In a May interview with ABC7 Washington, Sam Meek, an Iraq War veteran and the founder/CEO of D.C. startup Sandboxx, said that “mail call is still the most important morale booster for our troops.” (Video below.)
In 2011, Meek—a former Marine Corps. sergeant who served two tours in Iraq and who personally witnessed the positive influence and support that personal letters can inspire—set off to launch Sandboxx to make it easier for people to send letters to their loved ones in the military.
@sandboxx I appreciate what you guys do . I'm really going to need you guys during boot camp , with people sending me letters .
— Young Brasi (@That_ParisFlow) August 5, 2015
Sandboxx is a mobile app that’s used to capture content from mobile devices and convert it into a letter format that can be printed out and sent to specific troop units.
Today, the startup has already registered more than 20,000 U.S. units, from across the armed forces, on its platform. As a result, soldiers are able to easily receive pre-addressed letters from users who could otherwise not reach them due to a soldier’s lack of Internet or cellular signal.
In essence, Sandboxx hopes to make the process of writing a letter and sending it to a soldier that’s “off the grid” easier and more inline with how someone would use a smartphone to text or share a photo with friends.
“Although there are other companies who classify themselves as social media platforms for the military and vets, we are positioned to capture today's generation of 'social warriors' by aligning the user experience expectations of todays mobile users and wrapping it around the social structure and functionality needs of our military and veteran communities,” Meek said.
Fresh off an important client signing in Outlaw Energy, a new energy drink company that Meek says is building a “strong brand,” we caught up with the marine-turned-tech-entrepreneur to learn how his startup is doing.
Sandboxx officially launched its first revenue-generating product, Letters, in September 2014—which is when it hit the iOS app store. With the product, Sandboxx will print and send the letters that are submitted via its mobile app directly to service members.
A user’s first Letter message is free and those following it carry a $1.99 fee. “This is to print the letter, photo, envelope, postage and the stamped, addressed return envelope and writing paper that we include so that the service member can reply faster. [It’s] a flat rate for first-class mail to anywhere in the U.S. or to any deployed service member,” Social Media Manager Shane McCarthy said.
In early July, Sandboxx also launched in the Android store, aka Google Play. “Our month over month revenue growth is 138 percent since November 2014,” Meek told DC Inno, “as more service members and their families join, we expect to become the go-to-place for marketers looking to reach militaries.”
In 2013, Sandboxx hired its first employee. Today, it employs seven full-time professionals across its sales, engineering and marketing divisions. Over the course of the next 12 months, they plan to hire a senior level executive to guide strategy and operations, two junior level marketers and two more dedicated engineers, Meek told DC Inno.
The hires will help accelerate the startup’s efforts to build a community of users and for “ground marketing campaigns.”
Though Meek declined to disclose exact user growth figures or the app’s total monthly active user (MAU) base, he said they were seeing 90 percent month-on-month user growth. The Sandboxx founder said that the reason for this growth has come due to very low customer acquisition costs, which they plan to decrease further in the future as the team works to make their product more “viral.” He added, “these changes will become apparent in the next month when it becomes easier to invite friends and let family and friends know when you have sent letters.”
The personal element
Interestingly, one of the primary vehicles used to grow Sandboxx’s user base has been personal referrals, not advertising.
“Our growth from our users referring friends and family is extremely positive. Usually when one member of the family uses Sandboxx, we soon see the entire family joining and their friends adding them too,” Meek said. And the model makes sense, as multiple friends and loved ones are similarly dealing with the same communication situation but can conveniently access the same military unit from the application.
"We are positioned to capture today's generation of social warriors."
Meek says the positive feedback his team has received from Sandboxx users has also become a great motivator while the development process rages on.
The biggest challenge that Sandboxx currently faces, Meek said, lies in the application’s "find your unit" feature. The tool lets members of the military connect with their past units, but managing the addition of units to Sandboxx and making sure that they are accurate remains a time-consuming task. In addition, because thousands of new users are joining Sandboxx each month, the team will also need to deal with planning for long-term logistical questions, like how to best scale their product while still guaranteeing a quality experience.
Sandboxx currently boasts a 4.9 star review average on Facebook and is in the process of raising funding. The startup last raised funding in June 2013, in the form of a $1 million angel-led seed round.
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