Being a freelance Product Design Engineer means I am exposed to a variety of projects on a daily basis and get to work on some truly dumb cool stuff. However, these are other people’s ideas that I am helping bring into reality - not my own.

I’d like to think I have great ideas too, and have actually tried a few times to bring some of these ideas to fruition. Most of my experience is in consumer electronics design and I wanted to pursue an idea or two in that space. However, a good consumer electronics product requires many folks working closely together and decent funds to support it and I didn't have the time or budget to allow for the proper development process.

Luckily, I have too many 3D printers at my disposal and am pretty capable at 3D modeling stuff!

A bad idea is born:

Back in 2020, we were helping to revolutionize the Burrito storage and consumption market with Burrito Pop and people loved it. Then, COVID caused the market to dry up and I was sitting around looking for something to do with my 3D printers and bad brain when I realized there was a market for holding food aside from burritos.

A few hours of CAD modeling later, my first prototype of the Donut Hole-der was born! It scratched my itch of making something of my own, getting friends and family to laugh (at me, with me, or both… doesn’t matter), and helping feel like I wasn’t powerless during this pandemic.

Work picked up again, COVID died down, we moved to Vermont, got married and had a baby. Life moved on.’

Fast forward to 2025 and the Donut Hole-der lived on only as a dusty 3D printed prototype on my shelf and a video that occasionally showed up on my Google Home photo frame. When friends came over I’d show it to them and get a chuckle or two.

Things started to get weird again and I needed a creative outlet for my anxiety and uncertainty. I find I think best when I’m taking a shower and my brain can wander, and I decided to modify my Donut Hole-der design to have a modular system of silly attachments to create an ecosystem of products. A few more hours in CAD later, and the second version was up and running.

The new version had a cap that could be unscrewed for easy cleaning, a magazine extender to increase the carrying capacity, and an attachment to store crumbs from butternut donuts in spice jars for use later. Very important stuff.

Most importantly, it made my wife laugh.

Typically when I have silly ideas like this I spend a bit more time than I should have and share it with friends and family to see their reactions. These tend to run the gamut from “is everything ok?” to “I’d like one!” and they’re all helpful (I’m totally fine, by the way). When joking about selling the idea to Dunkin’ my friend gave me the ultimate idea:

Suddenly the pitch became far stronger- a simple trade: my idea for a pontoon boat. Most people would laugh and move on. But my brain is bad and I wanted to make this happen. Luckily, I knew just enough about how to make a website and spent the next two nights throwing together a quick page - www.deardunkin.com.

Sharing with friends and family again got me jazzed about it more.

Linked-in Viral:

A few years back I stopped using social media heavily and had no real avenue for sharing this with the general public. I am, however, fairly active on LinkedIn since we share resources and product design content on the platform often. Figuring I had very little to lose except my entire professional reputation, I decided to share it with the world on March 30th.

It blew the hell up. We typically see around 25,000 impressions on a well thought out resource or think piece we write. This passed 25k within the first few hours. People began resharing and commenting at a rate that made me a bit uncomfortable and optimistic that I may one day own that pontoon boat.

I was called a marketing genius (I’m not). A theory arose that I was in cahoots with Dunkin’ (I’m not). Near unanimous feedback was that this was a phenomenal deal for Dunkin’. Folks believed I had earned the pontoon. The people wanted a version for tater tots.

After a few days, the LinkedIn attention began to die down as the next big trend came up (#networking, #innovation, #future of work? Who knows). I also didn’t do myself any favors announcing this the day before April Fools, and two days before sweeping trade tariffs were slated to dominate the news 🤷. I had my moment in the spotlight and it was a funny story, but I still wanted that damn boat.

Social media duds:

I decided it was time to share it on other social media platforms to try and get it to Dunkin’s attention. Here’s where I learned a valuable lesson:

Being viral on LinkedIn is similar to being the cool kid in band class.

When I went on instagram (art class ), there was little to no traction. On reddit (computer science class) I received my first negative feedback and was called “cringe”. Creeping through their post history to see hundreds of posts in Competitive Call of Duty and Seduction subreddits helped me feel a bit better though.

I even made a tiktok account and quickly hated myself and deleted the account and the app. I don’t have the stamina to post often enough to get views. I suck at making videos or finding the right trends or music. Social media and I don’t get along well. Page views continued to trickle in.

The Morning Brew Incident:

I got in the habit of opening up my squarespace analytics each morning to see a few hundred new folks who had stumbled on my site and gave it a read. Some initial traction when the LinkedIn post went live was followed by a steady hundred visitors or so a day. Then came Sunday.

Traffic spiked to over 13,500 visitors in a single day. Funnier still, the average time on the page was over 5 minutes - meaning my site burned over 740 hours of time folks never will get back.

It was only a few hours later that I realized I should probably put a button on the site for folks to stay tuned with the latest developments. Chances are, you’re reading this because you found my page later in the day. Imagine what would have happened if you read it earlier!!

I had no idea where visitors were coming from and it was driving me crazy all day. I googled some very strange combinations of “munchkin” “pontoon” “trade” but couldn’t find anything online. I searched hashtags, tiktok, and finally sent out a quick email to my new email subscribers to see how they found the page. Apparently, the Morning Brew newsletter got word of my campaign and shared it with their massive audience -neat!

What did I learn from this?

A helluva lot!

Do things that make you happy and make people laugh.
Get feedback from friends and family often.
Shoot your shot and don't ever, ever, ever listen to anyone on reddit.
LinkedIn isn't used for product launches often, but it worked well for me since I had a bigger reach than on other platforms.
Don't launch something silly but serious near April Fools day.
Add an email capture to your website before it blows up.
Have fun and eat too many munchkins for “testing purposes".

What’s next?

Honestly - I have no idea. I even asked ChatGPT and apparently had done exactly what it recommended:

I have DM’ed a few folks at Dunkin’ and received no promising leads. I bought some Dunkin’ colored filament and began cranking out a few more prototypes to share with friends and family for testing.

So here’s where we stand: there are 86 folks who willingly gave me their email addresses to stay up to date here (hello!). I’m still having fun and making a few units for giggles. I’m waiting for that knock on the door someday to see a pontoon boat in the driveway.

I need your help to make that happen.

Please spread the word, share this with friends and family, tell your local Dunkin’ about this. Make it happen. If you do, we can all go on a ride together this summer on the SS Coolatta and I’ll change my LinkedIn title to “that guy who got a pontoon boat from Dunkin’”.

💗 Sam - the future “Butternut King of New England” 👑

How did we get here?