Changing How We Keep Nurseries Safe With WoddleBaby

When his newborn faced a medical crisis, Shaker Rawan, Founder and CEO of WoddleBaby, built a device to help parents track their baby’s health from home. 👶📊

Transcript

Steven: 0:01

Welcome to the Four Worlds Podcast from Tomorrow's World Today. We're diving into the latest in tech, science, and sustainability, from nature's mysteries and the world of inspiration, to the hands-on crafts of creation, the bold breakthroughs of innovation, and the scaled-up wonders of production. This is your ticket to the stories shaping tomorrow. On this episode, we sit down with Shaker Rwan, the CEO of Waddle, to talk about a revolutionary smart changing pad that harnesses AI to track your baby's growth progression and detect any health issues. All right, Shaker, welcome into the show. We're really happy to have you. We're super excited to hear about Waddle Baby's story and how everything started. So we'd love to welcome you to the show. Thanks for joining us. Thank you very much for having me. So let's start where... Everything began where Waddle Baby started in that inspiration that snowballed into now what is an innovative product. So take us through that journey and back to the beginning. What inspired you to start Waddle Baby?

Shaker: 1:08

Yeah, for sure. So we have two kids. We have an older child, and by the time our second child was coming, and we were like, hey, look, we're off the training wheels. We know what to do. Everything is good. Except that we brought our baby home, our son, and he got sick. The technical term is a failure to thrive, but basically what that resulted is a months-long issue with his health where he had dropped a lot of weight. He was very weak. And we were back and forth between the home and the doctors. We had the advisors on the call. We had, you know, bought every tool we could get our hands off on. And really, like, what that kind of highlighted was just... there's an old adage that it takes a village to raise a child. And we didn't really have that village anymore. Like the support system that even though we have access to healthcare and everything else is really, really hard because there's two parents work, you know, one on mat leave, one working full time with a sick child. And so the stress, the anxiety and the overall, like just the pressure on the family was like incredible. And so all I wanted to do was try to kind of trend how he was doing. Is he getting better? Is he getting worse? Or is he stable? Can I give his data from the home to the doctor so that they can make clinical decisions so I didn't have to take him in for weight checks every other day? And so what ended up happening is I ended up printing this box that was a pad, used a smartphone for its brain, and I would stream his data out to an AWS Amazon ML model that I was trying to kind of tune for him Fast forward, this was like, where I'm like, oh my God, this doesn't work. There's no tool to get his vitals to the doctors. There's no way I can train his health to see if he's improving. And of course, like, you know, we don't have this sort of village anymore around us because everybody's busy with their own lives. And so you're very in this kind of isolated, lonely place when you have like a sick kid, because, you know, other parents have kids, they're busy with their families and stuff like that. And so that was sort of the genesis behind it. And it's like, you know, my son is a healthy little boy now, he's all well, but I mean, six months of hell kind of led us to think that, hey, there's gotta be a way we gotta fix the problem between where you have an infant in the home And doctors in a hospital, can you get that data to them so that they can help you and make decisions in sort of longer term? How do we kind of elevate that experience so something as rudimentary as a diaper change can become something that is a little bit more connected, a little bit more supported?

Steven: 4:01

You know, we discussed that problem, something that was very personal to you, inspired you to create this product, this smart changing pad. So dive into a little bit about that and what it does and its capabilities and how it could help new parents or experienced parents, all of the above.

Shaker: 4:21

Yeah. So we were trying to actually solve like three different problems, I think, simultaneously. Because the way our society works is that we're kind of hyper-focused on, hey, what's the specific problem you're trying to solve? This one small little thing. And I think some of the infrastructure problems that we have is kind of across behavior, across communities, across health systems and insurance companies and things like that. So what Waddle is, is a changing pad. For all intents and purposes, it's a utility product. You put your baby on it when you want to change their diaper. But with every diaper change, it takes a snapshot of their vitals. And it takes that snapshot because we built in a scale in it that's a medical grade scale that will connect this year into your health system so that you can take this baby's weight data and give it to the doctors, which is a very good indicator of their health. But then we also looked at things like behaviors and just kind of like the nursery problem, right? It had to look good. So we had to design it so it looks beautiful. My team is from like the big tech companies. And so we brought a lot of our aesthetic designs from the Apples and Googles of the world into the product. So then we were like, okay, look, the nursery gets cluttered. People are used to now having things like baby trackers. They have nightlights and they have warmers. You know, they have white noise machines and things like that. And so we kind of incorporated all of that into a single device. And so the second problem we looked at is like, hey, can we just make the nursery less cluttered and more aesthetically simple? And so we made it an all-in-one device. And then the third problem that we kind of looked at is really like you buy hardware now and it kind of stays and it's like a brick, you know, like especially most of our furniture and things like that. What if we made it smart? What if it continues to get learned and get smarter? And so we built in Wi-Fi in it so that every week now we can, you know, get feedback from customers. We take their feedback, turn it into new functionality and we release it onto the device and the device just keeps getting smarter. It has a screen, it has a touchpad, so you can actually see new features and interact with it. So, you know, really what it is, is that it's a utility product, but it's designed to minimize the clutter in your house. It's designed to collect that data and securely give it to your doctor or your pediatrician. And then it's designed to get smarter. With time, as you use it, it gets smarter and smarter to become, you know, really that tool that just passively just helps you and every parent in the home.

Steven: 7:09

And with that, all of that information, it gets reported to the family doctor, to the pediatrician. But does it also give kind of the parents a peace of mind every time they put their baby down? They know exactly what's going on in the vitals and the health signs.

Shaker: 7:25

Yeah. Yes. So I think there's one thing that's really important about the data is that we design this thing to be for the families. And so the data doesn't go anywhere unless you ask it. You share it yourself. So you have full control over the data. If you want, you can delete the data and your personal data goes away. And so the data never gets sold, transmitted, or shared with anyone unless you're doing it yourself. The second part of that data that is that it streams into our artificial intelligence models that now take that data, understand how your child is doing. And so instead of like Googling random questions, now you can go into our app and just ask and say, hey, what's Steve doing? Is he growing normally? What kind of activities can I do with them? And the AI is getting smarter and starting to now give you like feedback loop of like, hey, by the way, do you know that like Steve is now like three months old? He leads a new site. diaper oh by the way you know like he's three months old like his eyes are now starting to focus now you can actually you know do activities certain activities oh here's how you do belly time which is an exercise to help the babies strengthen their necks so they can hold their head up and things like that so the peace of mind is the byproduct of this tool that is just really bespoke for your family And now it's starting to kind of give you information so that you don't have to go and like, you know, I remember when I was a sick child, I was on Google like a couple hours a day, just looking and reading random things. And it didn't pertain to my kid because it was just kind of everything. But now with artificial intelligence, what we're really looking for is a way to kind of create a curated experience that's just for you, that is around your personal experience and your specific child. And then, you know, so that way, you know, your peace of mind really comes out, hey, there's a tool that actually understands what my situation is and can actually now help me like, you know, better track my infant. So, you know, in addition to like the weight tracking, we track diaper, feeding, sleeping, so that, you know exactly. You know, one of the moms asked us, I thought, look, I want my nanny to be able to, you know, they text me daily how much the baby slept and how much they ate and what they did and stuff like that. Can you put that in the app? And we're like, sure. So we add like collaborators in the app so that now you can, your entire family can be in the app and you can see across like, hey, I'm a busy parent. I'm at work, but I can see exactly what, how my baby's doing.

Steven: 9:55

So it's clear that you take customer feedback very seriously. So through that, how has the feedback been for new parents especially? Because look at your situation. You said spending hours on Google. How about those parents that don't have the experience of previous children? What kind of feedback have you gotten from those ones that have their first kid and are just so unsure about a lot of things? We

Shaker: 10:20

talk to customers on a daily basis. I am in our support channel. I answer calls. I answer emails. I talk to them because it's really, really important. We went from an idea to a product in the market under 18 months. And it's very, very hard to do that for a piece of hardware, especially a hardware as sophisticated as this. But we had been building tech at a global scale previously, so we knew a lot of things when we came in on what to do and how to gain efficiencies. But what happened is we put the product out, and immediately parents who got it, they're like, hey, we've got some really interesting feedback. A parent with a toddler, the toddler thought the screen is amazing, and then they start pressing all the buttons, and they're like, oh, can you put a screen lock? Fantastic feedback. And of course that turns into a feature. Then there's parents who are like, hey, I'd like to get more intuitive weight measurements and stuff like that. So can it do this on demand? Can it just automate that? So we're like, okay, great. We can build some basic detection capabilities that determines, hey, some baby's on it, and now we can start to measure that. But then there's other kind of feedback, like early stage parents, especially first-time parents, they're like, can you help me track how much I'm breastfeeding versus how much I'm pumping And so that's actually something that has recently come in. And it's like, yeah, that makes sense. We can track how much you're pumping, how many hours you're pumping, how much milk is coming in. And then they want to be able to measure things like, hey, did they have breast milk? Did they have bottle? And can I track that so that I know which bottles are used when that milk was pumped? And so that kind of feedback is incredibly valuable for us. Because this device is so smart, we basically build and release new functionality to it every week. you know, there's a warmer built in. You know, we added the feature that allows them to make the temperature a little bit warmer so that compared to the ambient temperature of the room, the pad is a little bit warmer so that they take the baby out of the bath or they're changing them in the middle of the night. They can put them on there.

Steven: 12:32

Now, that's really interesting. Just hearing about all of the feedback and just the changes that you made, like the warmer and all of that. Let's go back to the early days when maybe you weren't able to gather that feedback and gather data. What are some of those challenges that really impacted the early days and helped shape the company's direction to where you are now?

Shaker: 12:53

I think I would go back to kind of what I was saying. It's a complicated problem, right? What we are trying to work through is this idea that parenting is the hardest job. When you have a child, it's the hardest job. And oftentimes, there is no manual. You kind of just make your way through it the best you can. You read books. You try to look at things online. You try to get resources. But really, at the hospital, when you're being discharged, it's really like the doctor kind of turning to you and saying, OK, this is yours. Now you go care for this human being. And you're on your own, right? And, you know, our parents, our families, our extended friend networks, like they're not always there with you at three o'clock in the morning when you're like getting up. And so, and especially if you have a sick child or a child that you're like, you know, you're going through like a tremendously, you know, stressful situation. So the complexity of the problem was really like bewildering to say, hey, look, we've got a series of problems. They're all intertwined. It all comes down to understanding the heads of just these parents, right? It's like, oh, I can't get the data to the doctor. Well, that's the parent's responsibility, the caregiver, to take the child to the doctor. Oh, I can't track my baby's development. And now that comes back to the parent. And, you know, I've seen moms and dads with like books of logs where they're like trying to track everything about their child and things like that. You know, it all comes down to the parents. Everything is on the parent's shoulder. And so what we wanted to do was kind of really just focus on how do we support the parent? You know, we talk about like giving parents peace of mind, but what does that really mean? It means helping them ask for the help that they didn't think they could get because you don't ask for it because you don't think it's possible. And so that's kind of where we started. And so we decided to tackle the problem a little bit differently than I think traditionally. We are not like a consumer-only device. We're not a healthcare device. We're not a pure data company. We're all of those things all at the same time. It's the first clinical device that is a full transformer. It's a utility. Your kid is going to pee and poop on it, and that's totally fine. And it's going to also provide information for a doctor to make a clinical decision. It can do that spectrum of things because we decided that, hey, this complicated problem does require effort to solve. Because if you solve it, it makes all of us just a little bit better equipped.

Steven: 15:24

That's a great point about the design. I mean, this device is going to go through a lot of hardships when it's used as a changing pad. So that's a great point. It brings attention to its durability, I'm sure, how it can withstand a baby.

Shaker: 15:42

The first box we designed, for example, was this very fancy box. It's the Apple iPhone box. We took inspiration from Apple's packaging for their laptops and for their phones and we used that kind of concept to build this really nice box but it wasn't recyclable you know like it's hard to recycle those apple boxes right it's very premium but it's very hard so we kind of like took that then we looked at the materials we were building we're like okay you know this thing has to you know we can't build like we're used to where electronics is just like you throw them away you use them kind of trade them in or they kind of have a built-in obsolescence and so we built the product to last you and i can stand on it and it's not going to break Wow. You know, so it's designed so that up to, you know, you can use it for your kid up to when they're like five years old and stuff like that. But it's also designed to last. We also build the technology like lots of tech companies are building. They're going to give you a piece of hardware, but then they're going to give you the subscription so that you can turn on all the features unless you pay the subscription. So we're like, no, no, we'll make all of the features available. If you want to have a subscription because you want to keep your data longer, then you could choose to do that. But otherwise, the function wise you have a device and so you can use it for your second kid right and this thing because it's wipeable and washable you can just clean it up and like it's perfectly fine it will continue it keeps getting smarter so you the investment you make to buy it for the first one just means you're gonna it's gonna last five years and you're gonna be able to use it for the for the next one uh so so we've gone kind of both from an environmental perspective but also longevity but also you know just kind of the way behaviors and the way we are looking at things is that we want to make a good quality product that's durable. that lasts and, you know, for you while you're trying to take care of your kids. So you don't have to worry about the product, you know, you're already, you've got plenty to worry about.

Steven: 17:38

With a newborn, you've got plenty, plenty on your plate. And you just talk, just talking about the longevity of it. Would you consider that one of your sustainability efforts just because of how long it can last? And are there any other sustainability efforts that you'd like to embrace?

Shaker: 17:56

Absolutely. I really love I love the idea of being able to pay it forward, right? The ability to kind of look at these kind of technologies, not as a sort of a transactional sort of, hey, I got this thing and I'm going to like throw it in the garbage after I'm done with it, but rather as a tool that can go to the next group of people. And so we have, over the next couple of years, we have a couple of programs that have come online. So right now, we just started. We gave a few to some military families because they need it. And it's a premium product. And so we wanted to make sure that we can support them. But I'd love to be able to have, for us, is that a program where we can kind of refurbish these things and give it out to other people who need it as well, right? Especially because the device is designed to speak multiple languages. And so as we integrate different languages to it, can we pass it on to somebody in a different country that can use it but can't access it with their current economics?

Steven: 18:59

And so that just brings up another question. Let's, you know, that's a little bit about your company themselves repurposing them. What about families? Let's say they have a kid and they're kind of done with it and want to maybe repurpose within the family. Maybe another family member has a kid. Does it have that capability to change that information?

Shaker: 19:21

Absolutely. So it's, again, I think because of our experience building sort of this sort of big tech environment, We brought all of that. It's just like your phone. You want to give it to somebody else, just reset it and give it to the other person and the other person picks it up and uses it. That's it. We made the process really simple so that people could do things like that. You want to donate it, reset it, your device gets reset and all your data gets erased and give it to the next person and they can go to download the app for free and then register the device and they're good to go.

Steven: 19:55

I think that's so important to highlight just because of how technology is evolving. Some people have different opinions on the technology, on AI. So I think that's really important to highlight how it's as simple as resetting it, deletes the data, and then you could pick up right where you left off with someone else with another baby.

Shaker: 20:15

Absolutely. And the next person who takes it and downloads the software, they're just going to get all the new features that was built onto the device. They'll get it downloaded. It just means that they don't have access to anybody else's data. And then they just start using it for themselves.

Steven: 20:32

Yeah. I think that's a very unique sustainability effort because when it comes down to it, it is sustainable. I mean, you're producing this device and a user has it, they get their use out of it, so on and so forth. And it kind of just, you know, goes along to the next one.

Shaker: 20:48

Yeah. We consider it a durable good, right? It's not a sort of a, what do you call it? Like one of these products that you buy in, like a one-time use product, right? It's designed to be durable and maintain its functionality so that you can do that.

Steven: 21:09

Yeah, no, that's great. That's exactly where my mind's at. So I want to switch things up a little bit. I want to know about Shaker and his team and how you guys innovate, how you guys brainstorm. You're a little familiar with Tomorrow's World today. We chatted about that off camera. We are. creation, innovation, and production, all of which that drive each other. So you and your team, when you sit down, how do you, let's say, use those four worlds in your own business and your own business model? And how do they drive each other at Waddle?

Shaker: 21:45

You know, I go back to kind of my Always back to myself and I'm like, you know, what drives me, what motivates me? You know, I'm an immigrant. I'm from Afghanistan originally, but I got a chance to, you know, grow up in North America and I've been incredibly privileged. I've had a lot of really incredible people, like even just our like venture capital groups, like Haldex and Woodward Ventures that have backed us. Like we've been very fortunate to have had a lot of opportunities opportunities given to us. That shapes my view that You know, I came from this very humble beginning of like, you know, being an immigrant native country, you don't speak the language, you know, you're going through all of that. But then, you know, kind of going through education and then getting opportunity after opportunity and seeing that like hard work kind of pay, how that shapes our outlook. The people that have shaped my life and, you know, have given me opportunities as I was kind of going through my career and my life. And I do think now my kids are like those little people that kind of shape how the person I'm becoming is kind of part of like the soul of this company. My other team members from product, from software, from our engineering teams, from our marketing team, they all kind of share the similar vision and outlook of, look, we want to just make things a little bit better, right? And so everybody's motivated from that perspective. Most of my team is our parents. And so they've experienced some version of these challenges themselves. And so they're like, yes, this definitely makes sense. This is why we're trying to kind of solve for this. But also I think where we've had a chance to play globally. We've had a chance to build technology at the global scale. And so we know kind of the, we have a wider perspective. It's kind of funny because like a lot of times people are, we think like everything is like solved inside the United States. No, accessibility, access to healthcare is still an issue here, right? Every parent has aspirations to have, you know, a healthy, you know, happy child, but every parent struggles. You know, I always go back to those three o'clock in the morning, you know, feelings where you are just like beside yourself. You want to have, you know, how do we help that parent when they feel the most vulnerable, the most tired, the most stressed and alone and help, you know, make them feel like, hey, they're going to be okay. They're going to get through all of this, right? And so the way we look at innovation also involves a lot around looking back, looking at the present, but then also looking across industries. We intentionally bring in ideas from different industries outside of tech so that we can learn from it. How do we cross-pollinate ideas in ways that challenge innovation what we had traditionally assumed was gonna be the way to go. So for example, like one of the things that, you know, we bring in a lot from folks that look at childcare, look at, you know, the psychological side of things into the technologies, how much data do parents wanna see Like there is a limit where you're kind of like, if you provide too much data, it just, you know, creates more anxiety than instead of solving for it, right? So how do we, you know, what is the human capacity for consuming information? What is the right bite size of information? So we try kind of bringing that. We also look at things like, you know, bring things from the educational market and just learn from them to say, hey, what is the best way we can learn to improve our behavior, you know? As a parent, I constantly am trying to challenge myself. I'm like, you know, I blow up on my kid. They're not listening and stuff like that. And so we actually went out, built an entire knowledge base and put it into the AI, trained the AI on that. And it's unbiased, right? Because the AI is just a machine. It's just trying to like give you some thoughts around like, you know, a way to kind of commiserate with you on the pain you're feeling, but also to help you improve. So how do we bring that? And that came from like conversations with people completely outside of tech, completely outside. It's just like regular family issues, right? And so to kind of summarize it, I think the fact that I come from, you know, I'm an immigrant and I feel a certain amount of like drive that I, because I've been given all these opportunities, I want to try and make things a little bit better for everybody. But I also think that a lot of that comes in from the other folks around the table that because they've experienced it and they're kind of like, they're passionate and their passions drive and feed us. But then we try not to be in an isolated box of like, hey, we're pure tech, we're pure healthcare and stuff like that. And then trying to bring people from outside, very different thought process because oftentimes the catalyst moment happens when somebody thinks of things completely different than you are. And then you're like, oh my God, that's where like, you know, a new window is open to innovation. Right. and potentially transformation.

Steven: 27:03

No, this truly is a remarkable product, a remarkable device. Now, as we wrap things up, I want to know about Waddle's future, what's in store and what's next.

Shaker: 27:14

So our first step in our journey, we released the product in October of last year to the market. And so now it's like, okay, just optimize that. Get the pipeline running so the product just gets smarter and smarter and add the other peripherals to it. That's sort of step one. Step two, which is this year, is connected to health systems. So that basically all you have to do is take your baby's data from the home and you You can give it to the doctor so that when you call them, they have that information so they can give you some advice without taking your baby into the hospital. And then the third piece, which is really like where we're division for what we want to do, is to stream all of this data into artificial intelligence models that continuously monitors your baby for risk of illness, right? And we are the only healthcare product that has built-in machine learning models on the device. That smart changing pad that your kid's going to pee and poop on actually has AI running on it. So you don't have to do round trip to the cloud. It's not slow. We can do that. So when we kind of get to that point where we have models that have been clinically tested and FDA approved, that's where in the next three, four years, you're going to have models where you're going to be like, hey, I want to monitor my baby. And an AI can monitor them around the clock, taking all of this data, just your data for the purposes of just checking and telling you, hey, your child is about to develop respiratory infection, like a cold or flu or something like that. Hey, your child is maybe at high risk of jaundice and things like that. And so having that feature where we have, and this is why the sustainability is built into this thing, is so that other people that typically couldn't afford the access to this If they're getting it through that sustainable effort, that donation, that sort of hand-me-down and paying it forward, means that everybody can have access to that future world of, hey, you've got a tool that can give you some basic clinical feedback, real-time, and it's accessible to anyone in any language. That's a great world to be in. So that's kind of where we're going is this sort of like step one, make a product, get it to market because we can make improvements and learn from the market. Two, connect it to healthcare. And three, build these sort of longer term models that will actually provide self-service capabilities in a world that essentially democratizes access to, you know, that sort of first layer of healthcare.

Steven: 29:51

Right. Now, we're super excited to see how you guys grow, how you evolve and continuing to follow your story. So, Shaker, we really appreciate you jumping on. And so thank you again for joining us. Thanks for having me. This has been great. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Four Worlds Podcast. Until next time, you can catch up on the latest innovations shaping our world at TomorrowsWorldToday.com. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel.