When I was an undergraduate at Carnegie Mellon, I took a class in Linear Algebra. The class was taught by a visiting graduate student, not by a Carnegie Mellon professor. The instructor of this class was *so* bad that ever since taking that class, I have always had a mental block against linear algebra and anything matrices. That mental block has come back to bite me in the rear several times. When I was taking a graphics class or when I was working on my PhD and needed to do 3-D transforms — there were multiple occasions when I felt the pangs of stress, which all find their roots back to one pathetic learning experience with a under-qualified and under-experienced teacher.

So it didn’t come as a surprise to me to learn that if  child falls behind in learning some of the fundamental mathematical concepts that simple little mis-step can end up changing the course of their life. The child may believe that he/she is not good at math or or worse yet get branded as being someone who isn’t good at math. That in turn can impact their choices as a student, which in turn determines their choice of a career.

Laying down strong mathematical foundations is one of the critical steps in preparing kids for a solid STEM education. That is why I am especially proud to be an investor and supporter of LocoMotive Labs. LocoMotive Lab’s new app Todo Math (pronounced To-Doh Math, not Too-Doo Math) starts by teaching kids how to count, write numbers, add, subtract, tell time and much much more. The secret sauce for Todo Math is at the LocoMotive Labs teams designs apps with special attention towards struggling learners. Ever activity and every level of the app ( and there are 18 different activities in the app!) had been carefully designed to ensure that the child not only can recognize or write numbers, but also understands conceptually what those numbers mean.

If you have a young child who is either starting to learn to count or one that’s struggling with basic arithmetic and numbers, Todo Math is the amazing app that can help them to start with a slid foundation or reinforce that foundation so that they’re able to build upon it. It is a brilliantly designed app that literally can teach your child math and do it in a way that kids actually enjoy doing the activities. To them it’s a game, but in reality it’s teaching them fundamental math skills.

“It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; its the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time.”
: David Allan Coe (from BrainyQuote)

If you know of any one who has young kids (between the ages of 4-8), do them and their kids a favor and tell them about Todo Math. It could very well change the very course of their lives — we hope.

Congratulations to Sooinn Lee and Gunho Lee, co-founders of LocoMotive Labs, on the launch of Todo Math. And a big thank you to my co-investors New Schools Ventures Fund, Wayee Chu and Ethan Beard, Allison Bhusri, 500 Startups, Mitch Kapor from Kapor Capital on funding LocoMotive Labs’ mission to ensure that all kids have the best chance to learn math at an early age.

You can follow me on Twitter at @ManuKumar or @K9Ventures for just the K9 Ventures related tweets. K9 Ventures is also on Facebook and Google+.