Talking Hands closes seed funding round

The start-up's previous mentors have now joined as business angels.

Various business angels have joined the start-up Talking Hands in a seed financing round. Among them are Axel Springer Consulting Group CEO Christoph Keese, Bitpanda founder and CEO Eric Demuth, Emma Mattress founders Dennis Schmoltzi and Manuel Müller, and Tiana founder and director Ilknur Gur. The business angels previously supported the company as mentors.

Laura Mohn and Maria Möller founded Talking Hands in October 2020 in Frankfurt am Main. The startup has developed flipbooks that teach children basic vocabulary in signs. In this way, Talking Hands wants to facilitate communication between children with and without disabilities and enable more inclusion. The inspiration for the product was Laura Mohn's sister, who has Down syndrome and learned to speak late in life. With the funding from the seed funding, Talking Hands now wants to grow its team, offer more products and expand within the EU.

"I met Laura and Maria about a year ago and am absolutely thrilled and convinced by their work and mission of inclusion in the education system. I am all the more pleased to be able to support them in this now," said investor Eric Demuth.

Last October, the founders presented their start-up on "Die Höhle der Löwen" and received orders from individual lions in the amount of 40,000 euros. After the show aired, Talking Hands said it received so many orders that the flipbooks sold out within a few hours, although the startup also faced criticism.