AI won’t take your job. Someone using AI will.

Why I started it

I’ve spent my career in technology. I started in manufacturing and supply chain leadership at Dell, moved into software, co-founded SourceDay and led it as CEO for about ten years. I’ve watched a few big shifts up close. This one is bigger.

Then I looked around my own kitchen table. My kids, their friends and most of my adult friends were using AI the same way: typing a few words into ChatGPT like it was a search box. Plenty of grown-ups I know were simply afraid of it. Nobody was showing families how to actually use it.

So I started teaching them, one at a time: my kids, family, friends. The results were great, but it didn’t scale, and I wanted something my kids would come back to on their own.

The text that changed my mind

A friend who teaches first grade texted me a problem: her class gets too loud. Thirty minutes later, with AI, she had a sleeping puppy on her classroom screen that wakes up when the room gets noisy. Her six-year-olds started shushing each other to keep it asleep.

That’s when it clicked. The skill that matters isn’t coding, and it isn’t memorizing prompts. It’s noticing a real problem, describing it clearly, and building the fix with AI, then checking that it actually works. Kids can learn that. So can parents. Read the full story.

What I’ve built since

I’m not a programmer. In a couple of months of building with AI, I went from curious to shipping real products people use:

• Don’t Wake the PuppyA classroom noise meter: a sleeping puppy that wakes up when the room gets too loud. It started as one teacher’s text and is now used by teachers with a whole cast of sleeping friends.
• ChoreScrollAn iPhone app that locks kids’ apps until their chores are done. AI checks the photo proof, a parent gives the final OK, and screen time becomes something kids earn. Built for our own family first.
• TinkertableThis one. The lessons, the coach and the app you’re looking at, built with AI and tested by my own kids.

If I can do it, your family can too, and your kids will be a lot faster at it than you are.

What I believe

• Families should learn this together. Kids pick it up fast; parents bring judgment. Each makes the other better.
• Curious beats scared, careful beats careless. We teach kids to use AI and to catch it when it’s wrong. Here’s how we keep it safe.
• Build real things. Five minutes a day of lessons, then something that works: their app, your time-saver.
• Parents stay in charge. A grown-up owns the account and can see everything the kids make. No ads, ever, and we never sell your data.

The company

Tinkertable is a product of TAK2008, LLC, a small Texas company, and is built and run in Austin. We’re in beta, and every family’s feedback shapes what we build next.

TAK2008, LLC · 5900 Balcones Drive #34755, Austin, TX 78731 · support@tinkertable.ai