#BearVsVirus
We are paneuropean remote team

The problem your project solves

Preschool kids are great. We love preschool kids. And we felt sorry for kids and parents who got stuck at home in a lockdown, without any support and oftentimes without ideas or skills to keep kids entertained and engaged. The most difficult it was for remote workers - who had to take about children and work.

As a group of passionate teachers, innovators, entrepreneurs, engineers, economists, and designers we decided to tackle this problem. After brainstorming, we invented a smart solution.

Captain bear already got one award - we won on a TechStars StartupWeekend COVID-19 hackathon award in Germany.

Our solution:

protects kids
makes parenting easier and more enjoyable
serves as a digital kindergarten in times of lockdown
helps remote working parents find quiet time to work

Pedagogy + Great Content + Power of Technology + Gamification = Captain Bear

The solution you bring to the table

Captain Bear helps parents by providing a "digital kindergarten" app.

It provides a thought-out schedule and all the content your need throughout the day in one place, carefully curated for your child’s age:

learning
playing
crafting
excercise
dancing
singing
stories
chores
and many more

It’s not about streaming never-ending cartoons or exposing kids to hours of games.

It's about motivating kids to engage in a balanced set of activities needed for their healthy and happy development.

Having all organized, structured, and prepared makes your life way easier and frees slots of quiet time to work.

We make this happen by applying pedagogical wisdom, the power of storytelling, gamification, and the secret sauce of motivating kids.

Captain Bear solution consists of 2 apps:

The parental app is the dashboard of your family life.

And kid’s companion app is a smart schedule that also teaches, motivates, and streams content. It is controlled by you - from your device, desktop, or mobile.

Please find mockups, details of parental and kid app, images, graphs, marketing research, and plan, and many valuable insights here: https://cutt.ly/syaUopU

Kid's app has no:

ads
inappropriate content
endless streaming

Captain Bear supports offline activities, lots of play, physical activity, music, arts, and learning

*CaptainBear also provides smart educational content addressing the pandemic challenges. Whatever will come our way in new normalcy, we will create high-quality stories that make sense of a kid’s experience and toolkits for parents.

What you have done during the weekend

We created a video, financial forecast (we can show you if you'd like to see), worked on MVP development, created a logo, talked with mentors about different aspects of our app development (technical, legal, marketing), wrote a booklet, covering important aspects of Captain Bear development (find it here: https://cutt.ly/syaUopU)

The solution’s impact on the crisis

Lockdown warned us that our schools and kindergarten are not ready to handle crises - they had no well-developed tools to help parents. Parents were left alone to care about kids - and many of them also needed to work full-time from home.

Much of the stress and the frustration people experienced during lockdown is caused by the lack of practical parenting skills - but also a failure of kindergartens to offer remote help, support, and knowledge for parents.

The situation of prolonged parental stress and frustration can be deteriorating for a children's mental health, can increase a risk of domestic violence, and have a negative impact on well-being and mental health of parents. Let alone decreased work productivity, which is hurting already weakened and challenged economy.

Captain Bear is a robust solution that can serve the whole EU in tackling the challenges of the pandemic that include preschool children and their parents. It will engage kids, help them continue their learning, support parents, and help parents to balance work and childcare.

Captain Bear provides:

a daily schedule that child will thrive in
pedagogically structured activities on demand - click away
all the content for learning and entertainment
tips&tricks helping parent successfully educate, engage, entertain or connects with a child
lists what to prepare, buy or do - based on selected activities

No more googling, searching, reading, losing time every day in finding things to do, or letting children spend hours on Youtube or playing games on a phone.

By doing so, Captain Bear saves an enormous amount of time and energy.

As an ed-tech platform, our solution will help kindergartens to continue caring about young kids remotely - by uploading their content and communicating with kids through the app they stay present in a child's life and bring enormous support for parents.

With your support, we could faster develop schedules, routines, and curate content for special needs kids, who are the most vulnerable group at high risk if parents are left alone, frustrated, and without relevant skills.

The necessities in order to continue the project

The #EUvsVirus event is for us a unique opportunity to bring Captain Bear to life.

To develop, test, and launch our first version, we estimate costs of about 30 000€.

Our calculation foresees reaching the breakeven point in one year, with a total capital requirement of about 250 000€.

With funding and institutional support, we could provide a fully functional solution in 3 months - just in time for autumn in case there is going to be a new wave of pandemics and new lockdowns.

Captain Bear team is already working on a project. We are aware that we have a lot of work ahead of us, but we believe our skillset and enthusiasm will help us overcome them.

Thanks to the network we have created during this event and the resources planned for the selected projects, we will be able to take up this challenge.

For all the details of our marketing strategy, research and other elements of a business plan, please download our Captain Bear Booklet https://cutt.ly/syaUopU

The value of your solution(s) after the crisis

Digital transformation of childcare and parenting can massively improve family life, since our solution, Captain Bear, is not only about providing content and engaging children - it is the hands-on, practical, and learn-as-you-go solution to improve parenting skills through daily activities with kids.

Carefully curated content for kids is accompanied by short explanations that help parents understand what to do, how to talk to the kid, support his development, and resolve conflicts if they arise.

App has breathing sessions, meditation, and support center for parents. It is linked with help-lines for parents and instructs parents to look for help as soon as they are overwhelmed, angry, or very frustrated in order to prevent domestic violence and to encourage parents on personal growth.

We also plan to add schedules, content, and parental support for special needs kids, because they, as the most vulnerable group, need the most support.

Captain Bear can also help institutions.

It is an overall ed-tech solution for kindergarten - using this app they are ready to continue to care about young kids remotely. They can upload theirs or use our content.

The platform can be adjusted to help social workers in their daily work with families that need support and expert help, scaling up the reach and amount of support they are able to give - the app can be with a family 24/7.

We also plan to develop AI that will learn about children's preferences, talent, progress, and personalize schedule and content, but also track and monitor a child's behavioral traits and help in early diagnosis of developmental problems.

Captain Bear is a one-stop app for everything that preschool children need. We want to build it around the best children's interests thus gaining parent's trust and loyalty.

For more information, please download our booklet: https://cutt.ly/syaUopU