Nate MacDonald and John Schuster spent more than a decade in schools looking to teach students some basic principles of circuitry and engineering — but realized that just giving them a battery and a motor and saying “go” wasn’t enough. So the two have started Tenka Labs, a new company that designs small blocks that operate as parts of circuits that they can connect to LEGO bricks. There are three units: a battery, a motor and a light, all of which can be connected to build creations like cars — and even a creepy moving stuffed rabbit that MacDonald showed me — in an attempt to teach kids some of the early principles of engineering. The company has raised $2.1 million in seed financing for its launch. “Students we were teaching about basic circuitry didn’t really understand basic circuitry,” co-founder Nate MacDonald said. “When you got to people soldering, they were just blindly soldering. We wanted to find a product that would help teach them basic circuitry.
Eventually as it progressed we kind of had a product. We didn’t want to just go after the teachers, we wanted it to be available for all kids and parents. We took that big concept of the block and two nails and brought it down to this size.” The blocks operate exactly like you’d expect with units of a circuit — connecting them in sequence gets a different result than connecting them in parallel. They have small pylons on the corners that automatically snap to other units to create a circuit. For now, the company is focusing on those three elements, but it’s natural that some other basic parts would come down the line (like a resister, for example). The idea here is that Tenka Labs wants to catch students and give them a better foundation before they graduate to something more sophisticated like a protoboard and start building more advanced circuits. MacDonald wants to target both teachers and classrooms — which will likely get some kind of bulk discount — in addition to just parents.
For now, everything is sold in kits, like one that uses all three to create a car. The kits retail at around $60. Each is designed to be just the size of LEGO blocks and snap into various creations beyond the kits that they’re offering. The kits are available for reservation and pre-order right now. “Kids are familiar with it, they’re comfortable with it,” MacDonald said. “Every kid has a pile of LEGOs.” Schuster also said that the company isn’t necessarily looking to compete against what he calls “screen time,” when a kid might be playing with a smartphone or tablet. But there has to be a place in the day where they’re away from screens and using their imagination to build things, he said. “We know that we’re not against screen time, I’m not opposed, but there’s a balance,” Schuster said. “But we think with the maker movement there’s a drive toward tactile play, and being able to make mistakes. The awesome thing about making creativity, you’re gonna have 6 kids building 6 different things.”
Tenka Labs is, of course, not alone in trying to build these sort of early engineering training products. There are other companies like LittleBits building similar tools to teach STEM basics to students before they start graduating to more advanced concepts, and that company raised $44.2 million in June on 2015. Schuster wasn’t shy to say that there will definitely be competition going forward, and now the company’s next step is to show off the units at the New York Toy Fair to get things started. “We want it to be analog, we want this to be something the kids need to learn the basics before they go to a digital product,” Schuster said. “They need to understand motor and gears. We integrate with the most common building block so we can build in three dimensions. We work with kids enough to know that you have to really ramp up the play factor. We want to help them go on this adventure. It’s not, say, ‘hey we’re gonna learn about circuits, you each have to build a car.'”
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In third place, "John Wick: Chapter Two" earned $30.4 million — more than double what the first film made in its opening weekend. The thriller "Split" and the NASA drama "Hidden Figures," both holdovers, rounded out the top five. The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters Friday through Sunday, followed by distribution studio, gross, number of theater locations, average receipts per location, total gross and number of weeks in release, as compiled Monday by comScore: 1. "The Lego Batman Movie," Warner Bros., $53,003,468, 4,088 locations, $12,966 average, $53,003,468, 1 week. 2. "Fifty Shades Darker," Universal, $46,607,250, 3,710 locations, $12,563 average, $46,607,250, 1 week. 3. "John Wick: Chapter Two," Lionsgate, $30,436,123, 3,113 locations, $9,777 average, $30,436,123, 1 week. 4. "Split," Universal, $9,525,935, 2,961 locations, $3,217 average, $112,498,205, 4 weeks. 5. "Hidden Figures," 20th Century Fox, $8,002,670, 2,667 locations, $3,001 average, $131,454,920, 8 weeks.
6. "A Dog's Purpose," Universal, $7,271,430, 3,025 locations, $2,404 average, $42,501,105, 3 weeks. 7. "Rings," Paramount, $5,649,575, 2,931 locations, $1,928 average, $21,321,861, 2 weeks. 8. "La La Land," Lionsgate, $4,943,811, 2,065 locations, $2,394 average, $125,954,156, 10 weeks. 9. "Lion," The Weinstein Company, $3,950,610, 1,337 locations, $2,955 average, $30,236,332, 12 weeks. 10. "Sing," Universal, $1,703,625, 1,479 locations, $1,152 average, $265,408,620, 8 weeks. 11. "The Space Between Us," STX Entertainment, $1,686,364, 2,758 locations, $611 average, $6,511,522, 2 weeks. 12. "xXx: The Return Of Xander Cage," Paramount, $1,514,592, 1,178 locations, $1,286 average, $43,126,640, 4 weeks. 13. "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story," Disney, $1,495,988, 929 locations, $1,610 average, $527,162,956, 9 weeks. 14. "Resident Evil: The Final Chapter," Sony, $1,386,438, 1,213 locations, $1,143 average, $25,251,868, 3 weeks. 15. "I Am Not Your Negro," Magnolia Pictures, $820,831, 115 locations, $7,138 average, $1,839,871, 2 weeks.
16. "Jolly LLB 2," Fox International Productions, $774,355, 173 locations, $4,476 average, $774,355, 1 week. 17. "Moana," Disney, $734,927, 461 locations, $1,594 average, $243,189,793, 12 weeks. 18. "The Founder," The Weinstein Company, $723,998, 454 locations, $1,595 average, $11,205,243, 4 weeks. 19. "Fences," Paramount, $723,054, 454 locations, $1,593 average, $53,943,781, 9 weeks. 20. "Manchester By The Sea," Roadside Attractions, $702,053, 454 locations, $1,546 average, $45,102,041, 13 weeks. Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by 21st Century Fox; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn;