Custom Machines, Real Problems, and a Business Built by Hand

When Henry Dabrowski was five years old, he started selling cups of water to runners and cyclists passing by his house in Milwaukee.

No plan. No pricing strategy. Just cups from the kitchen sink, a front yard, and the confidence to give it a shot.

“I kind of remember it being cups,” he says. “We didn’t have water bottles. But we had a sink and some clean cups.”

That’s still how he builds. See a need. Get moving. Make it work.

Today, Henry runs DarkFusion Systems, a boutique technology company that builds custom PCs, supports small businesses with white-glove IT services, and manufactures its own mechanical keyboards — all from a tight, four-person team.

They’re not a PC company. Not an MSP. Not a traditional tech consultancy. They’re all of it at once — tailored for creators, engineers, and small teams who can’t afford failure.

And it started the way most good things do: a series of trial runs, a few misfires, and one persistent founder who couldn’t stop building.

In high school, Henry tried to launch a computer company with a friend. It didn’t go anywhere. At 12, he and a few buddies used his dad’s garage to build a haunted house. That didn’t pan out either. But the impulse never left. He wasn’t chasing status — just trying to make something cool, solve a real problem, and see if it could stick.

“I’ve always believed business is one of the best ways you can help people,” he says. “It’s a creative outlet. A way to make someone’s life better.”

After college, Henry took the traditional route. He studied accounting and landed a job at a Big Four firm — but it didn’t last long. COVID hit. Layoffs swept through. He started looking for something with more upside.

That’s when he landed at Manifold Group, a venture incubator and consulting firm based in Chicago. And everything shifted.

“I got exposed to people who had already sold a few companies and were only in their thirties,” he says. “Some of the smartest people I’ve ever met. And I was 100% the dumbest person in the room — which was amazing.”

It wasn’t just exposure. It was permission.

Henry had been thinking about building something for years. Manifold showed him what it could look like at the next level — and gave him the push he needed to get serious.

By then, DarkFusion had already started to take shape. He’d been building custom PCs on the side for gamers, engineers, and creatives who needed powerful, compact machines with zero margin for failure.

But the business model had a problem: good machines don’t need replacing. His customers weren’t coming back every six months. And the niche was too specific to scale on hardware alone.

That’s when he saw a bigger opportunity — the space between traditional IT providers and the small businesses they constantly overlooked.

“There are so many small businesses that aren’t being served by MSPs,” Henry says. “They need real support. They just don’t have the time, budget, or in-house talent to deal with it.”

So he started bundling.

Instead of just selling a high-end computer, Dark Fusion started offering full-stack service: procurement, installation, troubleshooting, support. Whether it’s an accountant who can’t afford downtime during tax season or a designer who needs max performance in a small office, Dark Fusion delivers reliability — and a team that actually picks up the phone.

“We say to clients: don’t touch it. If something goes wrong, we’ve got you,” he says.

It’s not enterprise-scale support. It’s better. It’s faster, more personalized, and designed for small teams with big stakes.

“If 10% of Target’s POS systems go down, they’ll survive,” Henry says. “But if a small firm can’t take payments or access files, it’s game over. We can’t let that happen.”

And it works — because the team works.

Henry’s second-in-command, Bryan, helped design their mechanical keyboard line, has a background in QA, and brings enterprise IT experience to the table. Other contractors bring their own mix of skills. It’s a lean, weird, high-functioning crew that Henry credits more than himself.

“I got lucky,” he says.

But he didn’t. He made it a place worth showing up for. And he knows it.

“If you want to grow and share what you’re doing, you need a kickass team that believes in the mission,” he says. “And that might be the hardest part of all this.”

Still, Henry’s not in it for the title. He lights up talking about one thing more than anything else: solving problems that no one else has been able to.

The small business that couldn’t get reliable tech support. The artist who needed a workstation that actually fit their studio. The new client whose eyes light up when a fix they’ve been told was impossible turns out to be simple.

“Making something cool — solving a problem someone thought they had to live with — that’s what keeps me going,” he says.

DarkFusion is still small. Still scrappy. Still weird. But it’s real. And it’s growing — one problem, one keyboard, one custom machine at a time.

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