I wanted to 'disrupt the pink aisle'

I created GoldieBlox to be a toy and media company to disrupt the pink aisle and inspire future generations of female engineers.

I grew up in a small Rhode Island town and my parents' dream was for me to grow up and become an actress. My parents never bought me Legos or Lincoln Logs — being an engineer wasn't something I ever considered as a little girl. As a kid, I switched between wanting to be a lawyer or an artist when I grew up. It wasn't until my high school math teacher suggested I give engineering a try that I even considered it as a potential career. During my freshman year at Stanford, I fell in love with engineering.

I created GoldieBlox so that little girls can grow up with the toys and role models I wish I'd had.

As a student at Stanford, I was always bothered by how few women were in my mechanical engineering program. After I graduated, I made it my mission to tackle the gender gap in science, technology, math and engineering. I spent a year studying how girls learn best, researching gender differences, talking with neuroscientists and observing children's play patterns. I read books about the female brain, met with science and math elementary school teachers and nonprofit educators who were doing programs to get kids interested in STEM.

From my research, I developed GoldieBlox, a series of interactive books and construction toys to leverage girls' advanced verbal skills to help develop and build self confidence in their spatial skills. The star of the books is Goldie, a curious girl with a love of engineering. As she goes on adventures with her friends, she comes across problems that she must solve by building simple machines. As the story unfolds, the girls get to build what Goldie builds, developing the spatial and problem-solving skills that are fundamental to engineering.

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When I first began prototyping Goldie and building the GoldieBlox business, the toy industry wasn't receptive. Everyone I spoke to told me even though it was a noble cause, it would never go mainstream and it wouldn't sell because boys like building and girls like dolls — and that you can't fight nature.

I self-funded GoldieBlox for the first 9 months with my own life savings. Then, I raised a seed round from friends, family and angel investors using the videos I took of kids enjoying my prototypes. After that, I began to approach toy-store owners and industry veterans for advice, but they all rejected the idea, saying "construction toys for girls don't sell."

Source: GoldieBlox

Debbie Sterling, the founder of GoldieBlox, and “Goldie” on a zipline made with GoldieBlox.

So, I turned to Kickstarter to crowdfund our first production run. I reached my goal of raising $150,000 in only 4 days. The Kickstarter video went viral and in only 3 months, I had raised almost $1 million in pre-orders for GoldieBlox.

In 2014, we won Intuit's "Small Business Big Game" promotion, which gave us a 30-second ad in the Super Bowl. One hundred million people saw GoldieBlox's message about empowering girls. It was incredible and incredibly validating that America voted for us and wanted us for their daughters. Immediately after the ad aired, the traffic on our website jumped and we've been able to turn that excitement into something greater for the company.

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Getting over that conventional wisdom of "construction toys are only for boys" was a huge barrier at first and still continues to be a barrier. Construction toys are notorious for developing the spatial skills needed to excel in engineering and yet they are also notorious for being a part of the "boys club."

With GoldieBlox, we're creating stories with characters that break the stereotypes that toys for girls have to be about beauty, fashion and being a princess. Getting the word out about why it is important that girls get interested in STEM subjects is key.

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Commentary by Debbie Sterling, the founder and CEO of GoldieBlox, a company that makes building-block-like toys aimed at girls. After graduating from Stanford with a degree in mechanical engineering and product design, Sterling was bothered by how few women were in her program and became obsessed with "disrupting the pink aisle" with a toy that would introduce girls to the joy of engineering at a young age. Follow her and her company on Twitter @debbieblox and @goldieblox.

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