We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ursula De La Sotta a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Ursula , appreciate you joining us today. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.
I started creating Cuentologia, my first ever self founded company, when I was starting my family. I was 30 and recently married. We had just made the decision of moving to the United States so my husbando can study his master´s degree on a school he wanted in Chicago. I couldnt land the job I wanted in the US, so we didnt have financial security. But we trusted each other´s capacities and drive. So when I saw the huge need of resources to help parents deal with so many new challenges nowadays, I took a risk. A huge one… Creating a business and a family at the same time, with no guarantee nor salary. I remember I launched my first MVP in July 2021, one my son turned 1 month of life. I felt I had two babies. Of course it was scary, but I trusted my gut. I thought: well if this doesnt work out, I have the brains and I will have the motivation of a little baby that depends on me, to go get any other job out there. I trusted I could do anything. I trusted I would figure it out. But I felt the need and urgency to develop what I had in mind. So I did it. And that is how Cuentologia was born: putting the desire and passion before the security and safety net.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Cuentologia is on a mission to become the biggest catalogue of social emotional stories for Early Childhood. We have partnered with writers, artists, musicians and psychologists to create an AUDIO Catalogue of audiobooks, meditations and podcast to help parents raise emotionally stronger children. Because we -the founders-, as parents, know how stressfull parenting can be, we created this tool kit as a companion to explain this crazy world to our children, and help them understand through stories the most valuable values we want them to grow up with.
You can download the APP from any AppStore and try it for 7 days for free! If you would like Cuentologia to be part of your daily routine, we invite you to suscribe to our monthly subscription, so you can listen whenever and wherever: on the way to school, as bedtime routine, to replace momentos of screen, while we as parents are busy doing other things, while eating, while coloring, etc.
100% authentic spanish and immersive audio content to keep their imagination safe, in a world full of screens. You will be able to find stories for differente challenges, regarding differente ages between 3 to 8 years old, or differente specific situations like divorce, death, first day of school, loosing the first tooth, etc.
How did you build your audience on social media?
We were trying to build a product that “guides” parents in their parenting journey because from talking to our potential user, we discovered that their biggest pain was the amount of expectations they had in this new generation. Let me explain: we grew up in the generation of “it is just no because I say so” parents. And we are trying to be the “I validate your emotions and selfregulate” kind of parents. Of course is hard to apply something that we dont have an actual reference for. So we build on top of those expectations related to the insight we found. We “reacted” to the #respectfulParenting or #GentleParenting trends on social media, from the perspective that they are all really hard to accomplish. So Cuentologia comes perfectly as a practical solution to meet that parent I want to be but dont really know how or then. Still, we didnt sell Cuentologia all the time. We just built into the point of view: is really hard to achieve the gentle parenting style. With that real approach, and humour, we started to attract the kind of parents that matched our product proposition.
If you have multiple revenue streams in your business, would you mind opening up about what those streams are and how they fit together?
Yes! There are a lot of complimentary products, services and experiences that can compliment our audio content. From a diversification of the targets: not only parents, but also teachers, grandparents, institutions that care for the Hispanic Families, etc. Ans also b2b2c, offering Cuentologia as a benefit for employees in big corporations, related to wellness and family protection. Also, sources of revenue where we upsell our actual users: therapy consults within the app + hardware to reproduce our audiocontent + cotumized experience with stories where the name of your child is mentioned. Also real life experiences: children workshop to create their own audiostory or podcasts, or a workshop where they can create the storie´s characters the way they imagined. Also we can include the MarketPlace for content creators as part of our community and close the circle, bringing another source of revenue. Finally, branded content, were we partner with a brand to create a content for families that fits their agenda: talk about savings, sponsored by a bank.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.cuentologia.com/?permanent=true
- Instagram: cuentologiaapp
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ursuladelasotta/