Sci/Tech Kano Ships Its First 18,000 Learn-To-Code Computer Kits, Fueled By $1.5M Kickstarter

[The Helper]

Kano Computing, a startup that plays in the learn to code space by adding a step-by-step hand-holding layer atop the Raspberry Pi single-board microcomputer to make hacking around with code and learning about computational thinking child’s play, has shipped all the hardware kits in its first batch of crowdfunded orders and pre-orders.

That’s around 18,000 kits in all, co-founder Alex Klein confirmed to TechCrunch. “They are all in the wild, they are out of our hands. About 1,000 have arrived already — the early bird kits. And the rest, the general release, will be arriving [shortly],” he said late last week.

The company revealed it has also taken on a new senior hire, bringing in Thomas Enraght-Moony, former CEO of Match.com, as COO. Enraght-Moony will be managing sales and marketing as Kano seeks to scale globally. “He has a deep understanding of how, not only to make physical products but also to finance it — which it quick tricky for any new business, especially a business that is making a product with so many different components and so much complexity driving towards an end goal of simplicity,” said Alex.

“Because we’re a physical product and people pre-ordered it, that was enough working capital to fulfill the first pre-order of 18,000. What Tom is going to help us put in place is, hopefully, a mixed equity debt model for the future, for Christmas season.”

Read the whole story here: http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/27/kano-ships/?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000591

 

[FireCat]

Nah, that doesn't sounds so great !

 

[The Helper]

If I only have had one of these when I was a kid who knows what I would have done. I was lucky to be one of the only kids in the World with a Home computer in the house - a PDP11 with a floppy disk drive the size of an old school Vinyl Record and Basic was the language I could use. I could only use it at night when my dad was not working. With one of these Kano bad boys I could have went to the moon I think the PDP had like 256K Ram or something. Big as a washing machine.

 

[Accname]

If I only have had one of these when I was a kid who knows what I would have done. I was lucky to be one of the only kids in the World with a Home computer in the house - a PDP11 with a floppy disk drive the size of an old school Vinyl Record and Basic was the language I could use. I could only use it at night when my dad was not working. With one of these Kano bad boys I could have went to the moon I think the PDP had like 256K Ram or something. Big as a washing machine.

If you had one of these when you were a kid you would have been abducted by the government because you had technology 1000 times better then their own although you were only a kid.



But on a more serious note, the idea sounds promising, but it all depends on the execution.

 

[The Helper]

I like it because it exposes the hardware. It has been so long since I have had a hardware layer to play with. I am so stuck Microsoft API's I almost have forgotten what interrupts and such are. My first programming language outside of Basic when I was a kid was 8088 Assembler and that was fun!