June/July 2020 Startup Update

Dear Reader,

I’ve decided that I’m going to start simply posting my updates as by posting (lightly edited) emails I’ve written to founder friends on my progress. This way I save time, can post more often, and I feel like it’s a more authentic update anyway.

Sorry for no update! Covid hit so we interrupted fundraising and started building and getting deals with local utilities (aka CCAs) while we were waiting, and then Katie got pulled off with her kid (single mother). So we’ve been in a holding pattern ever since. Utilities are still pending, and we haven’t pivoted into consumer or whatever due to her not really being available or around… We haven’t taken up fundraising efforts again, but probably dodged a bullet there? Or not? Let’s see!

In the meantime I randomly re-launched sunboxlabs.com (an old project of mine) on hackernews, but selling the kits directly instead of just being a platform for assembly guides. Sold and shipped $4.5K of goods in a few days (with minimal profit), then sold another $1.5K through instagram ads to get a feeling for the marketing costs. I’ve now slightly pivoted to being a sort of dropshipping / advice company, as shipping it myself was adding little value. Still seeing a ton of interest, and am getting acquisition costs that’re in the low $10s (not clear exactly yet how much), so hope it’ll work. Not really venture back-able though, but I love the vision of solarizing the US from the bottom up, starting with backup generators – let’s see!

https://electrade.app is still making money. Let’s see!

And now have started doing a little contracting for a new fintech called ATMOS because my runway was not growing nor shrinking :)

Long story short – been a lot of holding and freaking out happening over here – therefore no updates :)