Principal electronics and systems engineer at Powerhouse engineering. Living in Shenzhen China. Founder of Custodia animal tracking.
Joined October 2025
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Gilberto Castro Sustaita retweeted
The “Move to Shenzhen” Era: the theme of my talk tonight. Full video coming soon.
Met lots of my new X friends IRL too: @DominiqueCAPaul @imittalishika and many more. Shenzhen events are booming, so…
MOVE TO SHENZHEN
IT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE
(Seriously)
At 23yo, I moved into a Chinese factory and became 杜无敌. Eleven years later, someone’s giving me a microphone to explain myself.
This post is now happening IRL.
Factory stories, expensive mistakes and a few things that actually worked. Hosted by Josh Woodard at Tech in the Tropics.
📍 Brass House, Shuiwei, Shenzhen
🗓 Saturday 24 October, 6pm
Free entry. Come learn from my mistakes. Much cheaper than making your own.
Gilberto Castro Sustaita retweeted
How to rent an industrial factory space in Shenzhen to build hardware at superspeed:
1. Scope out desired area, preferably by electric scooter.
2. Add all the WeChats you can find pasted on the walls (image 1).
3. Go see all available options, same day. Culture of NOW principles apply.
4. Obtain chinese wife and have her negotiate the price for you. Sign contract.
5. Renovate if desired. Budget 2-5 weeks depending on taste.
Unless you like to work inside a sauna (always tempting me @bryan_johnson), adding AC is a minimum
6. Move in
7. Profit
Attached are some images from the powerhouse renovation project.
We have co-working, prototyping and lab space, so if you’re a hardware founder doing something cool in robotics or physical AI, come build with us! 🦾
Gilberto Castro Sustaita retweeted
Go into debt if you have to, but move to Shenzhen 🇨🇳
You’ll see the best factories in the world.
You’ll find the best services in the world.
You’ll find a society that’s way better than what we have in the West.
You’ll ship your hardware product 100 times faster.
Just book a ticket!
Gilberto Castro Sustaita retweeted
At 23yo, I moved into a Chinese factory and became 杜无敌. Eleven years later, someone’s giving me a microphone to explain myself.
This post is now happening IRL.
Factory stories, expensive mistakes and a few things that actually worked. Hosted by Josh Woodard at Tech in the Tropics.
📍 Brass House, Shuiwei, Shenzhen
🗓 Saturday 24 October, 6pm
Free entry. Come learn from my mistakes. Much cheaper than making your own.
At 23yo, I moved into a Chinese factory to build hardware for my first startup.
That’s where I got my Chinese name: 杜无敌 (Duwudi). “Du the Invincible.”
Eleven years later, I’m still in Shenzhen. Apparently I haven’t suffered enough.
Along the way: $40M raised, 500K+ custom products shipped and a Guinness World Record for the world’s first 3D-printed laptop.
Now I run Powerhouse out of an old factory, helping other founders get from idea to mass production at Shenzhen speed. Ideally with fewer expensive lessons than I had.
We’re also launching a hardware accelerator, and I’m writing my first angel cheque. The plan: build and back the next generation of hardware companies.
I share what building hardware here actually looks like: prototypes, production problems, factory life and robots behaving badly.
Who should I be following in hardware, physical AI and robotics? If that’s you, say hello 👋
Gilberto Castro Sustaita retweeted
Pager Converted to Meshtastic Node ift.tt/Wb7op4g
Gilberto Castro Sustaita retweeted
“You merely adopted the factory. I was born in it. Moulded by it.”
— Chinese Bane
This is me on our shitty makeshift assembly line in 2015, desperately trying to ship my first product before we ran out of money.
Engineers who can’t DFM (design for manufacture) should be sentenced to assembling their own products. All 1,000 of them.
This is how great engineers are born.
Gilberto Castro Sustaita retweeted
At 23yo, I moved into a Chinese factory to build hardware for my first startup.
That’s where I got my Chinese name: 杜无敌 (Duwudi). “Du the Invincible.”
Eleven years later, I’m still in Shenzhen. Apparently I haven’t suffered enough.
Along the way: $40M raised, 500K+ custom products shipped and a Guinness World Record for the world’s first 3D-printed laptop.
Now I run Powerhouse out of an old factory, helping other founders get from idea to mass production at Shenzhen speed. Ideally with fewer expensive lessons than I had.
We’re also launching a hardware accelerator, and I’m writing my first angel cheque. The plan: build and back the next generation of hardware companies.
I share what building hardware here actually looks like: prototypes, production problems, factory life and robots behaving badly.
Who should I be following in hardware, physical AI and robotics? If that’s you, say hello 👋
Gilberto Castro Sustaita retweeted
i’d never dream of doing this anywhere but CHINA.
need to pee. starbucks has no bathroom. closest one is 200m away.
so i leave it all. laptop, backpack with wallet, passport etc
come back. nothing moved.
and you know what brooooo? nobody bats an eye because it's NOORMAL here
🤖 Made with AI
Gilberto Castro Sustaita retweeted
Hardware founders need game nights too 🃏
This was TechGames at Powerhouse, Shenzhen. Come for the games, stay for the people building cool things.
More events on the way. Come join us.
Gilberto Castro Sustaita retweeted
#FactoryWalkies with Ryan & Rhodey 🐶
$86 estimated unit cost. $99 target selling price. Not much left for Rhodey’s treats.
We reviewed the supply chain, design and components to get the BOM below $30.
Could we do the same for you? Maybe. DM me to find out.
Gilberto Castro Sustaita retweeted
US: “we need to rebuild our industrial knowledge base in electric motors”
China: “hold my shirt”
Gilberto Castro Sustaita retweeted
What does Powerhouse actually do for founders? Animation courtesy of one of our engineers with too much time (and Claude tokens) on his hands. Can you spot which one is me?
Gilberto Castro Sustaita retweeted
The MR 3000 Dual Band Radio by Joshua Cotter. A brilliant piece of industrial design that looks like military hardware pulled straight from a sci-fi film.
Gilberto Castro Sustaita retweeted
I’m an AI PhD at Oxford wanted to move to the US for years, but it never worked out. Maybe I can share why.
To me, it feels like the US is making it harder and harder for Chinese talent to come or stay.
First, Trump signed PP10043, which meant I couldn’t go to the US for any graduate school. That’s why I had to turn down my Stanford offer and come to Oxford.
Later, I qualified for an EB-1A (the extraordinary ability green card). But because I was born in China, I’m stuck in a country-specific backlog that could take another 4–5 years.
Meanwhile, on the other side, I’m getting 3–4 emails from China almost every week. They offer high salaries, free housing, generous research funding, and even offered an astonishing amount of money just for me to come back and have a conversation.
I’ve always loved the American spirit. I truly believe my abilities could have a bigger impact there. But honestly, the whole process has been incredibly frustrating.
All of this makes me wonder whether I should just give up.
Why am I spending so much energy trying to go to a country that doesn’t seem to want me, when another country is doing everything it can to bring me back?
Gilberto Castro Sustaita retweeted
We need to make cartoons and anime like this and let the kids watch it instead of Cocomelon.
Make the mechanics and the engineers the heroes in that and watch how more kids will now be interested in hardware and engineering.
Btw, this was all done before AI.
Gilberto Castro Sustaita retweeted
🏃♂️ I've gamified my own run so I can race my own ghost with the Meta Ray-Ban Display.
I built a web app for the glasses, loaded a previous GPX from Strava, and dropped game mechanics on top.
Pick up coins when you keep pace, sprint zones reward extra points if you push, and a mini leaderboard on the lens shows how you're tracking against your past self in real time.
Best part: it actually works. Seeing your ghost 20 m ahead is a way stronger nudge than any number on a watch. 😅
Gilberto Castro Sustaita retweeted
High in the mountains of Yunnan China, getting to see some Geisha coffee trees that will be ready for harvest in November
Gilberto Castro Sustaita retweeted
The Steam Deck is clearly more versatile than I could have ever imagined. I can already simulate, control, visualize and program my robot using it.
This legend at the #OHS26 KiCAD workshop proved that you can also design PCBs on it. Crazy. – at Eindhoven, Nederland
