Avnet acquired both element14 (as part of Premier Farnell) and Hackster.io in 2016. 

Since then, the combined membership grew by approximately 48% year over year.

element14 is a discussion-based online community where engineers collaborate to solve one another’s design challenges.

Members can see what other engineers are working on, learn from their experiences as well as online training, and get help to optimize their own designs.  

“This is a prime example of how the consistent sharing of information is driving the democratisation of design,” said Dianne Kibbey, global head of community and social media for element14. 

Hackster.io is a project-based online community for anyone who wants to learn about programming and building hardware. The site also hosts in-person workshops and meet-ups to help individuals, whether or not they have previous engineering or design experience, take their hardware ideas to the next level.

“With the support of the Avnet ecosystem, we have been able to accelerate our outreach to more people in more places and offer better learning tools for hardware creation,” said Adam Benzion, co-founder and CEO at Hackster.io. “It’s been fascinating to see our members’ skills evolve as they pursue projects in emerging areas such as blockchain and artificial intelligence, or specific components like FPGAs.”

Bill Amelio, CEO, Avnet, writes: 

“Because they learn from real-world project examples, industry experts and each other, our community members are more likely to find the right path to get their idea from prototype to mass production.”

Amelio believes the community members add: “enormous value to Avnet’s connected ecosystem. By sharing information, best practices and know-how you’re helping to bring better products into the world.”