Founded in 2023 by Frank Ließner and Timo Dries and evolved from the Fox & Sheep children’s app ecosystem, the Berlin-based start-up Tiny Monster is increasingly developing into a hardware company with GALAKTO, its audio system for children. After completing seed financing of EUR 4 million — investors include bm|t (Beteiligungsmanagement Thüringen), Reziprok and experienced operator and industry angels — the team plans to further expand production, the content catalog and retail.

With GALAKTO, chil­dren can sim­ply start lis­ten­ing with­out any com­pli­cated set-up and, above all, offline, as an inter­net con­nec­tion is not required. The radio play in the form of a token snaps into place mag­net­i­cally and the con­tent is played imme­di­ately. At home, GALAKTO ensures the best sound qual­ity with its loud­speaker sys­tem. The player can also be used on the move. The Twist’n’Go sys­tem allows chil­dren to take their GALAKTO with them when they travel: sim­ply turn off the player, plug in the head­phones and off they go. 

Timo Dries, Co-Founder Galakto: “Par­ents want sto­ries, not extra charges. Chil­dren need a reli­able audio player, not another screen. Galakto is the cas­sette recorder for the next generation.”

Over 300 tokens are cur­rently avail­able. These include sto­ries from the Uni­ver­sal Music Group, Oetinger, Kid­dinx and Hör­buch Ham­burg such as “Bibi Blocks­berg”, “DIKKA”, “Der Pumuckl”, “Die Olchis” and the albums of the most suc­cess­ful chil­dren’s song YouTube chan­nel “Hurra Kinder­lieder”. Pre-teen con­tent is also included: “Alea Aquar­ius”, “Kira Kolumna” or “The Gob­lin Chronicles.” 

The founders Timo Dries and Frank Ließner came up with the idea for GALAKTO back in 2013. Timo Dries, him­self the father of four chil­dren, has been the man­ag­ing direc­tor and co-owner of the devel­oper stu­dio Fox & Sheep in Berlin for a long time after work­ing at Nick­elodeon and Wooga. Together with Frank Ließner, he devel­oped over 30 apps for chil­dren between the ages of 3 and 9, which have been down­loaded over 45 mil­lion times and won 37 awards, includ­ing the Apple App of the Year and the Webby Award. 

With over 15 years of expe­ri­ence in prod­uct devel­op­ment and tech­nol­ogy for chil­dren, Frank Ließner at GALAKTO ensures lim­it­less, has­sle-free fun, because the pos­i­tive user expe­ri­ence is his top priority.

In 2019, Frank Ließner and Timo Dries bought the app provider Fox & Sheep from HABA and took the com­pany back to its roots as an indie studio.

Ver­ena Paus­der, Busi­ness Angel Galakto: “I have known Timo Dries since our time together at Fox & Sheep. He puts his heart, mind and expe­ri­ence into build­ing prod­ucts that chil­dren love and that really take the pres­sure off par­ents. I really appre­ci­ate Timo as a per­son and as an entre­pre­neur who proves time and again that he under­stands the needs of fam­i­lies. The GALAKTO team has now trans­ferred this prod­uct dis­ci­pline from the app store to the world of screen-free hard­ware — with clear vision, robust design and impres­sive mar­ket resonance.”

Katja Butz­mann, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of bm|t Beteili­gungs­man­age­ment Thürin­gen: “We are thrilled to be part of Tiny Mon­ster’s vision and to help shape the excit­ing path of this still young com­pany. From the very first meet­ing with the founders Frank and Timo, it was clear to us that they not only have an entre­pre­neur­ial spirit and down-to-earth atti­tude, but also sound expe­ri­ence in the chil­dren’s enter­tain­ment indus­try and a strong net­work. In a very short space of time, a dynamic, scal­ing com­pany has emerged that we believe will cap­ture a sig­nif­i­cant mar­ket share within the next one to two years. At the same time, we are delighted to be devel­op­ing another inno­v­a­tive com­pany based in Thuringia. We are look­ing for­ward to a promis­ing and inspir­ing collaboration.”