Could you start a brand-new desktop 3D printer company today?
I’ve seen the industry change utterly in the 18 years I’ve been following the technology. In the early days, things were vastly simpler.
Consider the case of MakerBot: a group of friends in a makerspace decided to start selling 3D printer kits based on technology from a then-expired Stratasys patent. They cobbled together a small team and shipped boxes of laser-cut panels, wires, and motors.
From there, they grew, and their products became more sophisticated, eventually joining Stratasys (ironically the owner of the original expired patent) and later UltiMaker.
That story was repeated by several startup companies back then, and some are big players today, like Formlabs. Others, like Solidoodle, are long gone.
Could someone run that same story today? Could someone invent a new 3D printer design in their garage and succeed in today’s 3D printer market?
Absolutely not. Those days are long gone.
Consider the current state of the market: we have multiple very large players selling literally millions of machines each year. These companies have been granted thousands of patents on almost all aspects of their systems’ designs, preventing others from proceeding. They have worldwide sales and distribution networks, with long-term relationships (and sometimes contracts) with customers to supply equipment and materials. They have huge research teams, sometimes numbering hundreds of technicians and scientists.
No one in a garage or basement could possibly compete against that.
To succeed from scratch today, you’d have to:
- Develop a completely new, unpatented 3D printing process that has extremely compelling benefits.
- Have a software team capable of designing foolproof software and clean user interfaces to attract and keep users.
- Have a significant manufacturing capacity to launch with massive numbers of sales to gain revenue.
- Have a large and sophisticated marketing campaign to get the message out to prospects and counter their affinity with existing players.
- Be able to gather and organize a large team capable of executing all of the above.
All of those things cost money. A lot of money. No one in a basement with a cool idea is going to have that cash, which at this point is likely nine digits wide.
It’s now a very different game from the early period of makeshift 3D printers. Not only is the technology different, but the buyers themselves are also different.
In the early days, the market was effectively DIY folks that could easily handle technical issues on their own. Nowadays, the desktop 3D printers are so easy to use that “normal” consumers are buying them. That is the market for a new desktop 3D printer, as it is far larger than the DIY group that already has equipment.
Unless you have the cash, you won’t succeed anymore.
