Kodable

Software is eating our world. Technological advances are moving at such a quick pace that the future our children will live in will be completely unrecognizable. Think about it - the phone in your pocket has more computing power than the space shuttle that went to the moon. But there’s a problem with this future. We aren’t preparing our children for it.

The key to their success is going to be their ability to harness and control this technology. With Kodable, we prepare kids for this future before they can even read. In the past six years, after working with 20 million teachers, parents, and students, we’ve created the best way for kids to learn about computer science. Through engaging activities, a complete grab-and-go curriculum for educators, and an immersive virtual world, we provide everything needed for our children to succeed in the future that awaits them.

The world is in desperate need of more computer programmers. But even more importantly, the children of today are going to grow up in a world filled with computers and jobs that require the ability to use and control them. Their ability is going to be crucial to their success. However, this isn't a skill that can be easily learned later in life - it must be done from an early age, when a child's brain is still learning how to think.

Traditionally, this type of computer science education hasn't been accessible to most children, especially kids from minority and at risk communities. Most students will only get the chance to learn about CS at school, However many schools don’t teach it. The lack of access is visible in today’s STEM graduate numbers. Currently, only 1 out of 7 engineers are women, and minority students make up less than 18% of STEM graduates. The number of schools teaching CS has grown from 10% to 35% in the past 5 years, but they’re starting too late. 

Learning about computer science early in life increases the likelihood that a student will succeed in a STEM field, making them more likely to continue. 

We want to reach every child in the world - giving them an accessible, easy-to-understand way to learn about computer science. We believe that they can use these skills to succeed in life and ultimately better the lives of those around them. Technology gives kids a unique power to create insane amounts of value with essentially zero resources. We take great pains to make our product accessible on as many devices as possible, and Kodable runs on any modern computer. Kodable requires no understanding of written text or a specific language, and to date has been used by kids in 190+ countries around the world.

Kodable teaches kids the fundamentals of computer science - logical thinking and problem solving - from the age of 4. In fact, kids as young as 18 months old have used and enjoyed Kodable! 

Kodable is designed to touch every part of a child’s life from their home to their classroom. We’ve developed a complete, scaffolded curriculum that teachers can use with their students without any previous computer science knowledge. They have everything they need, from scripted lesson plans, to a full scope and sequence, and even “unplugged” lessons that require no computer to use. In fact, two thirds of Kodable’s curriculum can be used without access to a computer at all.

In addition to the curriculum for teachers, Kodable includes a game for kids to play at home and at school. Filled with fuzzy characters that kids absolutely adore, we’ve created an entire universe that not only draws kids in, but makes them eager to explore. Accessible on virtually any modern device, Kodable guides kids through logical puzzles and challenges them with new concepts as they grow. Over time, kids are taken from learning how to think like a programmer in pre-k and kindergarten, to gradually transitioning to reading and writing code. 

Learning about computer science early in life increases the likelihood that a student will continue and, more importantly, succeed in a STEM field. Kodable aims to increase the opportunity for all kids to have a bright future in the digital age by giving them an equal opportunity to learn about computer science at a very young age. With Kodable, we help put all students on a level playing field for the rest of their educational careers.

We start teaching kids to code before they can read. There is a lot of published research indicating that your brain stops learning how to "think" at a very young age. What most people don't realize about coding is that it isn't just about memorizing commands and syntax, it is about being able to think logically, to identify and break down problems into multiple steps, and to be able to think in terms of "if this, then that." That sort of thinking is very difficult at an older age if you never learned to do it from a young one.

Another benefit of starting to teach kids at such an early age is that we reach them before "gender norms" begin to affect their decisions and interests. There is a well-known gender disparity in most STEM fields, and by giving all kids the opportunity to learn to code at an early age we can level the playing field. Giving girls the chance to cultivate their love for technology can end the gendered stereotypes within the tech sector. If all kids learn to code, it's something everyone does, not just boys or nerds. Technology can become something for everyone, giving all kids a medium for self expression and creativity.

Kodable has two parts - a fun and engaging game for students and a companion curriculum for the classroom, complete with lesson plans, scope and sequence, teacher reference guides, and more. These are designed to work in conjunction with each other, giving students a combination of on-screen practice, off-screen instruction from the teacher (we even provide scripted lesson plans developed by our team of former elementary school teachers), and unplugged activities that give every child a well-rounded introduction to computer science.

Our game has been developed through years of hands-on work with thousands of kids across the country. We've even built an entire kid-friendly development environment from the ground up that allows kids of any age to write real code to build their very own games, characters, and more. 

A common problem in teaching computer science is the "cliff" that inevitably comes when transitioning kids from symbol-based to written code. This is where most children get frustrated and ultimately lose interest. By starting so young, we can transition kids gradually from learning to think like a programmer to actually writing real code, removing a lot of the "gotcha's" in programming that aren't necessarily important at such a young age. 

Kodable was born with a strong educational foundation. Our founder Jon’s experience teaching himself to code led us to understand the importance of a pedagogically sound curriculum. Our first employee was a former teacher, and she played an integral part in the writing of all of our instructional materials. 

From day one, teacher feedback has been extremely important to us. We’ve tested Kodable hands-on in hundreds of classrooms with thousands of students, to develop a product that kids and teachers love.  In internal surveys, teachers overwhelmingly stated they see improvement in students’ problem solving and critical thinking skills, creativity, collaboration, and resilience after using Kodable. In fact, over 60% of teachers that use Kodable just once with their students are still using it a year later.

We’ve embraced our role as a leader in the early childhood CS Education community, and in 2017 formed a group of independent educators and computer science instructors to write a set of standards to quantify student achievement in Computer Science. The Computer Science Standards are free to use for any school or district. They don’t require the use of Kodable, but we have also mapped our entire curriculum to them. Additionally, we have mapped our curriculum to other well-respected educational standards including the CSTA standards and the Common Core.

Finally, we’ve taken great pains to make Kodable as accessible as possible. It runs on any modern computer, and because of this it has been used in over 190 countries around the world.

Kodable has reached roughly 20 million people to date including students, parents, and teachers, and over half of them in the past 18 months. We currently reach students in over 190 countries world wide, due to our text free interface. 

In the United States, our user base reflects the population’s demographics with equal representation in urban and rural communities as well as both public and private schools. We’re thrilled that Kodable also appeals to both genders and has equal numbers of girls and boys using it. 

By summer 2020 we'd like to double the number of teachers, students, and parents to 40 million.  And In five years we'd like to reach over 100 million people around the world.

Over the next year we would like to round out our CS product with a focus on creativity and sharing student achievement with the family. Additionally we would like to use machine learning to offer challenges that adapt to a child’s current ability, making Kodable even more engaging by offering challenges as a developmentally appropriate level.  

Kodable is already a trusted name in elementary schools; we have a large number of teachers and students using our product to teach computer science, giving us a direct channel to expand into other areas of STEM. We believe that most jobs in the future will be in STEM-related fields, especially as automation increasingly takes over. Over the next five years, we would create a single platform solution for 21st century skills. Using our established model of game design married with exceptional instructional design, we would offer teachers and parents a simple and effective way to teach their children about science, engineering, and math foundations. 

While we did raise venture capital in the past (most recently 2015), Kodable has been largely bootstrapped for the past few years, growing solely on our own profits. Funding is always a concern for us, and we have to strike a balance between building a stable business and investing in our own growth.

On a larger scale, access to funding for computer science is, and most likely will continue to be, a major concern for the foreseeable future. While incredible strides have been made since Kodable started in 2012, computer science education is still not mandated in most districts and states, and the ones that do often provide little-to-no funding. Jon's home state of Rhode Island was one of the frontrunners in computer science education policy, but allocated only $500k in total support for the entire state.

We have already actively moved to address both of these problems with our new Kodable for Parents product, which utilizes our broad reach in schools to access parents. Kodable for Parents is a direct-to-consumer sale, avoiding the bureaucracy and funding pitfalls of selling in to education. In only six months since we released Kodable for Parents, we’ve doubled our total ARR from the previous five years selling to schools.

By increasing our reach in schools, but not relying on them for revenue, we will be able to offer more resources for free to teachers without them having to worry about navigating the budgeting cycle to use Kodable, further decreasing the barriers to using Kodable in their classrooms. Teachers love Kodable so much, that often they are more than happy to tell parents about us, and kids go home eager for more. This excitement ultimately gives us access to more parents, allowing us to increase our revenue even further. Every teacher that uses and loves Kodable in their classroom is a renewable supply of children and parents that could become Kodable for Parents subscribers.

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8 full-time staff

Jon started learning to code when he was six, teaching himself in MS-DOS on an old laptop. He eventually moved away from coding, focusing on sports instead, and never took a formal class in CS. In college, he wanted to start a company, but realized he didn't want to rely on someone else to build his dream for him. Changing his major would have required two more years of school, so he decided to teach himself to code. He was able to learn incredibly quickly because he had learned how to think like a programmer as a kid.

Grechen is an incredibly talented product designer that never learned computer science in school, and it was one of the best things that happened to Kodable. One of the biggest problems with most existing computer science education tools is that the product designers are usually programmers themselves - they don't understand what it's like *not* to know how to code. Grechen is able to take her "non-programmer" understanding of computer science topics and translate them into relatable, accessible games for kids and easy to understand lessons for teachers.

Kodable has an extraordinary team of individuals that aren't just looking for a paycheck, but believe in our mission. We have two former teachers, including a Harvard graduate with experience at their Creative Computer Lab, a senior designer with twenty years of experience designing games for children, and a development team with decades of experience at places such as EA and Google.

We have a great relationship with the nonprofit Code.org. We are one of their featured tutorial partners for the Hour of Code and recommended 3rd party curriculum providers. We also have a partnership with Wonder Workshop, a company that builds robots that help kids learn to code.

Kodable utilizes its extensive reach in schools as a trusted marketing channel to parents, who we sell our Kodable for Parents product. Now having been used in over 50% of US Elementary Schools, we have direct access to the most trusted educator in a child's life outside of their own parents. A recommendation from a child's teacher on a product to use is worth more than any ad you can buy, and because we've spent so much time building a product that teachers love that recommendation is given willingly and with gusto. 

We're already financially sustainable. Kodable has been profitable for the past two years and have been funding our 100% YoY revenue growth solely off of our own profits. We employ a pretty traditional SaaS model - selling a subscription for access to our product.

MIT developed Scratch, which has been and continues to be the de-facto standard in kid's programming languages. They're also at the cutting edge of technology and have relationships with almost all of the major technology companies who have initiatives of their own to increase access to computer science education. The benefits there from a partnership standpoint are both vast and pretty self-explanatory.

Furthermore, the exposure that Solve can provide would be instrumental in our mission to reach the next 80 million people around the world. We've always been a product-focused company, and have increasingly been looking for more help when it comes to the marketing side of things.

Finally, we've been more or less bootstrapped for the past four years, and while we take great pains to make good financial decisions, money is always tight. We're a team of eight serving 20 million worldwide. The funding that Solve provides would help us expand and improve our product quicker, without having to rely on outside investors and venture capital - which can come with a number of strings that don't always align with the goals of education. 

We want to utilize machine learning to create a truly differentiated instructional model for kids. There’s no one size fits all learning tool because every child learns at a different pace. Our goal is to make Kodable an adaptive learning platform that is able to dynamically judge a child’s ability and provide challenges for them at their level. We’ve built all of our games with this in mind, but it is only recently that technology has caught up to our ambitions. This is an understandably difficult undertaking, and we would utilize this funding to not only build this feature, but enable an ongoing monitoring and refinement of it - making it an integral part of what Kodable offers so that we can better reach every child.

Kodable has been built from day one to appeal equally to boys and girls. Jon and Grechen are a 50/50 male and female founding team that believe that computer science shouldn't be something "just for guys." Jon grew up surrounded by empowered, successful women, including his mother and entrepreneurship professor. His only "real" job before Kodable was as a programmer on a team of all men, and he saw the problems with that from the very beginning. Grechen was fortunate to attend a high school that offered a programming class, despite her interest in web design, she chose not to take it because she didn't want to be the only girl in the class. 

We believe this is a problem that starts from a very early age, when boys are encouraged to play with blocks and girls with dolls. By reaching kids before these "gender norms" are able to really take hold, we can give them the opportunity to take a different route. Kindergarteners don't know what they're "supposed" to do, only what they want to do. One of our greatest achievements with Kodable has been that our user's gender ratio mirrors that of the general population - girls love us just as much as boys! 

Kodable has the anonymized data of more children learning about computer science than all but a handful of organizations in the world. This is so incredibly powerful, but until now we have lacked the resources to truly access, interpret, and capitalize on it. We want to use this data to revolutionize how we teach computer science utilizing adaptive lessons for kids. We know when and where students can get “stuck” learning computer science, as well as the best times to reward, incentivize, and encourage students. We just need the ability to unlock that data, which is what this prize would give us the resources to do.

Unlike organizations like Facebook that store personal information, all of our data has been anonymized and COPPA-compliant from the very beginning, which means it can only be used to improve our product. We have never, and will never, store any personally-identifiable information of students, which ensures ethical data storage and use.