You Did Not Watch. You Built.
Thirteen Tuesdays Ago
Thirteen Tuesdays ago I sent the first Unlocking Heroes newsletter of this Quarter 2 2026.
The platform was still in workshop. The Squad existed on paper not the web. Not a single mission had been verified by a real child. Not a single Vanguard product had shipped.
There was nothing to buy. There was nothing to download. There was nothing, really, to be a part of.
You showed up anyway.
The Word "Audience" Is Wrong
Most founders, at quarter close, write a thank-you to their audience.
That word is wrong for what happened here.
An audience watches.
The founding crew did not watch. The founding crew read the Rescue File on a Wednesday and forwarded it to a teacher friend. The founding crew quoted Green Eject Sunday at their own dinner table. The founding crew told a grandparent about Grandparent Saturday, and that grandparent bought the first piece of merch in the store.
That is not consumption.
That is co-building.
What You Actually Built
You built the credibility this platform needed to be taken seriously.
Investors ask the same first question every single time. Is this real? Is there an audience for a children's IP that refuses to compete on retention, that says screen time is the cost and not the reward, that builds the off-switch before the app?
The 796 of you reading this newsletter and the 554 on Lobster Bob's Scenic Tours newsletters are the answer.
The number is small, but that 1350 subscribers combined. The depth is not.
A reader who replies on a Tuesday morning is worth a hundred drive-by impressions. To anyone who matters in this conversation, that is the maths.
You did that. Every week. For thirteen weeks.
What You Made Possible
You made Phase 1 work. The world had to be introduced before any of the rest of it could land. You read the Uncle Jamie and Auntie Ellie origin. You read the four pillars. You read the seven inclusion clusters when I explained them in the open.
You made Phase 2 work. The merch store planning and launch. Character-led, not product-led. The early sales were not from a paid ad campaign. They were from one of you forwarding a Saturday post to a grandparent.
You made Phase 3 work. The Squad got deeper. Pvt. Bodger, the Chief of Clumsiness, was always going to be a risk on a professional feed. He landed because you let him land. Because you trusted that the failure-to-hero arc was the point.
The Posts You Surprised Me With
Some posts I expected to travel. Most of those did not. Some posts I expected to fall flat. Many of those travelled the furthest.
The post about why the off-switch came first was meant for Emma. It travelled to teachers and SENCOs. It travelled to a few readers I have not yet had the courage to reply to.
The Poverty Lock post landed harder than I imagined. People do not forward a corporate ESG line. People do forward a number with a date next to it. Ten percent of pre-tax profits in Year 1, stepping to fifty percent from Year 5. Legally binding. You understood why that mattered.
The Grandparent Saturday post about Grandpa John on a garden bench landed harder than I expected. The replies are still in my drafts folder.
I keep those replies. I read them on harder days.
The Secret
Here is the secret Uncle Jamie would like me to tell you.
The platform is not building itself. The Sovereign Brain is not finished. The Vanguard products are still in tolerance review. The Cloud Vault is in spec. Every single Tuesday for thirteen weeks I have looked at the work ahead. I have felt the gap between what is built and what needs to be built.
What closed the gap was your reply.
What closed the gap was your forward.
What closed the gap was the colleague you told over coffee.
I am not saying this because the forensic goal of this newsletter is replies and forwards. I am saying it because it is true. The work goes on because you make it possible.
What Comes Next
Q3 begins on Wednesday. The blog architecture pivots from manifesto to practical help. Pillar-cluster questions. Real answers to the questions parents and grandparents actually search for at midnight.
The Hero Drops early-access programme opens. Forty-eight-hour priority access for the founding crew. Free club. You went first, so you go first. Members become Early Heroes from the moment they join.
The Unlocking Heroes Foundation incorporates as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation later this quarter. Trustee recruitment continues in earnest. The Poverty Lock stops being a sentence and starts being a registered charity.
The Scrubbing Squad and Lobster Bob's Scenic Tours universe keeps deepening. The Vanguard products start shipping in waves through the second half of the year. The waitlist stays open.
You are not done. We are not done.
What I Would Like You to Do Next
Forward this to one parent or grandparent who needs it. Not to grow the list. To grow the founding crew. There is a difference. A list is rented. A founding crew is built.
If a sentence in this letter landed, reply to it. I read every one. I do not always respond in the hour. I do always read.
If you have not yet joined the waitlist, today is a fine day to join. Hero Drops opens to the founding crew first.
The Team You Have Not Met Yet
A word for the people who are building with me, the founding #firstbelievers crew. My sincere appreciation and gratitude continues to be extended to people who believe in the mission, give up their time, resources and skill to the mission.
Kelly Parker, on product design. Making sure the vanguard product experience matches the promise.
Ivan Wood and Soundara Pragadeesh A , on tech and workflow. Quietly up skilling on a new stack to bring revenue operations through new content offers via the Attio Customer.io platforms who kindly supported us on their start up program.
Tejal Gaddale, our 2D animator. The Squad now moves because of her great animation.
Lily Perkins, our creative writer. Many of the lines in the character back stories are being amplified and improved ready for publication of her creativity.
Donya Tazakori, our 2d illustrator. The Squad characters are becoming workable through key turnaround sheets, poses and expressions, this essential quality work feeds the animator pipeline.
Lucy McNab, who has recently joined the mission on graphic design to take our digital asset delivery up several more quality levels.
Niranjan Reddy Sarang Sekhar Soniya Singh and Durga Prasad Kondru, at the hermitcrabs.io web team. The new design and build of the scrubbingsquad.com website is outstanding and positions us a true b2c global children brand.
The Webflow team, we extend a huge thank you for supporting us through your start up program to allow the dev team to deliver an amazing digital property..
Jeanne Costa, continues to make us look like a world class children's IP, on brand and merchandise design. All of the brand assets you have seen all year are her work.
The @SofTeco team: Alexey Shevchik , Viktoria Efimova, and Elena Bobrova . Working tirelessly through the engineering specifications page by page and our future partnership to develop this technology is i9n great experience hands..
And Jamie Midgley, my COO. Driving hard to deliver the craziest of visions i keep inventing, and never once asking me to make it smaller. Delivering the vision to change the world and 10m lives of children is no small task, Jamie continues to deliver way beyond expectations.
You did not see them all in the bylines. They are building the universe infrastructure and platform the founding crew is supporting.
With Gratitude
I do not perform gratitude well. I prefer to mean it.
So instead of saying thank you, I will say this.
You as our subscribers, did the unglamorous work. You read a newsletter every Tuesday morning when there was no product to buy. You forwarded posts before there was a brand worth associating with. You replied to a stranger building something in the open.
That is the labour that makes platforms real.
Heroes Start Here Join the Waitlist
Join the hero community: Sign up at scrubbingsquad.com and be the first to get exclusive access for your Heroes.
