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LMJ's Lost Souls
Alzheimer's care and family support.
About
A Software Company.
For Mushroom Farms.
CalyxBox LLC was founded in 2021 by Jose Rivera, an entrepreneur with a strong background in marketing and technology. We build two products for mushroom farms, SporeUX and TurboBatch, and we proved them on our own farm before we offered them to anyone else.
The name
A calyx is the protective whorl around a developing bud, the part of a plant that keeps the seed safe until it is ready to meet the world. A box is the practical container that gets the harvest from the farm to the table. CalyxBox is both: software that protects what a farm grows, and the rail that gets it sold.
We chose the name because it states the mission in one word. Protect what's fragile. Promote healthy, responsible consumption of natural resources. Return value to the people and places that made it possible.
The origin
CalyxBox was founded by Jose Rivera, an entrepreneur whose background sits at the intersection of marketing and technology. He started a gourmet mushroom farm, MotorSpores, and quickly hit the same wall every small grower hits: the software to run a modern farm did not exist. So CalyxBox built it.
The tools that grew out of that farm became two products. TurboBatch runs the grow room. SporeUX runs the storefront. Together they form one rail, the only fully-integrated grow-it, sell-it system for a mushroom business. MotorSpores still runs on both, every day, which is how we know they work.
What we build
We live at the intersection of technology and sustainability. We build software that helps mushroom farms run tight, sell direct, and give back, with technology and compassion in equal measure. MotorSpores is our proving ground: every feature solves a problem a real farm actually had.
Every tool we ship is judged against three questions. Does it create opportunity for the community around the farm? Does it use the resource, soil, time, attention, money, responsibly? And does it make a grower's day measurably better? If the answer is yes on all three, we ship it.
Why Gurnee
Everything we do is anchored in Gurnee, Illinois, where MotorSpores grows and delivers. We build our software in a working grow room, not a conference room. The give-back built into SporeUX funds local causes in the same community that supports the farm. Staying local is not a limitation. It is the point.
Cause-driven by default
10%
Give-back is built into SporeUX. MotorSpores uses it to route 10% of every sale to a rotating set of named local causes. Not "a portion of proceeds." A fixed line item, ledgered publicly.
Current cause partners
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Alliance of Hope
Support for survivors of suicide loss.
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Feed My Starving Children
Hunger relief, hand-packed meals worldwide.
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Growing Healthy Veterans
Agriculture and wellness for veterans.
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Aid for Women
Pregnancy support and counseling.
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Keeping Families Covered
Essential household goods for families in need.
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Staben House
Transitional housing for women and children.
Transparency
The give-back module publishes every gift. On MotorSpores that means a fixed 10% of every sale, with the recipients named at the point of sale and recapped on the public impact ledger. If a customer wants to know exactly which causes their order funded, the answer is one click away. Every farm that runs SporeUX can do the same.
How we work
We stay small on purpose. We measure twice and cut once. We don't chase fashion. We prefer to do one thing well across decades than ten things briefly. Every decision, from how we farm to how we ship software, is filtered through one test: does this protect what's worth growing?