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In this Telescope LENS Q&A, we talk with Isabel Sheinman, CEO and co-founder of Maka Kids, a children's media and technology company providing safe and developmentally supportive content curation for parents. Drawing from more than a decade of work reaching over 15 million children across 26 countries, Isabel shares insights on why it is easier today to optimize for engagement than for a child's wellbeing, what the best children's content has always understood about the richness of a child's inner world, and why the legal structure of a company should reflect its obligations — not just its aspirations for growth.
My co-founder Tanyella and I have worked together for over a decade. Our first company focused on early literacy — we reached more than 15 million children across 26 countries with access to content to support their learning journey. And that work really gave us a front row seat to how deeply media and stories shape a child's development, both positively and of course negatively. We have seen what happens when content is designed with intention, and when it isn't.
Maka Kids didn't start as a startup idea. It started as a question we were asking ourselves for years: why is it easier to optimize for engagement than for a child's wellbeing? After building our first venture, we watched the children's media ecosystem move faster, get louder, become more algorithmically driven. And at the same time, parents were being asked to manage an impossible digital environment with almost no tools to do so. Maka is our answer to that gap.
The connection to Telescope's mission feels very direct. Designing better for more than a few is exactly what we are trying to do at Maka. But we are looking at the youngest users — those who have no voice in how the systems are shaped and designed. Children can't advocate for themselves against an algorithm, and parents are exhausted and underinformed. The platforms today have every incentive to keep it that way. We are building a system that is designed from the start to actually serve people, to meet the needs of the children and the families we want to serve.
During our research process, we found that 96% of YouTube content tagged as kid-friendly has no developmental value. It is hyper-stimulating, it is low quality, it is heavily commercialized. And existing platforms respond with really blunt tools — rough age settings that lump toddlers and grade schoolers together, ignoring massive developmental differences, and algorithms that are optimized for watch time, not wellbeing.
What we found is that no one is measuring quality or developmental impact because those metrics don't exist. The central idea Maka is built on is really like a nutrition label for children's content. We know what is in our food because we have standards to measure it. There has been no equivalent for what kids watch — their media diet. How can parents make informed choices? How can anyone make an informed choice without a shared framework for what good actually means?
That is the system we have built: a proprietary AI measurement system grounded in early childhood developmental science that dynamically maps the child's developmental stage with a parent's preferences to surface healthier content. The outcome we are looking for is to meet children and families where they are, giving them recommendations of content aligned to their developmental trajectory, opening their minds to new ideas, and serving content that can support them in major and minor life events.
What I am most excited about is what AI enables — hyper-personalization — and the idea that a story, along with a caregiver, can be a child's first teacher. We know how deeply we are imprinted by the stories we are exposed to in our youth. We are looking at children zero to six years old. This is really when hundreds of thousands of synapses are firing with everything a child is seeing and engaging with. We have this opportunity to understand where children are in their developmental trajectory and match stories that can not just meet their needs, but actually help them grow in that trajectory — to understand what story can support them, nurture them in this moment, and also guide them toward lifelong success.
I am really excited by the idea that we can hyper-personalize stories to children and to families while also using story to expose children to worlds they might not otherwise have access to.
The question that is top of mind for me is around trade-offs: how do we build scalable ventures, but do so truly with the impact our ventures are having on individuals and systems at the center? We designed Maka as a public benefit corporation because we believe the legal entity should reflect the obligations we have — not just our aspirations for growth.
But I think we should all be asking: do we have the right decision-makers at the helm of the systems we are now building? We are fundamentally reconstructing systems and building new ones. I would love to see a world in which we are holding to account the leaders of those systems to ensure they are actually designed for the wellbeing of all and the interests of those they are designed to serve. As a global community, we can absolutely do more to hold to account the people at the helm of all of these systems that we are now seeing emerge and be reconstructed. The decisions we make today are going to define the future.
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In this Telescope LENS Q&A, we talk with Galen Hines-Pierce, founder and principal of the Minerva Fund and co-founder and vice chair of the Recoding America Fund. An independent researcher on artificial intelligence and its impact on human institutions, Galen shares insights on how societies adapt to technological transformation, why the real rate limiter for AI is public buy-in, and what it will take to build a new social contract between people and technology.
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In this Telescope LENS Q&A, we talk with Erika Staël von Holstein, Co-Founder and Chief Executive of Re-Imagine Europa. Drawing from her expertise in neuroscience and narrative strategy, Erika shares insights on how our thinking patterns shape reality, why we need to listen to those we disagree with, and how AI can help us build wiser technology by understanding the limits of our own narratives.
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In this Telescope LENS Q&A, we talk with Michelle Giuda, CEO of the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue University. From her perspective as both a former student athlete and a leader in global technology policy, Michelle shares insights on how the United States and its allies can deliberately shape a future of freedom, prosperity, and security, powered by trusted technology and new models of collaboration.
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In this Telescope LENS Q&A, we talk with Kristen Edgreen Kaufman, Senior Vice President of Global Impact Initiatives at the U.S. Council for International Business (USCIB). With extensive experience bridging global public policy and private sector interests, Kristen shares insights on fostering innovation ecosystems, building coalitions across political divides, and ensuring American competitiveness in emerging technologies.
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In this Telescope LENS Q&A, we talk with Chris Massey, founder and CEO of The Brds Nst. Drawing from his diverse experience across government and private sector, Chris shares insights on demystifying government for entrepreneurs, the transformative potential of AI across healthcare and elder care, and how innovation can serve both security and prosperity when we all "row in the same direction."
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In this Telescope LENS Q&A, we talk with Heather Panton, General Counsel at Labrys Technologies. A former national security lawyer in the UK government who transitioned to the startup space two years ago, Heather shares insights on building compliance into innovation from the ground up, bridging the gap between private sector innovation and government needs, and creating technology that serves the public good.
