17 ms·
More broadly, it's kind of sad how little actually came of the "Maker Movement," at least in terms of startups. MakerBot sold for $400M and there are plenty of
by replicatorblog 9y ago
More broadly, it's kind of sad how little actually came of the "Maker Movement," at least in terms of startups. MakerBot sold for $400M and there are plenty of small 3-D printer companies targeted at hobbyists. Ponoko and Shapeways are solid if unspectacular. Arduino and Raspberry Pi are both solid projects, AdaFruit and Sparkfun are solid businesses. Make: Magazine is cool, but still a niche publication.
Of course, startups aren't the only measure of success. The net positive is hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of younger hackers who may go on to build the next hardware company based on lessons learned at a MakerFaire.
- radiorental 9y ago> More broadly, it's kind of sad how little actually came of the "Maker Movement" I'm not sure I agree. However I do believe the "Maker" movement was over sold by O'Reilly media and Dale Dougherty in particular. I stopped subscribing to Make Magazine few years back when it became apparent it was little more than a print version of Hackaday or Instructables. Regardless of Maker. There is a plethora Robotics Competitions, existing Hacker spaces and STEM is huge. The number of kids that were going to tinker at home is a fairly fixed. Where we'll really move the needle in terms of more people getting into engineering is in formal education (inc Robotics competitions). Disclosure: I'm a little biased, I help design and build IDE's for some of these comps, e.g. http://zerorobotics.mit.edu/what-is-zr/ http://zerorobotics.mit.edu/what-is-zr/ but I also have advocated and help implement "maker spaces" in my local school system. There is a sea-change, so I'll push back on the idea that little came of the 'maker movement'
- replicatorblog 9y agoI totally agree — There was just this point where the Economist and other general interest publications were covering it like the 3rd industrial revolution. More robot clubs are great, but it's hard to think of a single billion dollar company that came out of it.