Glass Umbrella · Pre-seed
We're raising a $1.8M pre-seed.
SAFE · valuation set by our lead · round now forming.
Founder capital is already in.
1 · The problem
Kids get seven hours a day of screens and fall further behind in reading.
Attention isn't the scarce resource — kids give games hours of it every day. What's missing is a place where that attention compounds into mastery. Families feel the gap. Districts are measured on it.
Sources: National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP); Common Sense Census.
2 · The solution
Physical and digital, built around deliberate practice.
Grit pairs a physical kit with a digital companion so practice happens off the screen and progress is tracked on it. The loop is deliberate practice — small, hard, repeated reps at the edge of a child's ability, with feedback — not entertainment with a worksheet bolted on.
Deliberate-practice mastery
Adaptive drill apps
Real practice, but it lives entirely on the screen the family is trying to get away from.
The top-right corner is empty
Physical and digital, organised around mastery. That's where Grit sits.
Edutainment games
Engagement first. Learning is incidental, and so are the outcomes.
Toys, kits & tabletop
Genuinely physical, but nothing measures whether a child is actually getting better.
Screen-only → Physical + digital
3 · The market
Sized bottom-up, not top-down.
TAM
$65B
Total spend across the families and schools we could ever serve.
SAM
~$4B/yr
The slice our product and channels can actually reach.
SOM
~$40M ARR
What we believe we can hold. Built from seats and subscriptions we can name.
Sizing is bottom-up from priced seats and subscriptions. We publish no ARR timeline we can't defend line by line.
4 · The model
Three revenue streams, one product.
Companion
$15-50/mo
Families subscribe to the digital companion that runs alongside the kit.
Districts
Free, then $25/seat/yr
Free to pilot so a district can prove outcomes before it has to find budget.
Venues
$70-100/mo
Cafes, libraries and shops host Grit tables and become local demand.
5 · Go to market
Identify → Cluster → Critical mass → Expand.
-
Identify
Find the families and educators already looking for this.
-
Cluster
Concentrate them geographically instead of spreading thin.
-
Critical mass
Enough density in one place that word of mouth carries the next family.
-
Expand
Repeat the pattern in the next cluster.
The district clock
Districts buy on a calendar, so we sell on theirs.
- Q1 Pursue
- Q2 Prove
- Q3 Budget
- Q4 Close
What we can already show
6 · The ask
$1.8M pre-seed, on a SAFE.
The round
$1.8M pre-seed
SAFE · valuation set by our lead
Round now forming
Founder capital already in
Use of funds
- 45% — Product & engineering
- 20% — First district pilot & outcome measurement
- 20% — First 1,000 families
- 15% — Ops, legal & COPPA
What it buys
- 12 months of runway to product-market fit
- One district pilot, measured on outcomes
- The first 1,000 families on the companion
- COPPA posture in place before we scale
The team
Operators at the intersection of gaming, education, and AI.
Will Watkins
CEO & Co-Founder
DevOps leader and gamification expert. Built learning systems inside large enterprises.
Doug Watkins
CTO & Co-Founder
Full-stack engineer and game developer.
Lake Watkins
Head of Game Design
Game designer focused on player agency.
Michael Hamilton
VP Engineering
Shipped AAA titles including MultiVersus and Dragon Age II.
Let's talk.
The round is forming now. If the shape of this fits your thesis, the fastest path is thirty minutes on a call — we'll send the deck ahead of it.
Or reach out directly:
invest@glassumbrella.io