Two founders. One watched the chaos from inside a print shop. The other had the engineering background to fix it. PrintDB started as an ink tracker and grew into a platform that runs the whole operation - top to bottom.
We didn't pitch investors, sketch a logo, and start selling. We watched a shop run, found the bleed, and built the fix - one small piece at a time.
On the floor
Working at Axel Rad Screen Printing, Daniel lived across both sides of the shop - the production floor and running social media. Close enough to every piece of the operation to see where the gaps lived: quoting in one tab, scheduling in another, ink counts on a whiteboard, production notes on sticky paper that vanished by Friday. It wasn't lack of effort - it was lack of a single place.
The first idea
We didn't set out to rebuild the whole shop. The first sketch was simple - a clean way to track ink and screen inventory. What's in the cabinet, what's on the press, what needs reordering before Monday. That alone was going to be worth it.
The build
Nathan came in with a computer-science background and years of shipping web apps. While Daniel sketched workflows, Nathan built the platform. No off-the-shelf ERP. No generic templates. Printer-native from the first line of code.
The pivot that wasn't
Once ink and screens were in one place, the gaps got obvious. Jobs needed the inventory. Customers needed the jobs. Invoices needed the customers. Timesheets needed the jobs. Every connection we built made the next one undeniable.
Where we are now
Today PrintDB runs orders, quotes, invoices, inventory, production, customers, employees, time clocks, schedules, and more - all connected, all printer-native, all built from watching shops actually work.
The people building PrintDB are the ones answering support emails, reviewing roadmap requests, and pushing the next release. No distance between the shop and the code.
Co-founder · Engineering
Computer-science background and years of building web apps across a handful of industries. Nathan designed the data model, wrote the first line of code, and still writes most of them. If it compiles, he probably touched it.
Co-founder · Operations & Design
Spent his days at Axel Rad Screen Printing wearing more hats than most shops hand out - moving between the production floor and running social media, close enough to every part of the operation to know where it leaked. Every workflow in PrintDB starts with him asking, 'would this have helped on my shift?'
Not a slogan wall. These are the calls we make when we're debating whether to ship something or how to price it.
Every feature starts with a real problem watched inside a real shop. If it doesn't solve a printer's headache, it doesn't ship.
Flat rates, no per-seat games. Founding Shops lock in 20% off forever. We'd rather earn you for a decade than squeeze you for a quarter.
Your shop runs on tight deadlines. So do we. Fixes go out in days, not quarters. Feedback loops short, ego loops shorter.
No VCs, no board seats, no growth-at-all-costs pressure. We answer to the shops that use us - that's the only roadmap that matters.
No gatekeepers, no sales reps on commission. Email a founder, hop on a walkthrough, or just start the trial and poke around.