Why Yoochooz founder Maggie Ciobanu left corporate finance to take on cyberbullying

After her then 12-year-old daughter was the victim of cyber-bullying, Maggie Ciobanu started working on Yoochooz, an app that flags harmful content before kids send it.

As children type harmful content, it issues a prompt, “are you sure you want to send this?”, so they think before they send it. Essentially it is a keyboard that replaces an Apple or Android keyboard that has an inbuilt list of profanities

“And at that point, the child needs to make a conscious choice of whether they need to proceed or not. And what we want them to do is make the right choices,” she explained.

Yoochooz aims to prevent bullying before it happens and eliminate the harm it can cause. It places emphasis on the privacy of users – parents don’t actually see the messages or material that gets flagged, or who it is sent to, but does encourage conversations.

It is one of five brands shortlisted to compete at the Pitch, SmartCompany‘s early-stage startup competition, on Thursday night in Melbourne.

Ciobanu explained how words can be added to the inbuilt list, including street names, “So that if [children] are communicating with someone new, [parents] are able to detect and ask the question: ‘Hey, who are you chatting to that you’ve just told you’re 12 years old?’

“Because they’re really important conversations to have to prevent grooming.”

Yoochooz: the back story

Ciobanu has a background of more than 20 years in finance and banking, but parenthood was always the number one priority. Venturing out to start YooChooz “was really important for me to make sure that I had the right tools as a mum to be able to still focus on my career, but make sure that my kids are safe and make sure other kids are saying the right things as well”.

Yoochooz, which works on a monthly subscription model, has already been promoted in school newsletters, is in conversations with a number of anti-cyberbullying organisations, and is receiving positive feedback. Version one, and the MVP, are “in a really good space at the moment,” Ciobanu said.

On Thursday night in Melbourne, Ciobanu will pitch Yoochooz for the very first time and is excited about the opportunity to compete. Guest judges Rachel Yang of Giant Leap, Claire Bristow of Skalata Ventures, Rahul Kesavan of AWS, and Mitch Hancock of BlueRock will pick a winner.

Will YooChooz be successful and take home the major prize? Find out for yourself! Register to attend the Pitch here.