About Us
Hey,
We're Marcus and Tom. Best friends since we were 16, still arguing about cars, tools and who owes who a beer.
Marcus spent 12 years as an automotive technician at a real independent shop — the kind where actual problems roll in on a flatbed at 8am on a Monday. Tom never worked a day in a garage professionally, but his own garage looks like a tool museum. His wife calls it a problem. He calls it a hobby.
Between us, we've probably touched every type of fastener known to man. And for years, one thing kept coming up.
The bolt that started it all
A few years back we were replacing the starter on Tom's '08 Silverado. Straightforward job — except for two bolts buried so deep behind the exhaust that you couldn't get a ratchet anywhere near them.
Four hours in, Tom looked at Marcus and said: "Who designed this. Seriously."
Marcus laughed. He'd seen it a thousand times.
"They do it on purpose. Make it just hard enough that you give up and drive to the shop. That one bolt just cost you $400 in labor."
Tom went quiet for a second. Then: "That's actually insane."
"Welcome to the automotive industry," Marcus said.
Turns out it's everywhere
What started as a rant about one Silverado turned into something bigger. We started looking around and realised it wasn't just cars.
The kitchen sink Tom had been putting off for months because the nut underneath had two degrees of swing room. The HVAC unit with three screws buried behind a bracket no nut driver could reach. The boat starter bolt so deep in the bilge that the marina quoted a full day of labor.
Plumbers, HVAC techs, boat owners, cabinet makers — everyone has that one fastener that beats them. The industries are different. The game is the same: make it just hard enough that the average person gives up and pays someone else.
We got tired of it. So we built something.
The world's ugliest prototype
Here's the part we're slightly embarrassed about.
Tom refused — as he always does — to call a shop. So instead of admitting defeat on the Silverado, he disappeared into his garage for an hour and came back holding something truly cursed: a bicycle chain zip-tied to a socket, wrapped around a gear he'd pulled off god-knows-what, taped together with electrical tape and pure stubbornness.
It looked like something you'd find in a bin. It worked on the first try.
Marcus stared at it for a long time. Then said: "We should actually make this properly."
That thing — that ridiculous, embarrassing, absolutely-do-not-show-anyone prototype — is what became BoltHero. We just made it 0.63 inches thin, 15.4 inches long, out of actual steel, and without the zip ties.
Who this is for
This is for everyone who knows exactly what it feels like to spend an entire Saturday on a job that should have taken an hour — because one bolt was just slightly out of reach.
The guy under his car at 9pm on a Sunday, one extension short of getting the job done. The woman who's been putting off that sink repair for three weeks because there's no room to swing anything under there. The boat owner who's been told "just bring it to the marina" one too many times. The HVAC tech who's been using a screwdriver sideways for two years because nothing else fits.
You're not bad at this. You just had the wrong tool. We built the right one.
Now go get your bolt.