Press Release - The Launch of Mime Industries
Mime Industries enables people to learn through play and exploration of technology. Their groundbreaking build-it-yourself kits have inspired children and adults to break through their own barriers and learn to build and code whilst having fun. Their products are simple to build and can be easily understood. Meaning you can use them to learn and play, adding your own imagination to make something great.
All Mime Industries products are fully Open Source. This means that as well as providing the physical and computational parts you need to build them we provide all of the design and production files you need to reproduce them. It also means that people all over the world can build them from just the plans! They believe by sharing their ideas freely you can learn more from the products, and they can learn more from you!
History
Mime Industries was formed from two independent companies. Mirobot and MeArm Robotics. Both had great success with their own laser cut, open source robot kits, but their founders Ben Pirt and Benjamin Gray thought that together they’d have a better chance of taking over the world!
Ben Pirt has been working as a CTO in startups since 2002 when he founded the energy monitoring hardware company Onzo. Since then he’s worked on platforms for the Internet of Things (Pachube / Xively) and on renewable technologies for the developing world. After creating Mirobot in his spare time for his two kids he decided to shift it up a gear and make it a product others could use. Two successful Kickstarters later and Mirobot is being used in over 50 countries around the world to help kids learn about technology, coding and engineering.
Benjamin Gray has been around the Maker scene since 2003 when he founded Phenoptix, an online purveyor of fine electronic goods. Since then he’s completed a PhD in Theoretical Chemistry, attended Oktoberfest five times, run a couple of marathons and fathered three wonderful children. Also over a few days in 2014, with the help of a friend, he stumbled on the viral success of the MeArm which went on to raise nearly £25k on Kickstarter.