Five to watch: Yonatan Raz-Fridman and Alex Klein, Kano

Yonatan Raz-Fridman and Alex Klein, 30 and 23
Company: Kano
Web: www.kano.me

With the tech industry in the UK enjoying a sustained and unprecedented boom, tech and coding skills are becoming increasingly valued amongst employers – so a start-up that allows children to build their own computer from scratch is always going to generate a lot of attention. Yonatan Raz-Fridman and Alex Klein’s company Kano uses the Raspberry Pi single-board computer as the basis for its colourful do-it-yourself computer kit. Kano has also released the simplest, most fun OS for Raspberry Pi, as well as illustrated books of computer projects and stories.

The proposition is instantly appealing, and this is reflected in Kano’s wildly successful campaign on crowdfunding website Kickstarter – its pitch raised a whopping $1.5m, making it the most crowdfunded learning invention of all time. Although the £99 kit will only start shipping in September, its Kickstarter pitch has already seen 13,000 pre-orders from backers in 80 countries – including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak – helping to generate an expected turnover of £1m by December. Named as part of our five to watch this year, once the product launches the young duo look set to have all the components in place to assemble their own global giant.