When I was reporting on earlier waves of technology innovation, from the Arpanet to the creation of the world wide web, my interview subjects rarely discussed how their families or anyone outside of their work colleagues influenced their visions. When my Dad ran the Arpanet for the Department of Defense from 1979 through 1981, online communication was a topic he left at the office. Marc Andreessen’s early colleagues who worked with him on creating the world wide web and later Netscape were mostly too young to have families or other attachments outside of work. Based on my years of reporting, I think it’s fair to say that founders’ decisions and feedback they received about how to create new technology ricocheted among their mainly white, mainly male colleagues.

But what I have found when reporting on AI and entrepreneurship during this cycle of tech innovation is that myopia has changed. To be sure, plenty of AI startups are embracing the 9-9-6 work culture that often filters out most people with loved ones to spend time and care for. But in this moment of explosive technological transformation, more founders and investors are including their loved ones’ feedback into the technology they are making and investing in.

They’re not just creating more technology for previously ignored groups like families, which I’ve reported on before . They’re also listening and watching how their children play with AI powered toys and asking their former high school teachers for their opinions about technology in schools. It feels like broader segments of society that were neglected in past cycles of technological innovation are getting their voices heard this time around. That also could open up opportunities to the thousands of tech workers the latest jobs report noted have suffered from cutbacks and are searching for reinvention.

“It’s informing everything that we do,” noted Brynn Jinnett Putnam , founder of Board which marries board games, video games and AI technology. Putnam’s business was inspired by her role as a mother of two kids and three step kids ages ranging from three to 22 years old. She was looking for a way her entire family could play together and that has paid off. Putnam has raised $35 million for Board.

The fact that family members are shaping technology is partly because of how pervasive technology has become and how much we now work from home. When my Dad started shaping the future direction of the Arpanet, which essentially became the Internet, he was working in a guarded office at the Pentagon. After he left the military in 1981 and started writing about the potential harms of what would become the internet, my mom, my elementary school aged-self and my baby brother had no idea what an Internet was. Now everybody talks about tech’s impact on their lives as parents battle their children over screen time.

But now founders and investors really see the value of feedback from the outside world. Brian Cho , co-founder of the early stage venture firm Patron Fund, confessed that he is “addicted to screens.” But he has found his daughters, ages five and nine, who he uses as “guinea pigs” when deciding what AI products to invest in, are far more strategic in their tech usage. When they draw pictures, they use chatbots to ask how to make them better. He noted that his daughters are very savvy when it comes to how sophisticated a toy that uses AI technology is.

“They’ve been a great filter for us, honestly, because kids can sift through what is real versus what’s not,” said Cho. “They might be really into it for the first week or so. And they use it for a week and they don’t come back to it. The drop off is really, really, really harsh.”

Cho’s co-founder Jason Yeh added that his work has been informed by how much his eight and ten year old daughters yearn for toys with more sophisticated narratives. They don’t have much patience for any AI products that don’t offer that.

“Kids have a really strong filter nowadays for quality content versus I think a lot of AI generative content is relatively shallow and not super high quality,” said Yeh. “It’s just high quantity.”

Putnam added that her children inspired the next product her company is creating. “What we’re currently building that launches in Q4 is the ability actually to create your own games and own pieces on the device,” she said. “And that’s very much driven by my experience with my children. So I built this device so that we can all play together.”

It’s not just parents who are relying on their children’s voices to influence their AI startups. Sohan Choudhury and Jinseo Park co-founded the AI powered education program Flint after hearing from many former high school teachers about how they wanted to use AI to help educate their students. But districts did not allow it.

“The teachers were describing how they were hotspotting to use ChatGPT because they’ve been banned by the district,” said Choudhury. “I just kind of realized, there’s something to be done here. And I don’t think ChatGPT and Anthropic, any of these AI companies getting really big is going to actually solve what AI and education should look like.”

So far, their three-year-old startup has raised $16.7 million building on the feedback they got from teachers. They credit their success largely to visiting actual schools, attending conferences and getting specific advice from teachers about how they can refine their products. Choudhury said this has also helped because for the first time educators feel that they are being heard by the technology world.

“Talk to an administrator at an average school or a teacher, they have so many complaints about how they are not in the loop of technology getting developed,” said Choudhury. “If you go to Silicon Valley and look at their perspective on education, they think education is a dinosaur. School systems, educators, parents are just against technology. It’s actually not the case. They’re against the negative effects that compound after a decade of not talking to them and then building technology that doesn’t incorporate their views.”