Great story. Wish you hadn’t done the bait and switch with the title.
I made a million dollar product from my dorm room (2025)
41–50 of 98 posts
Re: I made a million dollar product from my dorm room (2025)
#42In the late 80s, a friend turned his comsci class project into a product. The company was making about $25m. It died due to a patent dispute. He later started a dot com that is still very successful.
What was the product?
I can't find any references to the company online anymore. The product was a c++ interpreter (created from the founder's compiler class project) and IDE. This was before java/python/javascript/etc. The interpreter would catch errors and you could mix interpreted code and binary code. Pure software displaced it.
Re: I made a million dollar product from my dorm room (2025)
#43I admit, I barely understand what the product does, much less how there's 50k people wanting this. This is a component you can use if you're building a DIY keyboard and want to make it wireless? Seems profoundly niche to me. Am I missing something? Anyway, congrats on finding and reaching your market! The Internet at its best (although part of me wishes this nerd community had found a more self-hosted way of connecti…
There are billions of people in the world. 50k is 0.005% of a billion, so 1 in 20000. This is the reason I think money/market-motivated thinking, that often leaves people pursuing something they're not especially personally enthusiastic about, is wrong for most people. If your goal is to be a billion dollar grow-fast multinational company, okay, but if your goal is to just live a comfortable life and create something…
For most things, there aren't 50k reachable, aware, motivated, solvent buyers. Making enough people aware of your existence may be more expensive than the total profits made from your endeavour.
I am only pointing this out because I know people who would hear the first part of your comment and get their egos attached to an idea since they interpret it as 'there are billions of people, so I only need a tiny percentage, there is no bad idea, only bad execution' and lose years of their lives pursuing something where odds are stacked against them, if there were any odds in the first place. I'd urge people instead to also hear the 2nd part of your comment, and take it as 'experiment with many niche things, there are some that land and land well'.
Re: I made a million dollar product from my dorm room (2025)
#44neat product, but where's the FCC ID for an intentional radiator on it? your million dollar product can afford the legally required testing, right?
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Re: I made a million dollar product from my dorm room (2025)
#45Great story. Wish you hadn’t done the bait and switch with the title.
Doesn't really seem like a bait and switch to me. He legitimately designed and produced and sold the first thousand from his dorm room. Is your complaint that he left the dorm room before hitting $1M revenue from it? Seems irrelevant.
Re: I made a million dollar product from my dorm room (2025)
#46The question I have is, what were you exposed to and doing at ages 5, 10, and 15 that made you capable of developing a PCB in your freshman year of college?
Designing a PCB is not that complex. You can find a YouTube video, download the design software, order it from PCB Way, and get it in a few days. The problem is finding a useful product worthy PCB idea.
Its been on my todo list for like 4 years and whenever I try I bounce off pretty hard. That said get a bit closer each time.
Re: I made a million dollar product from my dorm room (2025)
#47This is cool, but honestly, I find it hard to believe that 50,000 units were sold.
Really? Why?
I know people who made like 3 or 4 of these keyboards from kits.
That I think they are insane and just buy the chinese knockoffs does not negate the existence of the other guy.
Re: I made a million dollar product from my dorm room (2025)
#48This is a really cool story. If the author is reading: It would be interesting to read about your experiences with marketing and building support for your products. I know you said a lot of it was luck and timing, but it would be helpful to get your thoughts on which moves you made that best took advantage of that luck and timing. I have dozens of friends who launched group buys for small boards around this price ran…
Hey! I'm the author. I think my good timing and luck showed up mostly through my initial Reddit post garnering a ton of attention. I road that wave to the group buy. From that single Reddit post I had tons of people interested and got them to join a community Discord. Remember that this was right when covid lockdowns had started, seriously good timing for me. I worked hard to move fast, engage, and share often on my…
RE: Competing clones of your prodcut
If you could go back in time, would you still make the keyboard firmware fully opensource?
I am sure having the product open source would have helped keep the community going during the early stages.
I'm asking because I'm in a similar situation and evaluating the pros and cons of open sourcing the source code for my product.
Re: I made a million dollar product from my dorm room (2025)
#49What to notice is that this wasn't really a startup idea at first but it was someone noticing that commercial wireless keyboards had solved a problem that the DIY ecosystem had not; a number of successful products seem to be from bringing an existing capability into a community that need it.
Re: I made a million dollar product from my dorm room (2025)
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are billions of people in the world. 50k is 0.005% of a billion, so 1 in 20000. This is the reason I think money/market-motivated thinking, that often leaves people pursuing something they're not especially personally enthusiastic about, is wrong for most people. If your goal is to be a billion dollar grow-fast multinational company, okay, but if your goal is to just live a comfortable life and create something…
For most things, there aren't 50k reachable, aware, motivated, solvent buyers. Making enough people aware of your existence may be more expensive than the total profits made from your endeavour. I am only pointing this out because I know people who would hear the first part of your comment and get their egos attached to an idea since they interpret it as 'there are billions of people, so I only need a tiny percentage…
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