Hello, dear Dio community!
With 2025 now well underway, I wanted to share my reflections on the incredible year we've had at Dio and the exciting things we're working on for the coming year.
I know it's been a while since I wrote my last newsletter (and you'll soon learn why), which is why one of my goals for this year is to peel back the curtain and be a lot more open with what we're building and where we're heading.
2024 was a jam-packed year—two major software upgrades, new merch designed personally by me and my wife, and launching on Amazon to name a few. 2025 is shaping up to be even bigger, with exciting things coming through the pipeline, some of which we've been working on for years! I'm excited to highlight some of these things today.
Being laser-focused on Effortless and Hassle-Free with software 1.0.4 and 1.0.5
2024 was the year where we were laser-focused on delivering the most effortless and hassle-free experience imaginable for multi-room audio. A huge chunk of our year was spent truly perfecting the Apple AirPlay experience, to the point where our Dio Node speakers now have the most stable AirPlay connection when it comes to dropouts and interruptions compared to every other product we've tested. You can even see it from one of our latest customer reviews:
I am very pleased with the Dio Node speaker system. I tried two other (more expensive) whole house sound systems from other companies, but had to return them due to a constant signal drop and being too complicated to use. I was able to get my Dio 3-pack up and running, playing music in less than ten minutes and have been enjoying the system ever since.
Ending 2023 with 3000+ homes also allowed us to surface the feedback we needed to identify opportunities to improve edge case issues like having the speaker automatically rejoin Wi-Fi after a power outage, addressing a brief a volume spike issue during initial playback, and several other improvements.
All of this work culminated in two major software releases: Version 1.0.4 in August and Version 1.0.5 more recently in January, setting a new bar for effortless multi-room audio. If you haven’t done your free upgrade yet, I highly recommend it. As a reminder, you can find instructions on how to update your Dio Node here.
Our first visit to our manufacturer & building the Next Big Things
Our mission at Dio is to reimagine how we connect to the internet through audio - seamless, flexible, and free from screens. Effortless multi-room home audio is the first step, and we spent a good part of the year creating the roadmap for our Next Big Things.
When we first started designing our manufacturing prototypes for Dio Node, it was right in the middle of the pandemic. Remember when all those crazy supply chain issues were going on? Yep, that's when we decided to bring our product to life.
So with our new roadmap in hand, we had the opportunity to finally visit our manufacturer for the first time and see how the sausage gets made. Here are some cool photos of the audio, networking, and other signal testing rooms.
A year of nonstop launches and momentum
Aside from the software updates, 2024 was also a year of other nonstop launches. In March, we released our first ever audio-lover merch, which was previously only available to our day-one backers of our Indiegogo campaign. Our new merch included several of the same designs from our Indiegogo campaign and a couple of new ones - made personally by me and my wife - as well as softer t-shirts and additional colors.
Over the summer, we also went live with our Amazon listing – a big effort that in many ways is still on-going. It will take some time for us to collect the reviews and traction to have our listing appear at the top of search results and with a proper add-to-cart button, but for those in the know, we’re live and accepting orders!
Each year, we’ve continued to gain momentum as more people discover Dio. One exciting highlight was when Touch of Modern, an online club for men’s apparel and accessories, reached out to feature us. This led to a new partnership and a fun pre-Black Friday event on their platform.
Beyond that, we were honored to be selected for Los Angeles Magazine’s holiday gift guide and also saw at least five more tech reviewers release YouTube reviews about us. On a personal note, I also had the privilege of sharing my journey building Dio in a founder interview with Bold Journey Magazine.
And finally, the biggest launch I personally had in 2024 was the birth of my daughter in September! (You can see now why I haven’t written since my last newsletter in August - but I’m very excited to share the news today and continue watching this little girl grow this year.)
Overall, we ended 2024 with a lot of momentum - more than doubling the number of new homes we served directly compared to the previous year. I’m fired up as we move into 2025 with a full agenda to rival 2024!
2025
It's now 2025 and just a little over 2 years since I shipped the first Dio Nodes to our Indiegogo backers from my garage, and yet it still feels like Day 0 with so many new people discovering us every day!
We’ve got quite a lot to do this year, and I’m extremely energized by how we’ve hit the ground running so far already. We’ve already exceeded the entire last year’s worth of direct sales within these first two months, and we'll continue expanding our community in some big ways this year.
As we continue to grow, we’ve revisited our corporate values and I, personally, am focusing on improving myself on one of them this year – “Build Out Loud”. Since we have quite a lot to build this year, I plan to be a lot more public with what we’re doing in a few different ways:
- For the business nerds: For those of you business nerds out there, I’ve started posting a monthly, public LinkedIn series about how our business is doing by the numbers. While most private companies don’t share this kind of information, Dio is a community effort and I strongly believe our community deserves to follow along our progress.
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Behind the scenes: As a fully time papa-preneur, I’ve also started posting more short videos on what the day-to-day looks like building up Dio. If you like to see the behind-the-scenes adventures behind building Dio, you can find me on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.
- Tech thoughts: For the tech enthusiasts out there, you can also follow along with my blog, where I write about trends in the audio and technology space and share my thoughts as a technologist.
- Newsletter: And, of course, I’ll continue writing my monthly email newsletters straight to your email.
This year, we’re also starting to explore special programs for A/V Installers, Short-Term Rentals, and Real Estate Agents. If you happen to fall into one of these categories, shoot me an email and I’d be happy to get you involved in the early stages of these programs.
Looking forward to an amazing year ahead – can’t wait to share more with you as 2025 goes on! And in case I haven’t said it enough, thanks for being part of our community of supporters!
Akarsh Vinod
Dio Founder & CEO