Mike Rizkalla’s difficult experience getting his son Max to bed at night got his technology-minded brain thinking about how to make the bedtime routine easier for parents.
“My son is a terrible sleeper,” said Rizkalla, a native Newfoundlander and Memorial University engineering grad who has lived in Halifax for most of the last 20 years. “He wakes up all the time in the middle of the night. It’s really hard, because for me, when my son wakes up, I’m awake, and I can’t get back to sleep. The truth is, none of us want our kids to wake up scared ... It’s dark, and it freaks them out.”
Rizkalla, Snorble’s CEO and co-founder, has a history of commercializing interactive experiences through robotics. He thought it would be great to find a way to develop a product to calm a child at night or in the lead-up to bedtime.
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In November of 2019, Rizkalla started jotting down some ideas in a Google document about what this sleep companion for kids might be like.
A mere 16 months later, Snorble is gaining considerable traction. Rizkalla and a team working in multiple countries have come up with a prototype, raised US$1 million through investors and successfully launched an Indiegogo campaign that quadrupled its initial goal.
Designed for children one-to-five years of age, Snorble is a cute animated sleep companion designed to engage children in a variety of settings.
It accomplishes this by blending proprietary neuro-linguistic processing — a form of behavioural technology — and artificial intelligence. It also relies on quad-core computing power and ultra-fast video and audio processing.
Day and night
During the day, Snorble can be used for games and interactive learning. At bedtime, it can encourage kids to put on their pajamas and brush their teeth, making these daily rituals part of a game-like experience. Once it’s time for bed, it shares light and soothing music. If a child wakes up at night, Snorble can help calm them through breathing exercises and other options.
“The basis of Snorble is we want to create a magical experience that would engage children,” Rizkalla explained. “We put children at the centre of the experience.”
Rather than bring in a drill sergeant to get the bedtime process rolling, Snorble tries to build a regimented routine in a more playful manner.
“We put children at the centre of the experience.” — Mike Rizkalla
“And then, through really positive motivation and giving them ownership and allowing them to be mindful, we actually empower them to take hold of the routine and be part of their own journey in developing those healthy habits,” he said.
There’s already a considerable industry built around sleep training, but Rizkalla does not see a product out there quite like Snorble. Because of that, he believes their product is primed to become an industry leader.
“This area is begging for a leader, and that’s what we intend to be,” Rizkalla said.
Licensing potential
There’s an entire world-building aspect to Snorble as well. The premise is each child born has a Snorble, a holder of that child’s dreams that exists in the imaginary land of Lullaboo. Rizkalla said children outside of the targeted demographic have responded positively to Snorble as a cute animated character. The company has worked with a former employee of Walt Disney’s research and development arm, and Rizkalla said Snorble would be interested in exploring licensing opportunities down the road.
“We see the ability for us to license out our (intellectual property) to other things and other brands, but also the reverse,” he said. “We have a way for us to rapidly develop new characters and new experiences that can be part of a branded entertainment property, similar to what we’ve done for Snorble.”
There are 10 full-time Snorble employees, plus a few more working on a contractual basis. Including partner companies involved in the project, there are people actively working on Snorble in Poland, Spain, Israel, Vietnam, Sweden, multiple American states, Halifax and in Newfoundland and Labrador.
“It’s quite a spread-out team,” Rizkalla said. “I’ve been managing international teams for decades and it’s exhausting and incredibly fun, because you get the perspective of all these different people in order to create that unique product’s outcome.”
Early success
He’s proud of the early success of the Indiegogo campaign. As of mid-afternoon Thursday — the campaign’s 10th day — it had raised more than $126,000. The initial goal was set at $31,426.
“I think though my mission is much bigger, and our goals are much bigger,” Rizkalla said. “Our goal, truthfully, is to help and empower families throughout their lives ... Snorble is our first step towards that.”
Snorble is in the midst of a three-year plan. The next step is to fulfill orders for families that pre-ordered the product. Substantial support will be offered to these early adopters. What’s learned from them should aid the company as it takes steps towards launching Snorble with retailers and hitting international markets.
Investor support in New York City and Halifax was encouraging for Rizkalla, who frequently splits time between those two cities. A lot of research has been dedicated to de-risking development and ensuring a good product will be available for those first customers.
“Our return on ad spend, as well as our desirability factor in terms of purchasing, are exponential,” he added. “I’ve worked on hundreds of products. I’ve never seen a response like this. People are going bananas. From a trajectory perspective, we’re really feeling it to the point where we’ve been having conversations early about starting our next round of investment, which would be for the series A.”
Andrew Robinson is a business reporter in St. John's.
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Twitter: @CBNAndrew
