I can probably guess the last piece of corporate swag you received: It was most likely a t-shirt, a tumbler, or a Moleskine with a logo of a company you’d probably soon forget.
But Jackson and Quincy Fuller, ages ten and seven, have a better idea: Stuffed animals, inspired by corporate logos and mascots. This June, the brothers—whose parents are Upfront Ventures general partner Kobie Fuller and kids’ clothing entrepreneur Shennel Fuller—founded Stuffers to help startups build better (and cuter) swag.
“Stuffers makes swag for companies big and small,” said Quincy, holding up Laurel, an adorable, soft-smiling “time block” that Stuffers made for AI time-tracking startup Laurel, last valued at $510 million.
This is, in certain ways, an AI story, father Kobie points out. The client comes in with a brand and character, and Jackson and Quincy then draw out a sketch of what the Stuffer could be. Then they go to their Stuffer Studio, built on OpenAI’s real‑time voice API and a number of image generation models. (They show me how it works by designing what a Stuffer for Fortune would look like—a big-eyed money bag.)
“Never before [has it been] possible to be able to draw ideas and then be able to have them turn into something that is fully product-ready,” said Kobie. “And now, we can do that with these raw, brilliant, creative ideas that only a little kid [could] come up with.”
Mom Shennel makes a good point, too—that kids are actually uniquely suited to, well, being the ones who design stuffed animals.
To Laurel cofounder and CEO Ryan Alshak, the first Stuffers “yes,” this is as much about corporate swag that you keep as it is a thoughtful experiment in what the youngest generation of entrepreneurs could grow up to be.
“This is more than a toy,” said Alshak via email. “It’s a proof of concept for how the next generation will learn in an AI-powered world. The Stuffy is the starting point for building an AI supply chain for education—teaching children the fundamentals of business and creativity through play. That’s the future of learning.”
Examples of Stuffers to date include HeatWave, a rosy-cheeked flame for AI market research startup Heatseeker, and their mascot, Adveri (a kid-style mashup of the word “advertising” and pictured in the online version of this article). Jackson and Quincy have been out finding clients, and Friday afternoons are set aside for pitch meetings.
“My goal is to have a Stuffers commercial, and I also want a billboard,” said Jackson. “And our goal’s to reach 50 customers in one year.”
Laurel’s Alshak believes: “I thought I was a pretty effective seller until I met the Stuffy CEO and COO. They could sell ice to an igloo—or a Stuffy to Build-A-Bear.”
See you tomorrow,
Allie Garfinkle X: @agarfinks Email: [email protected] Submit a deal for the Term Sheet newsletter here.
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