Jordan and Felix Lloyd began Zoobean as a way to provide books to children from non-traditional families. The Zoobean technology uses a combination of human and algorithmic curation to create personalized reading lists for its users. It also offers a subscription-based book-a-month delivery service in which families would receive a book that depicted them, such as a book about an interracial family. Jordan and Felix went on to develop innovative personalization and collaboration tools, including its Web-based recommendation tool, SmartList. Later, they developed a new application, Beanstack, to curate books so that librarians could make personalized recommendations to library patrons. Their mission was to help deliver a useful and personal experience for readers of all ages.
On Shark Tank, Mark Cuban invested in Zoobean and was an enthusiastic partner. He funded a reading challenge using the Beanstack software, “Beanstack Winter Reading Challenge for Libraries.” Its success was off the charts! He is passionate about the need for children to read and continues working with Jordan and Felix.
Today, Zoobean’s web application and mobile app are licensed by more than 1,000 public libraries and schools in the United States, Canada, and Australia, and Beanstack is the single best tool for facilitating reading challenges.
