myFirst founder and CEO G-Jay Yong (R)
myFirst, a Singapore kids’ tech company selling “first devices” for children, has secured over US$8 million in a Series A round led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India, as investors chase a category many parents already treat as unavoidable: giving children connected tech, but trying not to hand them the keys to the entire internet.
The company sits in the fast-growing space between two uncomfortable extremes — kids borrowing a parent’s smartphone, or kids getting their own and immediately colliding with adult platforms, adult content, and adult incentives. myFirst’s answer is a tightly controlled ecosystem built around its myFirst Fone watchphone and the myFirst Circle family app, which it says is already used by more than one million families across 60 countries.
Also Read: How myFirst aims to provide a safer social media experience for children
“We started myFirst because our own kids wanted to use technology, but everything out there was built for adults,” said founder and CEO G-Jay Yong.
A safety-first ecosystem built for children, not retrofitted from adult tech
myFirst’s technology stack is designed around a simple idea: children should be able to communicate and create without being exposed to the open social web.
At the hardware level, the flagship watchphone is positioned as a compromise product: kids can call and message, but parents aren’t effectively giving them a pocket computer with an app store. The company highlights GPS tracking, safety zones (geofencing), and an SOS button—features aimed at reassurance and rapid response rather than entertainment.
The ecosystem approach goes further than a single device. myFirst sells a range of kid-targeted gadgets (watchphones, cameras, headphones, drawing tablets and more) paired with connected services. The point is less about piling up screens and more about creating controlled entry points into digital behaviour: communication, creativity, and self-expression.
The core safety design principles, as described by the company, include:
- Closed networks over open platforms (children interact only within approved circles)
- Parental controls baked into the product, not bolted on after the fact
- Encrypted environments for sharing and messaging
- No ads, reducing the risk of behavioural targeting and engagement traps
- Reduced exposure to strangers by limiting who can contact or view a child’s content
Taken together, myFirst is trying to sell parents something the mainstream internet struggles to offer: a smaller, safer digital world that’s still functional.
myFirst Circle: social networking without the stranger-danger business model
The biggest differentiator is myFirst Circle, which myFirst describes as a “closed, ad-free social network designed specifically for children”.
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That sets it apart from traditional adult social media in three key ways:
- Access is permissioned: kids share moments only with approved family and friends, rather than broadcasting to the public or algorithmic discovery feeds.
- The environment is parent-controlled: the platform is designed around guardians managing contacts and boundaries, rather than expecting children to self-moderate.
- It’s not ad-driven: without advertising as the engine, there’s less incentive to maximise time spent, provoke engagement, or collect extensive behavioural data.
In other words, myFirst Circle is attempting to keep the “social” part (sharing, reacting, staying connected) while stripping out the parts that have made adult social platforms a headache even for adults.
Where the money goes: retail, telcos, and a push outside Southeast Asia
The Series A funding will be used to deepen the kidstech ecosystem and expand distribution, with myFirst pointing to retail and telco partnerships as its main route into new markets.
The company says it plans to scale across North Asia, the Middle East, the US, and Europe
It also namechecked large retailers Walmart and Best Buy as partnership examples, signalling a strategy built around mainstream consumer shelves and carrier bundles rather than niche online-only sales. For a kids’ device category—where trust, warranties, and physical retail visibility matter—that approach could be decisive.
Jessica Koh, Senior Executive Director at Vertex Ventures SEA & India, framed the bet as a shift in consumer behaviour: “We see a structural shift in how families introduce children to technology, driving demand for purpose-built products rather than adaptations of adult platforms.”
The real battle: defining “first tech” before the smartphone does
myFirst is effectively trying to claim the moment when a child moves from offline to online before a smartphone becomes inevitable. The company’s wager is that parents will pay for a safer on-ramp if the products are credible, not clunky, and don’t feel like a punishment device.
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The challenge, as always in children’s tech, is balancing freedom and safety without turning the experience into surveillance theatre. But with fresh capital and an explicit global expansion plan, myFirst is pushing its case that kids shouldn’t have to start their digital lives on platforms built for adults—and parents shouldn’t have to choose between connection and chaos.
myFirst as one of the first 15 semifinalists of e27‘s TOP100 programme in 2023
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