The Build Box Effect
Chase has been a Build Box subscriber for about a year now. I want to tell you what I've watched happen in that time, because I don't think you get to hear this enough from the other side of the box.
When the first box arrived, he followed the instructions. Built the thing. It worked. Cool.
By box three or four, something shifted. He stopped just building — he started understanding. He'd finish a build and then sit there turning it over in his hands, asking questions like "What if I changed this part?" and "Why does it do that when I move this?" He wasn't just following steps anymore. He was thinking like an engineer.
That's not a toy doing that. That's your product design doing that. You're not just shipping kits — you're building a way of thinking.
I Recognize That Curiosity
Here's why this hits close to home: I taught myself to code the exact same way Chase is learning to engineer.
Nobody handed me a curriculum. I had problems at work that nobody could solve, and I needed to figure them out. So I opened a code editor and started breaking things until they worked. I built a full custom application inside HubSpot — React frontend, API integrations, the whole thing — not because I had formal training, but because I had the same itch Chase has when he picks up a Build Box: What if I could make this better?
That curiosity, that willingness to try and fail and try again without getting frustrated — that's the thing CrunchLabs is really teaching. It's not about the builds. It's about the resilience and the patience and the belief that you can figure it out if you just keep going.
What You're Really Building
CrunchLabs is a company that's building curiosity at scale. You're taking the thing that makes engineers, scientists, and builders tick — that irresistible need to understand how and why — and packaging it in a way that reaches kids who might never have discovered it otherwise.
Also, let's be honest: science and explosions are just objectively cool.
I wrote this because I wanted you to know what your product looks like from a dad's perspective — watching his kid's brain light up in real time.
If you ever need someone who builds systems with the same curiosity-driven, figure-it-out energy that you're teaching kids every month, I'd love to talk. I'm living proof that the CrunchLabs mindset works — I just discovered it the hard way.
With appreciation (from me and Chase),
Matthew Ruxton