Walk around TechShop’s San Francisco location and you feel the hum. There’s $1 million worth of equipment creating a physical hum, but also the murmuring hum of dozens of people working on making their small business a reality.
TechShop is a maker space where, for a monthly fee, members get access to equipment and software, from a ShopBot CNC wood router to a 3D printer. Since opening its first location in Menlo Park in 2006, TechShop has expanded to six locations across the U.S.

TechShop’s San Francisco location is located in SoMa near the intersection of Howard and 5th Streets. Photo by Signe Brewster
A home for inventors
A quick walk around TechShop San Francisco gives you a sense of the volume of ideas that pour out of it every day. There are cardboard sculptures, cardboard chairs, custom wood furniture, a bamboo bike, a dragon head, a hand-built skee ball machine and just about anything else you could imagine.

A laser engraved postcard made of wood sits on a cabinet on the top floor of TechShop. Photo by Signe Brewster
Founder Jim Newton said the most surprising item he’s ever seen anyone make at TechShop was a perforated metal box filled with long needles. He asked the creator what they were and received an unexpected answer: brain probes. The man, a doctor at Stanford, was unhappy with commercially available brain probes and decided to make his own. TechShop has since had many more doctors come through to make surgical tools.
CEO Mark Hatch described it as the democratization of hardware. Instead of paying $30,000 or $300,000 to start a hardware business, creators can invest a few hundred dollars in materials and a maker space membership and launch something big.
Take Square, for example. When Jack Dorsey and Jim KcKelvey first took the idea for the mobile payment system to Silicon Valley, no one would back them. Then McKelvey built a prototype of their iconic card reader at TechShop’s Menlo Park location. They found funding. Square now processes upward of $15 billion in transactions a year and is valued at $3.25 billion.
That’s only the most famous example. Nearly anyone you talk to in TechShop’s San Francisco location is working on a product that is or will be part of a business. There’s Roominate, a DIY dollhouse that exposes young children to STEM skills. Lumio is a foldable lamp with a modern design. Hatch said about two Kickstarter campaigns are launched out of the location a week, and there are plenty of people who take other routes like Etsy or more traditional direct sales.
Many businesses end up running everything from TechShop. Adam Ellsworth, one of the founders of 8-Bit Lit, which builds a “Question Block Lamp” that resembles the question mark block from Super Mario Bros., said his team spent months building the blocks after they sold thousands of them on Etsy. Among TechShop members sewing, laser cutting and tapping away at laptops, highly overqualified employees built lamps that light up when you punch their underside in batches of 30.

8-Bit Lit cofounder Adam Ellsworth punches a Question Block Lamp to light it up on TechShop’s third floor. Photo by Signe Brewster
After a successful Kickstarter campaign earlier this month, they are now growing too large for TechShop. They are taking their manufacturing to China, which will allow them to grow properly.
Business owners are not on their own when they work at TechShop. If they have a question about equipment, they are encouraged to ask other members for advice. Collaboration on projects is common. Hatch and Newton emphasized over and over that connections are as valuable as machinery to members.
If they find they are in a situation like 8-Bit Lit where TechShop just isn’t big enough for them anymore, there are resources. SF Made, for example, lives on the top floor of TechShop. They can connect companies with local San Francisco manufacturing centers or get their product placed in stores. DODOcase, which builds iPad and iPhone cases with traditional bookbinding techniques, made its first prototypes at TechShop before partnering with SF Made.
Ellsworth is a founder at ProtoTank, which is also located on the top floor. Ellsworth said they have an open door policy for TechShop members, who can walk in at any time and ask for advice on a project. They also often end up helping ProtoTank, which has built everything from a glowing lab coat to novel sign technology, too.
A world of innovators
Newton likened the maker trend to desktop publishing in the 1980s. It was expensive and too difficult for anyone but experts to use. Now, everyone is a desktop publisher. It is so ubiquitous that no one even refers to it as “desktop publishing” anymore.
“That’s what I want making to be. I want it to just be this normal thing that people just do,” Newton said. “Anybody that has an idea of something they might like to make, on a recreational basis, in a normal, everyday kind of way, I want them to be able to access these tools and realize an idea. I would love if TechShop is the company that makes this happen.”
Hatch said there have been five inventions from TechShop members that he believes changed the world. There was Square, which gave anyone access to a payment system. Then there was a nitrogen detection machine that can tell farmers the minimum amount of fertilizer they need to apply. An improved irrigation system, cooling cabinet for servers and low-cost sleeping bag that protects premature babies from hypothermia were also prototyped at TechShop.

The Embrace bag, which resembles a sleeping bag, protects premature and low-weight babies from hypothermia. It was built for families in developing countries. Photo by Signe Brewster
If the whole world has access to maker tools, Hatch thinks the amount of ideas will keep building.
“Making things with your hands, using the tools and watching something emerge from it, is kind of a fundamental creative process that humans enjoy at a different level from other types of things. That human instinct to create is innate,” Hatch said. “We just happen to live in this 200 year interruption in human history where the tools of production became so expensive that the average laymen didn’t have access to them.”
-
1 / 18TechShopThe front desk at TechShop. Photo by Signe Brewster -
2 / 18TechShopTechShop stocks a supply store for its members. Photo by Signe Brewster -
3 / 18TechShopA mystery object sits in the TechShop lobby. Photo by Signe Brewster -
4 / 18TechShopMember-made objects sit in the entryway at TechShop. Photo by Signe Brewster -
5 / 18TechShopA bamboo bike and wooden TechShop logo sit in the TechShop supply store. Photo by Signe Brewster -
6 / 18TechShopA dragon head and TechShop logo sit in the TechShop supply shop. Photo by Signe Brewster -
7 / 18TechShopTechShop members work on the bottom floor of the San Francisco location, which is packed with metal and woodworking equipment. Photo by Signe Brewster -
8 / 18TechShopLaser engraved and cut objects litter TechShop's top floor. Photo by Signe Brewster -
9 / 18TechShopEclectic objects litter TechShop's top floor. Photo by Signe Brewster -
10 / 18TechShopA sewing work station in the corner of TechShop's top floor. Photo by Signe Brewster -
11 / 18TechShopCEO Mark Hatch holds a knitting needle gauge created by a TechShop member. Photo by Signe Brewster -
12 / 18TechShopProtoTank founder Adam Ellsworth poses with a sign technology ProtoTank created. Photo by Signe Brewster -
13 / 18TechShopA custom lab coat packed with LED lights glows in the ProtoTank office. While the coat is normally green, if a breathalyzer in the sleeve detects alcohol, the coat glows red. Photo by Signe Brewster -
14 / 18TechShopProtoTank founder Adam Ellsworth breathes into a breathalyzer in the sleeve of a custom lab coat packed with LED lights. While the coat is normally green, if the breathalyzer detects alcohol, the coat glows red. Photo by Signe Brewster -
15 / 18TechShopThe insides of 8-Bit Lit's Question Block Lamp. Photo by Signe Brewster -
16 / 18TechShopA tie made by Tasty Ties, which is an SF Made member. Photo by Signe Brewster -
17 / 18TechShopTechShop stocks Type A Machines 3D printers for its members. Photo by Signe Brewster -
18 / 18Type A Machines officeType A Machines' offices in TechShop in San Francisco. Photo by Signe Brewster




{"source":"https:\/\/gigaom.com\/2013\/08\/06\/how-techshop-is-changing-the-way-hardware-companies-are-born\/wijax\/49e8740702c6da9341d50357217fb629","varname":"wijax_da5aac0284d3481b3653ebf190d4851e","title_element":"header","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Cheader%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fheader%3E"}