How We Built Apaya (Because Kokotree Was Driving Us Slightly Mad)

Every startup has a moment where they think, “There has to be a better way.”
Ours came while building our first company: Kokotree.

Kokotree is a fun and thoughtful edtech platform for toddlers and preschoolers. We had adorable animated lessons, a beautiful app, and parents who loved it. What we didn’t have? A sane marketing pipeline.

The Chaos Was Real

Trying to grow Kokotree felt like juggling flaming swords… blindfolded.

• We were writing content in one doc, designing in another, and planning campaigns in Google Sheets
• Scheduling posts across five platforms, manually
• Debating ad copy in Slack threads at midnight
• Wondering if we should hire a marketing agency, a full team, or just cry a little

Sound familiar?

We were doing everything ourselves-content, design, ads, social-and it was exhausting.
That’s when we asked the obvious question:

Why hasn’t anyone built a tool that just... handles this?

The Birth of Apaya

We didn’t find the tool we needed-so we built it.

Apaya started as an internal solution to fix our own mess. We didn't have the time to hire an in-house team, or the budget to hire an external agency. And we certainly didn’t want another clunky tool or AI wrapper that generated generic posts. We wanted something smarter. More useful. Something that actually felt like a marketing team in a box.

So we built our own AI engine, using open-source, and customised it extensively. We added the best parts of tools like LangChain and Qdrant, and trained it on our real-world practical needs of content creation, creative generation, campaign planning, post scheduling, performance tracking, and beyond.

Suddenly, things got... easier.

What Changed for Kokotree

Once Apaya came online, here’s what happened:

• Our organic reach grew every single week
• Content went out consistently-without chaos
• We stopped spending '$$' on agencies and freelancers
• We didn’t have to hire a big team
• We actually enjoyed marketing again (no, really)

It was everything we wished existed when we were starting out. And honestly? We couldn’t believe how much time (and money) we’d been wasting before.

From One Startup to Many

After seeing how well Apaya worked for Kokotree, we knew we couldn’t keep it to ourselves.

We’d built something that could help any founder, marketer, or lean team punch way above their weight. So we turned it into a full platform and opened it up to others.

Today, Apaya helps brands automate their marketing workflows, grow smarter, and avoid the painful “do-it-all-yourself” trap we fell into.

Give It a Go?

If you’ve ever felt the marketing struggle-trying to post everywhere, write everything, and manage ads while also running a business-Apaya is here to help.

It’s not magic. It’s just the tool we wish we had from day one.
Now you can have it too.

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And yes, it works even if you’re not building a toddler education empire.