Hey fam!
In the world of newsletters, one day stands above the rest.
A day when deception lurks in every headline.
When trust is fragile 👀
When even the most reliable sources… might just be playing a trick on you.
This... is
🎉 TOTEM TUESDAY 🎉
(🎶APRIL 1ST EDITION 🎶)
Man, today's feed and email inbox has us laughing out loud over at Totem HQ 😆
DID YOU KNOW about one of Google's most legendary April Fool's pranks: the 2010 announcement of Google Translate for Animals?
Google claimed to have developed a revolutionary app that could translate animal sounds into human language. The promo video showed people using their phones to have full-on conversations with animals through barks, meows, and even chicken clucks.
The best part? They actually released a real-looking Android app that played random animal noises when tapped, making some users think it actually worked.
In that vein... 😈
Before we dive into our 3-2-1 for the week, we have a big announcement to share from the Totem instagram:
That new product may be fake, but the discount isn't!
You can use the code APRILFOOLS20 to get 20% off your entire order when you buy 2+ Totems. The discount will automatically apply if you click here.
If you were thinking of stocking up for festival season, now's the time! Offer expires at midnight EST! 🚨
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📦 Shipping Update 📦
It's a BIG WEEK for the Totem Tribe—the next batch of Totems will be arriving at our warehouse TOMORROW!
This shipment go out THIS WEEK and cover everyone who placed their order in January, February, and the first part of March! If that's you, can expect to have your tracking numbers this week!
We have another shipment coming in mid-April that will close out ALL pending orders in the queue, at which time we expect to be stocking inventory and fulfilling orders right away.
Reminder: when you receive your Totems or take them for a spin, be sure to tag us on Instagram, Facebook or Tik Tok! We repost every single one, and we have been LOVING all of the tags from Beyond Wonderland and Ultra Miami this past weekend 🥰
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OK—let's get this party started.
This is our weekly progress report to all our favorite people.
(that means you, friend — you're a glitterbomb of glory!)
Welcome to the Totem Tuesday 3-2-1.
3 things we accomplished,
2 things to learn,
1 thing to look forward to
Let’s go, Tribe!
😘
3 things we accomplished
⬇️
1) Seed Round Now Open 🌱
It may be April Fool's Day today, but this one is no joke 😎
Today marks an incredibly important milestone: the Totem Seed Round has officially opened!
To all the amazing angels who participated in our Pre-Seed Round earlier this year—many of which are probably reading this RIGHT NOW—thank you for making this global movement possible. We successfully raised $1.3m in pre-seed funding to help scale our operations and produce Totems for a worldwide audience.
In 2024 we built the ship... and in 2025 we're ready for the rocket fuel— aiming at our goal of 1 million Tribemates worldwide by the end of 2026 🚀
If you (or someone you know) are absolutely in love with what we're building here at Totem, and can afford a 6-figure check size, please send an email to our CEO at carter@totemlabs.com!
PS —
We're also scoping out a crowdfunding opportunity for cover a portion of the round to allow ANYONE to get a little piece of this tasty pie—not just the folks with big checkbooks! Stay tuned for more 🫶
2) Totems Available at Festivals 🎡
"so when are Totems going to be available to purchase at events?"
That's a great question, and we hear you! This is one of the most common things we get asked, actually.
Now that our production numbers have ramped up, we are thrilled to announce that you will start seeing Totems available for purchase ON-SITE AT FESTIVALS very soon. You won't have to wait for a shipment, but you may have to wait in line 😉
If you've attended any Insomniac festivals in the past, you've likely seen Electric Wave as a staple in many of their vendor villages. They offer just about every LED sound-reactive festival essential you could imagine—fans, glasses, flow toys, earplugs, and almost every LED-illuminated accoutrement you could imagine.
What would a festival packing list be without Totems? So we're going to be running a trial with the Electric Wave team to offer Totems for purchase at Starbase Music Festival in Lake Perris, CA on April 25-26, 2025!
They will have a presence both in the campgrounds and in the festival itself, so keep an eye out for Totem banners when you're stocking up for all your festival gear 🤩
3) Onboarding Second Manufacturer
Because we're already experiencing such high demand and festival season is only JUST NOW beginning, we decided that one factory is simply not gonna cut it long-term 🙅♂️
This week we are STOKED to announce that we have signed the contract and begun onboarding a new production partner, who will be in full swing later this Summer!
The coolest part about this? Our very first order with this new factory will be 60,000 Totems 🤯
Once they are fully onboarded, our combined forces will be able to produce more than 200,000 Totems in a single month. How's that for rocket fuel?!
What this means for you: since you're already a member of the Tribe, it probably means not much! But for the hundreds of thousands of people that will join the Totem Tribe over the next year—it means EVERYTHING.
We've only scraped the very surface (~0.1%) of festival goers in the US alone, after all. 💝
2 things to learn
⬇️
1) Totem Mobile App Coming Soon 📲
The Totem experience is about to change in a radical new way... because the Totem Mobile App is coming to a phone near you VERY SOON 😱
This Totem App will allow your phone to connect directly to your Totem to make the user experience even simpler and add a mountain of incredible new features.
In fact, development has been going on behind the scenes for a while now, and we're starting beta testing next week! 🧪
A few of the initial features we're planning for version 1:
- Interactive user interface with live glossary of all features and animations
- Simplified software update process
- Ability to change Bond colors and assign names to Bonds
- Child lock to prevent modification of peers
- View your location and peer locations on a map, plus SOS status
and much, much, MUCH more. 😘
The Totem App is going to be AMAZING, but I want to reinforce that our commitment to creating a phone-free and screen-free device is unwavering. Totems don't require the app to function, and never will.
(they just need the app to do all kinds of OTHER cool things you never even dreamt of!)
2) Totem vs. iPhone Accuracy Comparison is CRAZY
Okay, okay, maybe one more thing... 🤭
While we're on the subject of the Totem Companion App, one of the most fun new features for us tech nerds is the ability to see the exact position accuracy (PACC) of both the Totem Compass and your phone in real-time!
Our new product manager, Eric, has been doing a bunch of field tests this week, and the Totem Compass consistently matches or exceeds the iPhone's accuracy—in the most IDEAL iPhone conditions you could imagine!
This is with perfect 5-bar service in an urban area.
This speaks volumes on the effectiveness of Totem Compass tech, because the iPhone uses cellular data, Wi-Fi positioning, the Find My network AND satellite positioning to determine its location.
We've technically known about this performance for a long time. It's just fun to see the Totems outperforming smartphones as a physical number, updating in real-time, right on your phone.
🤗
1 thing to look forward to
⬇️
1) Coachella Meetup! 🎡🏜
The Totem team is heading to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festivalfor Weekend One—where we will host the FIRST EVER official Totem Meetup! 🤩
We'll be meeting on Saturday, April 12 at 4:00PM PT.
Location is at the Polo Sign, smack dab in the middle of the venue! Just look for our Totem flag and you'll see us decked out in Totem gear.
Come find us, and you may just walk away with some pretty cool prizes 😎 Bonus points if you bring your Totems!
Check out the map below for the exact spot.
Can't wait to see you there 🫶
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Closing out this week with a quote from Daniel Dennett, one of our favorite philosophers and technologists of the 21st century.
"Every living thing is, from the cosmic perspective, incredibly lucky simply to be alive.
Most, 90 percent and more, of all the organisms that have ever lived have died without viable offspring, but not a single one of your ancestors, going back to the dawn of life on Earth, suffered that normal misfortune.
You spring from an unbroken line of winners going back millions of generations, and those winners were, in every generation, the luckiest of the lucky, one out of a thousand or even a million.
So however unlucky you may be on some occasion today, your presence on the planet testifies to the fact that your story, from a broader perspective, is a very lucky one indeed."
This time next week, fam?
See you then 😘
✌️ + 🩷
The Totem Team
(P.S. — if this is your first Totem Tuesday, we hiiighly recommend that you go back and check out all the past Totem Tuesdays on our website. Every single decision we’ve made with the product is detailed extensively in past editions. Have fun 😘)
