Shark Tank US | 'I'm Going To Applaud Watching Cuban And Sacca Fight To Get BitsBox'

Next into the tank is a company hoping to spark the curiosity of our future generations. Hi sharks, my name is Scott Ler and I'm Aiden Chopra and we are from beautiful Boulder, Colorado. Our company is Bitsbox and we are here today seeking $250,000 for 3% of our company. Bitsbox is the world's most creative way to teach kids a skill that will change their lives forever: computer coding. These days it's not enough for kids to just know how to use computers, they need to know the language of computers and that language is called coding. Coding is a golden ticket to a great job and a great future and the best thing is that anybody can learn. The hard part about teaching kids to code isn't getting them interested, it's keeping them interested. That's why Bitsbox is a present that comes in the mail every month. It's a subscription box that teaches real computer programming. So we wanted to show you how it works. So what we did is invite one of our very favorite Bitsboxers, Grace over there, to help us. Now Grace's box just came in the mail and she's super excited. It just so happens that this month there is a Shark Tank app in the box. She goes to the Bitsbox website, she goes into her account, she starts a brand new app and she starts to type in the code exactly as it appears on the card. Now here's the thing: code is just a set of instructions that tells a computer what to do. So if we actually look at the code that she's typed, you can see line one tells the computer to fill the screen with an image of a shark tank, line two tells it to stamp an image of a shark on the screen, and line three says hey when somebody taps that shark I want you to make the shark pop. The Bitsbox approach is to give the kids lots of example projects just like this one that they can build upon and eventually you start making your own stuff from scratch. Now Grace is pretty advanced so she's already gone and created the rest of the challenges in this app and you can say she's made a full video game with animations and sound effects. Mark wins, Grace. So sharks, who wants to help us change the world?

Grace, how old are you?

10.

Were you coding before you did this?

Yes, I was coding Python and some C++.

I mean that's awesome. What do you want to be when you grow up?

I want to be a bionic limb programmer.

A bionic limb programmer, huh? Good as. What makes you want to do that?

Yeah, well because I really loved anatomy when I was little and I actually told my neighbor one time, I brought out my book of diseases to him and I said what's your favorite disease and I said mine's tapeworm.

We had that same conversation at lunch with Kevin. Yeah, all right, tell us about the business.

You bet. So Bitsbox ranges in monthly subscriptions from $20 to $40 a month depending on the options that you choose.

How long do I have to sign up for?

It's up to you. You can start up month to month and cancel at any time or you can sign up for a full year in advance.

What do I get for that price difference?

The $40 level is the full box that has a set of app cards every month. You get a toy that matches the theme, such as a whoopy cushion with code on it, anything else we can think of to keep the kids excited.

What is the ages for this?

Somewhere between 6 and 14.

What does a box cost you to make?

About $10, but that's at printing very very small quantities of paper. It gets much cheaper at scale.

How long have you been doing this and what have your sales been?

We launched the product less than two years ago. Since then we've done 1.3 million in revenue.

You making any money yet?

We're not cash flow positive yet because we have a team of five full-time people, but we are on the road to be cash flow positive this upcoming quarter.

What's your background?

Aiden and I met, we worked at the world's largest internet company, Google. Scott built this as a prototype for his daughter when she was seven. She loved it and a few other kids loved it as well. He decided he was going to quit and you want to recreate it.

Yeah, 80, let's quit. Let's go teach the world's children to code. You had me. It let's quit.

We actually did that. We did that because at the time it was pretty really good.

And did you go out and raise money after that?