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

Undergraduate Researcher

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

REEKON Tools is looking to bulk donate (1500+ tools) to and would appreciate any suggestions/contacts if there is a group in your network that might be interested.

We have an assortment of new and like new tools (retail returns) that we would prefer not to put in a dumpster and would much rather give to an organization focused on anything related to trades, STEM, or teaching the next generation.

If you have any leads or suggestions, would be greatly appreciated if you could send them to me!

We don't have a specific organization type in mind and any kind of trade school, community program, high school shop/tech classes, or similar would be greatly appreciated.

Nothing beats a crisp foam case to highlight all of our products and (seemingly) consistent industrial design!

REEKON Tools visits a lot of job sites and we are almost always giving out tools to our current and prospective customers to show how easy it is to get started.

For the past year, this has generally meant scrambling around the office to gather tools needed for demos and only once getting on site discovering they had beta firmware or bugs on them! 

We laser cut a foam insert combined with a transparent lid and matching yellow and black case to make several demo boxes for us to take on our visits ensuring we always have a set ready to go.

One of my favorite setups and awesome to see just how many hardware products the team have worked on and launched in past 5 years!

I had a great time talking about the REEKON Tools journey with Anthony M. Gonzales, MBA and Christopher Louie on the official Reddit, Inc. /r/Entrepreneur Podcast. 

Entrepreneurship is weird and I think sometimes looking in it's easy to think its all upside and making money. 

Hopefully between posting on LinkedIn and going on some of these podcasts we can help convey the messiness and non linear/predictable pathways many take to found their companies and hustles.

When you're in the weeds of it, it's always going to seem like everyone is doing better than you are (as high ambition people are always going to be looking at the next level up and how to get there).

Keep on grinding and know that every pathway is unique without any universal truths or ways of doing things.

You can’t force a team to work 996 and expect for everyone to be productive. It makes flashy headlines being the hot item for SF/YC companies recently but I would think less than 15% of the team is actually productive for the whole time.

The remaining 85% is drawing work out for things that could be accomplished in a productive 40-50 hour week.

I have long seen that passion and belief in company mission is what both drives people to work and be productive for longer stretches of time and there is very little way to force this regardless of company policy.

High achievers who are excited by a project and mission will put in the hours to get things done.

I have rarely/if ever seen success of trying to force people to work longer lead to better results when starting with the assumption of already hiring great talent. 

This isn’t to say that great companies are born working 40 hours a week but the standard is maintained and driven by passion regardless of what the company calls itself working policy wise.

I have long believed that 'leading by influence' is much more effective than 'leading by telling' and think the same is true here.

If you hire the right people and convey the exciting nature of your mission, any kind of hours based working policy is unnecessary outside of LinkedIn/twitter hype.

At the beginning of this year, I made it a goal to post on LinkedIn regularly (averaged about 4 times a week).

My goal with posting on LinkedIn was two fold:

1) Keep top of mind for relevant people and partners throughout the year

2) Warm up new connections prior to engaging with them to highlight who we are as a company and the depths we think about our products and ecosystem

For other industries, a lot of sales and inbound leads come from LinkedIn where, for us, it was probably more useful for industry connections, new partnerships, recruiting, and mentorship.

Overall, I would highly recommend as it was an overwhelming net positive in terms of connections, opportunities, and interactions I and REEKON would have otherwise not had.

As with anything social media, vanity numbers are meaningless but I share them here in the interest of transparency and so everyone can go check their own to see if they beat me.

Moving forward, for me, I think 2-3 times a week is the sweet spot of keeping everyone updated and what I will try to target next year.

Never let terrorists' demand shift good business and your principles as a company.

We are usually very generous in regards to sending out free or discounted samples.  Whether just for feedback or for promotion, it usually isn't a problem when people reach out.

However, there are many instances where we decline either based on the person asking (type of content they create, what their professional background is, etc) or other factors.

The following sometimes happens where influencers ask for free products and, if we decline or dont respond right away, resort to then leaving bad reviews or trash talk the company.

Early on at REEKON Tools we took these a lot more personally and tried our best to work with them to remove and shift.

Today, if people want to be disrespectful like this, we simply ignore them.  

They're not the type of people we want to work with or further our mission and its usually reflective of their content overall.

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The Battle

Adam Leeb

Christian Reed

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taplio

The Battle

Adam Leeb

Christian Reed

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

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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