Years ago, if you wanted a small PCB manufactured, your only option was to deal directly with the board manufacturer and the minimum order was 100's or 1000's o

Years ago, if you wanted a small PCB manufactured, your only option was to deal directly with the board manufacturer and the minimum order was 100's or 1000's of boards. Prototyping a one-off hobbyist design was totally out of the question. About 5 years ago a few startups figured out that if you played a large game of Tetris by combining the board designs of many hobbyists, you could submit the order as a single, giant PCB in a quantity of 10, or 5, or even 3. When the manufactured boards arrived, you break up the individual designs and mail them out individually to all of the hobbyists.