🎮 Heidi Vogel is a seasoned entrepreneur with over five companies under her belt, and today she shares her incredible journey from tech pioneer to gaming innovator. As a mother of four, she faced challenges managing her children's digital playground, which inspired her to develop GuardianGamer's monitoring solution. Her latest venture, GuardianGamer AI, seeks to bridge the gap between parents and kids in the gaming world by equipping parents with the tools they need to understand and connect with their children's gaming experiences. Through this initiative, Heidi is not only transforming the way families engage with gaming but also fostering a safer and more positive environment for children.

Whether you’re a parent, gamer, or entrepreneur, tune in for valuable insights on the positive impact of gaming on kids, the evolution of technology, and how to navigate new industries with confidence.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: 

• Creating positive and safe gaming experiences for families
• Tips on navigating new industries and evolving technologies
• The importance of staying true to yourself as an entrepreneur

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Here’s Waldo Recruiting
• Lizzie Mintus on LinkedIn
• Heidi Vogel on LinkedIn
• GuardianGamer AI 
• Joe Nickolls on the Here's Waldo Podcast

Episode Transcript

Welcome to the Here's Waldo Podcast, where we sit down with top visionaries and creatives in the video game industry. Together we'll unravel their journeys and learn more about the path they're forging ahead. Now, let's get started with the show.

Lizzie Mintus: Hi, I'm Lizzie Mintus. I am the founder and CEO of Here's Waldo Recruiting, and we are a boutique video game recruitment firm. This is the Here's Waldo Podcast. In every episode, we dive deep with founders and entrepreneurs and executives about their journey and what it has taken them to be successful. 

You can expect to hear valuable lessons and get a glimpse into the future of the industry. This episode is brought to you by Harris Waldo Recruiting. We are a boutique recruitment firm for the game industry that values quality over quantity. 

Before introducing today's guest, I want to give thank you to Dean at VentureBeat for connecting us at a VentureBeat event. If you haven't been, they're fantastic, really intimate, and you get to meet great people like Heidi and Perrin Kaplan, who introduced us directly. Thank yoUSo much, both. 

Today we have Heidi Vogel with us. She is the founder and CEO of GuardianGamer. She is an entrepreneur with successful exits. We will have to dig into this. She has a background in video streaming and previously co-founded ActiveVideo. She's a mother of four and she struggled with managing her children's digital playground. So in response, she created GuardianGamer's monitoring solution. 

Thank you for being here. Let's get started. First of all, welcome. And I would love to know more about GuardianGamer and what led you to starting it. 

Heidi Vogel: Well, Lizzie, thank yoUSo much for this introduction and having me as a guest on your podcast. I really love to talk about what I'm passionate about. And as you described, I am an entrepreneur. And I think it's very important to act upon these struggles in life and do something about it instead of just waiting until other people are fixing it for you. 

So I understand you have children yourself, so I'm trying to help parents with the digital playground. Do you have any experience in the online world already with your children that you like some help with?

Lizzie Mintus: Not yet. My oldest is three, so we're not online yet. We're doing an Amazon Fire tablet that is not connected to the internet when we travel to watch videos that we download, but I haven't gone into that world, but it freaks me out. So I'm so glad to know more from you. 

Heidi Vogel: Well, we're here to help you. So what GuardianGamer is, is this digital playground where we provide parents access to a little bit of the experience their children are going through. So children going on Minecraft. Roblox, Fortnite, and this is a free world to walk around in for them. But it's always scary for parents to not know what your children are up to or who they are talking to, and this is what we're trying to, uh, help them with.

So we provide them with a tool. It's called a guardian app, like a parent app where they can organize the groups and basically this is a playdate for what they normally would do on a real life playground. They just organize the groups where they are comfortable with the people their children are playing with.

And to be clear, this is for kids under 12. So these kids are very into all these game experiences and parents just haven't really been in those environments themselves. So they normally don't know what their kids are doing. So we're meeting the kids where they are. And we're providing parents with this AI supervision technology where they get little clips and little videos and little insights, and they can talk about it with their children.

Lizzie Mintus: So it's a play date. So yoUSet up who you want your kids to play with. Your kids don't have the free ability to play with whoever they want. Is that right? 

Heidi Vogel: It has two components to it. So on the one hand, you always have like online environments where they start talking to other players. So they can play with everybody in that free world, like Minecraft and Roblox and Fortnight. It's an open world. We're not closing down that world, but they cannot talk to everybody. He can only talk to their friends. YoUSelect as a parent. 

Lizzie Mintus: Okay. 

Heidi Vogel: So they can play with everybody, but they can't talk to them. Does that make sense? 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. And are there select games in which you are going to have your product work on, like Fortnite, Roblox, or there's many others?

Heidi Vogel: Yeah, going forward, we're thinking visibility is the problem. For now, we're trying to solve the visibility problem. So showing parents where are their kids are going to. So basically they have access to that world because they have accounts there. You already have set that up, or the kids have that set up.

So we're not introducing kids to gaming. We meet them where they are. If they want to play with their friends, you can allow them to go on any device to do that. But then you don't know what they're up to or you don't have a way to participate. So what we want to show is look at this amazing castle they've built or look at this challenge they made. So we're coming from a positive angle instead of like a parental controlling view and stopping the game, but we have limits. 

So the environment helps you to set those healthy limits. We're still figuring out, of course, where the specific needs of parents are. And well, right before this podcast, I onboarded some parents. It's like my community of friends here and family who are helping us to build this are giving us that feedback to sort of come up with the right set of features, but we need all the help we can get. 

So yeah, so I'm very curious what you would do in a few years when you have your children in whatever environment there is then, so we will be in contact with what the kids are doing. But that's our goal. Eventually we will meet the kids where they are. And parents will be able to have conversations with their children about their experiences. It's similar to how you would play soccer and you would be a present parent supporting the soccer game. You would know, hey, that was a great game. That was a great score. We just want to be part of that process. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, I like that analogy. My three year old goes to school and they send pictures to me. And if I ask him, how was your day? He doesn't really give me much because he's three, but if I'm like, Hey, in this picture, I saw you and so and so we're doing this, then I can really talk. So it seems like it would maybe make sense with your kid and be able to relate to what it is they're doing. 

Can you talk to me about, yoUSaid there's an AI component? How exactly does that work? 

Heidi Vogel: Of course. The world has been like pivoting around AI and I think we should envision this as an invisible helper in the network. So once they are on board to our GuardianGamer launching environment, there is an AI in the background. Always with the permission of the parents, they will go into that environment. We will have access to the gameplay so we can get little snapshots, but the AI will look at the whole experience.

So if your child was in there like yesterday and tomorrow, and maybe a little bit last week, we will try to give you the narrative, like, Hey, they started to build this project where they wanted to build an onion farm. Well, here you can see them strategize here. You can see them build it and here you can see them enjoy it.

So we're trying to give the parents the narrative, and that takes a deferred. process. So we're not doing it real time. So we're providing parents with little clips and little narratives over time. So we're not in it for like, Oh, now there is some bad word used, or we could do that over time, but that's not our approach right now. We want to give parents the narrative. So the AI will look at the gameplay and it will come up with that narrative. And it's pretty amazing what it can do. 

If you as a parent want to focus on creativity, it will give you creativity insights because we will find them with the AI supervision layer. So that's sort of the spiel we were going to find out with where the interest of the parent. And then we will work towards what you want to see in the experiences. 

Lizzie Mintus: If your kid is playing and let's say their friend starts to swear or say inappropriate things, it's not going to kick your kid out of the game, it's just going to report the information to yoUSo you are informed.

Heidi Vogel: Yes. So we're hoping to mitigate it a little bit. Like I've said in the introduction to you, we're bridging here. We're bridging between generations. So parents basically have no clue what is going on in these environments. And that's a little bit how it's supposed to be. These kids need to have agency to develop whatever character traits they have. If they are involved in inappropriate conversations, then what we will do is we will mitigate. 

So we will bring this in a humorous way to the parents. So it's not like throwing the child under the bus because you don't know what the context was. Maybe there wasn't. swear words used or maybe there was and especially in gaming, maybe there was like a little bit of a funny situation around some sensitive topic. 

But maybe if you get the context right and you go back into that gameplay moment, you will have a different idea. So we will bring it in a way that parents will be able to Go back to that moment, talk with their child about it, and then compare it, if they need to parent. And maybe you don't game with that friend anymore, if that is really an offensive situation or when it's starting to become bullying, but then you're there. You can do something, and this is what parents have been lacking, they have no tool for their availability right now. If you look at the current market where they can just be there when they are needed. Does that make sense? 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, it does. It also kind of reminds me of the AI video recorder and it gives you the highlights and then you can click in if you want, and you can go back to that moment, which is super helpful. And it gives you a summary if you just want to TLDR. 

Heidi Vogel: We give summaries and we give like those playback moments. And we're still finding all these market fit features. And it has, of course, a price because we're trying to be available to as many as possible. So as you described, I have a background in streaming, so it's a pretty complex process going on to get all of this ready. It seems like a little short clip of one minute, but to get that one minute clip with all those insights for parents, where we can show all these benefits, we have to really do a lot of stuff in the background to get that clip.

We basically built this whole cloud infrastructure, so we can bring this value to parents. And it has a price. It has a cost and we're going to drill down the cost to a very minimum so we can serve what the parents want on this platform, but also the children who will be happy with the clips and the game time.

But from the start, it is all intended to be a positive environment, a safe place, a hangout. I always say it's the trusted way for kids to play. And of course, we need to build that community of parents who want to become involved in this process. And I know there are millions out there who want to, but have no way. So we're hoping to be that bridge. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, it seems like such a big need. So from the time yoUStarted the company to now, is this a growing space? Because it seems like, I don't want to say every kid plays games, but like the vast majority of kids play games. So it seems like it would be such a growing problem. 

Heidi Vogel: Yeah, I think you're right. And I think we will become better and better in monitoring, I think, eventually, because we're only at the start of this. Imagine that. So we're a multimodal AI. Imagine what this AI technology is, because you wanted to talk about the AI technology.

The moment we had our hands on a model that could do a little bit of the vision AI. Imagine you can just throw in gameplay like the video, like the little clip I was just referring to in my explanation, where you want to go back to, imagine that. That is a little clip you can just serve an AI.

So that's basically the level we will grow into that we will be able to understand the gameplay, and the scenarios, and the moments where we need to be there for the children. I cannot imagine a world anymore where this will not be there. And I think we're only at the start, it will only become better.

So the moment we had our eyes on that vision model, over the weekend, we crunched the code. I was with my team. It came out on a Friday. So on a Saturday, we're all on top of the model, we're in hacker mode. We're super excited about this new capability that came on the market and available for everybody.

And of course we want to have our own model, but we're not there yet. We're just now using large language models with vision capability. So as soon as we got our hands on it, we were able to put it in practice and we got the clips out of it.

They were just much better because then we got like the vision explaining what really was happening on the screen. So I cannot wait until this is growing and coming into people's households. 

Lizzie Mintus: So did the US start implementing this with your own kids? Yes, right? 

Heidi Vogel: Yes. 

Lizzie Mintus: They're like your first testers.

Heidi Vogel: Of course. I am basically the product manager. I'm the founder. So I'm product managing this, but my kids are at the product requirement writers for all of this because they are on this all the time. And everybody in the team who has kids has their kids on it.

We built this for them, because we want them to have a parent in the house that isn't guilt tripping them because they love gaming, because that's also the other part. It's a little bit invisible in the market. Kids who love gaming and have a parent who is worried, has to deal with that situation. And and often is, and I've talked to many, many gamers and it often is that the kid feels that they shouldn't do something like gaming. It's not right. But if just a little bit of that turns into a positive connection, I cannot imagine what that would be doing to a child's life. Because I had kids, 18 year olds, who were talking about their connection with their parents and it's really devastating. Some parents just cannot even appreciate their child to this day because they were disconnected over gaming. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, it is a big point of contention and a lot of parents don't understand it. 

Can you talk about the positive impacts you've seen gaming have on your testers, your kids? 

Heidi Vogel: I can make it very personal for now. So a very interesting example is that my child, this is my son, when he was like 10, 11 years old, developed a sense of economics. Like how do economics work? So he got his head around like, Hey, you can build an asset, you can sell an asset, and you can just make it available. And all these things. So he started to sense a little bit of the value of like a virtual. So what we did, we gave him a Robinhood account to do some training in the real world. 

So this is turning things around like using gaming as a tool in your life. If this is something your child is really, really enthusiastic about, then see what they learn and then pick it up and apply it to some other context. So that's what we did. So we gave him access to some, like real life stock. We made him a list of course, Roblox was on. I think he also did some basic, very fluid products he put on there, but anyway, he started trading and he made money out of it.

He just really likes money. And he was having conversations with us about stock markets and all these things. So it was really not an issue at all. He picked it up in the gaming world. And we just saw that aspiration of him. And then we're like, okay. Let's use it and build it around some other skill. So that's just one example. 

And then my nine year old then, who was not a big gamer, I have to admit, but was in the environment. She developed this connection with her friend where they like playing with dolls. Boys like to play with cars and then do car kind of games online. But I saw immediately my girl go into a super creative mode where she was building a house and also carrying about her friend. For example, in Minecraft, you have these moments where it's scary and there's zombies. 

What I could see with my platform was that she was caring for her friend. She was really making her friend feel comfortable. Oh, let's build another layer. So the zombies cannot get into our house. So it was like a delight to watch. 

Lizzie Mintus: That's awesome. Yeah, I like the idea of your platform, just connecting parents with their kids a little bit more. 

Heidi Vogel: It's all what it is. And I hope it's five minutes a day when you look at the little video and hopefully around dinner time when you already have like that moment there. And then, we don't need you to be on this platform for hours of streaming through. 

Lizzie Mintus: Hopefully not. 

Heidi Vogel: No, no, no. Then I would fail my mission because my mission is not giving you another addictive algorithm to look at endless streams of content. No, I want you to look at your child. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, that makes sense. So you've started three companies, right? This is your third. Congrats. 

Heidi Vogel: Well, I think five. I put it on today. I had a fashion company in athleisure, so I made an athleisure brand. I wanted to be a digital friend. I had this line and I wanted to have my clothes tell me when I was running with an app, go right, go left. This is a safe route or whatever. So I've always been on the edge of things. So this is where I really stepped out of technology where I wanted to do something else. So I did a fashion brand. But I had to stop it because I moved to the US. And with the exit money, I built this brand, but it's not there anymore. 

But streaming technology we've sold technology like cloud TV to cable operators where you could just bring innovation to the TV faster. We had set up boxes in the past, the cable box was all clunky technology. So what we basically built was an environment where you could bring that intelligence into the cloud. We call it cloud TV. And then you could have an Apple-esque kind of interface for your content library. So we worked with cable companies all over the US bringing that technology to households, like millions of households have used our technology there. So that was one. 

And then, I was the first kind of pioneer mode with wifi like back in the days. I'm a little old so when you are having a coffee now, it's pretty normal that you have access to wifi but in the past it wasn't. So before Starbucks would give you a wifi network to drink with your coffee, I was having a back office platform allowing a mom and pop shop to provide wifi access in an easy way. So you don't need it to be, well, you could serve the coffees in the cakes and the sandwiches, but your technology back office was managed by me. So I had a company in that space. We call it Pico Point. It's still there. Some locations like in the Netherlands and in Europe, it's not a US based company. 

Originally I'm from Amsterdam. 

Lizzie Mintus: Okay. Okay. I was curious about that. But I feel like all your companies have a similar thread except for the clothing company, right? You have some similarities between all of them. 

Heidi Vogel: Yeah. So wifi and then streaming and now gaming. I actually think what we're doing can be applied to many, many environments. We are now starting with gaming, but it could also be streaming content eventually. But I think the unpredictability of gaming experiences is where I want to be. If you have a good, vetted content library, you can have an easy peace of mind. Oh, this is what my child is watching. 

And children like your aged children, I think they watch over and over the same thing again. So you don't need a fake library. But with gaming, there's a lot of unpredictability and things you just don't know. So I feel the need is more in the environment with gaming than it is with streaming. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, we should. That makes sense. There's a lot more unpredictability and I guess opportunity based around that. And it's only growing. Seems like a great market. 

So what are some of your takeaways as an entrepreneur forever, that you have taken? What have you really learned in your past companies and what are you doing differently, I guess, with your fifth company compared to some of the first that you started? What are some lessons?

Heidi Vogel: Well, the world is changing. So we're a small team now. In the past we had to have more money available also to do more. For example, now running a database, it's almost a commodity. So on the product development side, you don't need that big team and you don't need that big pot of money to build something really valuable. So I think that's the takeaway for now, because we're now in a totally different era. 

Going back to my first companies in the nineties, you have to have a little bit of courage or, there's a Dutch word for it, and people around you to encourage you. Talking to you, I know I will already be fired up today to work for my company because I had this awesome conversation with you.

You have to talk as much as possible with people about your vision, your mission, and what you want to accomplish, because you cannot do this alone. Never assume that you can make something in isolation. It's impossible. So that's a big takeaway. You have to talk to the world and you have to share what you think is needed so you can have that feedback.

But I think as a female entrepreneur, I always gathered myself with a lot of talented people around me, to my earlier point which I think is great. I have the best friends, made the best friends in my life and worked with them forever. And I'm still working with them. 

My team now, my founder team, we have known each other for more than 35 years and we're old. But we were all so young when we had our first gig. So we started when we were like basically 20 and we're now a little bit older. And I think I have a lot more calmness now in myself. I don't need to prove myself. I'm not. Definitely not going to prove myself. I'm just doing what I think is needed.

And I think I had that more in the past. So, let go of that. Know yourself. I had a conversation with a girl from Berkeley, just like last week. I met with her in San Francisco. She approached me on a terrace where I was talking with somebody else. She said, I get such a positive vibe from you. Can we meet? I said, well, yeah, let's do that. And I had to be in San Francisco last week. So we had a coffee. And I hope she's encouraged to do whatever she had in mind and she shared it with me. So I will help her. 

But I said to her, you have to realize that you just have to start and keep going. And you have to be in contact with who you are. If you know who you are, then just figure out. It shouldn't be all kinds of trauma in your life or whatever. Just get rid of it because if you get over that one fear, it will open up a new world for you. So know who you are. Just go, don't wait. 

Don't go and let all kinds of accelerator programs tell you this is what you need to do. You need to know the process so you need to educate yourself for the process. I said, I can help you with the process, but then you need to be in contact with who you are and then just go and never stop.

Lizzie Mintus: Something also you're passionate about, I think I see people who want to get into a space because they think it's the next thing and that's okay or you know it's going to make them money. But if you don't have that passion, I think it will be very hard. 

Heidi Vogel: Totally. And one other point we made in that coffee meet up was, if you think there is a problem to solve, fine. Don't focus on the solution. Not at the first kind of thought, like, Oh, I have a solution for a problem or find a problem with a solution. No, no, no, that's not the right order. 

If you have a problem, currently, you want to eventually solve with something, whatever that is, focus on that problem. I said, make sure you talk to a few people, let it be 10, let them tell you that they also have that problem. And make a count, make a list, where is the, and is that a big enough of a problem to solve with what you thought would be a good solution, but don't focus on the solution, focus on the problem. So that was another tip and a takeaway. 

But in the past, I might have done it maybe the other way around, because we were all opportunity driven, because we had a skill. I had this amazing group of wifi people around me. So I started with finding this problem in the wifi space and I was well connected to that problem going into something successful. But it's addictive to do companies like this. I just love it. 

Lizzie Mintus: For the entrepreneur, it is addictive. And I get that. For the average person, they're like, I would never do that. But yes, I love your entrepreneurism. 

But you were starting your own business this time, obviously you have like all the business fundamentals, you've had many companies, but for somebody that wants to break into an industry they haven't been in before, like, I mean, the fundamentals of business and streaming are the same, but games is a new industry. Can you share your experience on how you figured out how to navigate games?

Heidi Vogel: Oh my God. It's such an amazing industry, I can tell you. I maybe even talk with Dean about this, like when we had the coffee, it's already been a few months ago again. But the cable industry is very conservative. It's very, and it's of course, because of the market, so it's completely in the streaming wars was like a big thing. So you have a different landscape there. So you can't compare the things, but basically conservatism is not fun because especially if you're a supplier to that kind of market, it's really difficult to sort of get your first deal.

 Gaming industry people, like in itself, those are the creative class. Those are the people who, whatever. they do, they do it because they are passionate about it. And they have trust in their audience that they make something for an audience. So there's less territorial behavior and everybody's open and everybody's basically doing what they love. Such a different group of people. It's just, it's not comparable. 

To get my path into it. I went to the bigger trade shows like GDC. I met you maybe not at DICE, but I've been at DICE. And to be honest, for this particular problem, it's affiliated to gaming. It's not like I make the game or I am in the creative process of the game. So for me, I don't sell into the gaming industry. I'm selling into a totally different market. I'm just solving a little affiliated problem here. So , I feel very connected with the market. And I know everybody will love what we're doing because, I think it's not costing them money. It will just only give them the benefits. 

Lizzie Mintus: Peace of mind. That's what I like. 

Heidi Vogel: I hope I will not disappoint you in a few years. And I will be there whenever you have parenting questions. Maybe you have been in similar situations. I'm always happy to help. 

Lizzie Mintus: Thank you so much. Okay. I have one final question and before I ask it, I want to point people to your website guardiangamer.ai. 

The last question is, obviously, you've had so many businesses and a ton of success, but who have some of your biggest mentors been? I always like to highlight, even the most successful people have mentors. And what have they taught you that's really resonated with you? 

Heidi Vogel: I would have to say encouragement. For this last company, I felt an instant connection with her story, Lisa Thi. She has been like a pioneer in this space. And I had only two conversations with her and I wish I had more. I don't want to call her a mentor, but I for sure think she would love to be called like that, but she was a little bit limited in her time schedule to take on the mentor job.

But I felt very encouraged by her story. She made this amazing technology and she tried to make a deal with Apple. It was like a big, big technical invention. She pioneered it and her passion for solving some of the problems in this space, it really beamed out of the screen. And then during our conversations, I really want to show her that there's people like her who want to continue in her journey, helping her to get her original mission accomplished because if only one soul is hurt, I will fail. She's a big inspiration. So Lisa, I think I want to mention. She probably doesn't recognize herself as my mentor, but I really felt her encouragement. 

And other people, one of my co-founders, we have weekly calls. He has a ton of experience in the wifi space. He basically invented the term wifi, marketed it. Because how do you explain complex things to people in a very easy way? 

And now I have Gigi. So we go from wifi to Gigi. So I want to be the Gigi in the network, like the Jai Jai, or I don't know what we're going to call it, but I want to have some similar industry standard, like we've accomplished with the wifi alliance, like how do companies interconnect over a technology? How can we get everybody on a safe kind of path? How can we build an association for the gaming industry where they can be saying, okay, we're doing our part. We're helping families to keep their kids in a positive environment.

So, I have a guy who's in my team, Jeff Abramovich. He's helping me and he's coaching me and he's one of my go to persons for every question. He's very well connected, also here in the area. And of course my own partner as he's always there for me. You should always have somebody at your side.

Lizzie Mintus: That's great. I like what you said about how the person that's made a big impact on you might not necessarily know. I had a wonderful guy named Joe Nickolls on my podcast and he does this thing called Joe 100 and he makes videos for a hundred people in his career that have influenced him and then he posts them and says something nice about the person. It's a great thing to do. But so many people are like, wow, I can't believe you remember that. I can't believe this really lasted with you. So that's so sweet to hear. 

Heidi Vogel: Inspiration is really needed to keep going because it's sometimes a little lonely. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah and having company is very hard.

Heidi Vogel: I'm not there yet. I need to keep going. I know I have to keep going. 

Lizzie Mintus: We've been talking to Heidi Vogel, who is CEO and founder of GuardianGamer AI. Heidi, where can people go to contact you, learn more about you or beta test? 

Heidi Vogel: So we have a signup form on the website. It's like a big button, you will see it. So leave your email there or message me. I will reach out. But Heidi@GuardianGamer.ai.com is the easiest way. 

Lizzie Mintus: That's easy. Guardiangamer.ai. 

Heidi Vogel: Yeah. Then it's .com for the email. Yeah. Very confusing, but GuardianGamer AI for the signup. 

Lizzie Mintus: Thank you so much.

Thanks so much for listening to the show this week. To catch all the latest from Here's Waldo, you can follow us on LinkedIn. Be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes. We'll see you next time.