Latest / Founder Mode / Bring Back BlackBerry with Kevin Michaluk

Transcript

Bring Back BlackBerry with Kevin Michaluk · Founder Mode

• 0:00
  We're not trying to compete with your everything phone, which is
• 0:04
  your iPhone or Galaxy. You know, it's a big camera and
• 0:06
  top specs. We're going to build you
• 0:08
  something that is better at communication.
• 0:10
  You know, it's very pocketable. It feels great in your hand,
• 0:13
  like just holding it. It's an object you want to hold
• 0:15
  and the way you want to use it is as your people phone, right?
• 0:19
  Put your VIP contacts on it, do that kind of thing.
• 0:37
  You're listening to Founder mode.
• 0:38
  Where we talk to builders who question what progress is
• 0:41
  supposed to look like. Today's episodes about building
• 0:43
  hardware in a world obsessed with software, and why that
• 0:46
  might be the opportunity. It's a conversation about focus,
• 0:49
  community, and launching products that feel intentional.
• 0:52
  Again, Kevin, take us through your phone history.
• 0:55
  To the first mobile phone I ever saw in my life.
• 0:57
  I was probably 10 or 12 years old and my uncle was a salesman
• 1:01
  like a, you know, and would go around and sell home furnishings
• 1:03
  and stuff. And so he had a car phone.
• 1:05
  Like the one that was at the. Briefcase, yes Sir.
• 1:08
  And we got out of the we in Christmas.
• 1:10
  I remember it vividly. We went into the garage and he
• 1:12
  popped the doors open. We all got in there and there
• 1:13
  was this thing and it was like mounted in the car.
• 1:15
  It wasn't like a briefcase. It was mounted in the car.
• 1:18
  And for him it was like game changer.
• 1:19
  Went from, you know, 5-6 appointments today to like 10
• 1:22
  because he wasn't having to stop and was able to coordinate up
• 1:25
  time. But personally, I got my first
• 1:27
  phone. It was one I was down in LA 310
• 1:29
  area code and it was like a, you know, kind of like a brickish
• 1:32
  type phone and kind of fat, you know, I think it was Pacific
• 1:35
  Bell, even Pacific Bell or cellular one.
• 1:37
  But my coolest like kind of smarty phone.
• 1:39
  I had a flip phone, not a razor, but it was one of the Samsung
• 1:43
  wands early, early in the days. It was a Sprint, Sprint phone
• 1:48
  and that was it when I was working for Open Wave and we
• 1:50
  were doing picture messaging, yeah, on that.
• 1:53
  And then and then went to BlackBerry at that point and so
• 1:55
  sort of ran BlackBerry all the way to iPhone 3.
• 1:58
  So I did. Not even do.
• 2:00
  IPhone 1. No Sir.
• 2:01
  Never saw iPhone one and two. My brother had an iPhone 1 and I
• 2:04
  was like, that's kind of cool, but I'm like, dude, you're just
• 2:06
  not as productive as me did. No, I was like, not even, I'll
• 2:09
  wait. I was just like, you're just not
• 2:10
  as productive. I'm just way too good with the
• 2:12
  keyboard and so I fought it. You stayed on the keyboard for a
• 2:15
  while. Did you have an Android phone
• 2:16
  with a keyboard ever or no? No, never.
• 2:18
  As my primary, I've had five Android phones testing.
• 2:21
  Yeah, exactly. Testing or doing mobile apps or
• 2:23
  something, or or validating things, but yeah, never.
• 2:26
  And yeah, so never, never had an Android as a primary, but
• 2:29
  definitely had iPhones. And you know, basically I think
• 2:31
  I've only missed one. I think I missed iPhone maybe 10
• 2:34
  the X. Just skipped 1.
• 2:36
  How about you? Yeah, so 2013 I left Google and
• 2:40
  the very first thing I so I went and I bought an iPhone and so
• 2:43
  like I and I've been iPhone ever since.
• 2:45
  But I, you know, I love, I love keyboards.
• 2:47
  I love to be able to being able to type.
• 2:48
  You know, our guest today. We he he sent he sent me one of
• 2:52
  the clicks keyboards and then I bought another one and like, you
• 2:55
  know, it's awesome. It's it's really like it is
• 2:58
  really nostalgic and really cool to be able to like type again.
• 3:02
  And, you know, so I, I, I know you, I know you've known Kevin
• 3:04
  other Kevin for a while. Like, are you stoked for this
• 3:07
  one? I am.
• 3:07
  I mean, our guest has spent years, you know, building one of
• 3:10
  the most devoted tech communities and sort of mobile
• 3:13
  communities and was like a huge sort of, you know, kind of tech,
• 3:16
  you know, media mogul when we were kind of.
• 3:18
  Building influencer before that was a thing.
• 3:21
  Precisely and you know, I knew a lot about it because AI was a
• 3:24
  big BlackBerry user. I was a Crackberry reader.
• 3:27
  Yeah. More importantly, like as we
• 3:28
  were doing accompli, that was one of the mechanisms, you know,
• 3:30
  hey, we're doing mobile apps and getting reaching out to these
• 3:32
  various mobile communities. So it's pretty an interesting
• 3:34
  thing. So yeah, he's.
• 3:35
  He's now kind of asking a bigger question, right?
• 3:38
  Like, what if the future looks a little bit more deliberate, a
• 3:40
  little bit more intentional? Should we bring him out?
• 3:42
  Yeah, let's do it. Kevin, welcome to founder Mode.
• 3:55
  I mean, you spent years at the center of one of tech's most
• 3:57
  loyal communities, and now you're building hardware again
• 4:00
  at the moment. And today we're talking about
• 4:02
  products, momentum and why some deserve a second chance and
• 4:05
  maybe a better shot. I love it.
• 4:06
  Thanks for having me on the show guys.
• 4:08
  Great to be here, going to have some fun.
• 4:10
  And let's do it. They call you Crackberry Kevin
• 4:12
  for a reason. That's right, you were deep in
• 4:16
  the kind of tech media scene for over a decade.
• 4:19
  How did writing about products turn into this, this kind of
• 4:23
  ability to actually build them? Yeah, sets and reps.
• 4:27
  And I guess it's the compounding effect of time that you don't
• 4:30
  realize is happening until you get old.
• 4:33
  You know, for me, I got my first BlackBerry in 2005 when I was on
• 4:36
  a corporate job working in in media, working for Canada's
• 4:40
  biggest media company at the time.
• 4:41
  And, you know, got the addiction, the early day
• 4:43
  crackberry addiction, so to speak.
• 4:45
  Left that company a year later, went to a new job and made all
• 4:48
  of my friends and everybody buy blackberries, right.
• 4:51
  And from there, that led to launchingcrackberry.com, which
• 4:54
  was a sort of silly idea at the right time, No business plan, no
• 4:58
  real vision for it. But it was catalyst and took
• 5:01
  off. And we built what became the
• 5:03
  biggest BlackBerry website on the Internet, millions of
• 5:05
  visitors a month in the heydays and the early days of
• 5:07
  smartphones. And from there we parlayed that
• 5:10
  into launching more properties for more of the smartphone
• 5:13
  brands because obviously we saw what happened to Palm and we
• 5:17
  knew that, hey, when you're too big to fail, you know what can
• 5:19
  happen. Sometimes failure happens.
• 5:21
  Web OS, all of them, you know, and we built, we built websites
• 5:24
  and communities for everything. So on the success of Crackberry,
• 5:27
  we launched a company called Mobile Nations and we had the
• 5:29
  biggest Android and Apple and Windows Mobile focus
• 5:33
  communities. And that was a run from 2020.
• 5:36
  Nineteen, being in tech media, witnessing thousands of tech
• 5:40
  product launches and building a network of people who worked for
• 5:43
  big tech for a living. And after selling that company
• 5:45
  in 2019, I took a couple years off.
• 5:48
  I was trying to figure out what to do next.
• 5:50
  Kind of put a few irons in the fire, not sure what would stick
• 5:53
  or not. And what I found was I was the
• 5:56
  most passionate about tech and hardware specifically.
• 5:59
  But it turned out by being on one side of the coin in tech
• 6:02
  media, I didn't realize I was building the capabilities to be
• 6:06
  a tech builder. And it turned out I knew amazing
• 6:09
  people at all the right places. And I had learned a lot along
• 6:12
  the years of through the years of what to do and what not to
• 6:15
  do. So we pulled it all together and
• 6:16
  and now it's a dream team come together and we're building tech
• 6:19
  and I think we'll be doing it till the day we die.
• 6:20
  So good, so good. I was going to say, like, I
• 6:23
  mean, you've been part and you know, sort of orchestrated.
• 6:25
  So any launches from sort of on the reporting and covering side,
• 6:29
  Like when you were going to launch this latest sort of set
• 6:32
  of products that you guys launched most recently, How did
• 6:35
  you think about that differently?
• 6:37
  And then did you think you were launching a category or did you
• 6:39
  think you were launching a product?
• 6:41
  And how much of that was sort of like came to be as part of the
• 6:43
  launcher or sort of like was like, we we want to go do this
• 6:46
  thing and we're going to place it this way.
• 6:48
  And can you actually decide if you're launching a category or
• 6:51
  and when you're launching a product or does that sort of get
• 6:53
  sort of minted if it, you know, hits the right resonance?
• 6:56
  Yeah, great, Great questions. Going into Las Vegas and CES,
• 7:00
  you know, we, we as clicks announced 2 products.
• 7:03
  One is an accessory, it's our new power keyboard.
• 7:05
  It's sort of A1 size fits all Bluetooth keyboard and Power
• 7:09
  Pack for your smartphone, works with your tablet and everything
• 7:12
  else. And then we also launched
• 7:13
  Communicator, which is a full Android powered smartphone.
• 7:18
  You know, at a glance, you're going to be like, oh, it's kind
• 7:19
  of like an old BlackBerry. But as you unpack it, you're
• 7:22
  sort of like, wait, this is this is something new and modern and
• 7:25
  kind of forward-looking while while paying homage to the past.
• 7:28
  And both products caught everybody by surprise because
• 7:31
  with power keys, it's literally an invention.
• 7:34
  This is just a clever accessory that's never been on the planet
• 7:37
  before. And and that was pretty easy to
• 7:41
  name. You know, it's a power bank.
• 7:43
  It's a keyboard. Let's call it a power keyboard
• 7:45
  and the product speaks for itself.
• 7:47
  The utility speaks for itself. It's an impulse purchase style
• 7:50
  product and it fits into existing categories, but it's
• 7:53
  also by default kind of an invention.
• 7:55
  So it is a category of one. What was really interesting with
• 7:58
  Communicator is we knew what we were walking into, which is the,
• 8:02
  let's call it the the ghost of BlackBerry past, right?
• 8:06
  If you see a device that has this sort of form factor, you
• 8:10
  know what what I like to refer to as the pop Tart form factor
• 8:13
  keyboard, you know, keyboard screen.
• 8:15
  It's a little bit squat short. At a glance, it looks like a
• 8:18
  BlackBerry in the from 20 feet away, right?
• 8:20
  And you can't escape that. You can't escape designing a car
• 8:24
  that looks like a Porsche and you know, you've seen new people
• 8:26
  like Xiaomi and China build awesome looking cars, but from a
• 8:29
  distance you're like, what's that new Porsche?
• 8:31
  They own that they own that silhouette.
• 8:32
  So we knew we were going to walk into that and we knew if we just
• 8:36
  launched communicator as hey, this is something for old
• 8:40
  BlackBerry fancy miss buttons that that would be a, a, a much
• 8:44
  smaller opportunity and the wrong story to tell.
• 8:46
  And to answer the question, can you launch a category when it
• 8:49
  came into naming the product, we knew if we put the word
• 8:52
  smartphone at the end of whatever name we cooked up or
• 8:55
  phone at the end, you're going to invite comparison into the
• 8:58
  world of iPhone and Samsung and Google pixel devices.
• 9:02
  And guess what, you're not going to win, right?
• 9:04
  Like that would be how you launch a product and you're done
• 9:07
  before you even sell one. Beats Tim Apple.
• 9:09
  Nobody beats Tim Apple. That's right.
• 9:12
  You're 100% right. So, so for us, we we gave a lot
• 9:14
  of thought to it and what was really clear about the product
• 9:18
  design, how it looks different than your traditional smartphone
• 9:21
  phone. And what we're actually doing
• 9:23
  with the hardware and software features is building a purpose
• 9:27
  built communication tool, something that says we're not
• 9:29
  trying to compete with your everything phone, which is your
• 9:33
  iPhone or Galaxy. You know, it's a big camera and
• 9:35
  top specs. We're going to build you
• 9:37
  something that is better at communication.
• 9:39
  You know, it's very pocketable. It feels great in your hand,
• 9:42
  like just holding it. It's an object you want to hold.
• 9:44
  And the way you want to use it is as your people phone, right?
• 9:48
  Put your VIP contacts on it, do that kind of thing.
• 9:51
  And the word communicator came to mind.
• 9:53
  And when we looked at it more and more, we love that the word
• 9:55
  stands on its own. You know, you can you look at
• 9:58
  the product, you say the name communicator.
• 10:00
  It's a little long, but you know, so is iPhone 16 Pro Max,
• 10:05
  right? Like you just call it your
• 10:06
  iPhone and we know that our customers are just going to call
• 10:08
  it their clicks phone or their clicks.
• 10:10
  So calling a communicator set it up as a category and what
• 10:13
  happened was it worked, right? The media customers industry
• 10:18
  immediately kind of blessed it as yeah, purpose built
• 10:20
  communicators should be a new category adjacent to the
• 10:24
  smartphone. And we're we're seeing the the
• 10:27
  opportunity just get bigger on the back of that.
• 10:29
  And there's been a lot of disconnect and intentional tech
• 10:31
  recently that's been growing the last couple of years and we
• 10:34
  should talk about that more. But I think this sets up a new
• 10:37
  category that people understand and it's, it's not a either or
• 10:41
  decision. It's AI have my iPhone and this
• 10:44
  new product decision which is opportunity.
• 10:46
  I mean you guys are creating a category, it's exciting and
• 10:48
  bringing, bringing a category back, there's a there's a big
• 10:51
  leap from building accessories at clicks to now full devices.
• 10:55
  What changed internally at the company company that made that
• 10:58
  leap possible? So we we kind of Miyagi to
• 11:00
  everyone with this. So funny enough, you know, back
• 11:03
  on I think it was March 17th, 2023, that's when I actually
• 11:08
  registered the domain name clicksphone.com.
• 11:11
  And that was before we had registered a company before we
• 11:14
  had had our first working prototypes of our clicks
• 11:18
  keyboard case. That was a week before I I think
• 11:21
  I messaged who became my Co founder, Michael Fisher, Mr.
• 11:25
  Mobile, and that was the ambition from day one, right?
• 11:28
  If I had if I had gone out and tried to build well, let's say
• 11:31
  get him to join the company saying we're going to launch a
• 11:33
  phone, he would have said, you're crazy, Kevin, leave me,
• 11:35
  leave me alone to be a top tech YouTube creator.
• 11:37
  But that was the goal. So when as we built the team and
• 11:40
  even our cap table, everybody was from the world of
• 11:42
  smartphones, built and shipped millions of phones, done it for
• 11:46
  years, if not decades, and we built a smartphone team, but we,
• 11:50
  we kind of said, let's validate everything along the way and
• 11:54
  build into this. You know, I've seen a lot of
• 11:55
  projects pop up, Kickstarter, etcetera, where people launch a
• 11:59
  phone out of the blue and you're like, what is going on?
• 12:02
  You know, like, how are you going to do this?
• 12:03
  You're going to make a few thousand of them.
• 12:05
  You'll probably be out of business in two, two or three
• 12:07
  years, even if you actually launch the first one.
• 12:10
  And I feel like they never go to a number bigger than like that
• 12:13
  gets away from zero. You know, you sell a few 1000
• 12:16
  units, maybe you break 10,000, but you never actually get out
• 12:18
  of the atmosphere and you know, build a rocket ship to the moon.
• 12:21
  So we started with the Clicks keyboard case in 2024 when we
• 12:25
  announced it for the iPhone, which was the right way to go.
• 12:28
  You know, going back to Las Vegas and CES, we launched this
• 12:33
  and we sold a bunch of them and what did we do right?
• 12:36
  We built a brand immediately. We built revenue.
• 12:39
  We got partners, we got retail partnerships like Best Buy on
• 12:42
  literally day one coming to our, you know, hotel room in Vegas to
• 12:45
  see this thing back in 2024. We built customers.
• 12:48
  We learned what our customers loved and didn't.
• 12:50
  We saw the types of people who are using the product, including
• 12:53
  some of the biggest like companies on the planet.
• 12:56
  I've said it elsewhere, so I say, I'll say it here that, you
• 12:59
  know, the CEO of Andy of Amazon, Andy Jassi, you know, uses
• 13:03
  clicks daily. Like he's our low key influencer
• 13:06
  just using the product and loves it.
• 13:08
  Once we we saw that, you know, we were able to see how the
• 13:11
  market was evolving and we always had the idea for the
• 13:14
  phone. So the phone was there.
• 13:15
  We had designs, you know, I've got designs that have never been
• 13:18
  seen to the world of what we would have maybe shipped in 2024
• 13:21
  versus 2025. And when we saw where everything
• 13:25
  was going with more products hitting the market over the last
• 13:27
  18 months, probably in partial reason due to the success of
• 13:31
  clicks, that gave us kind of the aha moment where supply chain
• 13:35
  timing and everything lined up. And then we kind of got the
• 13:38
  ability to do what we wanted to do from day, day zero, which is
• 13:41
  let's let's get the phone going now.
• 13:43
  And that's what we're doing. That being something that
• 13:45
  actually increases only the focus of the product that you're
• 13:48
  building, but also how you're designing right now.
• 13:49
  We're hearing like a lot of the AI companies talking about like,
• 13:52
  you know, userless devices or audio only devices.
• 13:55
  Like all these things that are going to like, you know, not
• 13:57
  only is the keyboard going to go away, but the screen's going to
• 13:59
  go away. And this thing's going to just
• 14:00
  be, you know, an ambient BLOB that sits on my desk that I just
• 14:03
  talked to. And it just interacts.
• 14:05
  Like how have you guys thought about it where your piece plays?
• 14:08
  And then, you know, maybe there's something that we can
• 14:10
  get to later about where, where this goes.
• 14:12
  It's just if you try to invent the future and you're, you're
• 14:15
  trying to predict where all these rapid new advancements are
• 14:17
  going, man, you know, it takes you time to build the product,
• 14:20
  do the R&D, do the software. So like from where you start to
• 14:23
  where you launch. It's not a it's not a static
• 14:26
  thing that doesn't move. The world is constantly
• 14:28
  changing. So when you actually announce
• 14:30
  the product, you need to have everything right if you're going
• 14:32
  to get the right product at the right time and make it make it
• 14:35
  become the future at that moment.
• 14:37
  And if you don't, you're going to run out of money, maybe sell
• 14:39
  a bunch, but they're going to end up in a drawer.
• 14:41
  Which Jason, how, how many products do you have in your
• 14:44
  office right now that you don't use?
• 14:45
  I don't want to talk about. It right the same right and I
• 14:48
  think the I think the thing that happened with clicks, which is
• 14:51
  so funny and where we flew under the radar is with a product like
• 14:54
  this when we announced in 2024 publicly got a lot of buzz
• 14:57
  because obviously it's bringing buttons back it's a bit of
• 15:00
  nostalgia. However, there is that audience
• 15:02
  who wants it for the productivity features and
• 15:04
  everything. But by catering to an
• 15:05
  underserved market in the past, you were guaranteed business
• 15:09
  revenue and A and a customer base that allowed us to build a
• 15:13
  team and do R&D and actually have company level discussions
• 15:16
  as a, you know, young company around where the future is
• 15:19
  going. And when I look at the distance
• 15:21
  future of maybe screenless world, I'm like, yeah, there's
• 15:24
  there's obviously recording devices that are screenless.
• 15:27
  Now, I'm sure you guys both have your plot AI recorders or pins
• 15:30
  and those types of things. But The thing is, the screen for
• 15:33
  a long time is still going to be the best interface because we
• 15:37
  like to share. We're humans.
• 15:38
  You know, if you go out to your whatever kids recital tonight
• 15:42
  and another friend is there and you want to show them photos of
• 15:46
  something you took on the weekend, you know, the meal you
• 15:48
  cooked or the thing you just bought or whatever.
• 15:50
  Like you kind of need to pull something out of your pocket and
• 15:52
  show it off. And I'm pretty sure that exists
• 15:55
  in the world for quite a while. So with something like
• 15:58
  communicator, you know, you could look at it and if you
• 16:00
  didn't look closely, might be like, oh, cool buttons.
• 16:03
  They brought back the past again, but now in a phone.
• 16:05
  But in some ways, this button on the side becomes the future
• 16:08
  because what we've built here is really a handheld communicator
• 16:11
  that fits way better in your hand than any flagship
• 16:14
  smartphone on the market. And this is your notification
• 16:17
  light as well to show you when something is really important.
• 16:19
  It's your signal. But this button is sort of
• 16:22
  becoming a platform for AI, voice, etcetera, right?
• 16:26
  So press and hold to talk voice, dictate, let go to send the
• 16:30
  message. So if I don't want to type on
• 16:32
  the go and compose, I can just brain dump into ChatGPT, let go
• 16:35
  and send. Obviously, you know, whisper
• 16:37
  Flow, which I use a lot on my desktop computer, is not on
• 16:40
  Android yet, it's on iPhone. The implementation is, I think,
• 16:44
  pretty hokey. You know, Apple's not going to
• 16:46
  let go of that and make it easier for them unless they
• 16:48
  acquire them at some point. But man, would I love to put
• 16:51
  Whisper Flow into into this. Absolutely right.
• 16:54
  You guys talked to him yet? We've, we've got lots, I can't
• 16:57
  disclose all the things, but I mean, all the partnerships of
• 17:00
  what you can start to integrate are there.
• 17:01
  And but even from a hardware perspective, if you're going to
• 17:04
  buy this as a compliment to your iPhone or Android phone, and
• 17:07
  maybe right now you have the plot AI recorder you stick on
• 17:10
  the back of the device and you have to use their service.
• 17:13
  Double click start your AI voice recorder.
• 17:15
  We put microphones on the back in front so you can lie this on
• 17:18
  the table. And you know, one of the things
• 17:20
  I always see against say applaud devices.
• 17:23
  Well, I could just use an app on my iPhone and I don't need to
• 17:25
  buy a separate recorder. But if there's four of us
• 17:27
  sitting in a meeting and we want to record it, nobody wants to
• 17:30
  put their primary smartphone down on the table and not have
• 17:33
  it during the meeting recording. So what do you have a secondary
• 17:36
  complimentary phone that does a hell of a lot more than a
• 17:39
  dedicated voice recorder. But double click voice recorder,
• 17:42
  microphone dot bang does the same thing and we can partner
• 17:45
  with different providers. So if you're an Otter person and
• 17:48
  not applaud person or something else, you build that in.
• 17:50
  So this becomes, you know, a foot in the past, a product
• 17:53
  that's very much of 20262027 on the back of I'd say the rise of
• 17:58
  intentional tech and people realizing they need something to
• 18:01
  sometimes put down their iPhone and just have a more focused
• 18:04
  work device. But this doesn't punish you and
• 18:06
  limit what you can do with it. And then when you go into the
• 18:08
  future of like AI tools and that, how do we start to
• 18:11
  integrate them? And and you know, when you see
• 18:13
  things like this, we started talking about them years ago.
• 18:15
  So the things that you'll have me back on the podcast to talk
• 18:18
  about next year and the year after year after, they just move
• 18:21
  us down the line, you know, and but we got to execute, you know,
• 18:24
  we did a great job of height building and now this year's
• 18:27
  heads down. Get the work done, get the
• 18:28
  products out, and make sure you guys love them.
• 18:30
  Yeah, that's right. You, you mentioned plot a few
• 18:32
  times. It's funny, Kevin and I bought
• 18:34
  both, bought the Limitless, which just was acquired by Meta,
• 18:36
  which of course is now limited. So right, right we are.
• 18:40
  But that's just part of the, the tale of these hardware
• 18:42
  businesses, right? So you, you know, you're, you're
• 18:44
  a storyteller, Kevin. And I think first and foremost,
• 18:47
  you just did an AMA. You were saying before we get
• 18:49
  started, literally right before this, you were at CES kind of
• 18:52
  bringing this, bringing this back and kind of taking over the
• 18:55
  show again for a second time with with new clicks products.
• 18:58
  You've said that product storytelling matters maybe just
• 19:01
  as much or more than the product itself.
• 19:03
  How early did you start thinking about when you said you bought
• 19:06
  the domain in 23? Like, how early did you start
• 19:08
  thinking about this narrative? So you know, if I go back to the
• 19:11
  clicks launch of our keyboard case, we knew.
• 19:14
  So we announced it publicly on January 4th, 2024.
• 19:17
  We knew that was the date we were going to launch the product
• 19:21
  probably probably 9 months in advance before before we had
• 19:24
  working prototypes like our go to market plan was baked.
• 19:27
  If we couldn't be far enough along as a company, I probably
• 19:31
  would have tried to shelf it until the next year.
• 19:34
  And you know, part of that is when you when you have a show
• 19:37
  like CES, the world's media is coming.
• 19:39
  They're looking for tech stories.
• 19:42
  They want to tell tech stories. And if you can architect the
• 19:46
  right momentum there, you can build a giant snowball, you
• 19:50
  know, out of it, right? You start with something small,
• 19:52
  but if you actually get it rolling, it'll take off.
• 19:55
  And I think a lot of brands go there.
• 19:56
  We do it probably in the most economical manner possible.
• 20:00
  We don't go buy a big flashy booth on the show.
• 20:03
  Floor hoping for people to, you know, the right person to walk
• 20:07
  by to tell her story. We do it in a way where, you
• 20:10
  know, we have our own hotel suite.
• 20:12
  We start inviting people, you know, months in advance the way
• 20:15
  we we do the rollout of the information in the lead up just
• 20:18
  prior to the show and everything gets it out and we get kind of
• 20:21
  two bites of the apple. And when you see that approach
• 20:24
  work the first time, you know, we kind of followed our own
• 20:27
  playbook the second time and it works again.
• 20:29
  And, and part of it is to, you know, even in things like your,
• 20:32
  your media kit and press kit, make it people easy for people
• 20:35
  who can't be there to get the assets that they're going to
• 20:38
  need to be able to remix and tell their own story.
• 20:40
  Because you have a planet full of content creators now who, you
• 20:43
  know, their job is to tell cool stories, awesome and early if
• 20:47
  they want to pop on the algorithm.
• 20:49
  So if you set up everybody for success, you know, your success
• 20:52
  is guaranteed. And I think a lot of the
• 20:54
  products that that go to these shows just don't, don't do that.
• 20:57
  So we definitely focus on not just the storytelling of the
• 21:00
  product, but actually that that go to market, roll out for
• 21:02
  announcements. And I think it, you know, I see
• 21:05
  a lot of cool products that are not getting the attention they
• 21:08
  deserve. And it's kind of, I would say
• 21:10
  their fault, but I feel like they they think they're doing
• 21:13
  the right things. But this is where having lived
• 21:15
  on the other side of the tech media coin for so long,
• 21:18
  attending this event, watching thousands of events, you kind of
• 21:21
  realize what actually matters and what doesn't.
• 21:24
  And a lot of people will spend a lot of money on the things they
• 21:26
  think matters to find out after the fact that it didn't do
• 21:29
  nearly as much for them. And, and for us, you know, we've
• 21:31
  tried some of those bigger, bigger box things as well the
• 21:34
  last couple years. And guess what?
• 21:35
  They don't work as well as when we're kind of like a little bit
• 21:38
  crafty, take a little bit, you know, more measured approach,
• 21:41
  but start really early and know exactly what we want to do.
• 21:43
  Yeah. I mean, you talked about
• 21:45
  spending money. I'm curious a bit about raising
• 21:47
  it. And so like, you know, you guys
• 21:48
  have taken a quite different path, I think to fundraising as
• 21:51
  a lot of companies have so far. How do you guys sort of mix in
• 21:55
  the way you bootstrapped kind of partner but then also like you
• 21:58
  leverage the community boast as customers but also as kind of a
• 22:02
  megaphone? We never raised a penny.
• 22:03
  And if we had raised money, there's no way we would have,
• 22:05
  you know, meandered the ups and downs of the media world to get
• 22:08
  to an exit. So it was by necessity, a
• 22:11
  bootstrapped business. And we only invested in risk
• 22:14
  once we already banked money doing the safe thing that
• 22:16
  worked. And and you know, that could be
• 22:17
  a podcast episode on it on its own to really like dive into the
• 22:20
  world of bootstrapping. So I think for myself and for my
• 22:23
  my business partner and CEO age and you know, we're both of a
• 22:27
  mentality of less is more bootstrap.
• 22:29
  Maybe think of it as seed strap, like take on the least money
• 22:33
  needed, proof things out. And you know, once you de risk,
• 22:36
  you can always get growth capital as you need to.
• 22:38
  But obviously building phones and things like that require
• 22:41
  more dollars than, you know, building websites and doing
• 22:45
  content. It's a it's a different category
• 22:47
  of business. So we kind of tried everything
• 22:49
  at the start, like when we raised our first pre seed round
• 22:53
  in 2023, I came after we just self funded the project, right?
• 22:57
  And I, I in my head, like businesses can fail.
• 23:00
  You can try a lot of projects and if they don't work out, you
• 23:02
  don't care. So when we were developing this
• 23:04
  at the start, you know, we just self funded it through the
• 23:06
  prototype phase. I wanted to get in my hands and
• 23:08
  see if it would work physically, conceptually.
• 23:11
  And then once we decided to build the product, the first
• 23:14
  thing we did was we, we did a really strategic friends and
• 23:17
  family precede round. And it wasn't actual friends and
• 23:20
  family, but it was industry friends and family.
• 23:22
  So we went to a lot of our ex BlackBerry friends who had, you
• 23:26
  know, 15 years earlier, 10 years earlier, left BlackBerry to go
• 23:29
  to work at companies like Apple and Samsung and Facebook and
• 23:32
  Google and, you know, go a level up in terms of their expertise
• 23:36
  and, and probably dollars in the bank account.
• 23:38
  But people we would be able to call on when needed to help us
• 23:41
  as we proved out what we were doing and and grew.
• 23:44
  So it was almost like a price of admission to be part of the
• 23:47
  clicks, whatever we're building early, early on when we were
• 23:50
  still in stealth mode. So that that got us our first
• 23:53
  kind of precede round from all people who could help if needed.
• 23:56
  We can call them if needed for advice, but also they weren't
• 23:59
  going to cry if it didn't work out, right?
• 24:01
  Because they all knew what they were getting into from a risk
• 24:04
  and product perspective. And then we launched in 2024.
• 24:07
  We drove a lot of revenue straight away right D to C
• 24:10
  orders. The moment we went live purchase
• 24:12
  orders from from retailers, maybe we almost grew a little
• 24:15
  too quick in that respect. We should have kept things
• 24:18
  tighter on the D to C side. So we were able to do a lot of
• 24:21
  self funding in the business through through 2024.
• 24:24
  And you know, then when we kind of learnt because question one
• 24:28
  was, is this just a product that we want to scale to the moon or
• 24:31
  do we want to invest in future road map and start building?
• 24:34
  Once we had that decision of we want to position ourselves to be
• 24:37
  able to do even bigger things, then we start to go down the
• 24:40
  fundraising path. And the question was, OK, how's
• 24:42
  this going to work? Are we going to get money from
• 24:44
  VCs? We have a lot of hype around us.
• 24:45
  Maybe this will work. And we did start talking to a
• 24:48
  lot of VCs. We even went to Startup Grind in
• 24:51
  San Francisco last year. We won growth startup of the
• 24:54
  year, which was this massive accolade.
• 24:56
  We did talk to more VCs and what we found out was, you know, VCs
• 25:00
  probably are scared of hardware. A lot of them they, if you don't
• 25:03
  have a lot of words like AI happening at the time we started
• 25:06
  talking to them, they weren't necessarily wanting to look at
• 25:09
  it right away. And at that point they weren't
• 25:11
  sure, is this something like a fad or is it actually a category
• 25:15
  that's going to be there? So we weren't getting VC
• 25:17
  interest the way, you know, maybe you would have hoped.
• 25:20
  And we kind of went back into her playbook.
• 25:22
  We talked to we talked to some of her advisors, you know, sort
• 25:26
  of informal friends of the industry and that and one of
• 25:28
  them who is ACEO of, you know, big tech company, like billion
• 25:32
  dollar plus company, who I knew from the BlackBerry days.
• 25:35
  He said, Kevin, go back to what you did before.
• 25:37
  He's like you, you guys were doing this right in 2009, 2012
• 25:41
  community. He's like, do content like
• 25:43
  everybody. People know you like you quit
• 25:45
  blogging. You haven't been this guy that
• 25:47
  that like. You'll be surprised how many
• 25:49
  people know you if you just put out there and ask.
• 25:51
  To coming back to like this community that you've built,
• 25:54
  this revival rival of kind of the BlackBerry old tech, the
• 25:57
  keyboard. You know, there's a lot of
• 25:58
  skeptics out there and, you know, as a member of the media
• 26:01
  and now somebody who tried to convince them that you're right.
• 26:03
  A lot of people say, you know, revivals aren't going to work.
• 26:05
  They never work. How do you separate this
• 26:07
  skepticism, you know, of of kind of bringing bringing back
• 26:10
  BlackBerry in the form of the clicks communicator from, you
• 26:13
  know, from this vision and this this bigger kind of vision that
• 26:16
  you have? Yeah.
• 26:17
  So with with bringing back BlackBerry thing now it's not
• 26:20
  the goal, right? We've gone beyond it.
• 26:21
  But what the notion of bringing back BlackBerry last year did
• 26:24
  was it kind of kind of allowed us to shake the, the BlackBerry
• 26:27
  tree or the BlackBerry Bush, so to speak, and see what would
• 26:30
  fall out of it. And we we had hundreds of calls
• 26:33
  over the last six months with people from the industry, people
• 26:37
  who turned out to be investors and become investors, you know,
• 26:39
  from fans, from partners, suppliers, etcetera, who want to
• 26:43
  see this revival happen. And, you know, coming to
• 26:45
  funding. While the VC approach was not
• 26:47
  crystal clear, what we found as we showed people our road map
• 26:50
  was that they they kind of said, wow, yeah, we don't need to
• 26:53
  bring back BlackBerry. We love what you're bringing to
• 26:55
  market. How do I become part of that?
• 26:58
  So we were able to do our seed round really with fans of clicks
• 27:02
  and what we were building, but people who appreciated what they
• 27:05
  were missing in that world to be involved as part of the story.
• 27:08
  So that got us to through our funding round.
• 27:10
  Now when I come to what's happening in the market today,
• 27:13
  you know, it's it's been crazy. I actually have not seen a lot
• 27:15
  of skepticism right now. Now, where I think there's
• 27:17
  misunderstanding is a lot of people don't know what the scale
• 27:21
  of success looks like in 2026 for launching a smart, you know,
• 27:26
  a phone or a smartphone. And it's easy to remember
• 27:28
  stories like essential phone. You know, Andy Rubin, the guy
• 27:31
  who started Android, who you know, I think spent a couple
• 27:34
  $100 million to try to compete against iPhone with a really
• 27:37
  sexy Android device. And it didn't, didn't work,
• 27:40
  obviously. So if he can't do it, well, how
• 27:42
  is it possible that a startup brand or somebody smaller can
• 27:45
  come into it? And I think 1, you know, the
• 27:47
  economies of how we operate are very different.
• 27:49
  If you look at things tactically, like, you know, what
• 27:51
  are your minimum order quantities?
• 27:53
  How are you going to sell? It's not that it's not big
• 27:56
  numbers still, but it's much more achievable probably than
• 27:59
  than some people think if you do it correctly the right way.
• 28:03
  So I think that's a misconception.
• 28:04
  It's like, how are you going to compete against iPhone, Samsung,
• 28:06
  etcetera? You're crazy.
• 28:07
  It's like, well, no, you just don't actually understand how
• 28:09
  the industry works anymore. You're working off of, you know,
• 28:12
  2011, 2015 data and not the, the modern day economics of, of
• 28:16
  building hardware and, and how things can come together from,
• 28:18
  from chipset and displays, etcetera, etcetera to to pull a
• 28:22
  product together. I think the second part of it is
• 28:24
  don't compete come and end. And that's where by defining a
• 28:27
  category of you know, this is a purpose built communicator for
• 28:32
  people who are iPhone people and have a Galaxy or pixel.
• 28:37
  That question is is very different and that and that
• 28:40
  consideration is very different. Will we already know we have
• 28:44
  succeeded? The question will just be how
• 28:46
  much we succeed because we were able to smash our, our Moqs
• 28:50
  literally in less than 48 hours from, you know, for us the, the,
• 28:54
  the actual hard work is kind of done where, where we are on our
• 28:58
  sales forecast for the year. You know, two weeks into
• 29:01
  January, we were able to basically pass month 7-8 of our
• 29:06
  sales forecast where we're expected and all organically
• 29:09
  without a penny spent on advertising.
• 29:11
  So we already know right now it's a matter of, hey, you have
• 29:13
  carriers not knocking on your door, you have retailers
• 29:16
  knocking on your door. And I think navigating the
• 29:18
  growth and not opening the wrong doors or, or maybe some doors
• 29:23
  too soon. That is, that is the magic we
• 29:25
  need to navigate. And, and where I'm glad we have
• 29:27
  a lot of people to call on for advice and help because not
• 29:31
  everything's a crystal clear answer and you kind of want to
• 29:33
  say yes to everything, but that would probably set you up to
• 29:35
  make mistakes. So I think we're very focused
• 29:37
  now on deliver great products, you know, focus on quality.
• 29:41
  We already know from the demand side that you know, all of our,
• 29:44
  our signals indicators and actual sales, you know, on, on
• 29:47
  reservations and orders like are are knocking it out of the park
• 29:50
  from where, where our, where our forecast was between the
• 29:54
  pessimistic, optimistic and realistic expectations, you
• 29:58
  know, we are multiples higher than optimistic so that that
• 30:01
  problem is solved, right. That's fan you couldn't ask for
• 30:04
  a better start to 2026. So really it's about delivery
• 30:06
  now and just the right, right way to scale over years 234.
• 30:10
  Yeah, let's talk about that. I think, you know, I've
• 30:12
  definitely bought a lot of Kickstarter things that haven't
• 30:15
  come and I've bought, you know, I've also pre-ordered a lot of
• 30:17
  things that I don't know ever came.
• 30:19
  I don't I forgot, right. I can.
• 30:20
  So like, what are sort of the non negotiable mistakes, like
• 30:24
  sitting in your chair today knowing that we've all got
• 30:27
  orders for this thing. Like when is it going to come?
• 30:30
  And what are the what are the things that you could do wrong
• 30:33
  or you've seen other people do wrong?
• 30:34
  And how are you guys going to prevent that sort of like, you
• 30:37
  know, negative Kickstarter story?
• 30:39
  Because I think there's still some that I'm on that like
• 30:41
  people still chime in periodically and I somehow get
• 30:43
  comments and haven't unsubscribed where they're still
• 30:45
  mad that the thing hasn't come three years later and the
• 30:47
  company's bankrupt and shut down and smoked the 2,000,000 bucks
• 30:51
  trying to deliver something and didn't get there.
• 30:53
  But I'm curious like how you guys are looking at that sitting
• 30:55
  on what I would imagine is a mountain of pre-order cash.
• 30:58
  And like, this expectation window will ebb and flow over
• 31:02
  how you manage it over the coming weeks and months to the
• 31:05
  point that, you know, does this thing overachieve and sort of
• 31:08
  like deliver beyond people's expectations?
• 31:10
  Yeah, great question. So I think I think that's one of
• 31:12
  the biggest things that we always think about and we, you
• 31:15
  know, we, we've done a lot of sets and wraps.
• 31:17
  So if I go back to even clicks with our initial roll out for
• 31:20
  iPhone and Android, we did a similar thing, which was, you
• 31:23
  know, announced in January and ship a few months later.
• 31:26
  And, and what you learn is everything will always be a
• 31:28
  little harder and take a little longer than you wanted to.
• 31:31
  So that's where you know, if you have a date in mind that you're
• 31:34
  targeting for in the beginning, you just don't give an exact
• 31:37
  date because you know, it's going to end up probably missing
• 31:39
  by a couple weeks and that kind of thing.
• 31:41
  So in the case of our, our keyboard, right, the, the power
• 31:45
  keys, you know, we said ships in spring to make sure we have that
• 31:48
  window there where when things take a little bit longer that
• 31:52
  you're, you're kind of covered. And yeah.
• 31:54
  Spring in Chicago, Spring in San Francisco.
• 31:56
  Yeah, yeah, it's gonna be spring, but but you know, that's
• 31:59
  a product that has gone through all the stages.
• 32:01
  You're, you know, you've been using the product for for a long
• 32:04
  time now. It's really just about that
• 32:06
  final. How many do we need to build and
• 32:09
  having that buffer a time to make sure your supply chain
• 32:12
  builds enough 'cause it it, it really is a thing you plan
• 32:14
  around. And in our case, you know, if
• 32:17
  you were doing a lower volume, you would be able to sort of
• 32:21
  send out your first batch as kind of like your early founder,
• 32:24
  early adopter batch. You know, be really, really
• 32:27
  generous with everybody. If they have issues like you're,
• 32:29
  you know, it's fine. It's going to happen.
• 32:30
  It's a little bit more that Kickstarter you thing and then
• 32:33
  then fix it before you scale. You know, in our case with power
• 32:36
  keyboard, which is really been like, it's hard not to want to
• 32:39
  talk about the phone a lot, but I can't overstate how killer
• 32:42
  that product is. It is it's just such an impulse
• 32:44
  no brainer tech gadget buy that has a really high volume to it
• 32:49
  and it obviously comes up first. So we've, we've added a few
• 32:52
  extra weeks into that process of just final testing as you go
• 32:56
  from, you know, your, your like DVT to Pvt., like your final
• 32:59
  samples as you build the manufacturing lines and go just
• 33:02
  to make sure you have something that's that's rock solid for,
• 33:05
  for day one. And as those roll out of the
• 33:08
  factory, like I will stay in China that that month to just
• 33:11
  make sure nothing fades as you're, as you're going through
• 33:14
  all the way through. So you just have to do it.
• 33:16
  But I think the biggest thing is we've done a lot of sets and
• 33:18
  reps the supply chain, the factory, everybody we've been
• 33:21
  working with is, is years. You know, these aren't our first
• 33:24
  products. So that we succeed together.
• 33:26
  And that helps solve your problems because it's not like
• 33:29
  you're showing up. And if you miss something on
• 33:31
  quality or timeline that we as a company only feel it.
• 33:35
  Everybody feels that. So it brings out the best of
• 33:37
  everyone. So I think quick answer would be
• 33:39
  have a team that has all of the incentives aligned to deliver
• 33:44
  quality and to deliver on time and don't commit to big things
• 33:47
  until you've done your sets and reps and, you know, made the
• 33:50
  mistakes on smaller things which we've done.
• 33:51
  So I feel really confident about it and that's we're focused on
• 33:54
  this here. I like it.
• 33:55
  And with that, like where can people get on the train, follow
• 33:58
  the movement and and more importantly, if they haven't
• 33:59
  already put their pre-orders in? Yeah, head to clicks dot tech or
• 34:03
  if you if you like to and it's easier to remember, you can head
• 34:05
  to clicksphone.com, which will take you to the the communicator
• 34:08
  page in order Would love it if you join the journey this here
• 34:11
  as we go and it's going to be fun.
• 34:13
  And you know, for me, follow Crackberry.
• 34:14
  Kevin, I'm I'm kind of active on LinkedIn in terms of the
• 34:17
  storytelling of the business as we build it and go at which I
• 34:20
  think is is pretty interesting from a founder perspective and
• 34:24
  people can always DM me there, you know, love talking to
• 34:26
  founders and and sharing my advice where I have it.
• 34:28
  Kevin, this was a lot of fun. Thank you for joining us.
• 34:32
  That was a strong one, a kind of full blueprint on how hardware
• 34:35
  actually gets built without fantasy math.
• 34:38
  Yeah, no nostalgia bait, just reps timing and knowing where
• 34:41
  not to compete. Yeah, the category framing
• 34:44
  really landed for me. Communicator, not just another
• 34:47
  phone. That single decision explains
• 34:49
  like half the strategy. All right, Kevin, what are your
• 34:52
  top five on this one? So #1 compounding reps turn that
• 34:55
  media exposure into a product advantage #2 Accessories kind of
• 34:59
  validated the demand before committing to a full hardware
• 35:02
  build. 3 category naming matters more than really the specs at
• 35:06
  launch. And then four.
• 35:07
  I mean, CES wins are planned months ahead, not just like
• 35:11
  accidental. And finally, like hardware,
• 35:13
  success comes from incentives, sequencing, and, quite frankly,
• 35:17
  some restraint. If this episode made you rethink
• 35:19
  your relationship with devices or attention, share it with
• 35:22
  someone who's craving focus. And subscribe to Founder Mode
• 35:25
  for more conversations about building things that actually
• 35:27
  matter. That's it for today.
• 35:29
  Because sometimes the fastest way forward is putting your hand
• 35:32
  back on the keyboard.