Stephen Dodds, a former rocket scientist, recalls how excited he was the first time he laid his hands on a Sony Aibo.
“It was a little robot dog and I thought it would do so many cool things,” he said.
But he was disappointed to find the robot did little more than play with its toy bone and wag its tail. The idea of toys that were both smart and interactive remained in Dodd’s mind but didn’t come to fruition until a defining conversation while drinking wine with some friends in San Francisco.
He explained to his friends that investors were interested in having him create a drone that could solve farming or construction problems -- but all he wanted to do was shoot at it and play games.
“The aha moment was when one of my friends was like, ‘Dude, that is a viable market.’” he said. “I asked, ‘You would play with it?’ And he said, ‘Yeah.’”
After completing market research, he realized he and his friends weren’t alone. There was a viable market for a toy like the one he envisioned, and, in November 2015, he launched Juuk.
With Juuk products, children can enjoy smart toys paired with mobile games that have physically interactive challenges. The first product, Jukibot, was released in December 2018 and is targeted at children ages 6-12.
He says making smart robots leads to expensive products, so to make Juuk products more affordable, he came up with the idea of using a mobile phone as the “brain,” thus controlling the robot.
“The challenge was how do you make compelling games that incorporate the phone in a way that’s not awkward,” Dodds said.
After a couple of years of intense research and development with its computer vision powered camera and other testing, Jukibot was born.
Juuk’s application programming interface (API), which is a set of routines, protocols and tools for building software and applications, is designed so that users can easily create new games like Star Wars Jedi light saber training games and laser tag battle droids that can be played using light sabers and laser tag blasters.
The company's site currently lists the Jukibot at $99 and its blasters at $99 (although a pre-sale discount puts both at $69).
Now, Dodds and his team are busy working on the latest product set to launch in 2020.
Dodd’s team has come a long way after spending four years bootstrapping to develop the technology in Shenzhen, China, before ending up in Austin as a Capital Factory Accelerator company.
“The main benefits of Capital Factory are that it offers a huge network of mentors with much more experience in a variety of business industries than I,” Dodds said. “We have an all-access pass to mingle and meet with a lot of successful folks on a daily basis that I can learn from. They also have some really deep connections to investors both in Austin, as well as around the U.S.”
Dodds said making the move to Austin was easy because it’s a budding city for tech and a great place to build a business.
At the core of what he does, Dodds said he remains focused on building products that are fun. He asks himself if whatever he is creating exists already or has before and whether it’s something that will make a significant impact on children and even adults.
“I need to enjoy the end result of what I’m making and even enjoy the process of playing," he said. "I’m kind of lucky I get to build robots and one of the most important parts is playing the games and figuring out if they’re fun. I get to play all day which is really cool."
