One Man's Software Background Makes Manufacturing Hardware Easy MacroFab lets electronics startups dream big.

When Charlie Emery set out to build Spooky Pinball, his Benton, Wis.-based company, he ran into a snag: finding a resource to manufacture the circuit boards that power each of his custom-made, $5,995 pinball machines. His only options were to line up prohibitively expensive one-off production in the U.S. or deal with high minimum orders and suspicious quality from manufacturers overseas.

"I was doing everything out of my own pocket," Emery says, "and I only needed 10 circuit boards at first."

Enter MacroFab, the Houston-based manufacturer started by tech industry veteran Chris Church and electrical engineer Parker Dillmann. Church launched MacroFab after enduring similar pain manufacturing a time-lapse security camera as head of another company he founded, Dynamic Perception.