New-York based littleBits pioneer of electronic building blocks that enable kids all over the world to turn their ideas into inventions, announced this week their acquisition of DIY Co., the largest online learning community for kids. With this step littleBits shifts from being a hardware company to becoming a technology company that combines hardware, content streaming, and an online community, empowering kids to learn and be the future’s agent of change.
The littleBits platform tallies over 1 million electronic building block kits sold, reaching 70 countries and more than 20,000 schools. Founded in 2011 by Ayah Bdeir, an engineer, interactive artist and alumna of the MIT Media Lab, littleBits garnered great visibility through Bdeir’s Ted talk entitled, “Building Blocks that Blink, Beep and Teach” that had more than one million views.
DIY Co. was co-founded by serial entrepreneur and Kleiner Perkins Design Fellow Zach Klein, also a co-founder of Vimeo. The free, kid-only community boasts more than 1.5 million projects uploaded by kids in subjects such as astronomy, pizza making, and woodworking. littleBits gains a treasure trove of digital educational content for its community of kid inventors –extending the company’s reach from educational toys ($80 billion market) and edtech ($60 billion market) to the $36 billion informal learning market.
“Kids are using littleBits to create their own sibling alarms, program wireless robots, and learn math, grammar or design thinking at school,” says littleBits CEO and founder Ayah Bdeir in a press statement. “But learning is a journey: hardware is just the start, and new inspiration and skills have to be added all the time. DIY Co. is an important piece of littleBits’ ongoing engagement strategy, ensuring that kids are having fun and expanding their creative skills throughout their journey.”
The first offering leveraging both companies’ strengths is a series of online courses based on three new STEAM kits launching in the Fall of 2018. The kits inspire kids to learn and share their designs with other kids.
The acquisition officially closed on July 24th, 2018. As part of the acquisition, DIY Co. investors like Spark Capital, Kleiner Perkins, and Learn Capital are now part of the littleBits roster going forward.
