The Distill - Welcome to the Block

Greeting Pioneers Blockheads,

KYX has opened shop.

Meet Cinderblock

Think Y Combinator’s founder network blended with Brickyard’s intensity & focus—rooted in Louisville.

Cinderblock is our new invitation‑only shared‑hustle space for builders who are narrowly, obsessively focused on making their startups succeed. Forty on‑site hours a week is the floor; many of us are logging back‑to‑back twelve‑hour days because dreams don’t build themselves.

Inside 1205 E Washington you’ll find:

• Open-plan bullpen with dedicated workstations for resident founders

• Team & huddle rooms for strategy sessions

• Quiet rooms for heads-down work

• Roomy phone booths for back to back video calls

• Whiteboards & pin-up walls for rapid ideation

• Showers, chill corners, and (coming soon) a micro-gym, healthy grab-and-go eats, and nap pods—anything that lets you push harder, longer, smarter 💪

Why We Built It

Last December, Dan bought a dozen one‑month passes at Story (the OG home of KYX) and started giving them away to the highest‑potential builders he came across. The only rule: show up 40+ hours every week. Six months later that experiment identified a natural segmentation across founders and revealed a core group whose momentum demanded its own home.

Cinderblock exists so these builders—and the ones who join next—can scale faster together than they ever could apart.

Louisville has plenty of spaces to work. Cinderblock is built to win.

Why only focus on the founders who go the hardest? Because the most successful break-out startups are defined by the agency, intensity, and single-minded focus of their earliest team members.

For too long, this city has celebrated mediocrity. The clock has struck midnight. Louisville has turned pumpkin. And we’re done pretending the same broken oars will get us upstream.

The birds will chirp:

“It’s toxic.”

“It’s not inclusive.”

“This isn’t what the ecosystem needs.”

Cool. We’re not interested in optics. We’re obsessed with outcomes. And the outcome we’re chasing?

🚀 Escape Velocity

In space, NASA slingshots probes around planets to steal momentum. Jupiter barely notices—but the probe flies out faster, using gravity as fuel.

Cinderblock works the same way. Put a pack of killers in tight orbit and acceleration becomes exponential.

• 🌀Momentum Exchange Every hack, win, or failure becomes shared fuel. Your onboarding automation? I get the playbook. You crack signal-based marketing? I save months of testing.

• ⚡Proximity = Power Slingshots only work up close. Open floor plan. Shared space. No room to coast. Collisions are constant.

• 💥You Bring the Thrust You show up already moving. Cinderblock doesn’t create momentum. It compounds it.

• 🌌 After the Burn Raise a round. Exit. Build your next thing. The orbit’s still here when you need the next boost.

What It Looks Like Day to Day

• Crew Sprints – Each person in The Block rolls up their sleeves to crush something for someone else: cold outreach, ops help, dev support—whatever moves the needle.

• Surplus Value – Everyone is a resource. The price of admission is output for others.

• Weekly Competitions – Set unreasonably high bars. Compete to knock them down (sales contests, squat comps, automation races—you name it).

• Not a Coworking Space – It’s not for everyone. That’s the point. But if you’re curious, we’re doing open desks for potential crew-members via 13 hour Thursdays.

Outcomes We’ll Track

1. Hours in Orbit – 160 h/month minimum per builder

2. Velocity Metrics – weekly product releases, revenue milestones hit

3. Revenue + Capital Raised – dollars closed post‑entry

4. Delta‑v Moments – documented breakthroughs shared with the group

We’ll publish the scoreboard every quarter—real numbers.

Who We’re Looking For

• Startup teams ready to level up—remote work is for lifestyle founders. Ditch the couch and coffee shop

• Founders tired of being the only one shipping.

• Remote killers who want a sharper orbit.

• Anyone with massive work ethic and zero tolerance for mediocrity.

The bar to join is simple: unreasonable work ethic, surplus value, and the appetite to be held publicly accountable for weekly progress.

Think you’re a fit? Reply to this email and we’ll give you a tour.

Kindred Spirits

Brickyard (Chattanooga)

Brickyard’s in‑person founder residency drops high accountability founders with unreasonable work ethic into a purpose‑built bunker alongside a killer peer group in Chattanooga. They raise local capital, import global talent, and view “economic development” as a happy by‑product of startup success—not a KPI.

That mirrors our stance in Louisville: measure the ecosystem by exits and momentum, not ribbon‑cuttings. Their gravity‑assist model proves the power of concentrated ambition and is a blueprint we openly borrow from—and plan to pay forward.

Network School (Singapore)

Balaji Srinivasan turned a private island off Singapore into a live-work campus where cohorts of 150 builders strip away life overhead for three, six, or twelve-month sprints. Tuition bundles a room, three chef-prepped meals a day, 24-hour gym, co-working space, and talks from tech luminaries—so residents can channel every calorie into shipping code and companies.

Talent is recruited globally, density is mandatory, and economic spill-over is a secondary bonus. The formula—import high-agency founders, handle their basic needs, and let peer pressure compound—parallels Cinderblock’s own gravity-assist playbook in Louisville.

Written by Rachel & Jack

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That’s a wrap 🎬
Keep showing up 👊 
Keep shipping 🚢 
Peace, Pioneers ✌️