From Dorm Room to Million-Dollar Product: The Story of nice!nano

The journey from a hobbyist project to a million-dollar business often begins with a simple realization: the existing tools aren't good enough. For Nick Winans, this realization hit during his freshman year of college while attempting to build a wireless 65% keyboard.

His first attempt, the "Dissatisfaction65," was a functional failure. Despite using an Adafruit 32u4 Bluefruit LE microcontroller, the typing latency was unusable and the battery life was abysmal. This gap between the high-performance wireless peripherals produced by giants like Apple and Logitech and the fragmented state of the DIY community became the catalyst for the nice!nano.

Identifying the Gap

Winans began by researching the existing landscape of wireless microcontrollers. He found that while Nordic microchips were the gold standard for hobbyists, the Pro Micro form factor—the industry standard for DIY keyboards—wasn't well-supported. He analyzed three existing options:

  • BlueMicro: Too large for most Pro Micro keyboards.
  • nRFMicro: Close, but required modifications to meet his specific needs.
  • BLE-Micro-Pro: Expensive, closed-source, and limited to the Japanese market.

Recognizing that no single board offered the ideal combination of form factor, open-source accessibility, and price, Winans decided to build his own from scratch.

Rapid Prototyping and the Birth of nice!nano

In a focused weekend of intense work using KiCad and Nordic's documentation, Winans designed the nice!nano. His goal was simple: create the thinnest Pro Micro-compatible board based on the nRF52840 chip.

After a cautious $100 investment in a small batch of five boards, the prototype worked. The results were staggering: where his previous project lasted a few days on a 2,500mAh battery, the nice!nano lasted weeks on a tiny 110mAh battery—a 100x improvement in power efficiency. This technical victory, shared on Reddit, sparked immediate interest from the mechanical keyboard community.

The Perils of the Group Buy

Without the capital to fund a large production run, Winans turned to a "group buy" model—a common but controversial practice in the keyboard community where users pay upfront to fund manufacturing.

While the financial success was instant—1,000 units sold in just seven hours—the experience was stressful. Winans notes the anxiety of holding customer funds without a physical product and the historical baggage of the group buy model, which has seen many projects fail or funds stolen. This experience led him to a firm resolution: he would never run a group buy again.

Scaling the Ecosystem: ZMK and Typeractive

Hardware is only as good as the software that runs it. To solve the firmware problem, Winans collaborated with Pete Johanson, who was developing ZMK—a wireless-first firmware powered by the Zephyr RTOS. This partnership ensured that the nice!nano wasn't just a piece of hardware, but part of a performant, low-power ecosystem.

As the business grew, Winans identified another friction point: vendors didn't provide the comprehensive kits needed for wireless builds. In 2022, he partnered with his retired parents to launch Typeractive, a specialized store for wireless keyboard components. By introducing a 3D interactive configuration tool, they reduced the friction of building a wireless keyboard, eventually becoming one of the largest split keyboard stores in the world.

Lessons in Entrepreneurship and Open Source

Success brought challenges, including the appearance of clones on platforms like Taobao and AliExpress. Winans describes the frustration of seeing products advertised as "nice!nanos" using his own open-source firmware to ride the coattails of his work.

Reflecting on the journey, Winans attributes his success to a combination of hard work, timing, and luck. He entered the market just as interest in wireless DIY keyboards peaked but options remained scarce.

Community Perspectives

Insights from the Hacker News community highlight the broader implications of this story:

  • The "Gap" Strategy: One commenter noted that the product succeeded because it brought an existing commercial capability (low-power wireless) into a community that desperately needed it but lacked the tool.
  • The Power of Niche: While some questioned the scale of a "profoundly niche" market, others pointed out that custom mechanical keyboards have become a massive embedded hobby, similar to the sneaker community.
  • The Barrier to Entry: Modern tools have drastically lowered the cost of R&D. As one user observed, a weekend in a dorm room in 2020 has evolved into a few months with AI coding assistants in 2026.

Today, with over 50,000 units sold and over a million dollars in revenue, the nice!nano stands as a testament to the power of solving a personal frustration and shipping a product that the community actually wants.

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