No sign on the door. No agenda. You buy the coffee, we talk about whatever you're working on or thinking about. Good conversations with good people, that's all.
The back room is currently in
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House rules
I.Pick a city where I'll be and whisper what you'd like to talk about. A line or two will do.
II.I'll send you the time and the place. In Berlin I prefer a café in Schmargendorf, but I'm happy to come to you. You buy the coffee (or lunch).
III.45–60 minutes, off the record. If you bring a project, you'll get blunt, practical feedback.
Where the door opens next
Cities and dates change. Not in the list? Ask anyway: I'm in Stockholm most months and in Shenzhen every few months. In Berlin, Schmargendorf is my favourite, but anywhere in the city works.
💻 Online works too, on Google Meet. But I strongly prefer meeting in person: a café table and a prototype you can put in my hands beat a video call every time. Choose online only if we really can't be in the same city.
On the menu
Anything, really. Some things I know a lot about:
Hardware & factories: is your product idea worth your next year, what it really costs to make, DFM, EVT/DVT/PVT, the factory that says "very easy, no problem".
Supply chains: finding and managing suppliers, sourcing, moving production to Europe.
China: 20 years of working there, Shenzhen, how business really works, what's changing.
Business models & startups: your idea, your pricing, your first customers, whatever keeps you up at night.
Anything else you think makes for a good conversation.
Not on the menu: sales pitches. Everything else is fair game.
After hours 18+
🥃 Buy me a whiskey, hear the real war stories.
The coffee version gets you advice. The whiskey version gets you the stories that didn't make it into the books: twenty years of factories, deals and disasters, told off the record. Evenings only, in a bar, adults only. What's said over whiskey stays over whiskey.
Knock on the door
Your host
H
Hans Stam. 20 years of building hardware in Shenzhen factories: NPI, production lines, suppliers, everything that goes wrong between a prototype and 100,000 units. Author of The Hardest Hardware Lessons and The Hardest Factory Lessons. Based in Berlin, often in Stockholm and Shenzhen.
I do these because I learned most of what I know from people who took an hour to tell me where I was wrong.