[noonespecial]

The etiquette is that you keep your promises to everyone who donated. This can be harder than it seems. There are some things that you can build 100 of for $5000 in a timely manner that you just can't build 1000 of for $50000 without a much larger lead time and a very different skill set.

[JonnieCache]

In this case, he is simply (I realise that this isn't actually simple) shipping out PCBs in antistatic bags to hackers, so he should be in a good position. I imagine that scales fairly well. Apparently the documentation is already done too.

If you are sensible choosing who you go to, there are many shops in china who can pretty much do the whole job for you.

There are even a couple of startups who act as intermediaries between manufacturers and hackers who have produced boards like this that they want to sell in small to medium runs, but I can't seem to remember their names.

[noonespecial]

If you are sensible choosing who you go to, there are many shops in china who can pretty much do the whole job for you.

That's the skill set of which I speak. Getting a shop in China to actually produce a working product for you should be a major of its own at MIT.