In summary

  • Two Swinburne alumni and parents are the founders of Goldee, an AI parenting assistant app

  • Mike Fraser and Verity Tuck have drawn upon their experiences as parents and entrepreneurs to help other parents with their mental load

  • The hands-on experience they got at Swinburne has formed an integral foundation on how they approach running a business 

Two Swinburne alumni, now husband and wife, have drawn on their tech and innovation skills to create Goldee, an AI parenting assistant that is helping Australian parents reduce their mental load. 

When Swinburne alumni Verity Tuck and Mike Fraser became parents, they quickly found themselves overwhelmed by the dozens of emails, hundreds of WhatsApp messages and countless tasks every week required to keep family life afloat. 

“Personally, for me, this led to extreme exhaustion and anxiety and even physical symptoms. It was eating up my precious time and literally making me ill,” Verity says. 

That’s what prompted them to start Goldee, an AI parenting assistant app that lightens the mental load by automating family admin. 

“As people who work in the startup and tech space, we knew there had to be a better way for parents to manage family admin. There are so many tools to help employees with menial tasks in the office, yet none existed for parents,” Mike says

Verity and Mike are no stranger to the ups and downs of start-ups. Prior to Goldee, Verity co-founded same-day flower and gift delivery business, LVLY and Mike is a co-founder of the venture studio Shadowboxer. 

“When you first start a business there will be lots of failures and rejections and hard decisions to make. That fact doesn’t change no matter how experienced you get. The key is to get comfortable being uncomfortable and the hands-on experience you get during your studies can help immensely.”

A Swinburne multimedia student herself back in 2001, Verity found her paid placement experience an incredible insight into the digital world. 

"It was an amazing opportunity to meet new people and learn about what type of paid work there was out there. I am still friends with people from this placement to this day. Swinburne was a great mix of hands-on experience and great theory, which really got me ready to start my career on the front foot,” she reflects. 

Similarly, Mike found the connections to industry made during his studies at Billy Blue, in partnership with Swinburne, immensely valuable. 

“I had great access to teachers, which meant good connections into the industry. One of my favourite classes really helped me get a perspective on designing for purpose and bridging the gap between design and business,” Mike says. 

Goldee is the brainchild of Verity and Mike’s combined experiences as entrepreneurs and parents and was codesigned with parents in mind to create a sense of calm and control from both a functionality and technological perspective. 

Goldee was designed with parents in mind and helps keep everything organised

“Goldee reduces the mental load of family admin by scanning and sorting family-related events, appointments and to-dos from across a multitude of apps and bringing them into one central location,” Mike explains. “Goldee intelligently adds events, tasks and to-dos to calendars for parents and gives them handy reminders so they never miss a beat.” 

Parents can also use Goldee’s ‘Ask Goldee’ function to add to-dos, find out what they need to bring to upcoming events and much more.  

“Time’s our most precious resource, and there’s nothing more precious than time with our kids. With the help of Goldee, we hope that parents can spend more time and energy on what’s most important to them.” 

Find out more about Goldee and try it for free.

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