Stick ‘Em is the Hult Prize 2025 Winner.
But behind the fireworks and glory are 5 years of blood, sweat and tears.
Read our story below 👇
We grew up as builders, tinkerers and innovators. From robots to air cannons to flamethrowers, we spent our childhoods building all sorts of crazy things.
Growing up in the Singapore education system, we always had access to well funded public schools with great teachers and resources.
After graduating from secondary school, we quickly realised that the current ways STEAM education is being taught were not really developing future problem solvers.
Instead, it was producing students who only knew how to copy code and replicate robot designs, a far cry from what STEAM was supposed to develop
Furthermore, quality STEAM education was not accessible to 90% of the world. How can we expect a school in developing regions, struggling with funding and manpower to integrate hands-on learning & robotics into their curriculum?
Or a family worrying about basic necessities afford to send their child to a premium coding class to “get ahead”?
There was a growing divide between the haves and have-nots, and while the world preached STEAM and 21st Century skills as future skills needed, classrooms around the world were still stuck in the past. Everyone knew this was an issue, but no one had the solution to this.
On September 16 2020,
we created Stick ‘Em to solve that.
The idea was deceptively simple. Chopsticks, geometric connectors, and plug & play electronics. The basic building blocks required for students to create prototypes and learn concepts through play.
Why use chopsticks?
Tinkering is messy. It’s spontaneous, crazy, creative, and unconventional. We didn’t want kids to be worried about cutting things or damaging expensive parts, so we kept the process of using Stick ‘Em as DIY as possible.
Armed with takeaway chopsticks from hawker stalls, a 2nd hand 3D printer and an off-the-shelf Arduino from Taobao, we put together a minimum viable product (MVP) that had basic controls.
We were using a 3rd party bluetooth app we found on the app store that worked “well-enough” at the time, for basic motor control
We tested the first kit with friends and family’s kids. It worked pretty well, and we continued to refine it over a few months
We slowly added more connector variations and upgraded the electronics, until it got closer and closer to a polished looking STEAM kit
Then, our first breakthrough came. We won our first hackathon, the RHBHacks 2021 organized by Mapletree.
We couldn’t believe it!
$7500 cash prize, getting featured on the Straits Times, and we were given a temporary stall at the River Hongbao festival to share about Stick ‘Em!
Over the course of 3 days, hundreds of families visited our booth, learning about Stick ‘Em and placing pre-orders for our robotics kit.
We had 160+ orders, and looking back, it was crazy seeing such overwhelming support for our scrappy, half developed kit that did not even have that many features yet.
Then reality hit. We quickly realised that we now had to produce every single kit manually, with no production line.
We were manually unwrapping and cutting chopsticks one at a time, with a mini bandsaw. Looking back, this was incredibly dangerous and we were lucky to still have all 10 fingers after finishing these 160+ orders
For the 3D printed connectors, we were running multiple 3D printers at a time in Singapore Polytechnic’s FabLab (shoutout to Louis for being so patient with us)
We got classmates, friends and family to help with the massive task of sorting and packing, and somehow managed to fulfil every order in time
As we gained more traction in schools, we also received more grant funding from the National Youth Council, Philip Yeo Initiative, SUTD’s Create4Good, and a few other places
Our team and office expanded steadily to handle the increasing demand for Stick ‘Em
We started to expand overseas, seeing how Stick ‘Em was able to serve all sorts of schools with different backgrounds.
From top schools in Singapore to rural schools in Uganda, every student that used Stick ‘Em was creating innovative solutions.
Teachers were texting us about how they saw improvements in their students learnings, and were actually excited to come to class to use Stick ‘Em
At the same time throughout these 5 years running Stick ‘Em as a fast growing startup, some of us were doing our diplomas, university, and even mandatory military service
It was a constant balance of schooling and Stick ‘Em, but both taught us valuable lessons and we always managed to make it work.
We are lucky to have had all this support worldwide while building Stick ‘Em.
We were proud to represent Singapore on the global stage and bring quality STEAM education to the world! From encouraging text messages from parents to being invited to the Istana to meet President Tharman, this tough journey was made easier with everyone’s support.
Fast forward 5 years later, Stick ‘Em has
- Impacted 12,000+ students
- Trained 1200+ teachers in STEAM
- Scaled to 90+ schools across 11 countries
We decided to join the Hult Prize 2025 for a shot at the $1 Million USD prize to scale up our impact
We were up against 15,000 teams from different 133 countries, all presenting their world changing ideas.
After the online incubator, it got narrowed down to 24 teams, who would spend 1 month at the Ashridge House in the Global Accelerator sharpening their ideas with mentors in real life.
In Week 3, we pitched at Google’s London HQ and miraculously made it into the 8 finalist teams who would be pitching at the Global Finals. One step closer to winning the US$1M Hult prize.
Global Finals.
8 teams. Only 1 Winner.
Although our script was constantly changing (up till the night before), our mission and real world impact was clear. We just had to tell the Stick ‘Em story in an authentic way.
In the end, we presented in our usual light hearted, youthful manner, and showed everyone how a team of youth had spent almost a quarter of their lives tackling the massive problem of inequality in STEAM education.
We delivered our best pitch ever at the finals. Everyone in the room could feel our passion and commitment to the mission, and one of the judges even went “WE LOVE THEM” during the Q&A.
We managed to *unintentionally* make the audience and judges laugh a few times, but we were just being ourselves.
There was still some additional deliberation to be done, but we walked off stage knowing we had done the best we could, regardless of result.
And then, the announcement came…
The winner of the Hult Prize 2025 was… STICK ‘EM!!!
We couldn’t believe it. Just like that, we had won the opportunity to supercharge our growth to millions of students with the $1M funding.
5 years of hard work had been validated on a global stage, battle tested by mentors & judges, and loved by thousands of students and teachers around the world
This message goes out to anyone out there looking to make a change in the world.
No matter how crazy your idea might seem, keep pushing for what you believe in.
Because 5 years ago, a group of young, naive teens decided to build chopstick robots, with the crazy idea of making STEAM education accessible to all.
Today, they are standing on this global stage with the ability to scale their impact to millions of children out there.
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So, what’s next for us?
We are on the lookout for:
- Schools that need quality STEAM education in their classrooms (regardless of location!)
- Distributors and partners to bring Stick ‘Em to more schools around the world
- Parents, teachers, and friends of Stick ‘Em who want to share our mission to the rest of the world
If our mission resonates with you,
Stick 'Em 