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How Bdeir arrived at the idea
Bdeir traces her interest in making to 2004, when she encountered the maker movement through Neil Gershenfeld’s “How to Make Almost Anything” course at the MIT Media Lab. She had long enjoyed taking things apart and building things, while looking for ways to connect engineering with social, political, and artistic interests.
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littleBits Electronics Extended Kit | Buy on Amazon |
After graduate school, she worked as a financial-software consultant. Finding that work unsatisfying, she sought a return to creative practice through an Eyebeam fellowship. Her idea was to make electronic components approachable to people without technical backgrounds. The initial littleBits concept was a small experiment created with Jeff Hoefs at Smart Design to help designers prototype with electronics.
Why the early prototypes mattered
In 2009, Bdeir and interactive designer Jie Qi brought handmade littleBits prototypes to Maker Faire. The pieces failed during demonstrations and needed adjustment. But the rough showing put the idea in front of potential users, including children, and Bdeir says their reactions encouraged the team to continue.
#1 Best Overall
- QUICK START WITH INSTANT FEEDBACK: Color-coded electronic blocks make setup and inventing simple, with real-time feedback that encourages experimentation from the first snap
- GUIDED CHALLENGES: Includes open-ended challenges and guided cross-curricular lesson plans that introduce engineering design basics and foster critical thinking
- SCREEN-FREE CREATIVITY: Encourages hands-on learning, giving students valuable learning time sans screens
- VERSATILE AND ADAPTABLE: Modular pieces adapt to various projects and easily integrate across subjects
- COLLABORATIVE LEARNING: Supports teamwork and project-based learning in classroom settings
Visitors suggested possible components such as a light sensor, buzzer, LED matrix, and novelty sensor. In her account, the event’s value was not that the prototype was polished; it was that direct feedback gave the team ideas to test and improve. Bdeir’s practical lesson was: “You have to get your validation where you can.”
From prototype to a company that could ship
Bdeir says littleBits was ready to sell by 2011. She quit her consulting job in June and devoted herself to the company; littleBits formally launched that September at Maker Faire New York. According to the 2019 article, SparkFun made the first Bits, while the magnetic bitSnap connector was made in China.
Getting a factory prototype to work was only one part of delivering a physical product. Bdeir recalls that the company also had to establish quality control, customer support, warehousing, shipping, tax handling, and returns. She summed up the distinction in a line that remains central to her account: “The MVP of a hardware company is a hardware company.” A minimum viable product may demonstrate an idea, but a functioning hardware business must also reliably make, store, deliver, and service it.
What the community gave—and what it required
A few months after launch, Bdeir says she found videos of user projects from countries around the world. She also recalls parents, teachers, and children sharing stories about engagement and inventions. These are her observations and anecdotes, not a controlled study measuring learning or other educational outcomes.
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1Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesHer broader community lesson was reciprocal: “Namely, the best way to be a good community builder is to be a good community contributor.” In practice, that meant participating in the maker, STEM, girls’ empowerment, and entrepreneur communities that she hoped would welcome littleBits. The project ideas and stories users shared also exposed the team to uses it had not anticipated.
Rank #2
- Snap modules easily to 3 inputs and 3 outputs on the Arduino module, as well as additional I/O for advanced hardware interaction
- Communicate with software (Processing, MaxMSP, Flash etc )
- Build with 8 Getting Started sketches, including a DIY Etch-a-Sketch, Mouse Control and hundreds more from Arduino's community!
- Includes everything you need to get started (battery + power included!) right out of the box
- Works seamlessly with the rest of the littleBits library
Designing for a wider invitation to invent
Bdeir says littleBits deliberately used gender-neutral colors and packaging because the company wanted to invite more people into invention. She framed the aim this way: “Creativity is not gendered, curiosity is not gendered, STEAM should not be gendered.” This describes her design rationale, rather than proving that packaging alone changes who participates.
In the 2019 retrospective, Bdeir reported that girls made up 35%–40% of users, a share she said had held consistently over the previous four years. She called that roughly four times the industry average, but the article did not define the comparison dataset or method. Both figures should therefore be understood as claims she made at the time, not as independently established or current statistics.
Growing beyond the early maker audience
Bdeir describes partnerships as a route to audiences beyond early adopters. The 2019 article says littleBits joined the Disney Accelerator in 2016, worked with Disney and Lucasfilm on a Droid Inventor Kit, and had launched a Marvel Avengers Hero Inventor Kit by January 2019. She says the Disney collaboration helped the company reach people who might not otherwise have encountered littleBits.
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Her account emphasizes that a licensed product still needed to preserve the making proposition. She described the Star Wars kit as an invention activity rather than simply a replica toy. The retrospective also reported that the Droid Inventor Kit ranked among Amazon’s top 10 holiday toys, was the number-one Star Wars toy, and was the number-one toy over $50 in Q4 2017. Those are historical rankings reported by Bdeir in 2019, not current rankings or independently verified results.
The article also describes littleBits’ acquisition of DIY.org. These partnerships and organizational events are part of the historical account; they do not establish present-day ownership, partnership, or product availability.
Rank #3
- Snap and play, magnets prevent you from putting things the wrong way
- Play with light, sound, sensing and buttons without wiring, soldering or programming
- Make your own interactive objects, or combine with other construction toys
- Explain to your children the complex notions of electricity, electronics and science in a fun way
- On the littleBits website to see videos and images of what you can make
How a founder’s job changed with the company
Bdeir says she eventually stopped calling herself lead engineer and took the CEO title as the work changed. The shift reflects a broader point in her story: the skills and attention required to start a product are not necessarily the same as those required to grow an organization around it.
In 2019, she reported that littleBits had raised an initial investment round of $850,000, grown to a team of more than 100 people, sold millions of products in more than 150 countries, and built a platform with more than 10 kits and over 70 interoperable Bits. She also reported more than 300 Inventor Clubs. These are figures from Bdeir’s retrospective, not independently verified totals or descriptions of the company today.
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The story’s clearest progression is from making a prototype to building the systems around it, and from seeking an audience to contributing to a community. Bdeir’s account also treats design choices and partnerships as ways to invite more people into invention, while keeping the activity of making at the center.
One user anecdote captures the appeal she hoped to create: an 11-year-old named Vedant described a remote control he built for Lego cars by saying, “My imagination can be real now.” It is a memorable expression of a user’s experience, not evidence of a measured outcome for all users.
The primary source for this history is Ayah Bdeir’s first-person retrospective, “LittleBits Goes Big: Ayah Bdeir Shares History and Lessons Learned,” published by Make: on January 11, 2019. It documents her account and stated lessons; it does not establish present product availability, compatibility, pricing, corporate status, or independently tested educational impact.
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