I spoke with Reni Cao, the CEO and co-founder of Dex. Dex Camera is a language-learning camera for kids. Reni is a dad, a former product lead at YouTube, and on a mission to build technology that does good for kids and gives digital autonomy back to parents. We dive into his personal story from his high school days that drives his passion for AI, and why he believes the current education system is a “cookie-cutter” that fails curious kids.

We get really into the nitty-gritty of what makes “good” tech versus “bad” tech for kids and why the category of ‘children-first tech’ is very overlooked. Reni explains why most children’s apps are built on an “attention economy” model that forces them to compete with addictive content, and why his team needed to build physical hardware to break that cycle.

We tackle the hard questions, including the pushback from parents who believe in “no tech” childhoods. And he shared his most non-consensus view: that the era of standardized, industrial education is over. He believes we are entering a golden age of “scaled homeschooling” where AI meets kids where they are. Whether you’re a tech investor or an anxious parent, this conversation about nature versus nurture, “nei juan” (involution), and raising resilient humans in an AI world is a must-listen.

Every episode, I bring in a guest with a unique point of view on a critical matter, phenomenon, or business trend—someone who can help us see things differently. Season two will host a series of guests from early-stage investing, as well as builders, founders, and product managers.

For more information on the podcast series, see here.

To find the previous episodes of Differentiated Understanding, see here.

Chapters

00:00 Reni’s Journey to Dex Camera

03:48 Designing for Children: Principles and Insights

08:05 Technology’s Impact on Child Development

12:09 Bridging the Gap: Business and Product Design

15:36 The Role of Parents in Tech Development

25:20 Leveraging AI and Language Models

29:48 Value-Driven Pricing Strategy

32:05 Defining the Product Category

34:33 Subscription Models and Content Delivery

37:58 AI and Parenting: Balancing Technology and Safety

43:29 Unexpected Use Cases and Impact

47:29 Personalized Education and Parenting Philosophy

AI-generated Transcript

Grace Shao (00:00)

Reni let’s start with your personal story. Who are you and who are your team members? Because when I met you in SF, I was so enamored by the product and I thought your story was so interesting. So please share that.

Reni Cao (00:11)

Hi everyone, my name is Renny, CEO and co-founder of Dex. We’re a technology company in San Francisco, almost all parent company, which is pretty special in a startup setting. We’re a bunch of parents that having trouble with the same kind of like a reality where like our education system is a sort of like cookie cutter and our entertainment is also cookie cutter for children.

So we’re like, can we harness technology, especially the latest development of the AI, in different way for families that really gives children a chance to become the best version of themselves and ⁓ give the digital autonomy back to parents themselves rather than accepting the fact that they have to struggle between technology versus no technology. So yeah, we’re the parents, of like a bunch of missionaries in this journey together to explore how can we make the best use.

of the AI and our first product is called Dexta Language Learning Camera where kids can take pictures and turn the whole world into language immersions. And it’s a product targeting young children three to eight. And we’ve sold 10,000 pieces so far and ⁓ ratings has been high and we’re pretty excited about this. But yeah, this is pretty much about us.

Grace Shao (01:24)

But Reni, tell us a bit about what you did before Dex actually. What kind of led you to this path? I know becoming a parent really did inspire you. You have a young daughter, I think similar age to mine, around three years old. But before that, what really led you to this path? Were you always passionate about children’s tech or education?

Reni Cao (01:41)

I actually have been a product management guy for the last decade in Silicon Valley, some big companies like YouTube and LinkedIn, some smaller s***, ZFS, Wish. But I have been a builder since the beginning. I would actually say that my passion for decks actually originated much earlier than I started my career. It actually started right when I was at school, but happy to say more if you’re interested.

Grace Shao (02:07)

Yeah, no, do tell us a personal story there.

Reni Cao (02:09)

So I was always this random kid with tons of questions back in high school. And very unfortunately, I think the education system, especially in East Asian countries, is not designed for meet kids where they are. So every time when I come up with a random question, my teachers are usually a little bit impatient and will be like, can you just go back and finish your quiz, et cetera, et cetera.

So the moment I saw when GPT-4 comes out, I was thrilled and I posted a long like blurb on LinkedIn. Basically saying like, you know, if I had, have this as a kid, I would have grown into a more complete human. So this kind of like, I feel like this like generative AI’s capability to meet kids where they are, especially meets your needs for curiosity. It’s game changing. So.

I feel like I’m building this product first and foremost for a younger me that could have benefited so much from this. That’s pretty much the story about me. yeah, I know we see it and of course our parents right now we see there is a tectonic shift in terms of the skill landscape and what the future of workforce is going to be and even the existential challenge of what does human mean in a future society.

So we do want to build something that’s centered around children, centered around the family to help them find what they love and build agencies around it at the end of the day. So yeah, that’s the two main driving force of me coming to Dex. But I would be honest about it. It’s like very random. When I want to start a company, a lot of my colleagues are very surprised, being like, oh my god, Renny, you’re getting into this field. But yeah, I guess I finally find the work of my life.

Grace Shao (03:48)

I love it. think you need to understand the passion and the personal reason behind the businesses to really understand why the design was frankly so intuitive and why you’re so passionate about building this and leaving such a comfy, know, like cushy corporate role. I think that’s the one thing that stuck out to me. The product itself is actually so natural to how children behave to your point, like my three year old.

from morning to night, know, morning she wakes up, it’s like, mommy, what’s this? What’s this? What’s this? What’s this? How do say this? Why do you know that? Sometimes she gets angry at me. If I don’t know something, she’d be like, but you’re an adult, you should know everything. But the reality, especially with languages, it’s really difficult. So for example, yesterday she was coming back from her Mandarin class and she said, liu shu, she was pointing at random tree. And I was like, that’s not liu shu. All I know is not liu shu, but I actually don’t know what liu shu is in English because I think it’s only really common in mainland.

I’ve never seen that kind of tree. Well, I guess it’s a willow tree. You don’t see it very commonly elsewhere. And then she kept on pointing at trees, but in Hong Kong, you clearly don’t have liu shu because Hong Kong is like tropical. And then she got really, really mad at me. And that moment I was like, wow, if we had a Dex camera, that would have been perfect. But I was literally trying to take a picture of it while we’re moving car and try to upload it to GBTB, like what tree is this? What’s the name of it? So anyway, I think it’s really great product design. And I want to kind of get into that a little bit.

When you were designing it, what was the thinking? Like, what does it mean to be children first?

Reni Cao (05:10)

I think there are three layers of children first as a principle. The first layer we already touched upon that. So young children, their hand anxiety is very different from adults.

they tend to use one hand to operate a device and another hand they want to use for sensory explorations, like they want to touch. Sometimes they want to just move things around. So this requires a different form factor that one handed use, very tactile, very intuitive for young children such that they can explore a world while harnessing the power of AI in this case. So this is kind of like the user, the special things about the user.

And it’s a different design. think that’s layer number one. I think the layer number two is also that the device itself is a metaphor for the market as well. And in the market, we want to build something that’s drastically from the so-called adult-centric smart devices, namely the phones and tablets, to send the market a message that there could be a different option. There could be a good technology. There could be a family-centric technology. And we’ve picked this form factor

utilizing the metaphor of magnifying glass. It is something you use to see some hidden wonders, otherwise you cannot see. I do think that’s the ⁓ second layer of the things, which is like metaphor and category creation. And at the end of the day, I do think we intentionally make the device kind of worth finding this fine balance between engagement and

learning or kind of like a healthy aspect of the technology, meaning like we add a assistive screen, but we make it really kind of like limited and not the center of the whole kind of like a user journey. And we want to kind of like find a new way to put all the components in our consumer electronics world in a way that it strikes a more delicate balance and ⁓ let the device itself to be kind of like, you know, retentive.

for children without getting them to be addicted. So it’s kind of like we intentionally make it a little less stimulating, actually much less stimulating than a lot of a thought-centric ⁓ product. So that’s the main three kind of like principles around the product design. There’s a lot of conflicting constraints here, as you can see, but we do our best trying to find what is the answer. And here we go. Like what you see right now is our first, you know,

⁓ answer we have thought through and I think the market validated the answer quite well so far.

Grace Shao (07:39)

Yeah,

definitely. think exactly to your point, know, like a lot of times, I think when we as young parents looking at introducing technology to children, really worried about the big screens, addictive nature, or even the parental, even though a lot of them allow parental control, it’s the unlimited access to a wild, wild internet out there. Like all of these things are basically concerns and or reasons why we hold back technology from our kids.

So actually on that note, do think you kind of mentioned it, right? Like technology over the years, especially big tech frankly, has garnered a bit of a bad reputation. And I think that was really tied to the rise of social media and all of this mental illness that came with it. And obviously like you mentioned the addictive nature. So what do you think is actually harmful to the children’s development when we are looking at tech? What are areas actually we can really embrace technology?

I think you kind of touched on it lightly, maybe explain it to us in an even deeper, more technical way.

Reni Cao (08:37)

Yeah, our thesis is that why a lot of parents think technology is negative for a good reason. And the reason is that all the main status quo technology for children are built on top of the attention economy, as we call it. Everything revolves around time spent and how much attention, how much engagement in terms of like a minute, seconds, sessions you can get.

That, is the reality because, think about it, you build an app on an iPad, immediately you’re entering a competition with Roblox, with YouTube Kids, with all the videos, all sorts of things out there. You could do well. You can try to do good for the society, for the families, but you’re effectively competing against more like...

addictive kind of like a form factor of information and it’s a losing battle and as we call it is a rat race. So no matter what type of like educational apps or content you’re trying to deliver at the end of day you have to deliver them in more and more engaging way more and more gamified and more and more animation used etc etc. That’s I think that’s why it’s another reason why we need hardware at the end of day. I think the first step

how we can create alternative reality is that we need to create a new world, a new kingdom where the business is built upon outcome rather than attention. Meaning like it’s not the time spent logic anymore. It’s like, can you use this device? For example, for Dex, you can use the device and you see the child speaks better after two months or your kid starts to have a like a love to speak Mandarin and not preserve the rest of their childhood.

I do think there is a business model there like that, but I believe that business model warrant a totally kind of like a different design of the experience from ground up, from the device layer to the software, to the content, all the way to like user interaction. So I do think like that’s why the current technology is considered bad because it raised towards attention. And I think ultimately, inside Dex,

I believe the final answer to create that alternates like a reality is can we deliver something that’s purpose built for children before we build a general sort of like, you know, like time spent logic, like a product in, in, in the case of the decks, is something that, you know, purpose built around the languages. cannot do a lot of things. It cannot, it’s not a chatbot. It cannot, it cannot play videos.

But I do think even do one thing super well with the Frontier technology already delivers so much value to the families such that you can build a viable business model on top of that while creating values for families. I think being courageous enough to limit our scope to something to begin with, like really hold onto our principle, deliver a promise, create values there.

is another internally operating principle to get there in terms of how to harness the technology. And I want to say that it’s very interesting. What we noticed that is a lot of people are trying to use the AI in quite an all-in-one way. So you can see a little device with tons of features in there. can generate pictures. You can talk to celebrities at chatbot. You can talk to Elon Musk on that device. And we think, actually, that would be a very slippery slope.

⁓ in terms of harnessing the technology at the end of the day. yeah, purpose-built is another very critical principle we’re holding on to, to create a good technology.

Grace Shao (12:09)

No, I love that. But I mean, from a business perspective, sometimes people might not have purpose built businesses, right? Unfortunately, some are not. Then thus, how do we basically help the industry align the business incentive to the product design incentive? Because, know, like what you’re saying right now, it makes a lot of sense. And I think once I saw Dex Camera, I was like, wow, why is there not something like this on the market?

but it does feel like there’s a huge gap where, like you said, there is a big devices and the big tech. There’s this tiny niche little products, whether software product or hardware for children’s ⁓ use, but it doesn’t feel like people are taking it seriously, even though we all know parents are willing to spend on children if it’s for their good. It’s not like the economics doesn’t make sense. So why is there’s that gap right now?

Reni Cao (12:56)

I think you’re hitting on one of our most recent realization that the parenting needs and the children’s needs are quite long tail or as we call it, very like a versatile, right? Different parents have different parenting needs. Even when you look at the language as example, there are tons of different languages and even more dialects you wanna learn. Like let’s say you wanna learn Mandarin, you still got so many like a dialects there. There hasn’t been a real...

kind of like technology that can enable a venture scale business that attracts talent, that attracts a good backing in terms of like a capital to build something that’s like a generational. But I do think this is the moment AI is strong. We finally have to make sure we can build one system.

that can consolidate all those long tailed needs. Even for Dex, very specifically, you can learn a lot of languages and even more dialects with just like a nine person team building the hardware plus software. I think it’s the catalyst that’s much bigger than Dex itself. And I’m really excited about that. But I think another very interesting angle is like, despite the technologies there, you have another question. It’s like why there is not

more company like Dex. I have a personal opinion here. When new technology comes out, people will tend to use it in the most sloppiest way possible. They were trying to just like, OK, you can chat with the AI, so why don’t we just shovel AI into a little box and put it into a Talking Fluffy and call it an AI toy. And that’s it. That’s my business. I do think it is like a gravity that’s pulling people away.

from deeply think how to harness technology and pulling them towards something that’s so trivial and it’s just almost like a shortcut. I think that’s kind of like also, I would call that a trap on the entrepreneur side, that the technology is changing so fast and everyone’s a full mowing, everyone just wanna use it in some way. But I think in this sense, we as Dex, the company, we believe in that.

we need to think very deep about how should we use this technology to meet users where they are and deploy like AI in certain ways so Shell can deliver the value. So that’s why we start small, but we’re going to expand from there.

Grace Shao (15:09)

Yeah.

No, it makes a lot of sense, but I think I wonder if you guys all being parents like you just said have made a huge difference. I hate to overgeneralize, but like, you I’ve been in the tech space for 10 years, but usually either I meet men who are like 20 years older than me or they’re very young men who have not, you know, settled into a family yet. And I’m just saying when I tell people my mom, it scares people. They’re like, I don’t know what to say. I’m like, OK, like.

I’m not trying to scare you off by telling my mother, but the reality is most of us one day will all have families. And when we do, we start thinking about the things around us very differently, our perspectives shift. And I think to your point when you guys had a lot of purpose designing this product, I wonder if it has a lot of, you know, reason because you guys are parents. Whereas if someone is an entrepreneur for the sake of being a business person, they might not have the nuanced understanding of what a kid needs and what they even think is good for a kid.

So to your point, they create little stuffed animals with an L-I unplugged into it, which is horrendously scary. I would never introduce that to my kid, right? I’m getting very, very agitated about this. But you know, another one that we talked about kind of offline was like, I should be ambassador and be paid by Tony Box at this point, because I probably gifted at least like 20 of them out to friends with kids. I think they’re just like, on the surface, you think about it, they’re like, ⁓ a little box that plays music. You’re like, this is so easy. I can just use my iPhone.

Reni Cao (16:13)

Me neither.

Grace Shao (16:32)

to exactly to your point. It gives the kids agency, allows the kids to start navigating the world themselves and have preferences. For context for people who don’t have Tony boxes or kids at this point is you put these little miniature IPs, essentially they’re Disney or whatnot, and you can put them on the little box as a magnet. And then the box starts singing and has like seven or eight pre-programmed music or ⁓ stories. And then you can control with your little hands. And basically like you press the

Reni Cao (16:54)

stories.

Grace Shao (16:58)

big ear, the ear just like the volume goes up, small ear, the volume goes down. It’s like really, really great. So basically introduce technology to kids where they’re like, oh mom, I can control what I want to listen to today. But I don’t need to nag you about it to control the iPhone. I don’t get exposed to a screen. And I can sit there and be entertained for like half an hour myself. So I think Dext really falls into that category for me. Like, you know, we kind of skip the part where we explain how your technology work really and in a very day to day way.

It’s basically like you hold a camera, you point at things, you click the button, you can say, what is this? And you default choose languages, right? You actually explain better than me, please.

Reni Cao (17:35)

So there are actually four questions here. So I want to actually react to all of them one by one. I think this is a lot of good insights here. I think Tony Box and Dex share one thing in common, which is they are children-led, or they are child-led in this case. Think in the POV of a child. The world is kind of like a scary place that you’re told to do this or that.

you are brought to here or there, there’s not much quote unquote autonomy you could have. But now there’s a device that your parents actually are willing to let you operate and you can decide what type of content media or interactions you can get. That is just a huge reward to children’s like unlimited curiosity and their like a strong needs to be considered sort of like, you know, a big kid or a

even grown up in a way. I think that’s the intricate magic that if you were not a parent, you haven’t interacted with children a lot, you will miss. So instead of saying like a parent’s made us a better product builder, I think at the end of the day, it goes back to the product 101 that you really need to know your user. You really need to know who are using your product. We spent such a long time with our kids every day.

And early days, which is very funny, like ⁓ the first group of users using DAX is just our own children. And that gives us a huge edge there. Right. And I do think you mentioned that a lot of like startup founders in this category, sometimes they’re doing something with raised eyebrows of the parents. I do think they’re a little bit distant from the kids is one reason. And another reason is I do think there is a misconception that children are less.

at the end of the day, lot of founders think, you know, those are toys or some gimmicky stuff. Kids, you know, you just give them something that can flash, they can make some sound, and children would love to use them. But I reject that answer. I think that assumption is completely wrong. Children are actually smarter than adults in certain ways. They just cannot verbalize it. But as I said, they already got their little taste.

as the famous word, popular words, they got their taste and they sometimes can tell what’s a soulful piece of story versus it’s a very sloppy kind of story. So children actually knows that and they want quality experience, they want quality product, they can actually absorb something that’s really built well for them. I think that just gives us kind of like this endless.

sort of motivation to polish our product as if we’re building this for the most critical sets of adult users because we think actually children are more and they deserve more. Now, coming back to how Dex works at the end of the day, I think the core loop of Dex is quite simple. You just take the little camera. I’m happy to actually send a video to be the bureau here. You just take a picture.

⁓ And they would just literally just tell you, let me actually take a selfie here. Hi. Let’s see what I can learn about this. Look at that big smile. It’s like spreading happiness everywhere. Can you say a smile?

Just smile.

smile.

Yeah. This is like you get unlimited, like smile comes with some laughing too. It’s when you make happy sounds like, ha. Can you say laughing? Laughing.

like the ones we use to listen to music. Do you like music too? Can you say headphones?

This is actually English immersive mode. So you can, you can improve your vocabulary there.

Grace Shao (21:06)

how many languages you have now.

Reni Cao (21:08)

We have 16 languages and more than 30 dialects and it’s still expanding. And interesting observation here is like the smaller, the more niche the languages is, the stronger the demand is there, which we find is super interesting.

Grace Shao (21:21)

probably just harder to find offline solutions otherwise, right? Or like harder with the communities, assuming you’re an SF, finding a Mandarin community is not that difficult. You know, if you’re in England, finding a French community, probably not as difficult. if you go, you were saying like maybe like Arabic languages like that are not as mainstream, maybe in San Fran, you have people in San Fran wanting to do that, right? Or like people in Dallas last time you said, trying to learn Mandarin, which again, you don’t have a huge community. Very interesting.

I’m sorry, I got very passionate about the topic. So I want to of swerve back to our conversation here about raising children with technology. I’m sure you get pushback. think people right now, there’s the other side of argument where everything should be organic. Everything should be very simple.

Reni Cao (21:53)

Yeah, of course.

Grace Shao (22:08)

And I myself, I’m a big fan of a lot of the Montessori toys. You know, they’re not buttons or not even power charged. They’re just little wooden blocks, but they’re designed very well for them to, you know, develop motor skills. So how do you kind of explain to parents today who are saying technology should be rejected in the childhood. Kids should just be reading physical books. should learn the way that we learned or even like previous generation learned. We should go back to touching grass only. So

Like, yeah, what’s your argument there?

Reni Cao (22:37)

First of all, you are completely right. Every once in a while, we got a comment on our social media that, why don’t you talk to your own daughter to teach that language? Why do you need a device to do that? So your assumption is completely right. And my response to that is, first of all, actually, I respect that parent a lot. I believe in the most ideal world, organic human-to-human interaction and free play in the real world is great. There’s a lot of tech, like researchers actually

Prove that right, right? However, I do think the parent miss out constraints here. Number one, you may want to talk to your daughter, but you don’t know Cantonese, for example. So there’s no way for you to teach some subjects or some skills that you want them to learn or you want to immerse them with. And second, all of us know that the contemporary society is more and more fast paced. Not all the parents enjoy this privilege.

of saying, let’s slow down, set up a dedicated time for children to go out to places. All sorts of this ideal family style back in the 80s and 90s changed a lot, I would say. So we are, believe, rather than just blaming the parents, not spending enough organic time with their children, I do believe that technology should be introduced more as an option, as kind of like a gap stop.

as one of the extra tools on the table. That’s why when we design decks, we don’t introduce chatbots, but we spend so much time on sharing the insights that what your children are interested in. What did they take a picture of? What do they want to geek on? What did they learn today towards the parent app? And just give them this little window to see the world through their children’s eyes. Give them good downtime topic.

giving them a way to reconnect even as asynchronous. So I do think the concern is real and the overall kind of like, you know, judgment is very well reasoned. But I think what that’s the approach here is much more nuanced than saying like, let’s use technology to replace human. It’s not, it’s actually using technology to connect the humans, connect the parents and kids better. That’s the nuance I have to take a bit.

Grace Shao (24:42)

I see what you

Yeah. No, no, I love it because actually I’ve seen some parents even give kids like little Kodak cameras these days and these little toddlers go around the world, take pictures of how they see the world and they’re so cute. My own daughter sometimes takes my phone and takes pictures around the home and I come back with a lot of selfies and pictures of her sister’s foot or it’s just very cute because you see the world through their eyes, right? And it gives like, it’s like technology doesn’t take all connection away.

on technology. wanted to ask you about the technology. How do we understand that? Like how are you actually leveraging LLMs? How do you route through different LLMs or different languages? Is this something we talked about briefly? But I wanted to understand that bit more.

Reni Cao (25:20)

to share details. Where should we start?

Grace Shao (25:22)

Like how does it work? right now? So basically for the little Dex camera, can’t ask it, like he’s to your point, you didn’t build a chatbot. So I can’t ask a question. I can’t have a conversation. It’s not a companion, but I can ask it what’s this? How does all that work in terms of the back end technology and the guardrails you built up?

Reni Cao (25:38)

Yeah, I think

in a 30K feed view, Dex are utilizing basically all the multimodal LM capabilities to understand what the children are looking at. And on top of that, we build sort of like a profile, interest profile for the children and the parenting need profile for the parents to help contextualize, you what responses should we give in that case? To give an example, if you’re a three year old,

just starting to learn Cantonese and you are sort of like interested in a bunch of like a museum topics or you love like dinosaur skeletons and stuff like that, we will render you more challenges around kind of like hey let’s bring Dex to a museum and learn about different terms there and it will be English the primary languages teaching entry-level Cantonese things there. So basically like the visual understanding you certainly use like a multimodal LLM

The response definitely use kind of a conversation API of a lot of like an ALM. And I think building out this context layer or this memory layer of like a children’s interest and parenting needs, that actually is more complex. That takes kind of like a full agent system to try to understand what matters, like condensing or distill insights into a profile and gradually kind of injecting that into our responses. I think that’s on a very high level. That’s it.

We do use a wide range of LLM, mostly with Gemini and OpenAI. yeah, that’s kind of like the high levels.

Grace Shao (27:08)

I’m going ask a question you might not like, but I’m going to put you on the spot. When we talked last time, said specifically on Cantonese and Mandarin, you do use different LMS, but the accents can be quite funny. Like they’re a bit off. They’re not native sounding. Why is that? And how do you overcome something like that? Or other maybe non-English languages. Yeah.

Reni Cao (27:12)

No, ask me.

First of all, you need to try again because we have a solution already. But definitely, hit. We are already squeezing. I’m so hard that we’re hitting the boundary of a lot of like, in this case, it’s a TTS of the leading providers. Because I think about it, I’m pretty sure you’re using English plus Cantonese. It’s basically using English to learn Cantonese. Is that the case?

Grace Shao (27:50)

Yes.

Reni Cao (27:51)

is a mixture of languages cases. The challenge there is that without fine tuning, there is very limited sample of someone that speaks very good English and very good Cantonese, and they mix them in like one sentences. So the data, the training data to begin with is a little flawed. Either you have accent English or Cantonese as the more common cases. That’s the fundamental root causes of this. And we’re having kind of like heavy lifting tasks to kind of like solve that.

And with the foundational model getting better and better, think one day we’ll get there. And we can see that to be fully fleshed out in the next six months. You definitely hold us accountable. And I think this is right observation for mixed languages. It’s really hard. Yeah.

Grace Shao (28:32)

Yeah, I bet. how does it actually work right now? Like in terms of economics, like people pay you about $249, right? That’s the price of the product pre-tax. That’s not cheap. Like it’s much more expensive than a toy, but obviously bit cheaper than an iPad. How do I understand the pricing decision there and price? And then how does that relate to, I guess, how you pay for your token usage right now? Does that cover it?

Reni Cao (28:57)

Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, big time. We actually have a pretty healthy margin and the tokens are getting incredibly cheap. Much cheaper than where we started. I’m talking about like in 96, 97. It were a fraction of the token cost of where compared to when we just getting started, which is back in 2024 February. At that time we don’t even have GBD4, we have GBD3.5. that’s the kind of like, that’s the kind of like, actually that time we have GBD4 but

is we don’t have GPT-4.0. So it’s very expensive at that time. So now pricing. Actually, I have a let’s talk about the user-centric view and a business-centric view. On the user side, we’re actually adopting this value-based pricing model, which is like any enough day, language is a high value skill to acquire. I sent my daughter to a language immersion in the US. I’m very embarrassed to mention how much I spent on that school.

Grace Shao (29:33)

Okay.

Reni Cao (29:49)

And if DAX can offer 1 % lift or enhancement on top of that school, the price is fully adjusted and much more than that. So this is what I mean by like, and very funny that you mentioned toy, right? Toy is something that you get it, you play it for a couple of days, then you don’t see it, you don’t worry about it. And this is not what we’re trying to do. What we’re trying to do is we want to use a relatively high price to keep ourself honest about

the value we’re delivering to the parent. Do we really teach a language or do we really get the kids to fall in love speaking that language? If we do so, that price is well-justed. If not, we’re going to give you 90 days of free return period. No question asked, just return it to us. I do want to use this pricing model to push us to deliver more value for the user. So that’s one aspect of it. And on the business side, very funny, you mentioned, I hate when people box us.

into toy category. I don’t blame them. Natural reaction, but I want to send a signal to the market that if a team of talented people, hardworking parents, put their heart and soul in building a purpose-built device that harnesses AI and delivers concrete results, we could get out from the typical, stereotypical, like a toy average order value band and go much higher. Above that, it’s less about, I to keep my

is more kind of like, want to send a signal to prove that the market, we have enough parents waiting anxiously for something similar to this and want to pay a perceptually higher price for it, a premium for it. But yeah, that’s kind of like we landed on that price. And it’s so funny that so many people in the early days tell us, you’re going to do $1.99, because anything that started with a one

Grace Shao (31:22)

Premium, yes.

Reni Cao (31:36)

is night and day different than like two, that it started with two. But I actually, I’m like launching a suicidal mission. was like, let’s actually make it start with two, but let’s deliver more value there because it’s never like, it’s not a retail business at the end of the day. We’re trying to create a new paradigm of digital parenthood and childhood. We need to hold a high bar for ourselves. And the price is very telling, like in that case.

Grace Shao (31:59)

No, I actually agree

and I think would you categorize yourself in the same box as Tony box vertical? Would you?

Reni Cao (32:06)

Not really. ⁓ Tony Box is a, I would say they are a content business. they are, same thing with Yoto. Actually, their founders have deep backgrounds in labels, music labels specifically, and IPs. So they are effectively a distribution business that they are creating a new channel to distributing those IPs from Disney, from Spin Master, and et cetera, et cetera. And the other side, you can see that at Dex, we’re not

Grace Shao (32:19)

I see.

Reni Cao (32:31)

I think like IP partnership or putting characters on our device. And we actually optimize for value and outcomes, like I promised to you in one of our principle. So I would put ourselves in, I don’t know, the de facto smart device for families. Just very honestly, the family device, the family technology, maybe like this is where we’re trying to go to, but it’s a completely like non-existent category before we’re still exploring.

Grace Shao (32:33)

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, like family tech device.

Reni Cao (32:59)

and it may change how I call it.

Grace Shao (33:00)

think there’s some more

similar things maybe in East Asia because the audio learning like you know even when I was very young like I remember my grandma had a 步步高步伏机 I don’t know if you know what that is it’s like those like tiny little yeah yeah basically what it is it’s like people learn English with it and I think it’s very very like mainstream in China for a while but like you know these things been around I think in East Asia because everyone is using it to literally learn English

Reni Cao (33:11)

The steps are fine.

Grace Shao (33:24)

But it’s very one dimensional. It’s like one language to one language. They basically embed a dictionary, make the dictionary into a digital one. And you can ask search questions. You can ask what this word is. might, more advanced one might be even like with images, but I think, I don’t know, in the 90s, I didn’t see any images. But yeah, it does remind me of that technology and that vertical. haven’t seen something like that too mainstream in the West growing up, you know?

I think if I was when I was learning French and German growing up, that would have been so helpful to your point. But yeah, so I want to bring it back to sorry, I just want to bring it back to the the business. On the Tony box comment, I do believe their business actually could be really high margin because their product is only say like 199 or something like that, right? Like they’re the box. But each character is not a 20 bucks or 30 bucks.

⁓ My daughter is drying me up here because every two months she asks for a new figure. But my point is, it’s a great business, right? Like that thing just keeps selling. It’s like Spotify and a physical thing. So would you guys have add-on any services, software, hardware, anything?

Reni Cao (34:32)

We do.

That’s a lot of investor has been pushing us regarding this razor razor blade business model. I think for us though, what we are ultimately delivering is a business more like an app store.

It’s like where you can get personalized content and software for your parenting needs and for your children’s growth needs at the end of the day.

We’re launching, not we’re launching, we launched two tiers of subscription so far to validate that. One tier, $10 per month, you got unlimited LTE, plus you actually got a curriculum packed in like a content library. Every day we give you one topic and in the topic you can explore a lot of new vocabulary, expression, know, new languages and it’s good kind of like content to consume. And I think what’s most interesting is our future vision is actually a $20 per month tier.

In that tier, you can actually create activities for your children, personalize. Grace, can be like, I run this podcast. I’m a podcast host. How do I explain that to my kid and make it a little bit fun, exciting, and even adventurous as if the recording a podcast is a little journey? And by the way,

my kid likes this way of storytelling. You could give a lot of like a prompt there. They’re actually based on the profile, the context layer, we’re gonna build sort of like interactive, like a content that involves taking pictures, speaking, and just like looking at the device for explaining what does podcasting mean. And this tier actually got really good like attraction. And when we look at their subscription retention,

is above like 90 % in three months that shows early signs of product market fit. But this is what I mean by like our business setting of day. We are a channel to deliver like harnessed intelligence to parents such that they can build whatever content and software that adapt to their needs rather than just a purely search, then filter or control kind of like a timer. I really want the digital world to revolve around them, running out of way around. So in this case,

Put it in a simple way, we give them a tool to build whatever they want, and we charge on the usage of the tool, pretty much.

Grace Shao (36:41)

No, I actually really see that. I love it. Because I think my husband was trying to use chat GPT for a while to create stories with my daughter. Like, add a pig, add a dog, add a whatever in this. And obviously, it’s not made naturally for this. So the stories don’t come out as, I guess, natively understandable for children. So I see where this can go. And the funny thing, you use my profession as an example.

Reni Cao (36:49)

Exactly.

Grace Shao (37:05)

example, like my daughter just thinks I talk all day, that’s my job, and she thinks that her dad sits at a computer and press buttons all day. So between the two of us, none of us are doing it much, just talking and pressing buttons. So it’d be really great if, you know, I can, I guess, lean on technology to find a better way to explain to children modern day careers, you know, that may be not as easy to explain as, know, mommy’s a doctor, and doctors go help people and save lives, which is like what my family has.

you know, explained to us when we were growing up, you it was very clear. I want to kind of go on a little bit more about AI and parenting. I think there’s a huge discourse right now in the US, especially, I think from my point of view, where I sit in Hong Kong, in Asia, even yesterday, I was speaking to someone from South Korea, venture capitalist, they’re saying that parents and society seems to be a lot more open to bring technology into their day to day lives.

They’re much more open to the idea of leaning into technology for personal use and less worried about privacy and you know these kind of issues I guess. So at a high level, what do you think, should we be concerned when we introduce technology to children? will they, you know, for example, taking pictures themselves that automatically goes into one of the LLMs. Is that something that...

he should be mindful of or are there guardrails that can be built in?

Reni Cao (38:26)

We should be definitely mindful. That’s why we enforce ZDR, zero data retention across our stack for images. So even let’s say your kid take a picture of themselves, you cannot retrieve that picture even you want. You can ping me through my personal email. You cannot find that picture anymore. And OpenAI and Google signed a contract with us to burn a picture immediately, like zero data retention on all the usages. But overall, I do think

Grace Shao (38:48)

See.

Reni Cao (38:51)

It’s the company’s responsibility to introduce technologies to family and the family should hold a high bar there for sure. Because like the AI is so early and it’s way too powerful in certain way. And it’s like a kind of like a black box in certain way in a lot of different ways. that I definitely, I’m not a, I’m not that one of the technologies that wanted to like, you know, glorify AI and it is the future and stuff like that. comes with a lot of risk, especially like unproven.

aspect how it impacts the children’s cognitive development and something like that. That’s also a reason why we work with researchers and professors ⁓ closely like in Mount Eucalon from UCSF and Harvard professors doing education and doing research using text. I do think there is a substantial risk here such that the

And we as the entrepreneurs and we as the parents, we need to hold a high bar for ourselves and roll out things one by one. So I guess that’s why you will hear more about like, oh, that’s like, you could have done this. You could have made it more engaging. You will hear this much more often than you’d be like, oh, there is like an incident because, you know, we always prioritize, you know, safety first. We’d rather the device to be boring in certain way rather than introducing consequences that we don’t understand.

So I think there’s a very interesting dynamic between the Western and Eastern in terms of their views about technology. And I don’t think it’s a family parenting only. It’s also even a whole society, general perceptions. Happy to chat about that, but maybe it’s a little bit off topic here. Yeah.

Grace Shao (40:12)

comes from the mindful design as well.

⁓ No,

we can definitely talk about that a little bit, but I kind of just follow up on what you just said. So how should a parent evaluate an AI device or tech device when they are purchasing for children, right? ⁓ I’m sure there are different devices out there, maybe not exactly doing the same thing as what you’re doing, but other devices are tech native ⁓ or AI enabled for children. How should parents kind of go about this?

Reni Cao (40:52)

I’m not a parenting coach. I will share my views. Number one, do think we should bias, we should start from our needs first. Maybe let me put it this way. Don’t get carried away with all the possibilities of the AI. Ask yourself, what is the unresolved parenting needs you have and find solution there. Rather than, this AIX, then that’s just to buy that AI device and give it a try. That’s number one, I would adopt that.

Number two, I do think it’s important to see what a company’s method is. They definitely put their methodology somewhere, their belief somewhere, their principles somewhere, they’re kind of like, like how you ask me about how we use ALM. I believe that the parents should definitely hold the company accountable to explain those details and ask, verify, and that’s crucial step. That’s the due diligence on them, right? And I do think that

Finally, for any sort of AI product, I actually even think the parents doesn’t have to be getting into this searching and validating mental model. They could literally build their own in some sense. Given all the agent codings rising up and reducing the piece cost of software so low, I do think for lot of stuff, they should try.

to accommodate their own parenting needs in certain ways. Like I saw tons of the parents go into cloud code generating like a, know, almost like a story writer for their daughter. That’s actually my previous colleague at Wish. And it was awesome. It’s just different blanks to fill in. It’s kind of mad lips type of like a story. I do think the parents can change also their way that they are in the autonomy right now to build whatever they want to build.

Having said, it’s still a little bit of kind of like a Silicon Valley bubble type of answer, because honestly, in the world, the adoption of a cloud code is probably less than 2 % or 1%, I’m pretty sure. But I do think I would encourage parents to use AI themselves and explore a boundary, it can do, what it can does well, what it doesn’t. So then, the kind of I make a decision from there.

Grace Shao (42:45)

Yeah, no, I I appreciate that. It’s a very like thoughtful answer because it’s not just like A or B. of the day, think it’s parenting itself is so personal. It’s on how your family dynamics work, how you prioritize your time, how you want to parent. So when you want to buy technology for your children or incorporate that into their lives, it’s also a personal decision. I wanted to ask, actually, do you have any good case studies to share with us just a little bit?

Reni Cao (43:11)

We have quite a lot. What aspect, what, what type of case does he want?

Grace Shao (43:14)

Just like, I don’t know, like things that unexpected people use. For me, I mean, by default, just assume, yeah, people use it in urban areas, right? But then I think when I met you, you said, actually a lot of people use them, you know, in unexpected places, like orders come through all over.

Reni Cao (43:19)

Alright, I’ll give you one.

One of, I immediately think about one thing, one, almost like ⁓ close to 5 % of our users, they bought Dex to help with speech delay. That’s something we never anticipated, but those parents are very frustrated with all the, as we call it, sometimes autism tech or the speech therapy tech there. It’s not meeting their bar and they saw Dex, they’d be like, I would try everything right now for my kid. And surprisingly Dex helped them.

and it makes them real happy. And you can find actually all those real reviews in our review sections. Quite a few family mentioned that their kids refuse to speak certain languages or just even English, but that’s kind of necessitate the language as a fun activities. And all of a sudden, the kids start to open up and speak more, and the parents are really happy about it. This same exact story happened with my co-founder, who is really worried about his, at that time, two-year-old young son having speech delay.

But I want to disclose the name, but the song he actually first time spoken like coherent like ⁓ Chinese phrases using Dex and he caught it on a video. That was one of the most wholesome moment of our kind of like a user feedback in our channel. And right now we’re actually ⁓ volunteering to develop this special need mode. That’s kind of like, you know, customizing to special needs children.

especially like April is the world kind of like autism awareness month. And yeah, we just want to do it. And we want to donate to Dextre researchers and speech therapists to help us do it. This is a totally kind of like a side quest, but it just like give us it gives us so much kind of like energy. You’re thinking about technology can be used in a way that’s like immensely helpful.

Grace Shao (45:00)

That’s amazing.

Yeah, and something unexpected, right? Okay, I think I want to wrap up our conversation because I don’t take up too much of your time, but I do want to ask you one big macro question. With you working on whether you like to call it physical AI or not, essentially like a physical product hardware time software, how do we understand that trend going forward? Do you think AI will be essentially integrated, plugged in to more more hardware devices? What’s your view on that?

Reni Cao (45:33)

I do think there is a consensus that every wave of software technology revolution, there will be kind of like a device revolution following that. We are at the tipping point there. That’s like people starts to reimagine, where is this? this cloud? Is this the recording card? Maybe it should be a separate, like an ⁓ AI. Or this is a sort of like a little pendant that can kind of like ultimately listen to your life, help you organizing. I do think we’re at the ⁓

the dawn of a next wave of hardware. But it’s less about we’re doing the hardware because of the, I do think this is a software or technology driven type of hardware revolution out there. I do anticipate that. I do at least what I’m 100 % sure is like smartphones are not designed for children. Tablets are not designed for children. Families deserve something built with their interest.

their needs in the center of the spotlight. And I see that happening. And that’s why we started this company. And I bet there’s going to be tons more use cases there.

Grace Shao (46:33)

No, amazing. Thank you. I think ⁓ one last thing. Is there anything I missed or anything you would like to share with us?

Reni Cao (46:39)

By the way, I time. If you want to turn through all the questions, I’m happy to be here. I don’t have anything else after this meeting.

Grace Shao (46:44)

no, don’t worry. think it’s a lot of times like I use them as prompts. But you know, when we’re chatting, like we actually covered most of it, you know. ⁓ Yeah, is there anything you think we missed? But from my end, like I feel like I covered most of it. You know, we did technology, we talked about children, AI philosophy, talk a bit about your business model.

Reni Cao (46:50)

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

I do think you would want to talk about. Yeah, go ahead. Go with one last one, and I have one for you. Yes, go ahead. Ask yours first.

Grace Shao (47:04)

I think one last one. You go.

So I want

to ask you one last question, which is a question I ask every guest that comes on the show. What is one differentiated view you hold? I feel like your whole thesis around devices right now on the market are not made for children is already a differentiated view. But is there anything else you think that you hold that’s non-consensus?

Reni Cao (47:29)

Yes, with this view, I got beaten up so many times, but I still got to say it, right? I believe that education should not be cookie cutter. It should be highly personalized. So is entertainment. So is the parenting software. And we’re about to enter the golden age. Finally, this is becoming the reality. And let me say it this way. You look at a school in the US, how you tell the school is good or not, you look at one ratio. It’s called a teacher-student ratio.

One teacher taking care of less, but why? Because then the teacher can accommodate, individualize the needs. I actually have a very radical view in terms of our education system is definitely lagging, significantly lagging against how our society evolves, how the technology evolves. It’s still a one size fit all and industrial way.

to handle education, handle like, you know, testing, standard testing. It hasn’t really changed in the past couple of decades, but the world is a different place now. And I guess my view is like, it shouldn’t be that. The default shouldn’t be that. The default is like every kid should almost have their personalized tutor and the playmate that deeply understand them. Unfortunately, that’s impossible before, resources-wise. But I guess we need to strive to get there.

as a race, as a humanity. Because each kids just come up, come with their own spark.

that will miss out the window to make that spark their lifelong journey. But I’m not trying to attack on educators or school systems, something like that. I just feel like there needs to be more forces from the society, especially from the tech side, to help together build this alternative, enhanced of like a system that really delivers individualized education.

Sometimes I use the word scaled homeschooling. And you cannot imagine how much people hate that. people are like, homeschooling, you’re taking away the social aspect of it. People are very constrained on the vocabulary of how they describe things. But I guess when I say homeschooling, it’s not about keeping the kids at school and hiring a teacher. And that specific process right now, I’m talking about really meet children where they are in terms of their growth, in terms of their needs, in terms of the skills they’re going to develop.

I call that a differentiator, but maybe actually lot of people will share the same views. I’ll be happy to know who shared the same view and please join us in the journey. Follow us along.

Grace Shao (49:49)

I definitely

think that view is definitely, feel anecdotally a lot more prevalent in SF when I visit. I’ve met other people like yourself, other people in the tech space or, you know, investors who are embracing this idea of modern homeschooling. And they say the same thing. They’re like, we don’t like to use the word homeschooling because, it sounds like a bit more cultish, but it really isn’t right. Like it’s really focusing on individual ⁓ growth.

I think it’s amazing because I also think it’s because Silicon Valley itself kind of harbors this kind of growth and mentality and that the fact that people can succeed without degrees, people can succeed by building different things, people can succeed in just being different and being themselves, but the best version of themselves have always been, I think, what drives a lot of people who want to go to Silicon Valley because it’s like in many ways, as a mayor, talk to see like the best version of my talk to see, right? I think

in East Asia, even as I put my kid in school right now, I find people definitely a lot less like that minded. ⁓ I don’t know if it’s a cultural thing because like, know, for you, you know, I grew up in Canada for me, I always felt like, you know, having that freedom to learn, explore when you’re young, which is more Western kind of way of, I guess, education was good. But I think a lot of peers here actually believe that, you know,

for the first like say eight to 10 years, that foundational education should be drilled in. know, ⁓ grit should be taught, discipline should be taught. But it’s very interesting because it does kind of, I guess, manufacture different kinds of stereotypes. And I think it’s fascinating. And I think one more comment on that, I know this conversation has been more personal than we thought it would be, but I love it, you know.

I don’t really get to talk about motherhood that much in my podcast. It’s usually about tech and bros and tech bros and about, ⁓ and about finance. but I think even, you know, when you have kids, people talk so much about nature versus nurture. And what I realized is I was shocked to see the nature come through, as young as like six to eight months in a child.

Reni Cao (51:36)

You

Grace Shao (51:53)

their personality starts coming through and by the time they’re one to one and a half, they start kind of babbling, start demanding things. I realize 80 % of it is all nature. It’s like their preferences for how they socialize, their preferences of even noise, even you can realize like your point, your taste. You’re going to find a six months old who just wants to sit in a corner in a play group who just wants to flip through books literally and just undisturbed. You’re going to find someone who’s screaming in the middle of the whole group.

you’re gonna find my daughter who’s rolling over everyone and just like trying to knock everyone out. And I don’t know why. You know, you’re gonna realize all of it is nature. And even I believe agency, autonomy, grit, and desire to actually succeed, that itself is nature. And I don’t think you’d be taught. And I think this is a bit controversial. But definitely I think my husband and I have been thinking a lot about this. We’re like, we can just provide them what we can. But there is no...

point of even pushing them when they don’t want certain things. the best is to push them in a direction that they want to be pushed and they will tell you. I think this is like kind of the difference in our generation of parents. yeah. Reni, thank you so much. ⁓ Yeah, go on.

Reni Cao (52:49)

Exactly.

Yeah, but can I, I know this

is over time, but can I add one last comment towards what you say? But I think what you said, especially growing up in East Asian, like, you know, education system, it has been industrial for a good reason, right? At a time where stuff like AI doesn’t exist, the most effective way,

Grace Shao (53:03)

No, of course, of course.

Reni Cao (53:19)

to develop fundamental knowledge workers, plus finishing the job of dividing the children into different segments and give them different levels of education. That education system works perfectly. I entrance exam, as I’m talking about, taking standard tests and stuff like that. But all we know that is AI is sweeping through all the knowledge works.

and specialized in knowledge works, honestly, Asian parents like favorite jobs, like being a doctor, especially radiologist, you know, and or being a lawyer, you’ve got to start somewhere as associate. Now it’s getting kind of like his hardest. The world has already changed. The tsunami already hits. But I don’t think people actually understand the level of the s**t. A lot of like everyday people in the world, they haven’t felt.

this like a tsunami, right? So when you say you want to kind of like, you know, like find define your children’s nature and push them towards kind of like what they are intrinsically motivated about and give them resources to set them up for success, building grades are on the way. I do believe that I think I will 100 % agree with you that it will become the most fundamental aspect or element of education in the next like five years or even sooner to be fair.

That’s why I don’t send my... to put it in a simple term. I don’t send my daughter to Kumon. I don’t want my daughter to do Russian math. I never benchmark her against like, oh, like the other kids can read at the age of like three and a half. Why don’t you? Actually, I don’t because I fully understand that kids have their own time zone. Kids have their own spark. All you need to do is think deeply to define that, to understand that, understand why my daughter sometimes is super sensitive, understand why sometimes she got frustrated and want to hit.

Grace Shao (54:31)

I feel very validated.

Reni Cao (55:00)

Don’t take that on a surface level with the other tools you have. Go deep, understand that, and build these programs that’s personalized to her and help her. And I think like this is why I if I, talk about the word of Nei Juan a lot. If I have to dream on anything, right? I have to like a rather like ruthless compete on anything. I complete the deaf understanding of my daughter rather than anything else.

Grace Shao (55:03)

100%.

Reni Cao (55:26)

Because I actually think that’s the thing people gloss over. People must be like, education is just checklist. You got to check, check, check, check. And there is a better checkbox. Like Ivy League school, there’s a OK checkbox. There’s a worse checkbox. Forget about a checklist. That checklist is obsolete already. So I respect. I think we vibe together in terms of our schools of parenting.

Grace Shao (55:33)

Yeah.

Yeah, 100%. No, I agree with you.

parenting style. Yeah, yeah,

yeah.

Reni Cao (55:51)

But you’re so fully intuitive. don’t know whether I’m right or wrong, but this is what I firmly believe in. And I believe someone’s going to join this journey.

Grace Shao (55:58)

I think there’s more people who are aware, especially people who are more plugged in with the technology because they realize how fundamental society will change. I just thought about when we were young, I’m sure your parents also told you to go to university, go to this, go to that, right? For sure there was a hierarchy in their mind, what kind of school you should go to, what kind of degree you should get. Now I really don’t think that’s the case. Actually, a lot of my readers would even know.

my dad really forced me, well, pushed me, encouraged me to go into finance. And at one point he was like, if you don’t study finance and don’t work in finance, you’re not like following my footsteps and blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. And it was a very, it became a personal reason to do it. It’s not because I wanted to, or I was good at it. And there was actually a battle between us being like, I want to go into journalism. And he’s like, no, I was like, no, I’m going to go to journalism. He’s like, I’m not going to pay for it. You figure it out. But the beauty of it is actually found a way resourceful enough to get a full time, full scholarship.

And I still want to journalism. Again, I recognize how lucky I was. I I found the opportunity to do that. But most kids actually just end up then doing what their parents told them to do and they never, and they never actually live their best life or become the best versions of themselves because they’re doing something not actually fundamental.

Reni Cao (57:08)

you hit a very critical, I think it’s a background or context. There wasn’t an abundance before, right? Growing up, let’s say in the eighties, It’s a relatively kind of like a society. It’s relatively kind of like not that sort of like, you you wouldn’t call it abundance at the time. Let me just put it that way, right? You still need to compete for stability, compete for resources. That’s why there’s a rat race in education, which I totally understand. That’s kind of like.

It’s like a whole economy there, right? But I think that changed. No matter what we’re talking about, like, I mean, in China, I’m talking about US right now, I think abundance really will hit at some point of time. At that time, the challenge shifted from how can I avoid getting into a property or like ⁓ job loss towards kind of like, how can I find the meaning of my life? And how do I deal with this kind of like a journey?

It’s a generational theme there. It’s very funny that your dad wants you to go into finance rather than journalism. mean, for those who understand Chinese internet a little bit recently, there has been a famous influencer called Zhang Xuefeng. He almost helps everyone to pick their college major. And one of the college major he hates the most and advice everyone to not go to is actually journalism at the end of the day. Because it’s just not a...

stereotypically stable job that can make a lot of money, that can give you social status, quote unquote stuff like that. But I think that’s a lack of view of things. Our dad doesn’t know how our skill landscape is to be 20 years later, just like we’re not going to know what our kid is going to deal with. So we need to give them a more sort of generalize the resources and the skills at grit to survive. And it’s funny enough.

I made my, I named my daughter Simone because we are big fans of Simone de Beaufort, the kind of like, you know, foundational philosopher of feminism and a lot of like a sociology thoughts. So, you know, if I have, if I have to give a set of expectation for my daughter, I want her to actually do something that’s not commonly seen as a very, like a prosperous or stable kind of like career ladder. I want her to do something that’s kind of like

has a mission and some sort of like outlier type of journey. let’s see how that goes. She’s so young, so who knows.

Grace Shao (59:20)

I love it. All right. Thank you so much, Reni.

Reni Cao (59:23)

Thank you.

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AI x education, a contentious but unavoidable future. Designing tech for children with Dex's Reni Cao

AI Proem Podcast

AI x education, a contentious but unavoidable future. Designing tech for children with Dex's Reni Cao