But ToyTalk, the company that created the doll's software, says there's nothing to fear when it comes to Hello Barbie.
Not a Matryushka doll of nested software abstractions, running on some faraway server whose physical details you don't know or care about; not digital chipsets and circuit boards, taking advantage of Moore's Law and the peace dividend of the smartphone wars, to drive LEDs or solenoids or little electric motors.
At Santa's Secret Village (www.northpole.com), children relay their top gift request by checking one of a dozen icons representing bikes, stuffed animals, dolls and computer software.
"We always say that every company is becoming a software company," Doll told me.
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But we've done it!" Not that MakieLab is a dolls company: Taylor says it's more of a software manufacturing platform that can output 3D-printed shapes, including dolls but in the future other kinds of products.
David Chao, cofounder of Doll Capital Management, four years ago invested $1 million in Recourse, a security software outfit.
David Chao, cofounder of Doll Capital Management, four years ago invested $1 million in Recourse, a security software outfit cofounded by a business school chum.
They paired each doll face with a similar-looking human face and used morphing software to blend the two, ending up with a spectrum of pictures that ranged from fully human to part human-part doll to purely doll (see videos).
The idea was to leverage low-tech Mattel brands such as Barbie into software and Learning Co. brands such as Carmen Sandiego into dolls and other products.
Studying the store shelves beyond the doll department would have reminded the Barbie boss of a fundamental problem with the educational software business: price erosion.
