Dangerous Things started as a reaction to demand. After the ToorCamp 2012 Implantation Station, it became clear there are certain kinds of people interested in the DIY approach to RFID implantation, and on August 30, 2012 I posted a short announcement: "I put together a little online storefront that sells, well, dangerous things." That was the whole launch: NFC implants and DIY implantation kits, sold from dangerousthings.com.
The early site made its terms plain. The tagline was "Custom gadgetry for the discerning hacker," and the front page was one long warning: we sell dangerous things here, you are fully responsible for the choices you make, and, in case anyone missed the point, "we guarantee you will be injured or killed if you purchase and use any of our products." If you weren't comfortable with that responsibility, the page politely asked you to leave the site. I meant it as informed consent with the volume turned up, and it set the tone for everything that followed.
The same page explained why the store existed at all: I'd been a double RFID implantee since 2005 and wrote RFID Toys, and I put the store together "to help fellow life hackers find cool gear, provide guidance where possible, and learn from and be an active part of a community of people that like peeking over the edge to see what's possible." Over 2013 that side project took shape as a real Seattle company. Later that year we crowdfunded the xNT and put the first NFC-compliant implant on the market, but that milestone gets its own post.