blok internal memo

hi,

it’s dani here with some updates around blok and it’s future.

blok has been growing pretty linearly since the company started in february — and that’s not a great thing.

some things needs to change for us to be sustainable in the long-run.

it’s typically the same number of people purchasing a blok week over week which means that as a team we haven’t cracked the methods to get us on the growth trajectory we’re truly aiming for.

it’s mostly me that’s responsible for this.

don’t get me wrong.

to date, we’ve sold over 400+ devices and have many hundreds of people using the app on a weekly basis.

i’ve also received an overwhelming amount of positive reviews from many of you on how this small little tool has helped you be more productive, more aware, and how you’re nightly unwinding routine is different because of blok.

here’s one message i got recently:

“when i’m bloking i find myself using my phone for things i’d like to do more: connecting with friends or reading long form.”

that’s awesome!

but the question still is:

how do we get more people a blok in their hands?

i want thousands and thousands of people to get a taste of the blok world whilst also improving the app experience week over week.

that’s the best of both worlds for us.

i’m convinced that if we do we’ll achieve the coveted “word-of-mouth” and reap it’s magical rewards.

“ok but what have you done so far to expand blok’s reach?”, you may ask.

my main focus over the past months has been to fully automate the manufacturing of the product so i don’t have to spend much of my day printing and assembling the product (which is a very manual and boring task right now).

getting 1000 bloks in inventory would allow me to fully shift my attention to other high-leverage company things and not worry about the inventory bottleneck when we reach scale.

this is a problem that has to be solved sooner rather than later.

once we do, we’d then be able to sustain influencer marketing efforts, spend more time talking to customers and focus on other company activities.

until then, not having enough bloks is a top priority.

getting a blok design ready to go for mass manufacturing and having the supply chain in place is freaking hard.

it’s a lot of variables that are in play when solving this problem.

> which manufacturing method do we use — multi-jet fusion, urethane casting, sls, sla or injection molding? from which factory // supplier?

> what are the cost, design and aesthetic trade-offs between each?

> what are the lead times on each method?

depending on how you manufacture the product the process is more or less the same:

you re-design the blok alongside a mechanical engineer → once happy w it → wait for the factory's “green light” → pay for a sample → wait for production → wait for the shipment to arrive → inspect the sample → give feedback on it... to finally → get back to the drawing board and iterate.

do that 2 or 3 times for a particular manufacturing method just to realize that you’re not satisfied with that method (reasons may vary), move on to another method, rinse and repeat.

at this point i have about 10 sample bloks from 5 different manufacturing methods only to realize i’m not moving forward with production for any of these.

heck i even made an aluminum blok!

patience is your best friend during this manufacturing exploration process...

already, you can intuit how this has costed the company some money but more importantly the ultimate resource in a startup’s life:

time.

i’ve gone through all this to ultimately learn that plastic manufacturing of the blok is not the way forward.

i could expand on why but i’ll spare my frustrations for now.

it was a long and slow and painful process to learn this lesson yet i’m confident that i had to go through all of this to learn this lesson.

my friend gustavo put it very simply:

“dude, you’re focusing too much on the solution and not the problem.”

(infinite thanks gustavo for being very candid with me.)

so what’s next?

how do we scale this product and finally be done with this problem at least for now?

ooo i now have more clarity thank gd! the future is bright.

though i’ve been in a rut trying to overcome this manufacturing hurdle i think i have some answers now... one’s that i’m happy with!

> the next blok will look way cooler > it’ll be scalable > it’ll be cheaper > we’ll be able to offer different colors

plus, any company will be able to customize it with their logo enabling us to offer “business bloks”.

i give myself one more month to be done with this (again — for now).

the company’s trajectory is bound to change after that.

i’ll be able to focus my time and efforts on many other things that i’ve been meaning to get to!

all in all, i’m actually pretty happy to have undergone all of these struggles. in every problem there’s opportunity.

...the best is yet to come :).

if you’ve read this far, i appreciate you!

you following along means a lot to me, it helps the journey be less lonely for me.

drop a reply with any thought or comment you have.

anything is cool, i’m just curious to know what you’re thinking.

until next time, dani ⊙