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SALT LAKE CITY — About a year ago, Kristy Sevy’s now 9-year-old daughter Kenzie became a little more tech-minded.
"She has always had a strong interest in all things STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics),” Sevy said. “She's always been precocious, asked lots of questions.”
She would ask her mom such questions as, 'How does cancer spread? How does an egg split in half? How do you code hot lava in 'Minecraft'? She was asking for things like coding and robotics and things that were just way over my head.”
Sevy had to turn to her phone for answers.
“You should see my Google searches,” she said.
Sevy looked for educational toys which would help satisfy her daughter’s curiosity. She found a Raspberry Pi — not something her grandmother baked — but rather a small computer her daughter could code with.
“We were able to code and figure it out together, and it was fun. It was something we did together,” she said. “I think it built my confidence.”
Sevy, however, had a hard time finding products that were either pretty technical, like the Raspberry Pi, or too dumbed-down.
She vented to her brother, Kyle Muir, an entrepreneur.
“She started just raising ideas,” Muir said.
“I wish there was a toy that was this, this, this and this,” she recalls saying.
Out of that conversation came a startup called Fuze and a toy called a Zubi Flier, an electronic flying disc that kids can code.
Sevy, who studied marriage, family therapy and child development but now takes care of her three daughters, unexpectedly found herself CEO.
“This is not something at all that I ever would've envisioned myself doing,” she said.
She now spends her days intensively multitasking by taking care of her two younger daughters while doing business with her brother and working the phones at her dining room table. They have prototypes and a manufacturer and are trying to arrange funding.
It’s more than a full-time job that Sevy said grew out of her desire to help her daughters be successful.
“Everything I do, I do to help my girls develop autonomy, develop self-worth,” she says.
“Kids aren't getting educated right now on STEM topics,” she said. “Girls do not get the same encouragement that boys get at all. There's actually quite a few studies that show the girls…are pushed out of STEM topics around the age of 10 and my daughter Kenzie (who just turned 9)…that's a scary place.”
Indeed, Kenzie said, “There were a few kids who thought I was really weird because I liked math.” It was other girls, she said, who criticized her.
Still, Kenzie expresses a wide-eyed enthusiasm for all things tech.
“If homework was like engineering, like programming, I'd love it,” she said.
