The Hublock Chronology 📆

Aww, those mountains 😍 🏔 .
When Hublock 💜 hangs out, the sun 🌤 comes out . Traditionally, after several months of separation and working on Zoom, Google meets and similar creations, it’s always nice to meet up in the real world 🌍 . And the mountain vibes are the best 🏞 . So, during these days we don’t code anything 🤘 🧑🏾‍💻 👩🏻‍💻 , we don’t test anything and we don’t mess around. We focus on discussions and thoughts like “what if…” 🤔 . Whether or not we came up with something you may find out here…. or not 😎 .

Are they doing anything over there in this Hublock? 🤷🏽‍♂️
For some of you who are less familiar ➡️ we want to dedicate this post to everyone who does the magic (that no one sees) 🤌🏼 🚀 🙏🏾 . Meaning, everything that goes on underneath, as Maciek calls it – “the guts” 🙈 . Most of the things a user sees work solely because “the guts” are healthy 🍎 🍑 and they don’t have to bother with fast food 🍔 🍟 . Hence, it is crucial to maintain these guts on a regular basis by eliminating elements that may start “messing things up” in the future. So, like our wonderful developers nicely express it – by “cleaning the code from junk” 🗑 🚮 .

High Fashion! Here we go! 👗 🥼 👔
This is our first Hublock‘s Prêt-à-porter 💜 💁🏼‍♀️

So, you are saying that you are stuck in traffic? 🚧 🚗 🚙 🚐 🚌When your driver 🧑🏾‍✈️ informs you that he won’t make it because he is stuck in traffic … you no longer panic 🤯 . From now on you say: “let me check” and magic happens 😎 🤌 . Our clients have been crying out 🗣️ for this feature from some time already. Since we like them a lot 💜 we added the ability to enable and display the traffic issues 🚦 🚧 . Up-to-date ➡️ anytime & anywhere – this is what we say 😎 .

Do you have more than one package to send 📦 ?
We have introduced an additional feature to our lovely clients who requested the ability to input multiple shipments 📦 📦 📦 at the same time. Funny that we didn’t come up with this idea on our own 🤷‍♂️ . Our German customers accidentally got a “riddle” in Polish 🇵🇱 to figure out 😅 .

Europe needs us 💜.
After a week of onboarding we now welcome new customers from Germany, Spain and Northern Ireland 🤗. In total, over 50 new drivers will be using our app 🥳. Nothing makes us happier than screenshots from our clients without red errors and with “green” packages 📦.

As you can see it’s starting to get a little crowded on the map.
There are more and more e-commerce companies that want to use our app to track their shipments 📦🎁 on a map in real time 🕵🏻 . This is how the Hublock Hero Club came to life. We also gather transport companies there which are interested in supporting our customers without unnecessary agents 😎.

Miko and bread rolls in Toruń 🥖 🍞 
Apparently the best bread rolls are in Toruń, so Miko didn’t hesitate much, took out his bike 🚴 and off he went. Except that he lives in Gdańsk 😎 so the total distance for him was 400 km. And because he is from the Hublock crew, even a broken cable for his gearbox, called bike derailleurs, didn’t stop him. And because of that, the following week Miko spent working standing up 😅 .

Multitasks 📝
Now our automations can do much more 💪🏾. You no longer need to create multiple automations to “play” the whole process. Now you can create many actions in one automation. It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it looks different in practice. Before the change, one of our customers had over 40 automations! And after the change he could manage it all with just seven. Less work for everyone, and the servers are happier too 🤗 .

The best law firm in town which is led by a power woman – Ilona Przetacznik, prepared us on how not to do some silly illegal stuff and to keep our clients safe 👩🏼‍💼 👩🏻‍💼 . A rather unspectacular topic but crucial for any company out there 💪🏽 .

Fame is here 🥳 . Logistics Manager thought it would be inappropriate not to write about us 😎 . So we gave them an interview where we talk about the reasons why we do what we do 🤗 .

Seems like nothing special but makes everyone happy 😄 . Well, this is how we do it 💜. Just a couple of months ago an email which was sent to us would have looked something like this: “%%$&(&§()”)/§ automations DO NOT WORK” 🙈 . Luckily, not anymore 😎. From now on compliments only 🥰.

Doing marketing on a massive scale 😎 . Automations are not at all as scary as some people might think.

Kasia gave the front-end guys some hard time and they had no choice but to help her put our new website together 🥳 . Also she is no longer as uptight as she used to be, but just as crazy as we are 🤪 . And as you read our stories, you probably already figured that out by now.

Fame, fame, fame 😎 🎉 .
Logistics Manager wants to write something about us, because he heard some stories that we are so damn cool 🤠 . Well if they insist, let them write. You’ll find more information on the topic in the post from June 📰 .

To our surprise, suddenly Hublock has become a globally operating company. Even in Hawaii 🏝️ . We are checking to see what is happening with our customer’s shipment 🚀 .

As I mentioned before the fulfillment company got a crush on us 🥰 . Because we are good hearted people 💜 , we decided to help them out. So we adjusted our platform to their needs.
Some tests were done, keys to API provided, and the time has come to hand over the platform to the client.

And as if nothing ever happened – they imported their shipments 🎁 📦 . On top of that, without warning us 🤷🏾‍♂️ and there was f****** A LOT of it, you know! Pawel was yelling on the slack that some equipment must be brought back to life! 👨🏼‍💻 We only hope he doesn’t hurt himself… or us! 🙈

It’s high time to meet face to face and not via online mode only 🖥️ 💻 . And the best place to organise such a meeting is of course the Tatra mountains, a place where the legend was born.

Well we are doing a reunion of the whole team. We work a little (that’s how I explain it to myself), party a little and reflect about the past. We also deliberate on what colors our first Lamborghinis will be 🚘 . It’s all healthy and booze-free 😬

In the past we’ve been getting signals that our new customers weren’t quite sure what to do when they first joined our sexy platform 🤔 . So Kasia and the rest of the team created the UI Tour which is easily accessible by clicking on the “question mark“. This way we guide our new clients through the most important features 🤩 .

Friday then! I’m sitting here sipping coffee ☕ . Yeah, I’m already planning the whole weekend in my head and there she is! Kasia is calling me on Slack because some potential client wants something we don’t have. So, there I go, mentally ditching my coffee and running to Google Meets 👨🏻‍💻 . And I politely ask what the problem is and Asia (a potential customer) says they are from fulfillment and they work with e-commerce. They have a problem and don’t quite understand what is happening to their shipments once they leave their warehouse 🤷🏻‍♀️ . Well they saw how our map works, where you can see everything in real-time and they really want to have it too. And if someone really wants it, it would be foolish for us to say that it’s not possible. So we explain that we do not have such a feature yet, and that we would have to implement it first. I don’t hear any objections, so I drop in to the backlog and off we go for a discussion with the team on how to make it work 💁🏻 💁🏼‍♂️ .

Magda, Agnieszka, Wolfgang and Hendrik make a request . They say they like to stare at our map all day long, but they are not able to quickly check the status of their shipment 📦 . So we came up with the so called “sidebar” – you click on it and there you have it all. It took us a couple of days to implement it, because Paweł was installing some “endpoints” and the frontend had to make it look nice.

We do like transparency, so from now on each user can share the same parcels view with their clients + they have access to their shipment list, where they can see exactly what’s happening with their products. You won’t have to answer any more phone calls and inquiries about each parcel separately! Nor individually entering parcels numbers in some tracking program! How cool is that? Finally, everything under control in one place 🦾 .

March is a very good month to introduce one of the best features for our users. As we all know, humans tend to make mistakes, have hangovers and sometimes just a bad day. And we are here just to help 💜 .

Tadaaaaa… from now on, just one click of a button and our artificial intelligence 🤖 or some kind of algorithm will allocate tasks automatically. The reason for this is to prevent drivers from unnecessarily driving around town, to avoid sending 5 trucks half-full, instead sending two trucks filled to their maximum capacity, and to always make sure that every shipment is delivered on time ⏰ .

Finally, everything starts working smoothly. We are improving what can be improved, we do not touch things that are already working. New features are being added constantly 👨🏾‍💻 🧑🏼‍💻 .

Our automations already can:

✅ Create tasks for drivers.
✅ Send an email.
✅ Send a text message.
✅ Create repetitive tasks.
✅ Communicate the exact time a driver will arrive with the shipment.

We thought it would be cool to have zones on our map. So we made it. The problem was that our customers said that our zones “suck”. They wanted to have their own zones, not something that was made up by our creative minds. And we said: “you name it, you got it!” So now they can design it however they want 💁🏼‍♀️ .

Kasia and Żanet are kicking things off. In fact, a whole new vision and the brand’s image are being created 💪🏾 .
New videos are popping up on our YT channel. There is more and more marketing being done, some funnels, and some kind of shortcuts that nobody understands 😁 🤷🏻‍♂️ .

This is the moment of truth for us. We’re migrating most of our automation processes to a new version and testing (yes… the one that was estimated for 5 days 😬 ). Everyone is testing it! They are adding whatever they can, importing as much as they can and it works! Our customer (yes the one from SM 😈 ) calls and asks what’s going on, because his drivers and other employees are no longer calling him to complain that “something is not working again”.

We need fresh blood! So we welcome Damian, Kasia and Żanet on board. They are as twisted as we are so they fit perfectly 💜 .

When something is not working (and it isn’t) the way it should, you have to bury it and make it better. Our backend had such a plan, and since all of us are extreme optimists, the estimation went from 5 days to 3 weeks (oh well) 🤖 .

And how do we feel? Oh well, just like that ➡️

We are going hard over the edge. Things don’t always turn out the way we planned. Automations are so automatic that you have to manually “push” them 😅 .

The front end has also gone a bit off the rails. Drivers are slightly frustrated because they see more red errors than tasks to be completed 🤯 💩 .

Have we mentioned our client yet? He’s still here, fighting with us and yeah we are thinking that maybe he likes this sort of vibe (SM 😈 ). After all nothing trains better than a surgery on a living organism.

Panic on board 🛳️ 🤯. There is a customer here and he says that he needs things to be working ASAP. We are thinking to ourselves “brave MF” 💪🏻 . But what to do, chasing the first customer away is a bit out of line here. So we throw ourselves in the deep water with tied legs, hands and a bag of bricks on our back 🧱 .

It was a pretty challenging time. It just wasn’t going well. You could feel the uncertainty caused by the pandemic everywhere and the work was not quite going well either. As they say in the army “we had to reposition ourselves”. 🪖.

The whole world is switching to the “home office” mode, and we have always been that way 🤷🏾‍♂️

The first and probably most important automation “create task” is developed. It has always worked correctly in this pattern 😁 ➡️

And in this particular case, our automation, let’s say it diplomatically, worked “just so-so” 🤔 .

We stop for a moment, sit down and think about what will happen, how long it will last, and what impact it will have on our planet. We are wondering how we can help. Within few days we are releasing an app and a platform where people can ask the local community for help, if they don’t want to expose themselves to the risk of catching the virus. The entire team made this happen over the weekend and it was completely charity driven 💪🏾 🙏🏼 .

Everything has been carefully planned, labeled and appeared extremely straightforward 🤡 . It will definitely work out and there will be no follow-up questions 😂 .

Now, we have handled the problem with red errors (the kind nobody likes) and decided not to show them 😎 .

Rumor has it that there are companies out there which have more than one shipment a day to deal with and they don’t like to type everything in manually. So we added an importer and from now on they are able to upload all the data with one click only 🚀 .

We are in the Logistics Game Changer 2019 finals in Cologne. Even though we didn’t win, we are bringing back some fantastic memories from this beautiful city ☺️ .

We are presenting our platform at the Startup Meeting in Frankfurt am Main upon the invitation of Carousel Logistics GmbH 😎 .

Historic moment 🥳 . We are being featured on the App Store 📲 .

Lorem ipsum… not sure if this is actually some sort of plagiarism or not 🤔 . But we certainly aren’t alone! 🕵🏽‍♀️

We are testing the location of the driver using our app 🚀. Errors only… so it went smoothly 🤣 🤷🏻‍♂️ .

🔮 Matt completes another triathlon 🏊‍♂️ 🏃 🚴‍♂️

🔮 Our app is actually starting to “do something”. We don’t know exactly what, but at least there is “something” 😁 .

🔮 Matt takes Mike to the largest logistics trade show in Munich to let him see that we are doing something pretty grand 🤗 .

🔮 Paweł 👱🏼‍♂️ and Przemek 🧑🏻‍🦱 are officially joining our team. May the force of coding always be with you 🙌 .

We are now officially leaving the underground and grey zone 🎉 . We are getting Hublock UG registered in Hamburg. Off we go 🚀 .

We are looking for developers 🕵🏽‍♀️. We can’t be selling the prototype itself, it might be hard and a little bit shady 🙈 .

We present our prototype for the first time to a customer from the logistics industry in Frankfurt am Main. We don’t recall what the reaction was, but it wasn’t too bad, since he is now our client and uses our platform on a daily basis 💜 .

🔮 Matt comes up with a brand name, which wasn’t easy 🤯. But the domain was free. From now on we are called the
“Hublock” squad 🥳 .

🔮 The first member of our team is Oskar 🧑🏻. Graphic designer, who starts with a logo and then together we are creating a concept of the Panel and UI.

🔮 Somehow, by some miracle, we receive an invitation to a startup trade show in Warsaw. Off we go 🛩️ 🚗 to the Wolves Summit. We set up our banner on 2 square meters and you can immediately see that we stand out. Mostly because, we have invested in a giant monitor and we are displaying some Power-Point presentation in there 🚀.

🔮 We spend 3 days standing in our “fancy” booth surrounded by 20-year-olds, where Matt, with his long beard, feels like a school maintenance man guarding the kids during a break between lessons.

Like most of the world, we get caught up in the “Blockchain” buzzword and wonder if we can do something with it when it comes to logistics. Having said that, we have found out that it is hard to go from the era of pencil and paper to a technology that is just being created 🤷🏻‍♂️ .

Matt is looking for someone to help with developing software for logistics. Google prophecy suggests GMI 💻 .