To Make Your Parents Happy – Do Startup

Prior to our move to the States, my sister installed a computer at my parents’ home to enable our communication with them. After several sessions my mom was able to read emails and my sister gave up on any attempt to teach her to reply as well. But that was all right as long as Mom could open pictures.

Sometimes she needed an urgent support from my sister (surely enough, usually very late in the evening) because she “didn’t do anything and it all disappeared”. With the time we learned that “it all disappeared” meant she accidently clicked on a minimize button and “all disappeared” indeed. We were able to identify most common Windows misbehaviors, such as sudden disappearances of the browser, text turned to be red with no reason, shutting down at once, inaudible sound , frozen arrow and how to deal with “You got upgraded” message. The most dangerous of all were “Yes” or “No” types of questions that tended to appear from time to time. A choice between these two is a nightmare for a Jewish mom.

Thanks god, my sister and brother-in-law have high level of commitment to the customer service. If it was on me, I would already drop this account for good. However, at this point I was not concerned at all since all this tech support had happened 10 time zones away and I only enjoyed the end result.

But soon it wasn’t enough for my parents. They wanted to see my kids live. That’s where my sister dropped a bomb: “Skype”! I was frightened to even think of going this path as immediately I realized that I would not be able to benefit anymore from my time difference and going Skype would inevitably move me to the first line of support.

As hilarious as it is, I will spare every detail of how it went, but till today my every Skype session with the parents starts with the call over a landline. “-Mom, why on the earth you closed the Skype? -What are you talking about? I never close the Skype! I only unplugged the computer.”

So I was in a frantic need to find a better solution, something that works without a computer and could be operated by my parents. That’s how my first idea of eMazeU occurred to me. Initially it was a wireless digital video camera with extremely simple channel based interface that can capture, receive and play videos.
So off we went with this idea about two years ago. We worked hard on it but it didn’t really fly. One of the mistakes I made was to completely dismiss smart phones as a viable platform for that, and it took a while to realize that. Good thing we learned a lot.

While technical specifications of the product are not important anymore, it helped to define our current product. We create a personal channel to enable our customers to receive their content directly on the TV. Soon the product will be available here: www.eMazeU.com.

My mom is happy now. She uses our beta product and does not require a customer support anymore. I am a good son after all.