Astrohaus

Astrohaus was founded in 2014 in Detroit with the launch of the Freewrite smart typewriter, a distraction-free writing tool for modern authors. Since then, customers in 50 countries have written 350+ million words on a Freewrite.

The company's mission is to invent unique, well-designed consumer products that are a joy to use and make people's lives more productive.

CEO and Cofounder

SunDaily

Founder of SunDaily, a premium nutritional supplement brand focused on Vitamin D.  SunDaily is a research based nutritional supplement manufacturer committed to producing the highest quality products using only the most effective, bioavailable ingredients like Vitamin D3. Our focus is on creating custom formulations that are tailored to our modern diets and reflect the latest data from scholarly research.

Founder

Macquarie Bank

Structured commodity linked credit products including supply financing, hedges and term/revolving loan facilities for medium to large businesses.  Clients included power plants, paper converters, retail energy businesses, gas storage companies, renewable projects and others.

Senior Associate

Analyst in TMET group sourcing and executing deals in the telecom, gaming, media, entertainment and technology space.  Focused on asset valuation and deal structuring.

Private Equity Analyst

University of Sydney

Worked with research team to build and maintain an autonomous underwater survey vehicle. The project focused on cataloging change on the Great Barrier Reef.

Mechanical Design Engineer

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Studied tail walking in dolphins and other fish using a biomimetic robotic mechanism. Duties included creating physical models that can simulate the flapping motion in conjunction with mathematical models calculated by a post-doctoral student.

Undergraduate Researcher

Astrohaus CEO and Co-Founder. Inventor of Freewrite line of distraction-free writing tools. Over $1mm raised via Crowdfunding. Product Designer and Mechanical Engineer, @MIT alum. Will retire to be an artist in the mountains one day.

Adam Leeb

REEKON Tools

Digitizing and connecting the construction site with accessible hardware, software, and solutions for professional tradespeople. Focused on creating tools and ecosystems to reduce errors, speed up operations, and lower training overhead.

Founder and CEO

BOLDR Pro by REEKON Tools

Connect the field to the office with the first data capture platform integrating difrectly with digital construction tools.  Reduce errors, increase efficiency, and streamline your workflow with BOLDR Pro—the ultimate construction data capture software.

Kickstarter

Kickstarter Advisory Council Member

75th Innovation Command

Innovation Officer

Formlabs

3D Printed Testing Swab Manufacturing Lead - COVID-19 Response

Director (Form Cell)

Program Manager - New Product Development (Form 3 Printer)

Lead - New Product Development (Form 3 Printer)

Mechanical and Integration Engineer

United States Army Reserve

Served as a Platoon Leader with the 338th Horizontal Engineering Company with responsibility for over 40 soldiers and several million dollars worth of construction and security equipment. Part of deployment in support of Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) in the Middle East as a Rapid Engineer Response Force serving Army Central Command (ARCENT)

Platoon Leader/Executive Officer

Outsmarting Technologies LLC

Outsmarting Technologies LLC provided engineer consulting services and created new products and tools.  Launched a Kickstarter Campaign to successfully crowdfund GRIPsher keychain multitool with over $100,000 raised (between Kickstarter and post-sales) and more than 3000 units shipped. Used profits to build prototyping shop in my basement.

Chief Executive Officer

Shaper

In between Army assignments, worked for Shaper helping develop and prototype Shaper Origin handheld CNC router

Mechanical Engineer

MIT Media Lab

United States Army

Cadet

Founder and CEO at REEKON Tools

Upgrading construction everywhere with digital measuring tools and data capture software for connected job sites

Christian Reed

After 5 years and more than 1500 videos, REEKON Tools hit 1,000,000 followers on Instagram this past weekend!

REEKON made an early investment in social media right as TikTok was taking off in 2020 and it has payed 1000x dividends since - all for the price of about 30 minutes a day.

Videos and content we make on our tools, software, and construction techniques have gathered almost 2 billion views and led to REEKON being one of the most followed and watched brand across construction.  

I can't emphasize enough how valuable social media is for any business and all follows the simple formula off consistency and experimentation.  Anyone can learn how to do it and pays for its time many times over.

It's important to remember that while cool and a fun milestone to hit, follower count is just another meaningless metric to running a business.  

It's a nice by product and helpful for initial brand credibility but the real focus is on making great tools for customers and continuing to innovate in the built world.

Happy Veterans Day to all Veterans past and present!  Starting with ROTC in college and continuing with a deployment and Reserve service afterwards, it's often overlooked how valuable and impactful the ROTC program can be to start a career. 

ROTC stands for Reserve Officers’ Training Corps and is a college-based program in the United States that prepares students to become officers in the U.S. Armed Forces (Army, Navy, or Air Force).

During college, it consists of weekly training and other assorted events with a summer training course going into senior year.

As part of the ROTC program, you can receive a full tuition scholarship and commission as an officer upon graduation.

My ROTC journey started when interviewing with MIT and hearing my interviewer had done ROTC in the late 80s.  It sounded conceptually interested so decided to look into it more.

After doing more research and seeing how they provided full scholarships to any school along with the training and exposure in the military, I decided to apply.

Later in senior year of high school, I learned had received a full national scholarship to the school of my choosing and after doing ROTC for 4 years (and them paying for my full MIT tuition) commissioned in 2014 into the Army Reserves as an Engineer officer.

I was fortunate to have a deployment in 2015 right after completing the engineer officer training course.

Reflecting back, ROTC and service in the military in general set me up for many opportunities in general and proud to have served along side some of the many generationally talented people I met along the way!

You know who is crushing it in the hardware space right now? China (and it's actual brands and innovation, not knock off products).

The new generation of China born and bred manufacturing and design companies are emerging (and dominating) launching new hardware products and categories across the board leaving many US based companies in the dust.

Inspired by the success of home grown DJI, China has leveraged their expertise in manufacturing and combined it with a new generation of entrepreneurs in Shenzhen and beyond to make massive hardware brands.

- Largest 3D printing company by valuation (and soon most revenue)? Bambu Lab

- Most funded Kickstarter ever at $46.7 million launched earlier this year? eufyMake UV printer (Anker Subsidiary doing $1bn+ on Amazon already)

- DIY tool brand thats owning more and more shelf space at Costco and beyond (along with sponsoring UFC events) while Black and Decker left in the dust? Fanttik®

- Go to action camera? Insta360 displacing GoPro as leading action sports/adventure Camera and pioneering 360 video ease of use and processing

My takeaway is it's a mistake to sleep on China or the notional concept "of Chinese copy cats/knockoffs" as China has proven they are adept at manufacturing and now technology development, marketing, and branding.

Tariffs and lack of VC investment in hardware space is allowing China to get a leg up on the US as there isn't nearly the same level of innovation in US companies in the consumer hardware space or hero companies that have emerged in the past 4 years.

Constant pressure to have AI or a SaaS model limits the possibilities of building these billion dollar brands here in the US so its to be seen if this is a trend that can change in the coming years and beyond as hardware is a critical capability for the US to have (regardless of where its actually manufactured).

When founders think about starting a company, they often default to "I need to raise money" (i.e. Venture Capital) and often overlook bootstrapping their growth.

REEKON Tools being bootstrapped was not necessarily intentional but has worked out very well since allowing an incredible amount of flexibility as we've grown the business through Kickstarter and actually selling products.

To be clear, VC funding is great when you need it as some company's ambitions and time horizon don't align with other options. 

However, raising VC funding shouldn't be the default answer when starting a company (especially considering how many new companies are software based).

I have seen many companies that could have been very successful had they not raised tens of millions of dollars but got stuck in the middle of raising too much to have any successful exit but not growing enough to become a Unicorn.

While Bootstrapping may seem more glamorous at first glance, like any entrepreneurial path, there are absolutely challenges and differences between this and other sources of capital.

- Bootstrapped - can risk mitigate to start (dont quit job, get traction, treat as side hustle to start to see if it has legs)

- Focus on profitability and events (new product launches, etc) for growth

- Odds and ends are likely things you personally do (take out the trash, clean the kitchen area, make videos everyday) vs hire someone for.

- Long term play - time horizons much different and growth will be (relatively) slower driven by capital that can be poured into company dependent on sales/liabilities.

- No BS vanity metrics (how big team is, how much money raised) - everything matters and run like a real business from the start

- Cash flow is very difficult and sensitive to work with (dealing with this painfully presently) to balance operational needs with investment in R&D/future money making activities

- No bad exit (no plans to, we love what we do), we make money no matter what

- No time pressure - we are mission driven and dont need to deal with 'trending external pressure' to detract away from long term goals

I encourage all entrepreneurs I speak to to consider various pathways and not default to idea and notion they need to raise money.  

In an era of AI, software building tools, crowdfunding platforms, social media,  and more, it's never been easier to start a company and fuel its growth with low overhead.

This is your Monday reminder to fellow founders, keep grinding and making plays - the vast majority of startups and businesses have been having a incredibly challenging year.

Something I have been hearing a lot of behind the scenes from friends and  founders (but don't see widely shared on LinkedIn) is the difficulty and challenges many have been having this year to keep things going.

For some that means flat sales, to others huge decreases and some are completely out of business or have been sold to other companies at steep discounts.

Internally for many businesses, this has taken a lot of attention from making new products to dealing with cash flow, managing excess inventory, and mitigating tariff and pricing impacts throughout the supply chain.

While the causes vary, a lot seems to be tied to cooling consumer spending (especially since last year) and economic uncertainty perhaps driven by a 'wait and see approach' to tariffs, layoffs, and more.

It's been a wild 5 years to exist as a company but if you're still going and finding it harder this year than before, you're not alone.

Keep making plays, products people love, and stay alive.

I made it a goal this year to average one job site visit a week and on track so far with 48 total visits this year!

Being on the ground and learning more about the people, companies, and techniques they are using has been incredibly helpful to our roadmap and furthering my understanding of how various types of construction work.

There is no better place to see how your products are being used than watching your customers use in the field.  

There are countless examples of us finding optimizations that would not have been possible to dream up sitting in our office or lab

Listening to customers and observing how they work, what they optimize for, their biggest challenges, and how they think about things is something that's best observed in the field.

I strongly encourage anyone working in construction tech to get out of the office and spend more time in the field - no better way to grow and learn (and add some character to your vest hardhat and boots)!

I appreciate all the time and opportunity our friends, partners, and customers have given us allowing us to visit their sites and looking forward to keeping the trend going!

If you’re headed to Boston Built Week next week and would like a behind the scenes tour of REEKON Tools HQ and R&D lab, let me know!

We’re proud to be based in Boston for the past 5 years and have been spoiled by the incredible amount of talent and construction operations going on here.

A lot goes on behind the scenes to make products accurate and durable enough to earn a place in 100,000s contractors toolboxes and we’d love to show you some of the magic behind the scenes. 

I’ll be at Suffolk Technologies Demo Day too and looking forward to hearing from the 8 startups pitching there!

When 25 feet doesn’t cut it, the T1M Span 60 foot Digital Tape Measure is here to serve. Coming soon to our industrial and factory users!

One of the most elemental use cases of digital tape measures is capturing multiple measurements and sharing them over Bluetooth between different locations.

Whether your up in a scissor lift, ladder, or scaffolding, anyone who’s had to shout one measurement at a time knows how slow and painful this experience can be.

With digital tape measures and the BOLDR Pro by REEKON Tools platform, you can take and label measurements with your phone in your pocket and share them with the cut saw on the other side of the job site.

This takes about 3 minutes to setup and saves hours per week (and generally lots of scrap material as well) making it a great “gateway application” to highlight the value of digital tools in construction

The vast majority of startups that fail are from self inflicted wounds, not from competition running them out of business. 

There has been a lot of talk recently about the launch of AI tools from large players in the construction tech space (Autodesk, Procore Technologies, Trimble Inc. etc) and how this is going to drive startups out of business.

This is simply not the case and nonsense to think that the act of a large player making a similar tool is what will be the death of a given startup.

History points to the opposite where both players coexist (Slack and Microsoft Teams, etc) when they have made something truly useful and startups failing on based on their own fundamental issues (not having a useful product, high churn, raising too big of a round, etc).

The best startups are the ones who both can adapt, pivot, and (most importantly) find PMF and balance that with strong business fundamentals.

While its useful to take note of what competitors are working on and doing, those companies that focus on them (and not their customers) are almost always destined to fail.

Competition is inevitable but I would imagine the startups that dont succeed today are the ones that:

- Raised too much money at too high a valuation making follow on funding difficult 

- Have high churn 

- Marketing is based on hype without substance and customer adoption to support (this only works for short periods of time)

- Product isn't unique or useful long term (race to bottom is hard to compete in)

- Lacking company fundamentals (over hiring, no pathway to profitability, haven't figured out distribution, etc)

Undoubtedly running a startup is hard but the goal remains the same of making products that customers love and the rest becomes much easier.

As a follow up from last week's post on the design of our 'measurement modification mode' indication, we wound up on a clearer representation of the tape measure, blinking (short short long), in combination with our larger icons by the measurements themself.

Happy to argue in comments on why we think this is a great design and including some of the other scenarios as there are (for better or worse) 30+ different combinations a user can change the measurement on the screen!

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Adam Leeb

Christian Reed

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Christian Reed's LinkedIn Performance

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