Hellosaurus

Hellosaurus was the mascot and the namesake of a New York startup making interactive kids' video, shows where toddlers tap, swipe and talk back at the screen while the tablet's camera and mic turn that into choices for the characters. It was founded in 2019 by James Ruben, previously product lead at HQ Trivia, and raised $3.5 million in seed funding in 2020 from General Catalyst, Y Combinator and a pile of founder-investors, then signed The Wiggles, Laurie Berkner and Super Simple Songs. The dino's whole job was to make a technical pitch, participatory video with on-device computer vision, feel like a kids' show rather than an ed-tech deck. In December 2022 Brilliant Worldwide acquired the company for its Creator Studio tooling and said the consumer app would keep running. It did not: the app is gone from the App Store and Google Play, and hellosaurus.com no longer shows the dino at all. A good mascot does not save a business, which is worth saying out loud.