is a new
technology that rises up that allows the average user to
create a professional quality, a new ecosystem emerges for where
the user generated mixes with the professional quality. Users who
(17:09):
wouldn't have had the opportunity to become professionals in that
avenue now have the opportunity to become professionals in that avenue.
And so we do see an opportunity for an ecosystem
to emerge for children's stories. You know, I'll give one
more example. Uh, the music business went through a lot
of a lot of change, as you know, right, and
(17:30):
and people listen iHeart people listen on Spotify listen happily
listen to a lot of sorts. But what what what
happened was there was a free, credible threat to the
entire industry in Napster, and then a Spotify model showed
up for those interactions when you wanted to see the
long tail of songs or you wanted to just get
(17:51):
to the professional And so the reason we feel those
ecosystems show up, same thing happened with Twitter and and
news are now x, same thing happened with YouTube and
video is that you have to include the professionals. They're
the ones who are the most creative, the most skilled,
the most adept at making the best use of these
(18:12):
technologies and tools. You can't just assume that users all
of a sudden going to be able to, even because
they have a new set of tools, be able to
create the best.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Art in the world. You can't assume that.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
And so we had to create a technology that allowed
authors and illustrators and ip holders to participate, and that
just happens to coincide with what kids need, what we
learn they need. They need to reuse characters so that
they can experience the same things over and over again,
so that it helps with their cognitive development. They want
(18:43):
to be able to see those things that they already
know and love because it helps them make sense of
a new world, a new place that they're trying to create.
So just so happened that all of this stuff happened
to be coming together at a time where me and
some of my old team members happen to be looking
to do something new and again. Wendy Wendy was born.
(19:06):
Is Wendy born if you're not a father?
Speaker 2 (19:09):
No, Okay, definitely not, Because what I'm hearing is I
think I kind of know the answer this already, but
I'm hearing this thing was born out of love for
your children, parental concern, and an existential threat to reading.
I climb by nine. So it's it sounds like all
those coming together.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
I do think that there are amazing tools out there
that are being developed to help kids advance in their reading.
There are amazing tools that are help kids learning how
to continue staying on with their reading, whether those are
sequence books or programs that schools are putting out. And
(19:54):
while reading is we think the BEA's knees, and we
we believe that by creating your own stories, you will
read more. The mission that we are seen naturally emerged
from the conversations we're having with parents of kids who
are using the platform, is in the kid creating and
(20:16):
telling their own stories. Yeah. You know, my daughter has
an amazing teacher. She's in first grade and her teacher's
name is Miss Dana. We happen to have the parent
teacher conference just the other day and Miss Dana showed us.
She said, Hey, we're doing this exercise. She didn't even
know about Wendy. She didn't know I was creating an app.
She had no idea, And she goes, hey, we're doing
this great exercise where my daughter's name is Quinn. Quinn
wrote her own story and we're doing it again, and
(20:37):
we're doing another exercise in which you're going to get
a chance to make choices that go into stories and create.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Their own stories.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
And I ended up saying her, I said, hey, check out,
check out the app.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
She's like, what is this appen?
Speaker 1 (20:48):
But I was more amazed that she was amazed at
this exercise being worked into the curriculum. A couple times
stories get to be written by these kids a few
times throughout the year they focus on storytelling. The rest
of the time, they've got so much other stuff that
they need to cover. Right, there are great tools that
(21:09):
after school et cetera, focus on reading and making sure
that the kid is reading. But what's helping them get
back to telling their own stories in an age where
it is so critical to know what your story is,
to make sense of that confusing world through the stories
that we experience, through the stories that we that we
end up telling, and there are not tools that are
(21:29):
teaching kids at a young enough age how to find
their own stories, how to tell their own stories, how
to create.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Their own stories totally and at the same time, because
I know there's obviously with kids of a certain age
and facing social media and YouTube and all the many
many things that are being fed to them. You know,
you're almost like the story is being told and thrown
at you constantly.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
When can you shut it off and start to think, well,
maybe I can if I can tell my own stories.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
When you when do you turn on your own creative ability.
When do you let that imagine nation take hold the confidence.
There's many studies on this that show when when you
know this isn't just creative play, when kids actually create
their own stories, they gain more confidence, They reduce their anxiety,
(22:16):
they connect with other kids, they listen better, they search
for other people's stories. That's not happening in this in
this day and age through social through games, as much
as we'd like it to. There are obviously games that
are obviously wonderful applications with inside of social that helped
(22:37):
that connective tissue, but it is not now the predominant experience,
and those who saw it beginning at least have some
inclination as to how it can be used in that way.
But now kids where this is coming up as their
first their first language, they're thinking that the way that
they tell their stories about themselves is how they look
and what their interests, you know, and how they comment
(23:01):
and not the content of their own creations. It has
to be about the content of their own creations so
that they don't feel like their face has to be
front and center, so they actually feel like what they've
expressed what they believe to be true. The stories that
they want to tell is what becomes front and center.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
And what a confidence builder you can build your own stories.
I mean, that's amazing. I mean, so I'm a child
of the eighties and I'm now remembering choose your own adventure. Yes,
and this is a thousand times better because you know
the paths were predetermined. You pick one, you pick another,
and you wind up somewhere. That's right. When are you
building this for grown ups?
Speaker 1 (23:38):
So it is amazing how often through talking about Wenny
with parents, the following has come up. One choose your
own adventure which is coming. It's coming to Wendy, in
which you'll be able to not just have the same
three choices that lead to the same six pages at
the end of the story, but it could be never
ending stories, and it could be for those kids who
(23:58):
do need constant engagement every couple pages, what's the next
thing you want to happen in the story? It no
longer has to be just flat. It could be augmented
to where if there's a boom in the story, there
could be a boom on screen. If there's a shot
made on the story, you could see the basketball fly
across you. Could have pictures that start to look like
Harry Potter newspaper pictures where they begin to move. That's
(24:18):
one and so that's coming. The other is so many
parents saying I've got an idea for a kid's story
and it came with me creating stories with my own kid.
The amount of Princess Brellas and Dragon Bruce and Piano
the monkeys that have been told back to me that
are just the most adorable names that kids and parents
(24:40):
have come up with is amazing. And so again, our
goal is to create tools. We're just at the beginning.
We feel like we've got a lot of great tools
in when you're ready, but the toolbox is going to
just continue to expand get on the journey with us.
Now learn these tools, because there's just going to be
more that continue to come out in which we do
over time. See the ability to give parents kind of
(25:01):
the canvas for story building where you can edit the
images and edit the story, and it gives them the
opportunity to just put out what they think is a
wonderful story. But maybe they were the illustrator but not
the author, or maybe they wanted to be the author
but didn't know how to really put a full arc,
or maybe that a great idea for just a character
(25:23):
and didn't know a second character to include with it
that would be brilliant, and they needed some help. This
is why I believe where there is a very positive
thing that can come out of AI. We have heard
from leaders like Reid Hoffman who went back in time
and traced whenever there's a new technology that came up,
the creators got stronger. I heard a story about someone
(25:47):
thought the printing press was the equivalent of AI, where
I'm not handwriting it. A machine is writing it for me.
That loses all the essence of the story itself. It's
got to be a handwritten note for me to read,
otherwise I'm gonna lose part of the experience, right right, Well,
maybe you did lose a little bit of the experience,
but maybe you also gained a thousand more books and
(26:08):
a thousand more worlds you got to to move into.
And so we see AI when done safely, when done
with experts that understand kids at the heart, that know
what need to be built for them, this becomes exposure
to another tool that can help them elevate themselves and
a time where they need more tools to help them
elevate themselves.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
And it's AI and you're honoring the creators, which I
think is so admirable. Throw that out there. Good for you.
So with an app like this, it's likely you're gonna
You're gonna end up in many many homes, in many
many people's lives. Is there anything that anything else you
want people to know about about you? The founder, the head,
(26:49):
make believer, the creator. What should they know about you?
Speaker 1 (26:52):
I I hope I have two thoughts on this.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
One.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
I do hope what you said is true that story building,
story creating tools get in the hands of every kid,
whether it's Wendy or something else. I honestly like, I
just want kids to be able to have these tools
so that they can develop. I do have some nephews
that have gone through some hard times. They were the
product of of being teenagers when when COVID hits and
(27:24):
when social media hits, and I think a lot of
other parents saw that directly. It's it's one of the
most affected generations and got to see firsthand what happens
when they don't have some of those those tools available
for him. So, I, regardless of Wendy, I do hope
every kid gets access to this, and we are working
toward getting a free version of it. I will say
(27:47):
one other thing though, because this is such a hot
topic AI and kids and parenting, if you send me
an email Lance at trywndy dot com. Anyone can sent
if you want to have these conversations in your company
Slack channels or team channels or what have you. Anyone
(28:08):
in your company that wants to participate in that discussion
will give them a free version of Wendy anyone so
long as these conversations continue to happen as to how
we use these tools, how we look out for our
children in this time, how we connect with our children
as parents. This is the most important conversation. So we're
going to try and help further that conversation. And I
(28:29):
guess that's that's what I want you to know about
me and us that we are. You know, we want
this to be a successful business because it allows us
to invest more into these tools that kids can have.
But we want to be a part of and help
you have greater conversations on what are really difficult parenting
topics right now.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Yeah, yeah, it is not easy to be I would
say a parent or a kid right now, And what
an escape to go to go tell stories you know,
and just have a great time doing that. So Wendy
the Story App available on the App Store, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
App Store, ipat only for now. iPhone app coming in
a couple of months.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Okay, and try Wendy dot com. That's right and uh
lands New has a great conversation. So nice to sit
with you. I'm so appreciat of you having me. Thank you,
thank you very much.
Welcome to CEOs you Should Know by iHeartMedia Chicago, the
podcast that brings you inspiring stories and insightful conversations with
Chicago innovators and business leaders that you should know.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Welcome to another edition of iHeartMedia Chicago's CEOs you Should
Know discussions with local business leaders who are driving and
shaping our city's economy doing wonderful and interesting things. Today,
I'm joined by Lance Newhauser. Lance, thank you so much
for being here, Thanks for having me. In addition to
being the founder and CEO of Wendy the App, is
(00:32):
it safe to say you're also the head make Believer?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
It is safe to say. I have a seven year
old daughter, and when she was little, we used to
tell stories before bedtime. We'd read too, but we would
tell stories before bedtime. And she created these characters Princess Brella,
Dragon Bruce, and Piano the Monkey. And every night we
(00:57):
would start to tell different stories with these three characters
in it. And we had just moved from New York
to Chicago during COVID, and my daughter was only two
years old at the time, and she was adjusting, and
so just so happened. She has a cousin in town,
and so the cousin ended up sleeping over a couple
of years older. He was a sports nut, and we
(01:17):
introduced Xander to Princess Brella, Dragon Bruce, and Piano the Monkey,
to which he put these characters in sports stories, and
the two of them started bonding over these three characters,
and every sleepover the head subsequently they would go back
to telling these stories. And so this was one of
the kernels, the nuggets of realizing how important it is
(01:40):
for kids to tell stories because it's how they make
sense of the world and their place in it. And
it ended up becoming this connective tissue between what we
ultimately ended up building and bringing to market. So maybe
I'm the chief make believer, but maybe it's Quinn and Xander.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Well, first of all, how amazing to have the mind
of the child right deliberating that is. But about you though?
Are you? Are you a storyteller at heart? Were you?
Are you wired to create?
Speaker 1 (02:11):
I believe I am. I think some of that's environmental.
I have a famous cousin, shel Silverstein, the author. Hold
on a minute, yep, Mike drop what yeah? So look,
he was older than I was. He was off doing
what he did. I'm not going to make it seem
like I had some type relationship with him, but his mother,
(02:36):
my aunt Helen, and I used to sit next to
each other at each of the holiday dinners, and so
she was the one who first encouraged me not just
to read stories, so she did, but to also create
stories and tell stories. And my mom and her friend
(02:56):
had a children's bookstore for over twenty years.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
And so.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
I think just taking stories was and creating them was.
Indeed what I said before, how I made sense of
the world, and it ended up translating into my professional life,
in which I have built a few companies. And the
allure in building companies is getting to create a story
(03:23):
out of thin air and being able to have other
people attach themselves to that story, both the people that
work at the company and the people who are believing
in the company from the outside.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
So about your history, your professional history, You had some companies,
you sold some companies my understanding, and so correct if
I'm wrong, But it's afforded you to the chance to
take a step back and come up with something really
that you're really really passionate about, something that became very
important to you. Am I on the right track.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
You are. You are a bang on.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
So talk about how it sort of came about in
your mind to create something like those, and that this
would be a good time to tell us what it is.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Yeah, yeah, sure, I will get to I will get
to Wendy in a second. I I do think it's
important to note that early in my career I happened
to make it just happenstance, happened to make my way
into new technology that was affecting the way we communicate,
so much so that I stumbled in the search engine marketing.
(04:23):
I didn't know what it was really going to be
when I first got into it. And and me and
three others here in Chicago ended up starting a company
called Resolution Media that went on to be one of
the largest of its kind in the world. And we
sold it to Omnicom. And and and there were two moments.
One moment where I just happened to meet this gentleman
the name of Sandy Berdein who was I think he
(04:45):
was that of I's grad school business. And went to
lunch and he like old school. He slides a piece
of paper across the table at me, like what is
this Sady? And I open it up and it says
communication strategies in the digital environment. So what is this?
This is your new class twenty six years old. I'm
(05:06):
now teaching grad school class because I understand something that
very few people understood at the time. And I liked
that moment because I then got to get in front
of the class and tell stories to your point about business,
(05:27):
about creating companies, about how the world may work in
this very slim way. And when we sold Omnicom, or
when we sold Resolution Media Omnicom, I got called into
John Ren's office, who's now still the CEO of Omnicom,
when I was I think twenty seven years old, and
there was no I had no business, like, I had
no business being in this man's office. S men knows
so much about business, and yet he called me in
(05:49):
because like I want to learn about search, I need
to know about search, and you're the person who on
the ground correct And so that that feeling of being
able to help people understand new things through the power
of storytelling became a cornerstone to my career, became somewhat infectious.
(06:10):
Ended up starting another company called four C and we
sold that and ended up in a large role at Mediocean,
and that's a great company with great people. But it
was time for me to take a step back. And
I really had no idea how much of my identity
was wrapped up in my work. I had no idea
until it was kind of gone and I broke it
(06:31):
all down and had the chance to build it back
up again.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Sort of, Who am I right? What's left right without
all these responsibilities?
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Yes, And there were two things that came back more
dominant than anything else. One that I'm a father, and
two that I'm a storyteller. And I had this buddy,
very successful entrepreneur himself, Aaron Black, who who I asked
him a question randomly one day. I said, Hey, if you,
(07:00):
for good reason had to leave your industry, you couldn't
touch it anymore. What would you do to what she said,
I would think out three to four years as to
what my kids are going to be doing, what they need,
and I would build a company around that so that
I could help them most and I can spend my
most amount of time thinking about them, interacting with them,
(07:21):
et cetera. Okay, and so when I had the chance
to step back and start to think about the challenges
my daughter and now my son will face years out
the challenges that kids of that age are facing right now.
One of the things we realized is that they are
consuming things differently now. They are they're telling their own
(07:45):
stories less and less. They're consuming on demand stories, They're
consuming stories and games, are consuming other people's stories in
social media. And that need to create and have a
mad play is how they develop emotional and cognitive strength.
It's how they develop their confidence. And there's just not
(08:07):
enough tools out there to help kids develop and build
their own stories. And that's what Wendy is.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Because you brought that up, the difficulty and all the distraction.
Can you talk a little bit about decline by nine?
Because I saw it on your website and it hit
Can you can you explain? So?
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Scholastic team deemed it. It's called the decline by nine.
It's in one year alone, between the age of eight
and nine, forty percent of kids fall off or reading
for fun and they have it almost never recovers. And
what it does is it causes more anxiety and kids
and long term according to Cambridge University, long term developmental
(08:47):
issues both from an education perspective and a career perspective,
and the book is amazing. I read books still with
my daughter every single night, and yet the book is
falling off in terms of time spent because the other
forms of media are more immersive, more personalized, more on demand,
(09:08):
and we can't expect the book alone to then bring
them back. And one of the things that we have
learned in building Wendy in doing so, which right now
is an iPad app iPhone app comes out in a
couple months. We built it with authors and illustrators, with
experts in early education, early reading, experts in children's book publishing,
(09:33):
in child safety, and AI in order to understand what
can we do in this modern world to actually give
kids the chance to want to choose reading again. How
can parents provide a healthy alternative to gaming, on demand
video and social media for their kids? And we felt
(09:57):
story building, story creating, storytelling is what is already drawing
kids in and so if we can give them that power,
they'll want to read their own stories, they want to
share their own stories, they want to collaborate on the
building of stories with their friends, which was a technological
challenge we had to solve. How do you make it
where everything a kid creates is reusable? And shareable and
(10:20):
can allow that community aspect, that playground play where they're
talking about the same characters, that social currency that comes
when to kids bond over the things that they love.
How can we do that and give them tools so
that they can begin to create a professional quality and
simultaneously give authors and illustrators and IP holders a business
(10:42):
model in the age of AI. Because of my family history,
we wanted to put all that together, and it took
us eighteen months to do it a little longer than expected. Okay,
and now it just released again. You can find in
the app story search the Wendy app and also try
Wendy dot com. Try Wendy dot com.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Okay, so is the app? Are you replacing the book?
Are you? Are you additive to the book.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
So if let's do a hypothesis, if so many kids
use Wendy that they fall in love with storybuilding and
storytelling and thus reading what we I don't even go
to that many kids. We've already seen those kids that
use it become more engaged in stories again and find
(11:31):
themselves gravitating toward.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
The book again. Okay, that's right.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
It's it's you give them tools to fall in love
with the creative process, give them tools to fall in
love with the output that they can take ownership of,
and they now start reading again. Show them the worlds
they can create, have them get lost into story worlds
once again, and then they're going to see, oh my god,
(11:57):
their eyes open up to the greatest story world that
have ever been created by some of the best authors
that have ever walked the face of the earth. And
now we've got this synergistic building between kids having empowerment
over their own stories, sharing it, getting other kids into
stories and story reading, and then all of a sudden
discovering worlds that also already exist in books. So no,
(12:17):
we see ourselves as incredibly complimentary. Okay, okay, I love that.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
So which is.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Why, by the way, we included authors and illustrators. If
I could say one more thing on that, which is
the technology alone cannot create professional quality. It just can't yet.
It just cannot yet. And one of the you know
we learned. You know, first off, it's beautiful to watch
parents have a tool to help them safely engage your
children in AI, which everything through Wendy is choice based,
(12:48):
so that it protects the kid. We know what's going
in we know what's coming out, and that same choice
based flow allows us to protect IP. I don't believe
in a business model that allows people to just take
somebody else's ep I don't believe in a business model
that just cuts out professionals that have been working in
the field for a long long time.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
So the story you got scraping the internet.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
We actually went out and got actual illustrators to design
illustration styles just for us. We went out and got
authors to create what's known as story seeds because the
large language models right now, so we've got in the
app where it's catchy, but we say, there's more story
combinations and grains of sand on Earth that you can
make in the app. Okay, you can make every major choice,
(13:27):
from the genre of the story, to the personality of
the character, the superpowers of the character, the setting that
it takes place in, theme, tone, you name it. You
can make every major choice. And we have lots of
choices available. And despite having more combinations and grains of
sand on Earth, the large language models right now will
still start to converge to the same six or seven storylines.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
It doesn't.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
It does not provide the robustness the expansiveness of that
that equals the imagination, where's the adventure exactly. So we
went out and worked with real authors to create just
thousands and thousands of story seeds for us so that
this human computer creativity collaboration allows for the kids to
(14:13):
get involved, allows for authors and illustrators to get involved
where they don't need to get necessarily paid on full
completed works, which they could do one every so often.
They can all of a sudden just put new characters
into our system as a tool for the kid to
now put a famous character that they love, like nature Cat,
for example, which a PBS kids show that has now
(14:34):
licensed their cast of characters to Wendy, so you could
build nature Cat stories or put your favorite character in
combination with nature Cat. These are just more and more
tools that are going to become available so that whenever's
in a child's imagination can be replicated in what they
create in their stories that represents them, that tells their stories.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
That's I can tell how much this means to you
just the way you're talking about it. How about this,
Let's get in the weeds for one second. Sure on
the app, it's seven o'clock at night, right it's bedtime. Okay,
washed up, Pj's the whole thing. Get the iPad out?
Functionality wise, how does it work? What does mom and
dad kids do at this point? Yeah, so you great questions.
(15:13):
You come into the app and you immediately start. You
make a decision. Okay, first and foremost, do I want
to build a story entirely from scratch?
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Or do I want to use a character that I've
already made that I've fallen in love with? Or do
I perhaps want to use a character that I've seen
on screen that I now want to put into my
own story like nature. Depending on what they decide, you
now go through the process. You choose do I want
it to be a fantasy, an adventurous Borts story? Do
(15:43):
I want to create a new character even though I'm
using an existing character and give that character a name,
a personality, as I said, superpowered job interests? Where do
I want this story to be set? And so you
get to make literally all of these decisions that go
into the story. You get to choose the images of
(16:05):
your characters. You get four choices to choose from. Then
the opportunity to once a book is ready, you get
the stories ready. You get to listen to it in
audiobook format, you get to read it just naturally, or
you can get it and follow along narration, and you
can even choose the voice that you want to read it.
But again, this is just the beginning. This is just
(16:26):
the beginning. We want to literally give kids any and
every opportunity to have every tool in creating stories, all
the way to the point where they can take a
picture of their dog and turn that dog into a superhero,
where they can capture their grandmother's voice so that their
their grandmother can read stories for the rest of their
kids' lives, not just the rest of their grandmother.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Oh, so we and.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Give them every every possible character they've ever fallen in
love with. Is an opportunity, you know, We've seen this
in the media world, where when there is a new
technology that rises up that allows the average user to
create a professional quality, a new ecosystem emerges for where
the user generated mixes with the professional quality. Users who
(17:09):
wouldn't have had the opportunity to become professionals in that
avenue now have the opportunity to become professionals in that avenue.
And so we do see an opportunity for an ecosystem
to emerge for children's stories. You know, I'll give one
more example. Uh, the music business went through a lot
of a lot of change, as you know, right, and
(17:30):
and people listen iHeart people listen on Spotify listen happily
listen to a lot of sorts. But what what what
happened was there was a free, credible threat to the
entire industry in Napster, and then a Spotify model showed
up for those interactions when you wanted to see the
long tail of songs or you wanted to just get
(17:51):
to the professional And so the reason we feel those
ecosystems show up, same thing happened with Twitter and and
news are now x, same thing happened with YouTube and
video is that you have to include the professionals. They're
the ones who are the most creative, the most skilled,
the most adept at making the best use of these
(18:12):
technologies and tools. You can't just assume that users all
of a sudden going to be able to, even because
they have a new set of tools, be able to
create the best.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Art in the world. You can't assume that.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
And so we had to create a technology that allowed
authors and illustrators and ip holders to participate, and that
just happens to coincide with what kids need, what we
learn they need. They need to reuse characters so that
they can experience the same things over and over again,
so that it helps with their cognitive development. They want
(18:43):
to be able to see those things that they already
know and love because it helps them make sense of
a new world, a new place that they're trying to create.
So just so happened that all of this stuff happened
to be coming together at a time where me and
some of my old team members happen to be looking
to do something new and again. Wendy Wendy was born.
(19:06):
Is Wendy born if you're not a father?
Speaker 2 (19:09):
No, Okay, definitely not, Because what I'm hearing is I
think I kind of know the answer this already, but
I'm hearing this thing was born out of love for
your children, parental concern, and an existential threat to reading.
I climb by nine. So it's it sounds like all
those coming together.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
I do think that there are amazing tools out there
that are being developed to help kids advance in their reading.
There are amazing tools that are help kids learning how
to continue staying on with their reading, whether those are
sequence books or programs that schools are putting out. And
(19:54):
while reading is we think the BEA's knees, and we
we believe that by creating your own stories, you will
read more. The mission that we are seen naturally emerged
from the conversations we're having with parents of kids who
are using the platform, is in the kid creating and
(20:16):
telling their own stories. Yeah. You know, my daughter has
an amazing teacher. She's in first grade and her teacher's
name is Miss Dana. We happen to have the parent
teacher conference just the other day and Miss Dana showed us.
She said, Hey, we're doing this exercise. She didn't even
know about Wendy. She didn't know I was creating an app.
She had no idea, And she goes, hey, we're doing
this great exercise where my daughter's name is Quinn. Quinn
wrote her own story and we're doing it again, and
(20:37):
we're doing another exercise in which you're going to get
a chance to make choices that go into stories and create.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Their own stories.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
And I ended up saying her, I said, hey, check out,
check out the app.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
She's like, what is this appen?
Speaker 1 (20:48):
But I was more amazed that she was amazed at
this exercise being worked into the curriculum. A couple times
stories get to be written by these kids a few
times throughout the year they focus on storytelling. The rest
of the time, they've got so much other stuff that
they need to cover. Right, there are great tools that
(21:09):
after school et cetera, focus on reading and making sure
that the kid is reading. But what's helping them get
back to telling their own stories in an age where
it is so critical to know what your story is,
to make sense of that confusing world through the stories
that we experience, through the stories that we that we
end up telling, and there are not tools that are
(21:29):
teaching kids at a young enough age how to find
their own stories, how to tell their own stories, how
to create.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Their own stories totally and at the same time, because
I know there's obviously with kids of a certain age
and facing social media and YouTube and all the many
many things that are being fed to them. You know,
you're almost like the story is being told and thrown
at you constantly.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
When can you shut it off and start to think, well,
maybe I can if I can tell my own stories.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
When you when do you turn on your own creative ability.
When do you let that imagine nation take hold the confidence.
There's many studies on this that show when when you
know this isn't just creative play, when kids actually create
their own stories, they gain more confidence, They reduce their anxiety,
(22:16):
they connect with other kids, they listen better, they search
for other people's stories. That's not happening in this in
this day and age through social through games, as much
as we'd like it to. There are obviously games that
are obviously wonderful applications with inside of social that helped
(22:37):
that connective tissue, but it is not now the predominant experience,
and those who saw it beginning at least have some
inclination as to how it can be used in that way.
But now kids where this is coming up as their
first their first language, they're thinking that the way that
they tell their stories about themselves is how they look
and what their interests, you know, and how they comment
(23:01):
and not the content of their own creations. It has
to be about the content of their own creations so
that they don't feel like their face has to be
front and center, so they actually feel like what they've
expressed what they believe to be true. The stories that
they want to tell is what becomes front and center.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
And what a confidence builder you can build your own stories.
I mean, that's amazing. I mean, so I'm a child
of the eighties and I'm now remembering choose your own adventure. Yes,
and this is a thousand times better because you know
the paths were predetermined. You pick one, you pick another,
and you wind up somewhere. That's right. When are you
building this for grown ups?
Speaker 1 (23:38):
So it is amazing how often through talking about Wenny
with parents, the following has come up. One choose your
own adventure which is coming. It's coming to Wendy, in
which you'll be able to not just have the same
three choices that lead to the same six pages at
the end of the story, but it could be never
ending stories, and it could be for those kids who
(23:58):
do need constant engagement every couple pages, what's the next
thing you want to happen in the story? It no
longer has to be just flat. It could be augmented
to where if there's a boom in the story, there
could be a boom on screen. If there's a shot
made on the story, you could see the basketball fly
across you. Could have pictures that start to look like
Harry Potter newspaper pictures where they begin to move. That's
(24:18):
one and so that's coming. The other is so many
parents saying I've got an idea for a kid's story
and it came with me creating stories with my own kid.
The amount of Princess Brellas and Dragon Bruce and Piano
the monkeys that have been told back to me that
are just the most adorable names that kids and parents
(24:40):
have come up with is amazing. And so again, our
goal is to create tools. We're just at the beginning.
We feel like we've got a lot of great tools
in when you're ready, but the toolbox is going to
just continue to expand get on the journey with us.
Now learn these tools, because there's just going to be
more that continue to come out in which we do
over time. See the ability to give parents kind of
(25:01):
the canvas for story building where you can edit the
images and edit the story, and it gives them the
opportunity to just put out what they think is a
wonderful story. But maybe they were the illustrator but not
the author, or maybe they wanted to be the author
but didn't know how to really put a full arc,
or maybe that a great idea for just a character
(25:23):
and didn't know a second character to include with it
that would be brilliant, and they needed some help. This
is why I believe where there is a very positive
thing that can come out of AI. We have heard
from leaders like Reid Hoffman who went back in time
and traced whenever there's a new technology that came up,
the creators got stronger. I heard a story about someone
(25:47):
thought the printing press was the equivalent of AI, where
I'm not handwriting it. A machine is writing it for me.
That loses all the essence of the story itself. It's
got to be a handwritten note for me to read,
otherwise I'm gonna lose part of the experience, right right, Well,
maybe you did lose a little bit of the experience,
but maybe you also gained a thousand more books and
(26:08):
a thousand more worlds you got to to move into.
And so we see AI when done safely, when done
with experts that understand kids at the heart, that know
what need to be built for them, this becomes exposure
to another tool that can help them elevate themselves and
a time where they need more tools to help them
elevate themselves.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
And it's AI and you're honoring the creators, which I
think is so admirable. Throw that out there. Good for you.
So with an app like this, it's likely you're gonna
You're gonna end up in many many homes, in many
many people's lives. Is there anything that anything else you
want people to know about about you? The founder, the head,
(26:49):
make believer, the creator. What should they know about you?
Speaker 1 (26:52):
I I hope I have two thoughts on this.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
One.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
I do hope what you said is true that story building,
story creating tools get in the hands of every kid,
whether it's Wendy or something else. I honestly like, I
just want kids to be able to have these tools
so that they can develop. I do have some nephews
that have gone through some hard times. They were the
product of of being teenagers when when COVID hits and
(27:24):
when social media hits, and I think a lot of
other parents saw that directly. It's it's one of the
most affected generations and got to see firsthand what happens
when they don't have some of those those tools available
for him. So, I, regardless of Wendy, I do hope
every kid gets access to this, and we are working
toward getting a free version of it. I will say
(27:47):
one other thing though, because this is such a hot
topic AI and kids and parenting, if you send me
an email Lance at trywndy dot com. Anyone can sent
if you want to have these conversations in your company
Slack channels or team channels or what have you. Anyone
(28:08):
in your company that wants to participate in that discussion
will give them a free version of Wendy anyone so
long as these conversations continue to happen as to how
we use these tools, how we look out for our
children in this time, how we connect with our children
as parents. This is the most important conversation. So we're
going to try and help further that conversation. And I
(28:29):
guess that's that's what I want you to know about
me and us that we are. You know, we want
this to be a successful business because it allows us
to invest more into these tools that kids can have.
But we want to be a part of and help
you have greater conversations on what are really difficult parenting
topics right now.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Yeah, yeah, it is not easy to be I would
say a parent or a kid right now, And what
an escape to go to go tell stories you know,
and just have a great time doing that. So Wendy
the Story App available on the App Store, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
App Store, ipat only for now. iPhone app coming in
a couple of months.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Okay, and try Wendy dot com. That's right and uh
lands New has a great conversation. So nice to sit
with you. I'm so appreciat of you having me. Thank you,
thank you very much.
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