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Piper Raises $2.1 million to Teach Kids to Code Through Minecraft

There are many ways to build your personal minicomputer. There are a myriad of tutorials in coding that even the most experienced student can use. What can a student with ambition do? Where should teachers begin? How can an edtech businessperson determine what tools are most effective?



Venture capitalists are betting the horse that will win the race is Minecraft, thanks to Piper Kit, a computer that teaches students how to build their own computer, start playing Minecraft and, while doing this, learn to code. Piper, the company behind it, has raised $2.1 million in seed capital from Princeton University, Reach Capital 500 Startups, FoundersXFund, Jaan Tallinn (co-founder of Skype) and Jay Silver (the founder of Makey Makey).



The company, located in San Francisco, was founded in 2014. It is planning to use the funds to fund PiperEDU which is a version of Piper designed for K-12 classrooms. Each regular Piper kit includes a Raspberry Pi 3 microcomputer, an LCD display as well as a powerbank, speaker, and the wooden case that acts as the computer's chassis. Piper Block, the education-friendly version, includes additional components to avoid any accidents in the classroom. Piper has been hiring curriculum developers to create professional development activities that align with Next Generation Science Standards. These will be included in the new product.



PiperEDU is also available at a reduced price. While a standard Piper kit costs $300, PiperEDU will cost $250 when a school buys four units. If that price is too steep teachers can choose to lease Piper kits on a monthly schedule-two for $100 per month. Then, they can apply the money paid in rental fees towards the eventual purchase.



In the past 18 months, the company has seen rapid growth. After finishing the co.lab edugaming accelerator towards the end of 2014, Piper launched a successful Kickstarter and raised $280,000 by the end of April 2015, all while developing the first version of the kit. It sold 1300 units during Kickstarter and 1700 more in the rest of 2015. Mark Pavlyukovskyy, cofounder of Piper is predicting that Piper will ship between 10,000 and 15,000 kits in 2016, particularly due to Christmas being the biggest driver of last year's sales.



Piper began with Pavlyukovskyy's mishaps and educational endeavors. He was in the process of implementing an interactive healthcare program in Ghana in 2012 when he was struck with what doctors believed was cerebral malaria. He was transferred to England. He was in a frenzied state when he realized he could be more effective as a programmer, rather than as an advocate for health issues in the public arena. He was able to recover and he was able to learn programming on his own.



Pavlyukovskyy thought that the next step was to offer the opportunity to children. He thought, "If i can teach myself, why not others!" TLAUNCHER FOR MINECRAFT He tried the idea in India and Ghana using the brand new Raspberry Pi microcontroller but it was too expensive for the developing communities. "Besides I was shipping parts," he said.



He focused his attention on the US and ran into a second obstacle: children wanted to play Minecraft more than they wanted to assemble computers or learn to code. The makers of Raspberry Pi were ahead of him. They had already released Minecraft Pi which is a unique Minecraft server that works with the Raspberry Pi, in the end of 2012.


Website: https://t-launcher.com/