Welcome to the seventh episode in the Elevator Pitch series 3.
Every week we publish a 30 second pitch from 12 leading startups from across London. In this series we took the founders to the top of 40 Bank Street in the heart of Canary Wharf for the most exciting pitch of their lives.
After having written a story about magical night zoo, Josh Davidson thought it would be fantastic to create a digital project where others could contribute magical animals to live in the fantasy world.
With the help of co-founder Paul Hutson, who was working in primary schools at the time, that’s exactly what he did.
Design your own story
“Night Zookeeper is a company that turns children from consumers into the creators of digital media” says Davidson, founder and managing director of Night Zookeeper.
Night Zookeeper develop educational games for children and is a graduate of Telefonica’s Wayra Academy incubator.
When Davidson first thought up the idea seven years ago, what he saw was digital creativity in children’s games limited to pre-set choices such as the colour of Dr Who’s scarf or picking from one of six monsters.
That’s what Night Zookeeper wants to change.
Creative kids
The real heart of Night Zookeeper is asking children to express themselves creatively.
They give them back the power of creativity by allowing them to design their own character and story lines around a popular children’s story.
Their products are used in over 5,000 primary schools and sold directly to consumers through the App Store and their website.
Going forward
Night Zookeeper are going from strength to strength.
Having just secured £335k in investment, they are working with a company in Japan to establish ‘Night Zookeeper Japan’.
It will see the launch of localised versions of apps, games and school products, along with a new ‘Learn English with Night Zookeeper’ resource.
What is Davidson really looking forward to?
I’m most excited about getting the first Night Zookeeper story book out there.
It is a story that has now been heard by 500,000 children around the world and is always loved so it will be exciting to see how it performs as a commercial product.