Startup Little Hoots working with Today Show, Huffington Post
June 4, 2015 | Bobby Burch
Kansas City-based Little Hoots has scored two high-profile partnerships that are scoring its memory-saving app thousands of additional downloads.
The tech firm is working with the Today Show and the Huffington Post to provide snippets from its 
memory-keeping platform that captures youngsters’ memorable quotations to share with friends and family.
“Whenever they publish one of these Little Hoots articles we see anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 new downloads,” Little Hoots CEO Lacey Ellis said of Huffington Post and the Today Show. “It’s been great for awareness.”
Now available on iOS platforms, the Little Hoots app allows parents to memorialize their kiddos’ quotes, create a “memory tile” for it and then share the comment on Facebook or Instagram. More than 31,000 people have downloaded the app, Ellis said, and family members create up to 500 tiles per day on the platform.
The Today Show most recently featured Little Hoots, sharing such quotations as “Mom, my teeth were born to eat candy,” and “I wish I didn’t have to be born by you guys hugging naked.” Ellis said that Huffington Post Parents will sporadically display Little Hoots’ quotes in blog posts and other feature pieces.
The Little Hoots team is now raising funds to launch an Android version of its app, but it’s already encountering some local hurdles, Ellis said. She said that there’s a gap in Kansas City for the type of investment — seed capital — that Little Hoots needs to grow. The challenges are forcing the company to look for funds outside the Kansas City area.
“We’ve already made connections in Silicon Valley because the people we’ve talked to there seem to understand what we’re doing,” Ellis said. “They’re not as focused on revenue, but rather how we’re getting users and responding to a problem. They can see that vision more than anyone we’ve talked to (in Kansas City,) which is unfortunate because we really want it to be a Kansas City story.”
To learn more on Little Hoots, check out its platform here.
Featured Business
2015 Startups to Watch
stats here
Related Posts on Startland News
KC virtual reality firm partners with KU, NFL coaches
A Kansas City-based virtual reality company hopes some marquee partnerships will plug it into a market projected to reach $150 billion in five years. Founded in 2013, Eon Sports VR recently landed the University of Kansas football team as a client for its mobile virtual reality platform to help players train without the risk of…
ECJC relocates office, updates brand
The Enterprise Center in Johnson County is shaking things up. The non-profit organization that connects entrepreneurs to the resources they need to grow revealed Thursday an updated website, brand identity, and new office location. “This move is the culmination of a long, strategic transition to ensure that as Kansas City’s entrepreneurial community changes, we change…
Former Sprint COO LeMay dishes on KC capital, failure
There are few people in Kansas City more connected into the area’s investor, corporate and startup community than FarmLink CEO Ron LeMay. Also now managing director of Kansas City-based OpenAir Equity Partners, LeMay frequently sees the successes and failures of the metro area’s capital landscape. The former Sprint COO recently spoke with dozens of Kansas…
RFP365 partners with Kansas City, raises $950K
On the heels of a six-figure raise, area tech firm RFP365 recently landed the City of Kansas City as a client for its software that eases the request for proposal process. The company’s deal with Kansas City was born from the city’s “Innovation Partnership” program, which affords entrepreneurs the opportunity to “test drive” their technologies…