From the Naval Academy to Amazon and the creation of Minno… CEO and Co-Founder Erick Goss has quite a story that led him to developing this ad-free, streaming, video-on-demand platform for kids with shows that spark the wow and wonder of God! Being a trusted resource for families is something he doesn’t take lightly and talked with him about media, Laugh and Grow Bible Series and a possible BCU… yep a Bible Cinematic Universe.
Interviewed for Family Entourage
Family Entourage: I think Minno is a fantastic streaming platform for families, for anybody, and you as CEO and co-founder, start off with the inspiration behind Minno.
Erick Goss: There are a couple of things that led to the creation of Minno. The first would be I became a Christian in college at the Naval Academy, through the discipleship ministry called The Navigators. I recognized discipleship has always been an important part of my life, and then I had a chance when I was a helicopter pilot in the Navy and went to business school, and then ended up working at Amazon six months after they went public. There were only 300 people there, and so a very unique time and space, but I actually worked on a lot of the digital media initiatives at Amazon and really understood what was going to happen in the future.
I helped plant a church in Seattle and then was involved with children’s ministry, and then felt like the Lord called me from Amazon and moved to Nashville, and ended up working with a guy by the name of Phil Vischer, that some people know as the creator of VeggieTales, and helped him with a project called Buck Denver Asks What’s in the Bible, which was a video series to walk kids through the Bible, Genesis to Revelation.
What I recognized when I worked with him is that the DVD model that had previously existed basically was eliminated because of Christian retail going away, and it was going to be virtually near impossible for Christian families to find high-quality Christian kids content, because that DVD model was the only way that actually Christian creatives could make shows for kids and earn money. As I talked to parents, they were like, “Hey, we love What’s in the Bible. Can we find more shows? Where can we find them?”
Then I was also talking to children’s media professionals who were believers, who were telling me, “Hey, I’ve got these great ideas for shows for Christian kids, but no one in the mainstream media will touch them, and who can I go pitch them to?” I was like, “Well, there’s no companies that are making investments in children’s media.” What I recognized is there’s demand, there’s a huge audience that wants to be served, and then there are really super talented people, but we need to bring them together. That really led to the creation of Minno.
The name Minno is actually based on the Greek word for abide… my heart is what can we do to help kids and their parents experience Jesus every day through media and technology. That is really the inspiration of what can we do to really leverage media to help parents have the conversations they desperately want to have with their kids, but don’t really know where to start. One step that was interesting to me is, next to having meals together, the thing that families do the most together is watch media. The idea of using media as a discipleship tool and really helping parents, but also allowing kids to have a Christian imagination, that’s really the emphasis in why we wanted to start Minno.
FE: As you know — I mean not even post-covid, but that has accelerated — the media landscape has just completely changed, to where even the big studios haven’t really figured out how to get to audiences, let alone now the messaging doesn’t align with a lot of what families of faith believe in or want their young children viewing. I love what you’re doing with Minno. Talk to me about how you make sure that the content stays true to that value system, so to speak.
EG: Yeah, so it’s an important question that we spent a lot of time working through. The first is we came up with a statement of faith. What are we committed to? What can we show people we’re committed to? Then the second is when you think about creating content, there’s one sense where it’s like, “Oh, I’m just going to create a show.” When you’re thinking about content for kids, it needs to be really entertaining, but it also needs to be educational. You can find people who are really educational and boring as all get-out, and people who are really entertaining but heretical. You’ve got to figure out, okay, what do we do to get the best of people?
In the mainstream children’s media market, there are a lot of processes that they put in place to actually help both. We have actually developed a 53-point checklist that we use that we take every show through, to make sure that it’s Minno quality. Then we actually do doctrinal review on all our shows, so we actually send them out to seminarians to basically do a review of them, to make sure that no denomination is going to be offended or have problems with what we’re putting up on the platform. Because the real issue for parents is, “Can I trust this?” I mean, in one sense, we’re selling this service to provide children’s media, but what we’re really selling is trust.
The way I look at this is it’s our job to create emotional spa days for parents. When they turn on Minno, they need to be able to be relaxed and chill and not feel like, “Oh, this isn’t a compromise,” but actually feel like we’re helping them do their job. Because I think even with most children’s media, there’s a sense of it filling space so parents have a bit of a break, and you’re like, “I don’t feel good about that.” It’s like you’re hovering over your child’s shoulders, seeing what they’re doing. With Minno, we just wanted people to be able to feel like they could turn it on and know that we have gone to the effort that they would like to go to, to be able to vet everything to make sure that it’s safe and it’s doctrinally sound.
FE: One of those things is with your Laugh and Grow Bible for Kids. That’s your bestselling bible, but then you’ve been able to turn that into episodes, to actually break it down and make it digestible for kids to understand some of these larger topics. I mean, I loved sitting down with my kids and seeing how you broke down, what is sin, these big topics. Maybe talk to me a little bit about how you bring some of the favorite Bible stories to life, but then you’re also able to introduce, or maybe even add some depth to some of these larger concepts.
EG: When I co-founded Minno, one of the things that I thought we had to do is have a children’s Bible, because we really needed to say, “This is what we stand for and this is what we’re committed to.” One of the first products we ever released was the Laugh and Grow Bible for Kids, which is an award-winning children’s Bible. The thing that blew me away coming from Amazon was how many children’s Bibles there were, but there’s no videos supporting those children’s Bibles.
What’s interesting about the Laugh and Grow Bible for Kids is we are literally the only children’s Bible that has animated videos that actually correspond with the stories in the Bible. We are really excited. The most important thing for a Christian family is I want my children to understand God’s big story. I want them to understand who Jesus is and the role He plays in the life of my family, so that was the impetus around the Bible.
Then when we thought about the Bible, a lot of children’s Bibles actually aren’t fun for kids to read. They’re actually made for adults to read with their kids. They’ve got cute pictures, but the text itself is not engaging. Kids’ native language is humor, it’s funny, and we wanted to make sure that we had Bible stories that were funny.
We went out and got Phil Vischer, who created VeggieTales, to basically write some of those stories, but then we wanted to make sure it was useful, so we have family connection moments at the end of every Bible story. Sometimes there’s some tricky topics. It’s like, “How do I talk about this with my kid?” We put that in the Bible, but we’re also bringing that into our video series.
Then most children’s Bibles are like what I call the greatest hits of the Bible. There’s not a sense of how do you weave it all together. We’re one of the most comprehensive children’s Bibles. We have 52 stories, and that’s really weaving the story of God’s redemption plan into each of those stories. Then we’re taking each of those stories in our Laugh and Grow video series. They actually correspond identically with the chapters.
We get stories from parents who get really excited. It’s like, “My child just watched the video and then they went and read the book, and then they went back to watch the video.” It’s really great, because kids are really getting to understand the narrative of the Bible and what God’s plan for them is, through the life of Jesus.
FE: As a parent watching it with your kids, I’m sure there are many parents that would feel too embarrassed at this point to ask a question. “These names are really tough. Why do they have them?” Or, “Okay, so that’s the end of the story,” and you’re like, “No, it still continues. It gets darker, actually.” I appreciated that, because we’re rolling right along with them. I’m excited for a Christmas special that you’re also doing with the franchise.
EG: We’ve got our Laugh and Grow Bible Christmas special that are based on the four stories around the life of Jesus. We’ve taken those four stories and put them together to create a Christmas special for families, and we’re really excited about it. I think it’ll be a great opportunity for parents, because you can read the Christmas story, but you really want compelling. You want kids to get really engaged in it. The Christmas story, there’s one sense where you think about Luke 2, but there’s all this stuff that Luke 2 is a fulfillment of. What’s great about the Christmas story is the team’s done an amazing job of helping kids understand what did the birth of Jesus really mean.
To your point about helping parents understand things. I remember when Tim Tebow … he’s one of our board members … when he first came on board, he’s like, “This Laugh and Grow Bible, it’s really cool,” he goes, “but it’s intense. It’s like we’re teaching kids about the Abrahamic Covenant and these promises God made.” He goes, “It’s awesome.” I think it can be really encouraging. We’ve had parents actually say, “Hey, this is great. I learned a lot from this series.”
FE: Yeah, and you’re just continuing to grow and expand. I love that the animation is on par with anything that we’re seeing across the board. Especially with this new Young David, you’re having some shorts that are dropping, leading up to a full-length movie. Talk to me about that.
EG: Yeah, so about three years ago, we recognized that the hard part about Christian children’s media is, with the exception of VeggieTales, most people don’t think it’s very good. They think it’s kind of mediocre, and we recognized it’s really not due to the talent in the marketplace. There are amazing people, super talented. We met the David team when they were initially thinking about the movie, and we recognize we can’t get involved with a movie because of who we are as a company, but we could do something that’d be a series for kids around the life of young David. Really, how did David as a child become a man after God’s own heart? That was really the impetus of what could we do to actually start working with that team, and we wanted to help that team because we were so excited about the David movie.
We have five shorts on Young David. Each one of them are five to six minutes long, and we’re going to be releasing them over the next five months. We are doing that in partnership with Angel Studios. Angel Studios and Minno just did a partnership deal where we’re working with them both on the Young David episodes, but then also working with them on the feature film that’ll be releasing in 2025. I know the first time that I got exposed to what this team was doing, it was breathtaking to me because, as a guy who’s thinking about Christian children’s media and what can we do to raise the bar in advance, the quality, I felt like these guys were accelerating everything by five to ten years.
When people see it, I think they’ll just recognize, “Wow, I didn’t even know this was possible.” It’s so inspiring to see the life of David on a screen, and inside of what would it mean for a child to actually grow up with the idea that God is present with them and working with them and helping them in their lives every day. That’s the thing I get so motivated about, of kids really catching a vision for that.
FE: I appreciate your doing that, and hopefully it will expand to other favorite characters, that we can learn more about their stories too.
EG: We talk internally. If David can be successful, what we’d like to do is, if people talk about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we want to build out the Biblical Cinematic Universe, the BCU, because we feel like there’s such an opportunity with the quality of the animation and the storytelling to really bring the rest of the Bible to life.
FE: Well, I’m on board with the BCU. I’m on board with Minno. I cannot wait for audiences to get a chance to engage and see all of this, and then also just to see lives change. Thank you so much for providing this for us.
