Summer has wound into Fall. Life has been dynamic, and I’ve been itching to publish the ideas I’ve been pondering and wrestling with.
What occupies my headspace most strongly is LokBros Studio, the company founded by myself and my brothers about a year ago.
The Studio
When we first started the business, the three of us brothers sought to help people wherever our expertise could. We attempted to “niche down,” following well-proliferated business advice these days. We dabbled in website design, backend development, media production, and SaaS. We ate up YouTube videos and tried on many hats.
In short, the first year of the studio has been one calibration. We would dive into something, proclaim that “this is it” and through the experiences learn more about who we are, individually and all together.
LokBros is a Band
Kaamil, Nabeel, and I are learning what it means to work with each other. We’re learning how to give each other space, just hang out sometimes, calibrate with each others’ friends and families, and develop an inexplicable intuition about each others’ states of mind.
While we started by trying to make sure we were all equally involved in all activities, things have shifted into a much more effective rhythm. Now we own our specialities.
I’ve started to view the studio as a band. We each write certain songs, leading with the instruments we’ve mastered. We’ve got our own stories, interests, and tendencies, but we present ourselves as a unified team.
We each hold dear our own ambitions. And we’re encouraged to push the band the band creatively with our aspirations.
But individuality falls aside when we get on stage. The lights come on, and nothing else matters, except that we play the tune.
And truly, the jam is sublime.
Through the disagreements, early mornings, potential deals, rejections, and flub-ups, our focus has clarified: LokBros Studio is an interactive experience studio.
Toucan City
Last Fall, I attended an amazing event hosted by the great
1. At C3, a gathering of community builders in New York City, I found myself positively buzzing with inspiration.Bringing my learnings back to Boston, we generated many, many, product ideas. All of the ideas (and a product) hovered around one thing: events – and gathering IRL.
We felt the best way to understand and solve gathering problems was to facilitate gathering ourselves. This was a bit of a risk. Facilitating gathering didn’t promise immediate buckets of revenue. We began with a small experiment – a house show at Kaamil’s place called Acoustic Toucan.
One thing led to another – we wrote a manifesto, and began building what is now called Toucan City.
Toucan City is a project to create immersive and artistic spaces that creates community. We’ve done three events so far, and the biggest one is on the horizon.
At Electric Toucan, we assembled a dream-team to turn a Somerville art studio into a bioluminescent jungle. It was filled with local artists’ work, Boston-based DJs, immersive games, and new friendships. With over 130 attendees, we were blown away.
We took a hard look at ourselves after that. Looking through those early internal docs and chats, it’s easy to spot our naiveties. It seems obvious now – our skills and interests converge on crafting interactive experiences.
Yet – I know we needed to wind through the road of exploration to get here. It’s one thing to hear advice. It’s another thing to absorb learnings ourselves. The only way to figure things out is to keep doing.
This band will keep hosting, crafting, shipping, and connecting. Who knows, we might have a Greatest Hits album one day.
Want to join the fun? Our next immersive event is on October 11, 2025. Moonlit Toucan tickets are live!
Want to jam on ideas? Email me anytime at hello@lokbros.com.