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
This AI keyboard can write your next email with the push of just one button; its creator says it could revolutionize workplaces
Hardware — not just software — should be at the forefront of the AI’s future, Jerry Hsu shared. After the successful release of its GPT-powered AI mouse, Jethro V1, in late 2024, Overland Park-based Virtusx — which is revolutionizing workplaces through integrating hardware and software to make AI-driving products more accessible and user-friendly — has…
Alexa, show me the winners: Storytailor leads Pure Pitch Rally prize tally ahead of tech launch
Storytailor’s marquee Pure Pitch Rally win comes at the perfect time for the Kansas City startup, its founders said. They’re preparing to roll out a new immersive storytelling platform through a partnership with Amazon’s Alexa+ next year — a move expected to bring their tech to more than 200 million Prime users. “It’s the most…
LISTEN: How the Midwest opened this German agtech company’s eyes to opportunity in the US
On this episode of our 12-part Plug and Play Topeka podcast series, we connect with Débora Moretti, co-CEO of NutriSen — a Berlin-based agtech startup building real-time molecular sensors to measure nutrient concentrations in plants directly on the field. Moretti shares how her team, alongside co-founder Tobias Vöpel, is merging biosensor technology, data-driven insights and…
Crossing lanes: KC Streetcar collaborators back aboard for expansion, dropping new merch, anthem
Opening the extended KC Streetcar line Friday completes a loop for creatives whose collaborations with the popular public transit system first emerged nearly a decade ago along Main Street — a time when Kansas City’s surging vibrancy helped curb streetcar doubters. “For us, it’s always been about representing Kansas City — the people, the culture,…