The box pictured in the article is somewhere in the range of the 11th - 30th Skystream box ever created. Yes, It looks horrible. That sticker though :) We wanted to share this story with our awesome family as we get close to celebrating 5 (YES 5!) years of being Skystream! While we are getting all nostalgic, we wanted to thank all of our awesome customers! Without you we would not be here to tell this story.
Our first Skystream box was a dual core unit. The shape of the box was some of the inspiration for the ONE and the TWO. When the two owners of Skystream started Skystream, they both had full time jobs. Skystream was just a side hustle.
Both of the owners worked commission based jobs together and were having a tough few months. Deals that were supposed to go through didn't. Things were looking bleak for the owners. Owner one even cashed in his change jars to pay the power and cable bill (Ironic right!)
Owner ONE (See what we did there) had purchased a Streaming device to save some money on cable, but was left feeling like there had to be something better. Owner TWO (We are so clever) was also interested in cutting cable and saving money, so he started looking around and found someone selling an Android based streaming device. Both owners met with this seller and got a demo. Owner two bought it, owner one had already spent all of his money on the other streaming device and had to sit on the sideline until another deal went through.
Both of the owners got to work the next day and were discussing the Android device and said to each other "We can totally make this better!"
A few weeks of learning how to work on Android firmware and they were ready to buy the first ten boxes. The only problem was that another deal fell through, so both of them were pretty much broke. Owner one decided to take a risk and purchase 10 boxes on a credit card with no idea on how he would pay it back.
2 weeks of eagerly waiting for the package to arrive, they finally came in. These boxes were blank and had no logo. They were having a friend create a logo for them as a favor, but it was not ready for the first round. About 3 weeks later they had sold all ten units and were ready to order the next 20. The logo was ready to go and things were looking great.
At the same time the website was created and through some word of mouth was getting orders. The product was listed on a large marketplace and sold out pretty quickly. So they were sitting on orders with no product. But these 20 boxes were on their way and everything would be good. Not so fast, said the streaming gods :)
The 20 boxes were delivered to owner two at his house. Owner two called owner one and told him there was a problem with the 20.
Owner two -They printed the wrong logos on the boxes!
Owner two is known as a prankster, so owner one was a little skeptical.
Owner one - Don't mess with me like that, I've been answering emails all night from people who want their boxes.
Owner two - I'm not playing, they have some random stupid log on them.
Owner one - So what do we do? Just send them out as is? If people return them I won't be able to pay my credit card!
Owner two - Hold my beer! (Not really what he said, but it works for the story.)
The final idea was to have sticker created of the logo (Beautiful logo right :) and to spray paint the boxes with some awesome metallic black paint. Brilliant!
So they both met at owners two's house with grandiose ideas of how great they were going to look when done. A few hours later they were all done and looked horrible. But people wanted them and they worked very well, so at the time it made sense to ship them out.
A few days went by and they followed up via email with everyone who bought them on their site. People loved the box and not one person complained about the look of the box. A huge sigh of relief heard around the Orlando area was let out and things were good. Owner one's credit card was paid and the next 40 were ordered with specific instructions on the logo :)
A few days later they were looking at the dashboard for the online market place they were selling them on and found they had gotten their first review. If you have noticed the theme of this story, I'm sure you can guess where this is going. Expecting a nice shiny 5 star review as they had hand tested each box and all of them were working perfectly, they were met with a 5 paragraph one star review.
The customer actually removed the sticker (Why, we have no idea to this day) and could see the raised logo of some other random company. He started out by saying that the box worked well. But then went into a fit of typing rage in all caps that the owners were snake oil salesman who were just selling someone else's product and spray painting them and adding some stupid sticker.
The owner's contacted him immediately via email to explain what had happened and that they wanted to fulfill the order and not have him wait for another batch to arrive. The owners offered to refund him some money if he considered changing his review. But this customer was not hearing it. They never did get that review changed, but Skystream could not be stopped by one bad review. 5 years later Skystream has grown by leaps and bounds. We have added many new members to our streaming family over the years!
We hope you enjoyed this little story of how Skystream started. Without all of the support from you, our streaming family would not be where it is today! We greatly appreciate your support! Thank you so much for referring so many of your friends and family to Skystream! It is an honor and pleasure to have you in our family!
As always, Stream On!!!
