Blackdot is an Austin-based startup that is blending technology with body art to transform how tattoos are designed and delivered. Founded by serial entrepreneur Joel Pennington, the company has developed the world’s first fully automated tattooing device and an online marketplace for tattoo art. This innovative platform—dubbed “A New Way to Tattoo”—aims to make highly detailed tattoo designs more accessible while creating new opportunities for artists. Below, we explore Blackdot’s business history, its product development journey, and the vision of its founder in driving a tattoo industry revolution.
Founding Vision and Inspiration
Joel Pennington’s Background: Joel Pennington came to the tattoo industry with an unconventional resume. He had already built a successful tech startup in telecommunications (ClearAccess, founded in 2005) that was acquired by Cisco in 2012. After relocating to Austin post-acquisition, he indulged his passion for craft industries—first by cultivating a micro-vineyard and offering custom wines, and later by diving into specialty coffee tech. These diverse experiences gave Pennington a unique perspective at the intersection of technology, art, and consumer trends.
The “Eureka” Moment: Pennington’s leap from coffee to tattoos began serendipitously. In 2017 he joined a Bay Area coffee tech startup (Bellwether) that used a hardware–software–cloud model to automate coffee roasting, exposing him to cutting-edge ideas in automation. While mentoring another startup that year, he met engineer Yan Azdoud, whose expertise in hyper-elastic surfaces and medical devices made him an ideal future collaborator. In 2018, Pennington started brainstorming “something big, something transformative” beyond coffee. The inspiration struck on a skybridge at San Diego airport: “Tattoos. What about an automatic tattoo device that could make beautiful tattoos?”
This realization, sparked by noticing the elaborate tattoos of coffee baristas around him, marked the birth of Blackdot’s concept. Despite having zero tattoos himself at the time, Pennington sensed a huge opportunity; many Gen Y and Z consumers craved intricate, small tattoos but faced barriers like limited access to top artists and long waitlists. He envisioned applying the Bellwether model to tattooing—combining hardware, software, and cloud to “centralize the art of tattoo” much like automated coffee roasters had done for artisanal coffee.
Laying the Foundations: Pennington officially incorporated Blackdot around 2018 and assembled a team to pursue this audacious idea. He brought Yan Azdoud on board as CTO, leveraging Azdoud’s scientific acumen to tackle the formidable engineering challenges of automated tattooing. They decided early that Blackdot should own the entire tattoo experience rather than just sell machines to existing shops, to ensure quality control and safety. As Pennington explained, they shifted from placing devices in traditional studios to creating dedicated Blackdot Studios where the automated tattoo systems would exclusively operate. This approach meant building not just a device, but a full-stack tattoo service model from scratch.
Building the Technology: From Prototype to Product
Developing the world’s first robotic tattoo artist was a multi-year endeavor. Blackdot entered a stealth R&D phase that lasted nearly five years, during which Pennington and his team iteratively designed and tested their automated tattoo machine. By Summer 2019—“two years into the stealth period”—they achieved a major milestone: the first-ever tattoo on human skin using their device. The inaugural recipient, a volunteer named Chris Harvey, received a high-resolution tattoo that demonstrated the device’s potential for precision. Pennington was adamant that the output not only looked stunning but would “stand the test of time” without requiring the touch-ups often needed in traditional tattooing.
Prototype Evolution: That early success paved the way for refining the machine. The team built an initial prototype dubbed the V1, then improved it into a commercially viable version known internally as V1c. During development, Blackdot conducted over 90 tattoo sessions on various test subjects to perfect the system’s safety and consistency. The device uses a very slim needle and only tattoos as deep as necessary, which has led to a remarkable record: in those trials, they report “never [having] caused bleeding or scarring”. This level of control and gentleness is virtually unheard of in tattooing, underscoring the machine’s surgical precision.
How the Automated Tattoo Machine Works: Blackdot’s patented device marries hardware, imaging software, and cloud data to deliver tattoos with exacting detail. Before inking the actual design, the machine uses a few tiny test dotson the client’s skin which are “compared against Blackdot’s skin database to determine which settings (number of punctures and depth) will yield the perfect black dot for that client’s tattoo location.”
In essence, the system “reads” the skin’s characteristics and auto-calibrates for optimal needle pressure and ink deposition. Once calibrated, the robot arm executes the tattoo design dot by dot. Each micro-puncture is only ~250 microns (0.25mm) in diameter, enabling extremely high-definition results beyond the capability of a human hand. “We’re able to tattoo [grayscale] dots with surgical precision,” notes Dr. Azdoud, allowing Blackdot to “execute extremely detailed designs that cannot be tattooed by hand.”
The machine’s approach is often likened to a “futuristic stick-and-poke” method, since it places one deliberate dot at a time. Unlike a traditional tattoo gun that requires constant wiping of excess ink, Blackdot’s device applies continuous suction to remove excess ink on the fly, eliminating the “wipe-think-tattoo-repeat” cycle and streamlining the process. Clients sit in a modern, ergonomic chair (resembling a sleek dentist or lounge chair) while a robotic arm moves methodically to imprint the design. Throughout, the system’s software ensures each dot is placed exactly per the digital design blueprint. This high-tech methodology results in tattoos that can capture minute details—fine art, photographs, or intricate geometric patterns—with a level of consistency and clarity that astonishes seasoned tattooists. In fact, veteran artist Steve Godoy described a tiny Blackdot-crafted Mona Lisa tattoo he saw as “a category all its own. It’s its own specific art form.”
Launching the Business
After years in stealth, Blackdot officially launched out of stealth in October 2023, unveiling its automated tattoo platform to the public. The company opened bookings for the first customers at its flagship studio in Austin, Texas. This initial studio (currently in East Austin) serves as both a showcase for the technology and a controlled environment to deliver the full Blackdot experience to clients. Pennington likened the moment to a watershed for the industry: Blackdot was “introducing A New Way to Tattoo™,”combining hardware, software, and cloud to let artists anywhere have their designs tattooed with unprecedented precision. At launch, the company also debuted an online platform where customers could browse and book exclusive tattoo designs from renowned artists rather than picking from a flash sheet in a parlor.
Curated Art and Collaborations: Blackdot’s go-to-market strategy leaned heavily on star power from the art world. The launch featured exclusive collections by top-tier creators across genres, signaling Blackdot’s positioning at the premium intersection of art and tech. The first Blackdot Certified Artist (BCA) is generative art pioneer Tyler Hobbs, known in the digital art realm for his algorithmic designs and NFTs. Blackdot partnered with Hobbs to transform some of his sought-after digital patterns into physical tattoos, marking the first time his code-generated art appeared as ink on skin. Also on board is celebrated Istanbul-based tattooist Omer Tunca, who released a limited collection via Blackdot—allowing fans around the world to get one of his signature designs “without needing to travel to Istanbul,” as the platform effectively removes geographic barriers. Rounding out the launch lineup, Blackdot teamed with artist John Craig, famed for designing The Smashing Pumpkins’ iconic 1995 Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness album cover. Craig licensed imagery from that album art to Blackdot, which was a personal triumph for Pennington (a lifelong Pumpkins fan who now sports one of Craig’s “Star Nymph”images as a tattoo on his forearm). These collaborations underscored Blackdot’s focus on high-end, one-of-a-kind tattoo art: designs that are rare, artist-approved, and executed to perfection by the machine.
The Blackdot Marketplace: Central to Blackdot’s business is its online tattoo art marketplace, a digital hub where tattoo seekers can purchase designs and book tattoos much like buying art prints. Artists who collaborate with Blackdot upload their tattoo designs to a secure cloud, where each design can be provisioned to any Blackdot studio for application. This creates a novel separation of design and execution: an artist could be in New York or London creating artwork, and a client in Austin or (eventually) Los Angeles can get that exact design inked via a Blackdot machine. Crucially, Blackdot has built a royalty system into this model – each time a design is used, the originating artist gets a cut of the revenue. In essence, Blackdot tattoos function like limited-run art prints: an artist can release, say, 50 editions of a design, knowing each will be faithfully replicated on skin and that they’ll earn income from every single one. Blockchain technology underpins the tracking of these limited editions; the company plans to use NFTs to certify scarcity and authenticity of tattoo designs (for example, ensuring only 50 clients can ever get a particular Omer Tunca piece). In the near future, Blackdot even envisions a “Tradable Tattoos™” program where ownership of a tattoo design (as an NFT) could be traded or sold on secondary markets before it’s actually inked. While these Web3 features are still rolling out, they hint at a potential new digital economy around tattoo art.
From a customer perspective, getting a Blackdot tattoo involves paying for two elements: the design fee (pricing the artwork itself, which can range widely based on the artist’s fame and the edition size) and an execution fee for the actual tattooing procedure. Early examples show design fees from a few hundred up to several thousands of dollars, and execution fees roughly in the mid-hundreds to low thousands. This means a highly coveted piece by a famous artist could cost a client upwards of $5,000–$10,000 in total. Blackdot is clearly positioning as a premium offering in the tattoo market – appealing to collectors and enthusiasts willing to invest in unique body art. By handling both the artwork licensing and the high-tech application, Blackdot’s business model captures value on both sides: it earns revenue from the studio services and shares in the value of exclusive art sales. Notably, the company has attracted venture capital backing, raising about $4.6 million in funding prior to launch. As of early 2024, Blackdot is inviting further investment from angel and institutional investors to fuel its growth.
Market Positioning and Industry Impact
Blackdot arrives at a time when tattoos have never been more popular or culturally accepted. The U.S. tattoo market is valued around $1.6 billion and is forecast to reach $3.9 billion globally by 2030, with nearly 10% annual growth. Surveys show almost half of Americans under 40 have at least one tattoo, and most who do end up getting multiple pieces. This boom is driven largely by Millennials and Gen Z, for whom tattooing is a mainstream form of self-expression. Yet, despite the growth, there remains a significant untapped audience – an estimated 40 million Americans – who are interested in tattoos but haven’t followed through due to various barriers. Common hesitations include fear of pain, inability to find a design they like, concern that the result won’t match the vision, or simply feeling unwelcome in the traditional tattoo parlor environment. Blackdot explicitly aims to address these pain points (both literal and figurative) to unlock a new segment of customers. By dramatically reducing discomfort (through precise needling and skin-specific calibration) and by offering curated, guaranteed-quality designs in a premium studio setting, Blackdot’s approach “finally opens up tattoo as an option” for people who were holding back before. In other words, Blackdot isn’t just competing for existing tattoo enthusiasts – it’s expanding the market to novices and art collectors who value this new kind of experience.
Positioning in the Industry: From the outset, Pennington has been careful to position Blackdot not as a replacement for traditional tattoo artists, but as a complementary new category of tattooing. “Blackdot is not a substitute for the [traditional] experience… instead, it offers an entirely different tattooing experience,” he explains. He frequently emphasizes that what they’re doing “is not for everybody, it’s for a slice of the market.”
Traditional custom tattooing—with an artist hand-drawing on skin—will always have its place. Blackdot’s value proposition is to provide an alternative for certain types of art and clientele: those seeking extremely intricate, high-fidelity designs, perhaps on a smaller scale, or those who want a less painful, more predictable process. “This is really just technology that allows tattoo artists to scale, and for other artists to participate in a market that’s been off-limits in the past,” Pennington says, noting how painters, illustrators, and even generative digital artists can now see their work embodied as tattoos without personally wielding a needle. By standardizing the tattoo application, Blackdot essentially decouples art creation from art application. A direct consequence is that geography is no longer a limit: someone in Texas can wear a tattoo designed by a famous Turkish or Japanese artist without traveling or that artist being present. This “breaks down the barriers of geography and medium,” as seen with Omer Tunca’s and Tyler Hobbs’ collections being instantly available worldwide.
Within the tattoo community, reactions to Blackdot’s concept have ranged from excitement to cautious skepticism. Recognizing the importance of industry buy-in, Blackdot brought respected tattoo veterans into its fold early. One of its advisors, Steve Godoy, is a 37-year tattoo industry veteran who initially came from the old-school punk tattoo scene. Godoy admits he was initially protective of tattooing’s hand-crafted tradition, but he sees Blackdot as potentially “a breakthrough innovation in the tattoo field” that could enhance artistry and quality across the board. He noted that over the years, the proliferation of studios diluted some of tattooing’s original rigor and exclusivity, but Blackdot’s focus on precision and art might “carry artists to different vantage points” and bring the craft “right back to its roots” in terms of quality. By standardizing high-quality results, the platform may set new benchmarks for what clients expect. At the same time, it introduces new revenue streams for artists (royalties, licensing deals) that don’t exist in the conventional model, potentially attracting artists who never considered tattoos as a medium for their work.
Of course, Blackdot’s emergence also “raised some eyebrows,” as the Austin Business Journal quipped. The idea of a robot “stabbing” people with ink inevitably garnered sensational headlines and social media buzz, including a segment on Shark Tank’s social media and tech blogs like Gizmodo. However, Blackdot’s messaging has consistently been about artistic empowerment and customer choice rather than replacing human creativity. The company often points out that no other firm currently offers automated tattooing, positioning Blackdot as a first mover without direct competitors in the space. Their main competition, implicitly, is the status quo of manual tattooing. By carving out a niche as the high-tech, art-centric option, Blackdot aims to coexist with traditional studios. In fact, as part of its growth, Blackdot is expanding the Blackdot Certified Artist (BCA) program so that even traditional tattoo artists can collaborate and offer designs through the platform, earning royalties and reaching new clients without physically tattooing each piece. This collaborative stance helps Blackdot appear less as a threat and more as a partner to artists, enabling them to monetize their art in new ways.
Looking ahead, Blackdot’s impact will largely be measured by how it scales and how the tattoo-loving public embraces this new format. The company’s expansion plans are ambitious: with the Austin studio running, Pennington plans to open additional Blackdot studios in major cities such as Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Las Vegas, and even international hubs like London and Berlin. These studios will be the exclusive venues to get a Blackdot tattoo, each offering a premium, gallery-like atmosphere rather than a typical street tattoo shop. The controlled rollout (rather than selling machines to any buyer) indicates Blackdot’s priority on consistency and brand experience as it grows. If Blackdot’s model proves successful, it could usher in an era of tattoo studios that feel as much like tech labs or art galleries as they do clinics. Moreover, by bringing in non-traditional artists and catering to consumers who want highly personalized, fine-art tattoos, Blackdot may broaden the definition of what a tattoo can be in popular culture.
Joel Pennington
At the helm of Blackdot, Joel Pennington serves not only as CEO but as the chief storyteller and visionary driving the company’s direction. His eclectic background is core to Blackdot’s identity. Pennington often says he was “born to build” Blackdot – a statement reflecting how his life experiences converged into this venture. In telecom, he learned to scale a technology business rapidly (ClearAccess was the fastest-growing telecom company on the Inc. 500 in 2010). In winemaking and specialty coffee, he honed an appreciation for tradition, craft, and differentiation in saturated markets. These experiences taught him to weave technology into everyday experiences in a way that feels authentic – a philosophy that clearly carries into Blackdot’s fusion of automation with a deeply personal art form.
Pennington’s role in Blackdot’s direction is multifaceted: he’s as comfortable talking about machine precision and patents as he is about art history and music. In 2020, to articulate Blackdot’s vision to early stakeholders, he co-authored a full-length book titled “Blackdot: The Road to the Tattoo Revolution,” alongside Pulitzer-finalist art historian Dr. Noah Charney. This visually rich eBook delves into Pennington’s background and the company’s pursuit of technological firsts and artistic collaborations, and he made it freely available for those curious about the deeper story. The very creation of this book highlights Pennington’s strategic storytelling: framing Blackdot not just as a startup, but as the culmination of cultural and technological trends in tattooing. It also underscores how he bridges worlds—by bringing an art scholar like Charney into the fold, Pennington signaled that Blackdot is as much about art culture as it is about tech.
On the technical front, Pennington knew he needed top talent to realize his idea. His early partnership with Yan Azdoud (now CTO) was pivotal; after mentoring Azdoud’s project in 2017, Pennington recognized the value of his “penchant for navigating scientific principles” and recruited him to help build Blackdot’s device. Together, they built a world-class team of engineers and scientists (many with PhDs) to tackle challenges in robotics, skin biomechanics, and software. Pennington also sought guidance from industry veterans like Steve Godoy to ensure Blackdot respected tattooing’s legacy even as it innovated. As CEO, Pennington is very much the public face of the company: he gives interviews explaining Blackdot’s mission and often personally engages with the art community. A passionate music fan, he leveraged his longtime Smashing Pumpkins fandom into a business partnership (licensing John Craig’s album art for tattoos). He even convinced Pumpkins members Jimmy Chamberlin and Jeff Schroeder of the project’s cool factor during a backstage meeting, proudly sharing that his young daughter’s drawing might become his next Blackdot tattoo – a dragon holding a guitar, nicknamed the “Pumpkins-approved tattoo” by his team. These anecdotes show Pennington’s hands-on approach in blending personal passion with professional endeavors to push Blackdot’s brand.
Under Pennington’s leadership, Blackdot maintains a clear mission: to “offer a new way for people to get tattoos, provide better mechanisms for artists to share and get compensated for their work, and reimagine the tattooing process as a whole”. Colleagues describe him as a visionary who can see both the big picture and fine details – whether it’s charting out global expansion or obsessing over the fidelity of a single tattoo dot. Having been a consumer, creator, and technologist in different industries, Pennington brings an empathetic touch to Blackdot’s customer experience. He insisted that the studios prioritize top-tier customer service and hygiene, knowing that many first-time clients might be anxious stepping into this brave new world of tattooing. And as someone who himself only started getting tattoos as part of Blackdot’s testing process (famously letting his young daughters partially operate the machine on him as a fun experiment), Pennington understands the emotional weight of getting a tattoo. This perspective keeps Blackdot grounded in the human aspect of body art even as it pushes the high-tech envelope.
Shark Tank Air Date: 03/21/2025 – Season 16 – Episode 14
