Driving Girls To Succeed in STEM

We use customizable radio-controlled cars to teach kids about Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). Everybody knows boys love playing with cars but somehow we forgot that girls do too.

The White House has made STEM a national priority yet girls who are excited about science when they are younger start giving up on it as early as middle school. 

Loving STEM but Leaving It

• Women make up just 12% of working engineers
• Outdated stereotypes are keeping girls out of the sciences
• Boys are 5x more likely than girls to want a STEM career
• 1 in 4 high schools don't even offer physics education

Replacing Stereotypes with Skills

• Hands-on science activities boost girls' confidence
• Increasing girls' STEM confidence actually improves their academic achievement
• Extracurricular science makes it 3x as likely girls will stay engaged in STEM fields
• Experts recommend building girls' interest through play, creativity and experimentation

RaceYa is a platform for exploration - with toys that go really fast.

We're starting small with our raceable science kits - and your help

We have battle-tested our car in playgrounds around New York City.  So we know kids love it. Then we tested our combination of cars and curriculum in schools and camps. So we know kids learn from it too.

RaceYa was written up in Forbes,  The Wall Street Journal and AlleyWatch . We were featured on the nationally syndicated PBS show SciTech Now. And we’ve demoed RaceYa for the tech savvy audiences at New York Tech Meetup and the Bloomberg Women's Demo Night.

Team RaceYa

Abigail has a PhD in Anthropology and a lifetime of experience as a maker and tinkerer. After more than 10 years in public policy research she left academia to understand how and why kids play and learn the way they do. Her passion for toys grew out of her observation that toys have the power to shape how kids view their place in the world. Since starting RaceYa she has been sought after as a speaker on education, robotics, and engaging girls in STEM. Her two kids are her chief product testers and toughest critics. 

Geoffrey Quelle studied art and photography at Pratt Institute before spending 15 years working with the Blue Man Group developing their mind-blowing musical instruments, sets and props. In 2007 he co-founded Square Root Studios, which specialized in scenic technology and art fabrication. In 2012 he co-founded Windercase to develop a cell phone case with retractable headphones. Now he's our Head of Product and we're delighted to have his crazy, creative brain on our team.

Our curriculum has been developed by professional science educators with years of experience working with kids. And our prototypes are being developed by an incredible team of product designers in downtown New York City.

We have advisors from the worlds of toys, hardware manufacturing, software development and eCommerce.   

Learning Though Hands-On Play

Not homework pretending to be a toy

Too many educational toys expect kids to do a complicated building process but aren't much fun to play with after that. 

Typical STEM apps and app-controlled toys don't help parents cut down on screen time (or reclaim our phones!)

And sure, there are other STEM toys “for girls” but by the time they're 10, our girls want real power, not just flower power. 

RaceYa works straight out of the box. But that's just the start.

RaceYa is more than a toy

It's a combination of the car, the curriculum and the community. 

The ultimate vehicles for STEM. 

Cars are the perfect blend of artistry and science. We designed the RaceYa car to be fun, fast, accessible, educational and endlessly customizable. 

When you change your car’s performance to navigate new terrain or fly over a daredevil jump, you are working with physics concepts like friction, torque and aerodynamics.  

When you change how your car looks you’re playing with art and personality and joy. 

According to the Girl Scouts' influential report on STEM, teen and tween girls want:

• To understand how things work
• To solve puzzles and problems
• To do hands-on science

Girls today are Girls Who Code

Our Arduino -powered programmable circuit board will let you turn your car into a hackable, raceable robot. We chose Arduino because it is an open-source product and connects RaceYa kids to the creativity of the growing open-source hardware community.

The RaceYa curriculum mimics the way kids play

It’s not a "lesson plan".

Like a choose-your-own adventure book for science. 

User Testing the Draft Curriculum

Focusing on 6 key areas, our engineering challenges are designed to unlock RaceYa kids’ natural creativity and problem-solving skills. We'll start by including a booklet of challenges with the kits but we are exploring more digital possibilities for the future. 

We’ve worked with highly experienced science educators to develop our curriculum, which follows the New Generation Science Standards. 

Curated STEM Content to Keep Kids Learning

When we say that we’re more than just a toy, it’s because our goal is to build a community of curious kids who help one another learn and create.

There are loads of great science videos on the web, but how do you find what’s good and age appropriate?

We’re curating the best content from around the web so kids can take their learning deeper and parents can be confident they are in a safe, moderated environment.

Kids can customize their cars right away from the materials in the kit but we are working on building a 3D printing platform that will allow them to design, produce and share with the community.

 

A $4 Billion Dollar Market

Of the $25 billion US toy market, building sets, youth electronics and vehicles make up approximately $4 billion. RaceYa, cutting across these categories, is poised to capture a sizable portion of this market.

Our initial target market is girls, but fun, fast cars appeal to all kids, particularly in our core market between the ages of 8-12.

The RaceYa kid likes to create, deconstruct and ask questions.

RaceYa parents are tech-savvy and design-conscious. They want their kids to have meaningful play experiences.

STEM Toys are a Key Trend according to the Toy Industry Association

‘Educational toys are “STEAMing” ahead, and toys that teach or reinforce Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math (STEAM) continue to be top contenders in the toy market. Parents and educators appreciate these toys because they help prep kids for school by building important spatial, reasoning, critical thinking and problem-solving skills.’

Abigail's anthropologist roots mean we've done lots of testing 'in the field' - so we've brought the cars to playgrounds around NYC just to see what kids would do with them, and to ask what they thought kids should be able to do with them. 

We've tested the combination of the cars and our full teacher-lead curriculum with kids at two summer science-camps. And we've tested the do-it-yourself design challenges at the Brooklyn Free School. 

Everywhere we've gone parents have asked "Can I buy one now?!  My son/daughter/niece/nephew/grandkid/godkid/friend's kid would LOVE this!"

Now we need to get it to market – and that’s where you come in.

Our Next Steps

We need to raise $70,000

Your investment in RaceYa will allow us to:

• Complete our third-generation round of prototypes
• Build out RaceYa.com as a customer acquisition channel
• Refine the RaceYa curriculum

If we exceed our goal, our plan is to:

• Accelerate our product development
• Expand the RaceYa curriculum
• Test marketing channels

Thank You! We are very excited to have you join us!