Venture Name: TinyTap
Co-founder & CEO: Yogev Shelly (co-founder: Oren Elbaz)
TinyTap was founded in 2012 and currently claims to be the world’s largest educational game library, with games created by over 100,000 users. It is described as a social platform that allows users to create, share, publish, and sell personalized learning games for children. Users create the games by combining images, voice recordings, painting (in-app), text, and sounds. No coding knowledge is necessary to create games in TinyTap, which makes it accessible to many more potential creators. If users decide to publish and sell their game creation as an app, TinyTap receives 30% of the profit and the user receives 70%. The TinyTap app is free to download and use (limited functionality), with full accessibility for an annual cost of $59. TinyTap is currently among the top 10 grossing kids apps worldwide and has 9.2 million registered members.
Co-founder and current CEO, Yogev Shelly, has a background in app development. He was studying visual communications at Bezalel Academy of Art & Design in Jerusalem with co-founder Oren Elbaz when they came up with the idea. Shelly was originally inspired to create a similar platform for his father who suffered from dementia, wanting to make interactive visual reminders for him of loved ones and fond memories. The two co-founders had also spoken during their time in school about creating something educational for children, which is what their design ended up becoming. TinyTap currently employs about 38 staff members with a variety of specializations, from a variety of fields of study including psychology, computer science, educational game design, and so on. Many of the members also use TinyTap with their own children, which suggests they believe in the value of their company and creations. In 2022, TinyTap became a subsidiary of Animoca Brands, a blockchain gaming company with a stated interest in supporting teachers as valued creators and ensuring that they benefit financially from the educational games they design. Shelly’s current focus is on transitioning over to a Web3 education system with publisher NFTs to provide teacher-users with better earning opportunities. However, NFTs are still very new and security is still questionable, so this move is unproven, at the moment. This does demonstrate that Shelly is open to new opportunities, wants to maintain forward momentum in his venture, and is interested in ensuring that the creators on TinyTap are benefiting financially from the sale of their designs.
The initial inspiration for creating TinyTap, Shelly’s father who was suffering from dementia, had me reflecting on the experiences that inspiration can spring from. My own father is in the later stages of Alzheimer’s and I can appreciate how experiencing a loved one’s challenges due to a similar disease could lead to thinking creatively and attempting to design or start a new venture to fill a need. Shelly’s shift to creating a platform for educators, parents, and children to design learning games is not fully explained in any of the information I could find, but perhaps that was inspired by his father, as well. (Or, possibly, by becoming a father.) I’ve often thought over the past years, while supporting my father through his good days and bad, about those creations that do not exist yet that could make his days better or easier. It seems to me that this is where the inspiration for new ventures is born, in those times we recognize the gap between what currently exists and what does not yet exist at that moment we begin to realize we need it.
References/Links:
Home Page. Tiny Tap Website. (June 9, 2023) https://www.start.tinytap.com/animoca-brands/?source=3
About Us Page. Tiny Tap Website. (June 9, 2023) https://www.tinytap.com/about/
Takahashi, Dean. (2022. June 16.) Animoca Brands acquires most of educational user-generated content firm Tiny Tap. Venture Beat. https://venturebeat.com/games/animoca-brands-acquires-most-of-educational-user-generated-content-firm-tinytap-for-38-9m/
Widmann, Elana. (2013. Jan 2.) TinyTap: Create and play personalized iPad games with your kids. No Camels. https://nocamels.com/2013/01/tinytap-create-and-play-personalized-ipad-games-with-your-kids/
Meet the Tiny Tap Team. Tiny Tap Blog. (June 8, 2023) https://blog.tinytap.com/meet_the_team/?_gl=1*abp5u1*_ga*MjA0MjcwNTgzNS4xNjg2NTM0NDE0*_ga_THNQE7VH0C*MTY4NjUzNDQxNC4xLjEuMTY4NjUzNzcwOC40MC4wLjA.
Thanks for sharing TinyTap! I tried out a French game and I can see it being a fun activity for younger students (grades 6-8 in particular).
Having sold products on TeachersPayTeachers for many years now, I am always interested in seeing how teachers can have a passive side hustle and TinyTap looks like a good opportunity for tech savvy teachers. I don’t fully understand how the products (games) on the site become NFTs though. As much as I have read about NFTs, I still don’t really understand how they work! This page: https://www.start.tinytap.com/publisher-nft shows how much the teachers have made through their sales. What I understand is that external investors can purchase the NFT through ETH (Ethereum) therefore, crypto is used as currency instead of cash!