Vladislav
Smolyanskyy
Founder
A Note from the founder
I'm very grateful for the opportunity to work on my passion, expand my horizons and become a better entrepreneur while helping develop the next generation. Pinblock for me is a chance to inspire many young minds and therefore change the future of our world.
Pinblock has been a great journey but we still have a long road ahead of us. Thank you for your support, contributions, and many happy moments that you chose to share with me and the Pinblock team.
If you would like to personally reach out to me, it would be my pleasure: Vlad@pinblock.com
www.StartupVlad.com
QUICK BIO:
Vladislav was born in Ukraine but soon immigrated to New York in 2006. Feeling alone in a new country Vlad discovered his passion for learning, especially everything related to business. Read more about his journey into entrepreneurship on his website and social media shown below.
Pinblock Timeline
2014
August
September
First Pinblock Shipment
December
While hanging out at ShiJun's apartment, the concept of Pinblock was born.
Pinblock is incorporated under the state of New York and plans of realizing the concept of Pinblock are put in action.
First production run is complete and arrives to our warehouse in Brooklyn, New York.
A friend connects us with children's Cancer research hospital where we donate the first prototypes of Pinblock as a Christmas gift for the bed bound children.
2015
January
Kickstarter Card
February
May
A Kickstarter campaign is launched to fund a full production run. We reach out to multiple media sources and get our first ever coverage.
Pinblock successfully funds the Kickstarter campaign raising 18k (8k over the funding goal) and full production run is initiated.
We attend one of the biggest trade shows in the toy industry, Toy Fair, which is conveniently located in NYC. There we establish many businesses relationships and get our first coverage by major publications such as Fortune and Forbes.
www.Pinblock.com is launched as we officially introduce Pinblock into the market.
Vat19's Viral Commercial
July
September
October
Gabe joins Pinblock
Vat19, an online seller famous for their viral YouTube videos, partners with Pinblock and produces a hilarious commercial that generated millions of views.
After getting feedback from fans, customers and Pinblock's resellers, we develop and introduce two new product lines: starter packs which offer a better entry price point and single color sets for ultimate creative building.
Pinblock establishes a partnership with Israel's Zippy Inc. Pinblock gains so much popularity in Israel that Zippy opens up an Israeli Pinblock company and launches their own www.Pinblock.is website.
2016
February
March
New Marketing Campaigns
May - December
Pinblock attends 2016 international toy fair where we meet the CEO of Moose Toys, Paul Solomon who received toy of the year award for their Shopkins product line. Paul becomes a fan and a friend of Pinblock.
Shijun resigns from Pinblock and Arthur joins the team.
Lots of big events occurred during the above months however they cannot be disclosed until mid December. We apologize for the secrecy however it will be mutually beneficial for all of us.
Honorable Mentions
Arturas Lanchinskas
Executive Manager
Joining Pinblock in early 2016 marked a moment when Arthur ventured into entrepreneurship. Coming in without any prior knowledge he soon became an indispensable part of Pinblock.
In order to accomplish that Arthur had to leave 14 years of painstaking training in Judo from which he was a US Open Gold Medalist, World Team member, and multiple Nationals medalist as well as his goals of becoming an Olympic And World Champion.
From his time down the path of Martial Arts Arthur was able to take away his self-discipline, incredible work ethic, and ability to quickly grasp skills and put them towards his work at Pinblock grasping the fundamentals of entrepreneurship.
Due to his personality, and knowledge in everything nerdy which is exemplary of Pinblock, It’s a great pleasure to have him on the team.
Shijun Xiao
Co-Founding Partner
Shijun founded Pinblock with me around September 2014. By taking the realization of Pinblock nearly all upon himself, Shijun singlehandedly established manufacturing, logistics and distribution so rapidly that we had Pinblocks on hand by December of the same year.
Our mutual passion and expertise in different areas of business made us not only great business partners but great friends.
Shijun is an exemplary entrepreneur who's ability to make difficult business decisions and take bold action always astonished me. Being partners with him has taught me a lot about business as well as in psychology of being a worthy entrepreneur.
Even though we've experienced difficulties in our partnership, which came to an end around March 2016 with Shijun resigning from Pinblock, we're still friends and in the future might indulge on yet another entrepreneurial venture as partners.
Gabriel Podolsky
Sales Director
Gabe was the first person to join Pinblock and stayed with us without any guarantee of success or indication of any merit. His loyalty and passion made him a great accomplice in business and in life.
Gabe volunteered himself to help with sales efforts which were becoming overwhelming at that time. Due to his determination, he soon became greatly successful at running sales and continued to build out his own sales team to propel Pinblock even further.
After establishing himself as the head of wholesale business Pinblock went through changes which almost entirely eliminated wholesales and thus severed Gabe's active involvement in within the company. Gabe is still involved with Pinblock and assists us any way he can because that's just the type of person he is.