About
A small publishing house that happens to run on models.
Why we started
Elena spent nine years in children's publishing and four of them running a picture book imprint. The manuscripts that stayed with her were the ones she had to turn down: a story about a girl with a hearing aid who is afraid of the swimming pool, a story about a boy whose grandmother speaks a language he is losing. Wonderful books for a small number of children, and impossible to print ten thousand copies of.
Desmond had spent a decade building machine learning for a photo product used by twelve million families, where the hard part was never the model and always the trust. They met at a conference neither of them wanted to be at, and by the end of the week they had a shared document called One Book Per Child.
Quillow is nine people in Portland and it is the whole of what we do. We are Pre-Seed, we have raised $850,000, and we are building this full time.
The company
- Legal name
- Quillow Labs, Inc.
- Incorporated
- Delaware C corporation
- Founded
- April 2023
- Headquarters
- Portland, OR
- Team
- 9 people
- Stage
- Pre-Seed, $850,000
- Lead investor
- Lamplight Ventures
- Announced
- September 2024
1219 SW Alder Street, Suite 300, Portland, OR 97205
(503) 555-0142
Angels: Ada Whitfield and Peter Mwangi.
What we hold to
Four things we do not argue about internally.
One child at a time
Publishing works on the average child and there is no average child. We are only interested in the book that could not have been printed for anybody else.
Gentle is a feature, not a filter
The content rules are part of the product, written by a person who reads every refusal the system sends. Being told no by a children's product should never feel like being told off.
No photographs of children
There is no photo upload in Quillow and nowhere to put one. A text character sheet holds far less about a real child, and it turns out to be enough.
Say what it is
The books are written and painted by models and we say so on the cover of the website. Nobody should find that out later.
The team
Nine people, one book at a time.
Elena Marsh
Spent nine years in children's publishing, four of them running a picture-book imprint, and left after watching a thousand manuscripts get turned down for being too specific to one family. Based in Portland.
Desmond Okafor
Built machine learning systems for a photo product used by twelve million families, where the hard part was never the model and always the trust. Writes the character-consistency pipeline. Based in Portland.
Story and reading level
Priya Raman
Head of Story
Edited early readers and picture books for a decade. Owns the age bands, the reading level, and the rule that no Quillow story ends on a scare.
House style, character sheets
Hana Sato
Illustration Director
Painter and art director. Set the house style, the palette, and the character sheet format that keeps a child looking like themselves on every page.
Generation pipeline
Tomas Ferreira
Founding Engineer
Works on the illustration queue, retries, and the parts of the product that must not fail at 8pm on a Tuesday.
Content rules, refusal quality
Ruth Delacroix
Trust and Safety
Writes and tests the content rules. Reads every refusal the system sends and rewrites the ones that sound cold.
Hardcover production
Anders Holm
Print and Fulfillment
Handles paper stock, binding, and the proofs that go to the print partner. Reads every hardcover before it ships.
Product design
Ivy Chen
Design
Makes the reading experience feel like a book rather than an app, on a phone in a dark bedroom.
Support
Marcus Boone
Family Support
Answers help tickets, usually the same evening. Keeps a list of every story idea a parent wished had worked.