projects/mini-dash/
MINI DASH
A plug-and-play display that gives drivers a compact dashboard of vehicle information. Small, still running, still profitable, and the most educational thing I have done.
Selling an object to a stranger who owes you nothing is an unforgiving test. There is no narrative in it.
A simple object, deliberately
You plug it in, and it gives you a compact readout of what the vehicle is doing. That is the whole product. It is not complicated, and that is precisely the point of this page.
I started it, designed it, sourced it, shipped it, and answered the support email. My honest expectation going in was that the hard part would be the product: the industrial design, readability in direct sunlight, an enclosure good enough to justify the price.
Those were real problems, and they were solvable in a bounded amount of time. The parts that take the years are the suppliers substituting components, the batch-by-batch quality control, the logistics, the returns, and the support inbox. That work does not finish.
What carried into the next thing
MINI DASH made money early, in small amounts, from strangers, and it still does. I did not appreciate how unusual that is until I spent time around venture-funded companies. I am not romanticising small business, and it was never going to be venture scale. It is a practical product business that works, which is a different and useful kind of evidence.
Three habits carried over directly. I am extremely suspicious of anything that only works in the demonstration. I do the operational work myself for as long as I possibly can, because the texture of a problem is only visible from inside it. And I take unhappy users seriously and early, because the complaint is the cheapest research anyone will ever hand me.