Some of the best shows in
NYC are available for free at the simple click of a smart phone or laptop
button and come in the form of "Meet-Ups." At many of these events including “Hard Wired” and the grand
daddy of all Meet Ups “NY Tech Meet-up” where you can see the story of true
value creation from a wide variety of budding entrepreneurs.
By value creation I am
thinking about creating something from nothing. Lots of these business people
mastered the art of “pivoting” – that is changing and evolving their product or
service offering and business model until they find something that works. Seems
lots of angel investors, venture capital firms and larger well-established
companies are taking note, and putting down millions of dollars in the process.
These events embrace an
open-source approach to sharing experiences and intellectual capital in full
measure.
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| Bre Pettis of MakerBot. |
An excellent case in point
is MakerBot Industries and one of its founders Bre Pettis - a natural pitchman - who was a featured speaker
at the April Hardwired event. MakerBot is a five-year-old Brooklyn, NY based
company that makes open-source 3D printers.
The early MakerBot makes 3D printer
kits required assembly. These products were designed to be built by anyone
with basic technical skills, and are described as about as complicated as
assembling IKEA furniture, with only minor soldering required. Their printers
print with acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), high-density polyethylene
(HDPE), polyactic acid (PLA) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA).
3D printing in of itself is
revolutionizing many businesses, “…allowing
prototypes to be built in hours not months, compressing the innovation cycle
and accelerating the ability to get
stuff done fast…” according to Pettis while speaking at Hardwired.
Pettis said their market for
3D printers is split between entrepreneurs and big corporations, and sited a
range of uses from people making doll house furniture, to movie set designers,
to aerospace giant Lockheed - all exploring frontiers using 3D printing.
One of the best take-away
thoughts from Pettis was his never-ending quest for innovative thinking. He
mentioned “…I was riding the wave of 3D
printing at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas while cruising
the back-alleys of the show looking for cool new ideas…” This guy clearly
has no intentions of resting on his laurels.
He loves the idea appealing to
misfit kids who want make things, empowering their creativity with MakerBot
technology. “These freak-show kids are
our future” Pettis declared.
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| MakerBot Cupcake. |
MakerBot started its 3D
product concept offerings with “Cupcake CNC” – source files needed to build the
device were shared on Thingiverse MakerBot's online community- allowing anyone to build one from scratch.
This online community is
still thriving - where users can post 3D printable files, document designs and
collaborate on open source hardware. The site is a collaborative repository for
design files used in 3D printing, laser cutting and other DIY manufacturing
processes.
Because of the open source
nature of the product, many suggestions for improvements came from users.
Printing upgrades and replacement parts became popular projects for learning to
operate the units.
Introduced in September 2010
at Maker Faire NYC the
Thing-O-Matic was MakerBot's second kit. The Thing-O-Matic shipped with many of
the common upgrades that had been built for Cupcake.
The company was founded in
April of 2009 with $ 150K in seed money from three angel investors and then had
a capital infusion of $ 10 million in August of 2011 from Foundry Group, a
venture capital firm.
On June 19, 2013,
Stratasys Inc. announced that it had acquired MakerBot in a stock deal worth $403 million,
based on the current share value of Stratasys. The deal provided that
MakerBot would operate as a distinct brand and subsidiary of Stratasys, serving
the consumer and desktop market segments. Now that's real value creation.
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| Replicator: 3D Printing heaven-on-earth for $ 2899. |
In January 2012 MakerBot
introduced the Replicator. It offered more than double the "build envelope" of
the Thing-o-Matic (225 mm × 145 mm × 150 mm). The company has
gone on to introduce four new generations of the Replicator 3D printer series,
including its most recent model that features WiFi enabled software connected
with MakerBot mobile apps along with its original desktop apps. This model
provides an even larger build volume and fast print time to accelerate rapid
prototyping and model making.
They’ve even introduced a
Replicator Mini Compact 3D printer for $ 1375 USD making the technology
available at the same price point as a decent laptop computer. That should get
aspiring inventors and entrepreneurs excited.
Seems that even with success
MakerBot is continuing to pivot on its business model, while fully embracing
its open-architecture view on both 3D hardware / software, and their
intellectual capital - having fun and growing like a weed in the process.
You can visit their retail location at 289 Mulberry St near Houston in NYC – where they sell equipment and
supplies, demonstrate 3D printing, offer classes and provide a real-time and
up-close view of the future of value creation starting at 12:00 Noon every
day.
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