About us

Three of us. All parents.

All people who build technology for a living, two of us in safety-critical settings.

We are building Yado because we are watching the technology landscape for children shift. We are watching a world that is being made to feel increasingly unsafe. The default answer to these questions and problems has predominantly been to give children a smartphone. We didn't think that was good enough. We are building a different solution.

Yado is a screenless device for children getting ready to take those first journeys independently. No apps, no feed, no notifications, no screen to look at. It gives a parent enough to know their child is where they should be, and it gives the child the freedom to get there on their own.

A child's hands clipping a Yado device onto a school backpack.

It all started with Lex's niece.

She was at the age where she'd be allowed to go to school by herself, exactly the small step you want to take to grow your independence. The school's condition was that, for safety reasons, she would need to carry a phone. To get that bit of freedom, she had to get the very thing safety experts warn you against. Either a smartphone, and with it everything that comes along: internet safety, social media, pictures, messaging 24/7. Or a ‘dumb phone’: somewhat less open, but still open to calls and messages from anyone.

We want our children to grow up able to be safe, autonomous and responsible. We want them to have the freedom to do some of what we did. To go out, to get it slightly wrong, to learn the lesson and come home. Not to be wrapped in cotton wool. Responsible use of technology is now a huge part of that, whether we like it or not, and the conversation around it must start younger than most of us would like.

This is why we set out to build Yado. To give parents and children a choice about when and how to start their journey into the world of technology and connected devices. It is a way to stay safe and in touch without the need to open up that box just yet.

The journey of making Yado

In the age of Dragons' Den and startups raising huge sums in funding rounds, we do things a little differently. We are self-funded and building something from the ground up with one single thing in mind: what problem do we want to solve? The norm in tech is to sprint to raise as much cash as possible, so products end up designed for investors, not customers. We believe there is a different way: caring deeply about the product we are creating and keeping our users and families at the centre of everything we do.

The founders

Lex Smith

Co-founder | Product and Design

She builds personal safety devices used by public services in five European countries. They're worn by people living alone or at risk. If one fails, someone doesn't get help. Making sure that never happens is the most important part of her job.

Her work covers the whole stack: international hardware supply chains, firmware and OTA, cloud infrastructure, the SaaS and mobile applications on top. Trained in engineering as well as design, she is hands-on in the build as well as the planning. Her day job is translating technical complexity into products that survive government procurement scrutiny and then perform under real pressure.

Although working in a corporate space right now, she has 10+ years of experience in the trenches with SMEs looking to optimise and scale through sensible use of technology: improving businesses, helping them grow, and freeing up time for founders to do the things they love and are good at.

Mum to two. Third on the way.

Sean Westgate

Co-founder | Business & Technology

An entrepreneurial technologist with over 20 years' experience driving innovation, building products, running teams and growing businesses. Equally at home in a boardroom or debugging in the trenches, and best of all showing people what good technology can actually do.

Co-founder and technical director of Green Hippo. Green Hippo built the Hippotizer media server, which ended up driving video on the Oscars, Super Bowl halftime shows, The X Factor, West End and Broadway productions, and tours for Take That, Springsteen and George Michael. Sean took it from a startup to an international business and out the other side into a parent group.

Lives in Hackney with his wife and three children.

Ste Smith

Co-founder | Engineering and Design

Ste leads engineering at Yado and writes the code behind it. On a product for parents and children, that code has to be secure and hold up when it matters. He thinks hard about how every part of it works before it ships.

He has 10+ years behind him as a lead developer, on projects of every size. His clients include Eurostar, The Very Group, Nando's and Quantum, where he worked at the fast-moving end of Web3. He's worked with founders starting from nothing and with businesses that had serious money behind them. Sometimes that meant building from a blank page. Other times it meant taking over someone else's platform and making it better.

He shapes the product design too, and he's the one who takes feature design and interrogates it before we start to build. When a problem looks stuck, he's usually the one who finds a way through.

He wants his kids to grow up seeing tech as a tool they can use safely, and Yado is his chance to build that with the right intentions. He and Lex are partners, so they're one team at home and at work.

Dad to two. Third on the way.