Calling All Kids
Following my recent post comparing two companies that sell phones for kids, Kajeet and Firefly [What Kids Want in Phones], I had an interview Monday, April 5 with Daniel Neal, the CEO of Kajeet together with my friend Emma, and I would like to share with you a little about what I learned from his 14 years in the telecom business.
The first thing I wanted to know was how do families find out about Kajeet? He explained that he places a lot of links on Google, does some radio advertising, and also puts advertisements on websites. In fact, the day after my interview, I was watching videos on YouTube and a Kajeet ad came up!
As a kid who loves technology, I then wanted to know how often does Kajeet update their phones? Mr. Neal told me that they try to update their phones 3 to 4 times a year.
With many of the big phone companies today adding the Android OS to their phones, I was happy to hear that Kajeet is also planning on adding Android phones to their line-up, and one might even come out this year.
I really wanted to learn from him about how do kids manage to convince their families to buy them a Kajeet phone? His answer was that kids usually keep asking and asking for a phone. He said that what makes Kajeet special is that when parents finally go online to find phones for kids, they find out that Kajeet has especially designed many things to give the adults lots of control of the phones and their phone plans. For example, he explained how he has set his own kids’ phones to not be able to call anyone except for their parents during school hours, but can text as much as they want after school.
My friend, Emma asked some excellent questions about what are the popular phones with kids today. Mr. Neal talked about how the Sanyo 2700, LG Rumor and LG Rumor 2 are popular because they all have full QWERTY keyboards that make them good for texting. She also asked about the differences between the Katana phones, and he explained that besides the design changes, there is a new higher tech chip in the Katana II which includes 4 times more memory and helps the phone also weigh less. He told us that the first phone the company had at the beginning was the Nokia 2155, and how today he does not have any phones from Nokia on Kajeet because that company has decided for now to focus on the rest of the world and not the US, but he thinks that Nokia will be big again in the US within the next two years.
At the end of our interview we had a fun conversation about the unique logo they have for the company, and he laughed and asked us what we thought, and then told us that they call the logo “KJ” and it is a smiley face. We also found out the company’s name is taken from the first letter of each of the 6 kids of all the three people who started the company.
I really enjoyed speaking to Daniel Neal, and I liked how much he thinks about what us kids want, and even said that some people say that he is still a kid at heart himself.
