Backed by Apple design luminary, Scotts Valley company’s portable blender inks Williams Sonoma deal

Matthew Moore and Dakota Adams are on a mission to transform everyday objects like the household blender using the same kind of design aesthetic that companies like Apple have brought to cellphones and watches.

Earlier this year, the pair launched their first product, BlenderCap by Cruz, a sleek cordless  gadget made for creating smoothies on the go. It’s a battery-powered lid fitted with a blade that can turn a stainless steel water bottle into a portable, personal-sized blender.

The product debuted at January’s CES show, the biggest consumer technology trade show in the U.S., and was named one of Time magazine’s best inventions of 2023. Moore and Adams have some impressive tech chops backing them financially. And soon, they’ll be transitioning from selling only on their website to working with other retailers, thanks to a deal signed in November with kitchen and household retailer Williams Sonoma.

Adams and Moore met about a decade ago while working at Apple, where they were part of the team that brought the Apple Watch to market, under a division called manufacturing design. It was there they started talking about taking a similar design and technology approach – sleek design and ease of use – to consumer goods, largely inspired by an idea Adams had in college. Their first target? Blenders. 

As a student at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo, Adams regularly made himself smoothies before workouts at the local CrossFit gym. But he wanted something better and more portable than a household blender – and something more powerful than the portable blender models on the market. Using three batteries he got from a friend who interned at Tesla, he rigged up a cap with a blade that would fit a Hydro Flask, a popular brand of insulated, stainless steel water bottles. Moore and Adams took that idea and began experimenting in Moore’s Saratoga garage. By the end of 2021, they had a prototype very close to the BlenderCap available today. 

Adams and Moore focused their design on simplicity and ease of use. The BlenderCap doesn’t use Bluetooth. It’s not WiFi-connected. It doesn’t have multiple speeds. It is operated by pressing just one button. After screwing the cap on the bottle, the user holds down the button or double-clicks it to blend for 25 seconds. The BlenderCap comes with its own stainless steel bottle, but the cap is also made to fit on other popular brands like Hydro Flask, essentially turning an existing bottle into a portable blender.

Priced at $129, the set includes the BlenderCap, a blade cover, a funnel and a 32-ounce vacuum-insulated bottle. It charges via USB.

There are other portable blenders on the market, but Adams and Moore maintain that theirs is a superior product that far outperforms those other options. BlenderCap’s nine batteries hold 300 watt-hours of electricity and can provide 500 watts of peak power, and the device boasts a 18,000-rpm high-speed motor. For context, an average full household blender spins at about 24,000 rpm.

Last year, Adams and Moore left their jobs at Apple to go all-in on BlenderCap by Cruz, setting up shop in the former CrossFit headquarters in Scotts Valley. Scotts Valley made sense from both a geographic and a principles perspective. Moore lives in Saratoga, but Adams lives on the Westside and the pair say Santa Cruz fits with the vibe of their product, which is really aimed at the active-lifestyle consumer. (While the products are made overseas, fulfillment is done locally.) 

The small team of 10 includes five people who work out of Scotts Valley, along with several others working remotely throughout the Bay Area. That doesn’t include the teams working overseas on the manufacturing of the product. They work with a facility in Shanghai to manufacture the BlenderCap, which started shipping earlier this year.

Along the way, they’ve gotten support from some big-name investors, including Apple’s former design chief, Jony Ive, who is widely considered the mastermind behind some of Apple’s most iconic products. Former eBay CEO Devin Wenig is another investor. The company has not disclosed how much investment it has raised so far, but says the investor support will help fuel further development of the BlenderCap and aid the company in its efforts to bring new products to market in the coming years.

“What we’re really building is the next premium product company,” said Moore.

Their goal is to expand beyond the BlenderCap to other household items, although they are hush-hush about where they might go next. 

“All we know how to do is build great products – that’s what we live, breathe and dream,” said Adams. “We wanted to build a really great, well-built product but not price it at such a point that no one can afford it. We want to be in that sweet spot where it’s well-built but then it’s also got mass-market appeal.”

One thing that has surprised them is that although they invented the BlenderCap for people on the go, they’ve seen a lot of people using them in their kitchen – many exclusively. 

“I’d say 85-90% of our users are using it in the kitchen and we didn’t see that coming,” said Adams. “We thought it would be for people at the gym, but we’re seeing more interest from college kids living in dorms or people in small apartments.”

Kitchen and household retailer Williams Sonoma is set to start selling BlenderCap on its website in late January/early February, helping to put the product in front of new audiences. Adams and Moore say they’re working to line up similar deals, with outdoor retailer REI being a major target. 

“The battery technology that Dakota and I invented for this product has a lot of applications far beyond this consumer appliance world. We have some ambitious projects planned for the end of 2024 into 2025,” said Moore. “All of that engineering and development is happening right here in Scotts Valley.”

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