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From walking dogs to working with Netflix: How one founder wants to change streaming for deaf people
Some tech founders have rich parents. Others max out their credit cards or spend down their retirement accounts to make it through those first crucial months before they can actually raise any finding. Mariella Satow opted for a different route: Still in high school, Satow offered dog walking services to her neighbors to raise money for her very first app: SignUp, a free Chrome extension that provides American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation for videos from streaming services like Disney+, Peacock and YouTube.
“It started as a high school passion project,” Satow says. This week, that passion project, financed early on one pooch at a time, is going prime time with a major media coop: Netflix and SignUp Media announced a partnership Monday that brings ASL interpretation to 73 kids and family titles, including popular franchises like Octonauts, CoComelon and Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio movie.
Altogether, Netflix is financing the interpretation of 200 hours worth of content. But for Satow, the partnership with the streamer is just a first step. “We want sign language to be as ubiquitous as closed captioning,” she says.
From dog walking to building apps
Satow is not deaf herself, but has deaf family members, which is how she became interested in sign language in the first place. And when her high school switched to remote learning during the pandemic, she used all the free time she suddenly had to learn ASL.
I know what you’re thinking: I, too, was a lot less ambitious during those early pandemic days. No new languages, no sourdough starters, just a whole lot of TV binging. No worries, Satow did that too, which is how she realized that there wasn’t really a good option for deaf people to join in on the fun.