Kieran Donovan On Raising Over $50 Million To Build A Platform To Ensure Regulation-Compliant Gaming For Kids And Teens

Kieran Donovan’s journey is a fascinating tale of creativity, resilience, and the unexplored paths of entrepreneurship. His professional experiences have taken him across continents, from New York to London, Hong Kong, and now Singapore, where he co-founded k-ID.

Kieran’s company, k-ID, navigates the complex regulatory landscape of kids’ and teenagers’ online privacy and has raised capital worth over $50M from top-tier investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed, Z Venture Capital, and Everywhere Ventures.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Raising capital outside the U.S. presents unique challenges but can lead to success with the right approach.
• Kieran Donovan’s journey reflects the value of persistence, adaptability, and learning from setbacks.
• Living and working in diverse regions gave Donovan empathy and a broad global perspective.
• Moving from a legal career to founding k-ID was driven by a relentless desire to solve a critical problem for kids and teens online.
• Co-founding with complementary skill sets and backgrounds was crucial for building k-ID’s success.
• U.S. investors have a higher risk tolerance, which played a significant role in the company’s fundraising success.
• Targeting the right investors and focusing on aligned verticals, like gaming, is critical in pitching to VCs.

 

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About Kieran Donovan:

Kieran Donovan is the CEO and founder of k-ID. In his role, Kieran uses his decade of experience working at the frontier of data protection and online safety regulation to manage the company and technology overall.

The only person to have ever been named Privacy Lawyer of the Year multiple times, Kieran has advised some of the world’s most well-known online platforms on how to architect solutions to navigate emerging regulatory challenges across the world efficiently.

Kieran has been featured in major press, including Forbes, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, and VentureBeat, has appeared on popular podcasts, including Deconstructor of Fun and Naavik Gaming, and has been recognized by the World Economic Forum as a Technology Pioneer for 2024, as well as winning recognition from Law.com, Chambers, Legal 500, Asian Legal Business (ALB).

Connect with Kieran Donovan:

• LinkedIn
• TheOrg
• Crunchbase
• Bloomberg

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Alejandro Cremades: All righty. Hello, everyone, and welcome to The Dealmaker Show. so Today, we have a really exciting founder joining us. um We’re going to be talking about the whole stuff of building, scaling, financing. Now, in this case, you know for them, they’re outside of the US. you know Really interesting how they got started first with two co-founders, and they brought another two co-founders a year in.

Alejandro Cremades: We’re going to be talking to about the journey of raising money from U.S. VCs when you’re not in the U.S. And then also how to think about raising capital for a segment that is not really the typical VC-backable type of segment to begin with. So ah again, you know, brace yourself for a very inspiring conversation and without further ado, let’s welcome our guest today, Kieran Donovan. Welcome to the show.

Kieran Donovan: Yeah, great to be here Alejandro, super excited.

Alejandro Cremades: So originally born and raised in Sydney. You know, father was a pilot, mother was a teacher. Give us a walk through memory lane. How was life growing up for you?

Kieran Donovan: Oh dude, it was literally white picket fence. Uh, grew up on a, on a pretty suburban street, white picket fence, white house, very, very sort of traditional suburban upbringing, uh, local school. And, uh, you know, when I get back to my, my hometown,

Kieran Donovan: Uh, it’s incredible because, uh, I just run into so many people that I went to, to school with, uh, because it’s, it’s just that type of environment.

Alejandro Cremades: So you you’re a creative kind of guy. you know At what point do you really you know feel that there is like some real creativity there are going on for you?

Kieran Donovan: You know, I’d always been into the the creative writing bit, even even as a young kid, I would just do that for fun. And I would just write and ideate and and come up with all sorts of stories. And that was probably from the age of six or seven. And and in fact, a few years ago, I actually dug out some old diaries and came across some stories that I’d written as a kid, ah which didn’t quite hold up.

Kieran Donovan: But it’s always it’s always been there, and it’s definitely something that I embraced, particularly as i as I got older.

Alejandro Cremades: So let’s talk about that. you know As you get older, you know you embrace that to the max. In fact, you know you ended up packing your bags and trying your luck in New York City. So tell us about that.

Kieran Donovan: I did, I did. I finished high school and and I decided that I would go to to college and I would do creative writing and my parents said sort of said, well, you can’t just do creative writing. You need a real career. And so I i paired it with law school at the same time. and I went through that with the intention of never being an attorney, of never being a a lawyer, and only embracing the creative writing side. And so once I finished college, I went to to New York and I embraced that. And I i was writing, i the whole experience of juggling that, ah writing in cafes 12 hours a day, submitting to all sorts of agents.

Kieran Donovan: flying back and forth between LA and New York, trying to get get meetings with production companies, had a had a script option. so So stuff sort of happened, but ah eventually I ran out of money. And I had to add to return to Sydney and and call the law firm I’d interned at and say, yeah you don’t have that job by any chance, do you?

Alejandro Cremades: And how was it that for you? Because you either succeed or you learn. you know It was kind of like a good exposure to what running out of money looks like. you know I’m sure that it was not easy to make those phone calls.

Kieran Donovan: It wasn’t, it wasn’t easy because I think there was a big part of me that just didn’t expect that it wouldn’t work out. Uh, I backed myself a hundred percent. I didn’t feel like I had a backup plan, but actually in hindsight, looking back, I did. I always knew I had the the legal career to fall back on. If it didn’t work out, I could go back. I could get the job. I always knew in the back of my mind, but I i pretended that that didn’t exist. I pretended that it was the the only option. Um, and so it was a big move to to go back to Sydney. After having spent that time in the, in the U S and traveling and and all that experience, and then really.

Kieran Donovan: having to own the fact that that big plan I told everyone about didn’t quite work out.

Alejandro Cremades: So how do you land in London?

Kieran Donovan: I spent a few years working as as an attorney back when data wasn’t, it would it wasn’t what it was today. And I remember when we would advise on on acquisitions, the data component of a transaction was,

Kieran Donovan: reviewing a website link. That was it. This was back in 2010, 2011. But what I was very excited by was the prospect of working on a lot of the bigger transactions that were happening around the world. And so I eventually, although I was way too junior to to do it, um I put my hand up and basically called every recruiter who would take a phone call with me and say, I want to move to London. Get me a job in London. I really want to go and try it with the the big league. I want to work for a big firm. I want to work on the big deals. And I kept getting told, ah know your place. you need You need more time under your belt. and And I just didn’t take no for an answer. up

Alejandro Cremades: I hear you. Now, obviously, you land in London, and you were working there at Latham and Watkins, one of the top pay law firms globally. But it sounds like you like you like traveling. You like to experience different places, Kieran, because that took you all the way to Hong Kong. So I guess the the the question that comes to mind here is, what do you think, you know what kind of perspective it has given you to be able to to have that opportunity to live in in so many different places around the world?

Kieran Donovan: It’s such a good question. One of the things that I feel has been such an asset for me, particularly more recently is just having the benefit of empathy with all sorts of different scenarios. And I think that comes about from having firstly lived.

Kieran Donovan: a whole range of different experiences myself, including running out of money and having to swallow my pride and and return home to to my hometown and start all over again. In addition to all of the experiences I’ve had, embracing other cultures and languages, I’ve learned bits of languages along the way. I spent a ton of time ah in places like Beijing and Shanghai um for months at a time where I had to pick up the language in order to to figure out how to get around.

Kieran Donovan: ah And so I think it lends a real unique perspective when you’re living somewhere that’s outside your home and you do that over and over and over again in different places, that you recognize more of the similarities than you do the differences.

Alejandro Cremades: So landing in Hong Kong, you know, that was quite a big deal for you because you were opening office for Latham and Watkins. I guess that this was kind of like the first experience to entrepreneurship, you know, of some sorts, not intrapreneurship, you know, perhaps, you know, how, how was that as an experience?

Kieran Donovan: It was, it was entrepreneurship, but with a giant safety net. And so i I knew I had the benefit of a fantastic firm with plenty of fantastic people who would support me. And coming back to what we were talking about earlier, if it didn’t work out, I could go back to London.

Kieran Donovan: And so the mission that had been set out for me moving to Hong Kong was, see if you can build a practice. See if there’s there’s runway there to build something special. See if there’s a market there where where folks are willing to to really embrace what we do ah with the de the the tech and data focus and the media focus that we had. But there was the backup plan. I could go back to London if I really, really needed to. And so I knew that was that phone home button existed.

Kieran Donovan: But I didn’t want to go back. And so this time around, I treated every day as though I was going to get called back to the mothership at some point. And so I needed to make it work.

Kieran Donovan: Uh, and this was a second time round, right? This, this was the second time I’d made this sort of big move. And so I couldn’t quite stomach the idea of it not working out a second time. And so I was relentless and I, I just embraced it every day to to build a pretty formidable, um, and, and really exciting practice in team.

Alejandro Cremades: So here you are 13 years in as an attorney, you know, having been in Sydney, London, now in Hong Kong, and you probably, you know, you made it to partner, so you had an amazing salary. So very comfortable. Why did you decide to put yourself in a very uncomfortable situation of being a founder?

Kieran Donovan: My wife asks me the same question all the time. I eventually felt compelled to solve a problem and it was a problem that I couldn’t ignore. I had ideated with the idea of doing something for a long time. Uh, even from my earliest time in London as an attorney,

Kieran Donovan: I would always have that at the back of my mind. I love doodling on ah on a page where I would craft ideas or think about things in a unique way um as compared with perhaps what traditionally clients would be thinking of in terms of deal structures, in terms of products that they were building. And so I always knew that there was something there. There was an itch I hadn’t quite scratched. And eventually I was faced with a huge uptick in regulatory enforcement and new regulation around the world around kids and teens. And eventually you’re staring down that challenge, that problem, and you’ve seen two versions of the future. One is where you do nothing.

Kieran Donovan: And one is where you give it a, give it a try. And eventually I just could not live with myself if I didn’t go and try. I was hoping, I was hoping desperately that someone would go and do this. Someone would solve this. Like the kids and teens online pieces is so complex and so fraught with risk. I thought surely someone’s going to try something. Someone’s going to try something in this space and over and over and over again, I just.

Kieran Donovan: saw people trying things that weren’t working. and And eventually I just felt compelled and I couldn’t ignore it. And i so I had to do it. I don’t feel like there was a choice.

Alejandro Cremades: So why would I be in the business model of KID? How do you guys make money?

Kieran Donovan: So the core of the businesses is our engine and we call it our compliance engine. And really it’s taking all of the threads of the complex regulation that exists today and distilling it into a product that makes it really easy and straightforward for any developer anywhere in the world to go to market where their audience is.

Kieran Donovan: And in a way that embraces that audience, um particularly when it comes to younger kids or teens. And I can tell you that even basic questions like what is a child or what is an adult varies wildly around the world. And I think by about December, we’ll have hit 127 jurisdictions that define what an adult or a child is in, in various ways.

Kieran Donovan: And so most of the world has its own view on how to define a kid and how to define what their experience should be online, but they don’t sync up. They’re very, very different. And there’s a reason for that, of course, because culture and social values are different from place to place. And so you don’t want to homogenize that. What you want to do is embrace that, but it’s really hard.

Kieran Donovan: when you’re trying to deal with a UX where you just want one UX, you want one sign up flow for your account system, you want one set of features that you’re integrating into a game or a product. And so what our engine does is it simplifies all of that and delivers all of that complexity directly into the product in a way that ah is totally invisible to the to the user. so

Alejandro Cremades: So you got started eventually, you know, as as we were talking here with KID with one co-founder and you guys waited a year and then you brought on board two other co-founders. I mean, what’s the reasoning there and how did you guys go about structuring that too?

Kieran Donovan: So I’m a first time founder. Uh, and so in my view, I had always had at the back of my head. Well, at the end of the day, 50% of nothing is nothing. And so I knew going in that if I was to.

Kieran Donovan: de-risk the overall vision, then what I needed were were people who were going to work toward making that vision successful. And I wasn’t going to do it myself. And even with with Tim, my co-founder initially, the two of us came from very similar backgrounds. And so we needed someone with a business background, someone with business acumen, particularly in the gaming industry. We needed someone who understood trust and safety really, really well. ah we needed We needed a tech technical co-founder as well, because we didn’t have one.

Kieran Donovan: um We had a vision, but we didn’t know how to execute on it. And so we knew that there were going to be key roles that we needed to fill. And it just so happened that when we met um Julian, who was on the the business side and had run game publishers in APAC and Jeff, who had built out Trust and Safety at Google and at Meta.

Kieran Donovan: that we got on so well and I could see the value that those guys would would bring both personally and professionally and and the contribution they were willing to make to the vision by just jumping in with both feet that it made total sense that the four of us would be co-founders and bring this vision to life together.

Alejandro Cremades: So you’re in Singapore um and you had the opportunity also of experience in New York previously and New York, you know, obviously it’s a booming when it comes to startups. So I’m wondering why doing it in Singapore versus maybe in the US and how has it been through the journey of building something like this, you know, in in a place that is outside perhaps of the startup, you know, dreamland?

Kieran Donovan: It’s a happy accident, but it wasn’t in it wasn’t intentional in the sense that we did actually go to go to raise money out in this part of the world to begin with. It’s a different risk appetite out in this part of the world ah and the expectations are different.

Kieran Donovan: The businesses that I think funds out in this part of the world see are very, very different. They don’t necessarily see really, really early stage global ideas. Um, there are, there are some examples of where i I think there’s an exception, but I think generally what happens a lot out in this part of the world is that founders come and want to take a business model that has worked in a different part of the world and are now going to deploy it to this region. And.

Kieran Donovan: You can often compare metrics. You can show growth. You can you have all these you know great slides that you can create around. Okay. This is how it worked out in Latin America. This is how it worked out in Europe. So this is how it’s going to work out for for the the the region out here. We didn’t have that. we We were a blank canvas. And so we were pitching, I think in a way that in hindsight wasn’t resonating in the way that we wanted. We were getting term sheets, but not, not anything where we thought, um, it would be meaningful, um, for, for the company. The difference was, was when we went to the U S and

Kieran Donovan: To be honest, we we did it as a bit of a Hail Mary. We got a few term sheets out in this part of the world and we thought, you know what, why don’t we why don’t we pitch um funds in the US? Why don’t we pitch A16Z? We’ll see what happens. And so we were but fortunate enough that we could we could find that connection.

Kieran Donovan: And then it just happened. I mean, the the appetite is different. The willingness to back an early stage founder on the back of an idea and, you know, some early good, positive feedback from the market. It was a po it was just so different to to the way that this particular region typically operates, although I think it’s changing.

Alejandro Cremades: how does the how How would you define or compare what does an investor look like in in in that region right versus an investor, let’s say, in the US? What are the key differences?

Kieran Donovan: I think there’s a few differences. so One is um the LP makeup is typically different. so A lot of the investors out in this part of the world, are um the LPs are often sovereign wealth funds um or or big pension funds. and so I think there’s a different there’s a different risk appetite and different approach that that brings. um I do also think that there’s a heavy focus in terms of verticals on FinTech and historically crypto out in this part of the world. And so there is a lot of investment around that space um to I think the detriment in some ways of of other verticals that have come on on in in leaps and bounds. I think also it’s,

Kieran Donovan: Just the vision. I often speak to founders in this part of the world where they’re very focused on regional expansion and often they’ve been very, very successful in one country and now they’re moving internationally. And I think that’s a lot of what particularly VCC, that’s a lot of the founders who are pitching them. Hey, this was a super successful business. These, this is how it’s going. I want to expand into five countries or 12 countries around the region. And this is how I’m going to do it.

Kieran Donovan: pitching something that’s homegrown and and going global, outbound, I i feel as is more abnormal, more unusual.

Alejandro Cremades: There’s probably now a lot of founders that are listening that are outside of the US and also wondering about how to go about fundraising from VCs in the US. What but can you tell them?

Kieran Donovan: So what’s worked for me, and that and that’s really the one thing I can talk to is, Ultimately, I got told tons of advice. There was a bunch of it that was um really helpful and a lot that is probably helpful for for other founders, but but wasn’t as relevant for me. What worked for me was being very intentional and direct about the funds that I was speaking to. And so we knew that we were going after the gaming vertical to begin with. And so we were very intentional about speaking to gaming funds.

Kieran Donovan: ah Yes, we have a vision and and we’re already capitalizing on some of that outside of gaming, but we didn’t want to get ahead of ourselves. And we didn’t want to be speaking to someone who wasn’t necessarily ready ah for the pitch that that we were giving. And so we were very intentional about that. I did a ton of research around which funds at which stage. um And so we were speaking to people, particularly at the early stage, that made sense for where the company was.

Kieran Donovan: and also looking at the backgrounds of the people that I was meeting. And so I would look at, where they where did they work previously? Where are they at in their career? Does it look like they have a family? Because I knew that another aspect of what we were doing was very focused on kids and teens and families. And so there’s a very, very big difference between speaking to someone who has a seven or eight year old kid and this product is directly gonna affect that that kid’s life.

Kieran Donovan: versus someone who, um you know, the kids are or already at college or beyond. And so they’re looking at it through a different lens, not necessarily, um you know, the wrong lens, but it’s just, it’s a different lens. And so I think just going in aware of those sorts of things was incredibly helpful.

Alejandro Cremades: So obviously, the VCs they and investors, you know they are really invest in vision too, know as well as employees and perhaps customers. So I guess if you were to go to sleep tonight here and you wake up in a world where the vision of KID is say fully realized, what does that world look like?

Kieran Donovan: To me, it’s ah any kid anywhere in the world can go online and they get the experience that respects them for who they are and where they are.

Alejandro Cremades: That’s unbelievable. Now, how how is it to to um to operate in a yeah you know kind of like regulated you know space? I mean, we’re talking about kids. How has it been to build a business you know in in this segment for you guys?

Kieran Donovan: It’s definitely an area where A lot of, uh, concern exists from the market generally. So if you’re building online experiences historically, and it’s kind of, you know, if you think about it now, how many times do you go online and you get asked to enter your date of birth or to click, I confirm I’m over 13. And we all know what kids are doing at that point. You know, I’ve got two boys. I know exactly what’s going on. And the research shows, and this is what’s really interesting is that

Kieran Donovan: Most kids, when they click through that or when they lie about their age to sign up to a service, most of them are doing it with a parent helping them um and with full knowledge of of what’s happening. And the parent hopes, as I do, that your’re your yourre kid is going to tell you if something’s going on, if something’s gone wrong, if strange messages are coming in.

Kieran Donovan: And your only choice is to hope, and because ah there aren’ there are no parental tools in those um in those experiences. There is no age adaptive experience. It doesn’t restrict certain features. It doesn’t um adjust things in a way that are more appropriate for for that particular age band, ah because they’re not meant to be there. And so that, that I think, is the is the scary component of the internet today, ah is that most of the internet has forgotten that kids use a lot of the internet.

Kieran Donovan: And that to me is the space that is where we we can be disruptive, but in a really positive way and in a way that just makes sense. Uh, cause it’s kind of wild that the first thing kids learn to do online is to lie like that. That just doesn’t feel right.

Alejandro Cremades: At what point do you guys realize we’re into something here?

Kieran Donovan: It was definitely an existential crisis that we would cycle through a lot during the first, I would say 18 months. There are key moments that are very, very meaningful. And this is probably true of any founder, but definitely for us. One was the very first time that we signed a contract where someone is willing to pay us money for the product we’ve built. The second one is where you consistently hear the same message.

Kieran Donovan: And so I love pitching. it’s It’s one of the things I spend a lot of my time doing. And when you hear things, reactions like, this just makes sense. How come no one’s done this? And you hear that over and over again. It really is inspiring because that’s the sort of fuel that will keep you going when you’re grinding those 20 hour days and you know things are are not um coming together as fast as you you’d like.

Kieran Donovan: I think those are the sorts of things you hang your hat on. The other thing is seeing things go live. There is absolutely nothing. I can tell you that we would we we had a town hall, the very, very first title that went live, the very first game that went live. And our CTO jumps on and there’s 40 odd people in this call. And he says, everyone, just wait, just wait. Shares your screen. And there’s this little dot that pops up on the screen to show that there’s traffic.

Kieran Donovan: And I can’t, you know, for 60 seconds, we’re all speechless because it’s just, it’s real, right? It’s real. And and I think that to me is, um, is, is the exciting part is seeing all this vision come to life.

Alejandro Cremades: That’s incredible. Now, imagine I put you into a time machine, Kieran, and I bring you back in time, you know maybe to that point where you guys were thinking about doing something together, maybe like around you know September 2023 or so. And let’s say I was able to give you the opportunity of having a chat with that younger Kieran. What would be that one piece of advice that you would tell your younger self there?

Kieran Donovan: Follow your gut, just trust your instincts, uh, back yourself and be willing to embrace discomfort. That is without a doubt the thing that, uh, there are lots of things that I feel very uncomfortable about in terms of, you know, I’d never pitched VCs before. I was sat there in a room with, with huge VCs with huge, you know, abilities to ability to deploy huge amounts of capital.

Kieran Donovan: Uh, I quit my job, so I was all in. There was no going back. Uh, there was a, there was a lot of that. And so just backing yourself. And I would say to him, just, just have faith, have faith that you are, you are, you are on the right path and it’s going to work out.

Alejandro Cremades: For the people that are listening here, and I would love to reach out and say, hi, what is the best way for them to do so?

Kieran Donovan: Yeah, I mean, our website is easy is where you get in touch with the company k-id.com. um LinkedIn is where i I hang out most of the time. So you can search me up Kieran Donovan um on on LinkedIn as well under K ID. And otherwise, um always happy to to field emails Kieran at k-id dot.com. um Very happy to chat always willing to give people time and and just chat about my experience.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing. Well, hey, Karen, thank you so much for being on The Deal Maker Show today. It has been an absolute honor to have you with us.

Kieran Donovan: Thank you so much, Alejandro. This was fantastic.

*****

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