For Alex Klein, online forums were not an altogether friendly place to get an education in coding. As a kid, he says he would peruse the sites and ask for help where he needed it, only to be met with constant criticism from members of the community.
"People would say, 'You don't know how to do that? What are you like 10 years old?' and I was like 'Yeah. I am,'" Klein remembers.
Klein never felt that there was an easy entry point for a curious kid to get involved in technology, and so, last year, he decided to create one himself. He launched Kano, a kid-focused computer company that not only teaches young people to code but also how to build their own computers. Kano launched on Kickstarter in 2013 and has since sold 40,000 kits to users around the world. Last week, Klein announced the company had raised $15 million in venture funding.
But what is, perhaps more impressive than the fact that 40,000 kids and counting have now built their own computers is what they've managed to do with those computers once they're built. In just four-and-a-half months, some 27,000 kids have published nearly 6 million lines of code on a site called Kano World. It's a place for Kano users to share games they've customized, Minecraft features they've devised, and songs they've written, and turn them into lessons for other Kano users. In that way, Kano World is quickly emerging as a sort of GitHub for kids, a place for them to learn with and from each other.
"For a long time open source has, paradoxically, been one of the most closed communities in the world. It’s the denizen of people who for a long time weren’t that interested in bringing more people into their world," Klein says. "Kano is a friendly layer around this community."
The concept of Kano World as it exists today emerged almost by accident. Initially, Klein says the site was intended to serve as a cloud storage space to make up for the lack of storage on the devices themselves. But as users began uploading their work to Kano World, Klein and his team quickly saw a way to turn each project into another learning experience for kids. Now, when a new project is posted on Kano World, it gets automatically broken down into a series of steps for other kids to follow.
The overarching goal at Kano is to encourage kids to be creators of technology, not just consumers. An important part of turning kids into those creators is ensuring that their creations are celebrated. Kano World makes that possible, but it's not the only way the company is working on giving kids more exposure.
In its latest round of funding, Kano also set aside 1 percent of its undiluted equity to fund its non-profit arm, Kano Academy. Klein says Kano Academy is the company's way of discovering the most promising tech talent within the community and helping them develop their skills. Kano employees will also spend 1 percent of their time working with members of Kano Academy, and the company will donate 1 percent of kits to members who might not otherwise be able to afford the $150 devices. Already, Kano has users from Kosovo to Sierra Leone to Mongolia are using Kano to build and customize technology.
"There are young people, inventors, social entrepreneurs, who often don’t have the tools they need to get started, but often don't get the support they need either," Klein says.
Klein's hope is that by shining a spotlight on what they're creating, Kano can help kids feel empowered to modify and improve upon the technology they use every day. In doing so, he believes, Kano could help discover the great technologists of the next generation.
