Mark Austen

I started my career making physical things. In 2014, I opened Print3D Matter — Amsterdam's largest 3D printing shop. A year later, I founded Local Makers, an industrial product design studio with a team of 10. We took ideas from napkin sketches to manufactured products: concept development, prototyping, tooling, and production.

When COVID hit in 2020, I designed a reusable FFP2 silicone face mask from scratch. We ran a Kickstarter campaign, got it funded, and licensed the design to manufacturers in multiple countries. From idea to mass production in weeks — because that's what I do.

Around the same time, I built EU Made — an online marketplace connecting businesses with European factories. That's where physical products met digital platforms, and where I realised the same "idea to production" process works even better in software.

In 2023, I moved to Curacao and founded AI Makers. Everything I learned about building physical products — understanding the problem, designing the solution, prototyping fast, iterating, shipping — I now apply to software and AI. Custom software, AI agents, training, security testing. Same process. Different medium.

You think it. I make it. That's been the constant for 18 years.