MY START-UP:
E-liza Dolls: Dolls that teach young girls ages 5-12 how to code and use hardware
Venture capital backed start-up I launched in 2020
Eliza will fix the gender diversity gap and create
a new generation of women in STEM.
We want to expose young girls to technological concepts and encourage creative thinking through hardware and software, preventing girls from being influenced by generational stereotypes.
We created an 18’’ doll with programmable hardware inside the doll that can be coded over an app. The code is sent over bluetooth to the doll. Children use block style coding to code the doll to build fun projects using sensors!
No product on the market targets the natural interest of girls, combined with technology. Parents have so few options, they feel they need to force their daughters to play with STEM products designed for boys, in order to get their daughters on a STEM path. We believe little girls don’t have to sacrifice their interests in order to play with educational STEM toys.
Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Sergei Brin (founder of Google), and many other technology leaders all started tinkering with computers at a young age. Now girls of today’s generation will too.
The doll is patent pending (Non-provisional utility patent filed 2023)
Investors:
Venture Capital:
AIX Ventures (Pieter Abbeel, Richard Socher, Chris Manning, Anthony Goldbloom)
Coho Deep Tech (Elvis Zhang)
Angel investors:
Rupi Kaur
Pamela Vagata (Pebblebed)
Cory Levy (Z-fellows)
Lucy Hoag (Violet Labs)
Nirav Patel (Framework)
Grants/awards:
Amber Women’s Grant
Jericho Innovation Prize
Team:
David Williams (Hardware engineer)
Brian Eastman (Mechanical engineer)
Lisa Winter (Manufacturing lead)
Adrienne Fong (Social media intern)
Advisors:
Anca Dragan
Rupi Kaur
Jennifer Pisansky
Heather Day
Andrew Brase