Maka, a children’s media platform company which was founded in 2023 by Isabel Sheinman and Tanyella Leta on the East Coast and moved to Detroit in 2025, has launched Maka Kids.
Maka Kids is a new app designed to give families safer, developmentally supportive screen time.
The platform was developed in partnership with the Yale Child Study Center, Harvard University, the University of Michigan, and Michigan State University.
“Maka Kids is a video streaming app for families with young children, powered by a first-of-its-kind algorithm grounded in child development science,” says Sheinman. “Our platform maps a child’s developmental needs and a parent’s preferences to recommend content that’s actually good for kids, not just content that keeps them watching.
“After a decade building children’s digital products together, we saw the gap clearly: major platforms optimize for attention, not wellbeing, and no one is measuring the developmental quality of children’s content because those metrics don’t exist. That’s the gap we built Maka Kids to fill.
Leta says, “In partnership with researchers at the Yale Child Study Center and Harvard, we surface and score content appropriate for a child’s age and stage and deliver it through an autoplay and ad-free experience parents can feel good about. We are building the trust layer for the $372 billion children’s media market — and we’re doing it from Detroit, where we found mission-aligned investors, a community that moves with intention, and the space to do this right.”
The company recently closed a $2 million pre-seed round led by Michigan Rise, with participation from Detroit Venture Partners, Invest Detroit, and other Michigan investors.
- Name: Maka Kids
- Address: Operating out of Newlab, 2050 15th Street, Detroit, MI 48216
- Email: marketing@makamedia.co
- Website: com/
- Phone Number: 917-331-0018
- Category: Entertainment/Media
- Founded: 2023
- Founders: Isabel Sheinman and Tanyella Leta
- Number of Employees: 7
- Most Recent Annual Revenue: NA
- Video Link: Click here
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