Dear True Fans: Production Scaling

Dear True Fans and supporters, first, thank you so much for the $20.1k total collected – of the $20k called for – on the emergency construction funding. Monday, I’m ordering the insertable tooth blades for the dimensional sawmill; Tuesday – the rebar is arriving so we will be welding rebar for foundations. Wednesday – we’ll be pressing compressed earth block samples. Thursday – bulldozing and excavation of the site is happening.

 
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Hear David Ihnen’s update on construction:

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News on funding: $148k grant from Kauffman foundation – rejected! That provides a perfect chance to focus on scaling production as a more prominent route to funding the $3M minimum required for project success by year-end 2012.

Aren’t we building a 5000 square foot workshop, and comfortable accommodations for 10? Can we therefore, not scale production? We’ve already shown amazing results, with me as production manager and mostly unskilled labor.

We cleared 3k last year, $25k this year – under rough conditions and in the absence of proper fabrication documentation. Now our documentation is coming into shape – and with a comfortable working environment, I’m calling out for $1/4M cleared next year.

Our plan is to get 10 fabricators here, we have 3 already making commitments. We are now considering 1 week production and 3 weeks prototyping each month. If we have 10 fabricators/prototypers here – then on our own account we could earn $5k/person per month while continuing our prototyping duties– which would be over $1/2M next year. With that kind of earning, further investment would be a natural outcome. Why? Because we are giving the business models away for free. We prototype, document, and optimize to create the most powerful open business models in the world.