It was just a few months ago that Tori Bowman Johnson set out to design a series of illustrated ‘I Spy’ prints.
She had a delightfully simple goal.
Ms Bowman Johnson wanted to create charming, educational artwork for her children’s bedrooms and sell them on Etsy to help kids slow down and observe the world around them.
She never intended to launch a digital media platform. But after sharing early drafts on social media, demand surged, and an unexpected experiment at home shifted her thinking.
Watching her six-year-old son hunt for hidden items such as apples, kookaburras and violins within the artwork, she noticed something compelling: he immediately wanted to write down every object he found.
“I quickly realised that something as simple as an I Spy game was becoming genuinely entertaining while also supporting literacy,” Ms Bowman Johnson told Business News.
“That sparked a much bigger idea. Rather than creating a static print for a wall, what if this was turned into a daily experience families could return to together?”
With that, Alphabet I Spy was born: a free daily web app built to make early learning feel like play.
Today, the puzzle’s user base spans age ranges from four to 93, appealing to children, parents and grandparents alike.
Its concept is similar to Wordle, the addictive five-letter daily word puzzle established in 2021 and acquired by The New York Times a year later. It has an estimated 14 million active daily users.
Everyone can play Alphabet I Spy and everyone solves the exact same puzzle on any given day, creating a shared community and conversation.
Lean efficiency
The startup was self-funded and leaned into the accessible no-code ecosystem combining Canva, Glide, Upwork and Ms Bowman Johnson’s own design skills.
“Building a product is one thing; getting people to discover it is another thing entirely,” she said.
“As a bootstrapped startup, every marketing dollar has to work hard, so creativity became our biggest advantage.”
Without a massive advertising budget, early growth was driven through deliberate public relations, strategic partnerships and organic word-of-mouth.
Part of Alphabet I Spy’s growing retention lies in a critical early product pivot.
The team introduced a ‘reveal’ feature, allowing players to instantly uncover tricky hidden items.
While it looked like a mechanism to let players cheat, it was engineered around the psychological desire for completion.
“Many people don’t want to spend 20 minutes searching for one last object before rushing off to work or school,” Ms Bowman Johnson said.
“By allowing players to reveal the object, anyone can finish the puzzle, record a time, and start their day with a small sense of accomplishment.”
For fellow entrepreneurs navigating the early stage grind, Ms Bowman Johnson offers key takeaways.
• Resist feature creep
Keep the user experience (UX) intuitive. Every additional button adds friction, and friction drives users away. If a user can’t understand the premise in seconds, simplify it.
• Defer native app costs
Launching as a web app keeps capital expenditures low while allowing the startup to study real user interactions before committing heavy capital to app builds.
• Redefine tech interactions
Not all screen time is passive consumption. Digital products can act as shared bridge-builders between generations.
Looking ahead
Running the business during school hours while raising two young sons, Ms Bowman Johnson is taking a deliberate approach to long-term growth.
Over the next three to five years, the objective is to transform Alphabet I Spy into a household brand, ideally by partnering with established media outlets, breakfast brands or educational platforms to integrate the daily puzzle into millions of family morning routines.
In this way, Ms Bowman Johnson has developed a visual Wordle for our times, born in Western Australia.
• Charlie Gunningham has spent 25 years in WA’s startup sector, is on the WA government’s Innovation Advisory Board and is chair of Startup WA
