August 2020 Startup Update

Dear Reader,

Sunboxlabs update – everything else unchanged (though got press for energylollipop but still have no business model and electrade is slowly growing in revenue).

Sunboxlabs: I’m a little stuck right now tbh. The early 10 customers love it and are using it for learning about solar, backup, camping.

Now I’m trying to re-create the early sales success and am testing different channels:

• Tried building SEO content, Instagram paid Ads, Twitter paid Ads, twitter unpaid. None of those worked profitably so far (but got 3-4 new sales through FB).
• I went hard on the backup use case (PG&E safety shutoffs, hurricane, etc) last month but learned that backup is something customers do 1x per year so a gas generator is cheaper, more performant, and even supergreens don’t care if it’s once a year.
• Next up trying less scalable stuff: trying going to an SF farmer’s market with a stand, building a wholesale partnership with a van-life modifier, trying referral deals with off-grid influencers, building content for the Ham Radio crowd.

My hypothesis is I’m in this middle ground of performance (.3-1kW) where I’m too small for RVs, too big for outdoors camping – so may have to change up the product size and pricing structure. But TBD.