In 2013, fresh out of the University of Florida with a mechanical engineering degree, I founded Good, Inc. — a consumer product company with a vision that still feels ahead of its time.
The Vision
GOOD Inc. was a vertically integrated company: design, manufacture, market. Based in Gainesville, FL, first at Founder’s Pad and then at HackerHouse — a startup incubator in a Victorian mansion built in 1905 on 2nd Street.
The goal was audacious: 5 consumer products and 5 web services by 2018. Products ranging from simple electronics to household goods to disruptive camera designs. Each with a clearly defined value proposition for the everyday consumer.
But the really interesting part was the manufacturing model. Walk-in manufacturing — anyone could enter the store, attend a one-hour course on assembling a product, prove they could build it twice, and start earning per-piece wages on the spot. Faster work, more money. A model that turned manufacturing into something as accessible as a walk-in clinic.
The ambition was to create something as ubiquitous as the Bic lighter. Something so woven into daily life that you forget it’s a product.
The Products
GOOD Inc. was never just one thing. The pipeline was always full:
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GOOD Eye — A camera that sees in all directions. The “disruptive camera improvement” I kept talking about. Full Solidworks CAD designs, optical engineering specs, strategic analysis. A Square2Sphere camera concept that could’ve been GoPro before GoPro went spherical.
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GOOD Pet Feeder (GOODog) — An automated pet feeder with auger-based food dispensing, web dashboard, and mobile app. Built with UF interns — full functional requirement docs, electrical/mechanical/software documentation, research papers on pet feeder redesign. Born from watching my dog Banner eat Sparks’ food.
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TXT TAG — An SMS-based tagging and organization system. We ran a hackathon for it at UF with custom AI-designed business cards, flyers, and judging sheets. The kind of project that would be a YC startup today.
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Coin Flip for OS X — A Mac app. Simple, fun, shipped.
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GOOD Keychain, GOOD Bottle Opener — All designed in Solidworks. Physical products you could hold.
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MyReps — A civic tech platform connecting constituents to their representatives. The dream was for the US Government to acquire it.
And we were designing shirts too:
The Team
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Mark Solters — Our on-staff physicist. His mind ran at a mile a second. Extremely knowledgeable about physics, electricity, and software. I wanted him to be a lifelong member of GOOD Inc.
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Frank — Investor. I wanted to give him a return on his belief in us.
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The HackerHouse Cadets — Peter, Sam, Brad, Ty, Juan, Matt, Mike, John. Nine of us in a Victorian mansion built in 1905, building things.
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UF Interns — The engine. Each one learning valuable life lessons, earning valuable experience. We even mentored high schoolers.
The Infrastructure
This wasn’t just ideas on napkins. The NAS archives tell the story of a real operation:
- Solidworks CAD for every physical product — camera bodies, lens assemblies, freezer logistics, broom designs (yes, we were going to make a better broom)
- GOOD Business Plan in Pages format
- Financial models and projections in Excel
- GOOD NDA for protecting IP
- Intern orientation presentations and agreements
- Press coverage from Miami Herald, Sun Sentinel, and New Times
- Investor pitch deck in Keynote
- 3D printing pipeline — Solidworks to STL to MakerBot (the TAMID logo was 3D printed)
- Illustrator files for business cards, hackathon flyers, and branded merchandise
What I Learned
Function is beauty. The form should exist to serve the function.
I learned that the more students you move through a company — each learning valuable life lessons, each earning valuable experience — the more good you contribute to the world.
I learned that programming has tremendous power: you can write something once, and those instructions are followed to the letter, indefinitely.
I learned that great ideas come from isolation, but great products come from teams.
And I learned that the goal was never just the company. Easy employment was just the beginning. Happiness was the ultimate goal.
Where It Lives Now
The full GOOD Inc. archive is preserved on my NAS — every CAD file, every pitch deck, every financial model, every intern orientation. It’s all still there, a time capsule of what a 23-year-old mechanical engineer thought was possible when he had nothing but ambition, a Victorian mansion, and a team of brilliant people who believed in making good things.
BuyGood.us was the original website. The company operated from 2012-2014 in Gainesville, FL and South Florida.