9 ms·

What doomed MakerBot? The Osborne effect

159 points by hugs 12y ago

deleterious 12y ago
Did no one see "Print the Legend" on Netflix. Pretty well discusses this matter in detail. It also deals with funding a new business and the various pitfalls.
- sleepychu 12y ago
  It was discussed in the article but the author didn't find the answer given in the documentary convincing.
orionblastar 12y ago
The Osborne effect whee announcing a future product before it is made way too early cancels sales of the current project. People forget when Osborne was losing sales, the IBM PC and PC-DOS was gaining sales and CP/M systems like those made by Osborne had a lot of competition. Microsoft/IBM had a converter program that could convert CP/M-80 programs to DOS programs. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2015/04/17/10608077.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2015/04/17/10608... Also Kaypro had won over Osborne customers with their own CP/M machines that reached the market before the new Osborne models. Commodore had the VIC-20 and later Commodore-64 that provided cheaper computers as did the 8 bit Atari line. Some people would rather buy a $399 Commodore or Atari computer and hook it up to their TV screen. So announcing a new product too far ahead of time was only one factor in the Osborne effect. Makerbot has Chinese competition, and they had technical issues as well. There are more factors here than just announcing a new product too far ahead of time. Instead of Osborne it is more like the Apple III http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_III http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_III
- hugs 12y ago
  (Author here.) I agree with you, there are several factors at play in what happened to MakerBot. I believe Bre learned the wrong lesson -- going closed might have looked like the obvious solution to their drop in sales. But the one huge advantage MakerBot had over their competitors (and the cloners) was the good will and support from the open source community. With that support gone after going closed, MakerBot had to sink or swim on its own. I think they could have found a way to stay open while dealing with concerns of revealing future plans. For one, they could have kept the plans closed during development, but released all the plans on launch, forcing their competitors to play catch-up. As a user, I wouldn't necessarily need access to future designs for future models, but definitely would want designs to the current model that I owned. But anyway, I now buy LulzBot 3D printers, which are fully open. The latest version is TAZ 5.0. I can't tell, though, just by looking at the LulzBot online repo [1] if plans for future versions are also posted there ahead of official release. [1]: http://download.lulzbot.com/TAZ/ http://download.lulzbot.com/TAZ/ [Edit] LulzBot is more awesome than I thought. They post the source for future versions that they're working on, too: http://devel.lulzbot.com/TAZ/README.html http://devel.lulzbot.com/TAZ/README.html "'Kauri' - EVT version of the next printer after TAZ 5.0"
- hyperpallium 12y ago
  And Osbourne probably preannounced so early because of the competition (to pre-empt users switching). Preannouncement and failure were correlated due to a common cause. OTOH MS vapourware has scuttled competitors. So it depends on your market power. Osbourne was against IBM and a disruptive tide.
  - xorcist 12y ago
    Also Intel with Itanium.
  - jkestner 12y ago
    Right - it was a move of desperation. Perhaps Osbourne could've marketed/distributed their way out. But it's hard to position yourself as the brand that no one gets fired for buying when someone's already got that spot. With MakerBot, another issue may be that the market is approaching saturation. As they're being eaten by cheaper competitors, they haven't been able to create a new market to grow into. I suppose the Replicator is an attempt to do that - how has that done?
- hga 12y ago
  Furthermore, Osborne himself in a front page Wall Street Journal article and/or interview admitted he lied about the cause of the company's demise. This section from Wikipedia casts further doubt on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect#The_Osborne_Myth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect#The_Osborne_Myt... and I should really get around to working with someone with a Nexis account to properly source that article.
jacknews 12y ago
To avoid the Osborne effect, they could simply have produced new versions and only open the source once released. That's not the real problem. I guess it was a combination of chinese knockoffs and stratasys proprietary instincts. In any case, IMHO, the layoffs are a result of losing the open community, which is now being serviced by true open-source proponents like Aleph with their excellent Lulzbot printers.
- hugs 12y ago
  Yup, I only buy LulzBot printers (I own 3 now), pretty much a direct result of MakerBot's decision to go closed.
  - simcop2387 12y ago
    Just got a taz 5 a few days ago. Been really impressed with them. I still don't have the bed fully level but the PEI surface has been wonderful compared to everything else i've ever used. it's like it's a completely different kind of machine. I looked at them for the same reason, open source but they really deliver on the actual product. my only complaint is one i'm going to fix myself if i can't find any other way. the LCD is bright at night when printing in the dark.
  - kreitje 12y ago
    If you are around northern Colorado, they give tours of their place.
deleted 12y ago
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dsjoerg 12y ago
doomed is a strong word, and the article makes no attempt to argue that makerbot is doomed, but rather assumes it without any argument or demonstration at all. i have no stake in it myself, but if you're gonna make a strong statement like "doomed" you should back it up. layoffs != doomed
- hugs 12y ago
  It wasn't just layoffs. "Stratasys also announced a $100 million write-down on Makerbot’s valuation in February." Link: http://makezine.com/2015/04/17/makerbot-lays-off-100-employees-closes-retail-stores/ http://makezine.com/2015/04/17/makerbot-lays-off-100-employe... But you have a point, they're not dead yet. They might turn the corner, hire again, and regain that $100 million in value someday.
tarr11 12y ago
Perhaps an open source model might have mitigated the atrocious quality of the 5th generation Makerbot. I must have replaced our extruder 5 times already, and the entire machine had to also be replaced once. This is all on a maker care warranty, so no matter what they charge, there is no profit left. If I could have replaced the extruder with an open source clone that functioned better, I would have.
gonzo 12y ago
Personally, I'm wondering how many on HN actually owned an Osborne machine.
- bjelkeman-again 12y ago
  I never owned one. But touched one when they were sold in shops.
- bigiain 12y ago
  Me. (Well, my Dad...) I learnt _huge_ amount pretty much accidentally from that machine and the user manual that came with it. Nobody told me at 12 or 14 years old that kids weren't supposed to solder together a handful of parts to add a joystick to the parallel port and write Z80 assembler routines to speed up the inner loops of games written in basic.
- empressplay 12y ago
  I still have one! Flyback is shot on the CRT though =(
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    Heat and vibration rubbing the coil wires against each other is what kills flyback transformers, you can usually get replacements for about $50 or so and replacing them isn't hard.
alayne 12y ago
This seems like a normal result of post buyout restructuring by Stratasys. Does anyone have sales numbers to know if they are actually having issues?
- ChristianGeek 12y ago
  This is what the business press is reporting, and it makes sense. The author of the article obviously has a grudge against MakerBot and decided to go postal against them when he read the layoff headlines without doing due diligence first. (Wait until he finds out they closed their retail stores!)
spiritplumber 12y ago
What I generally do is "I've got Rev C for sale. Source and schematics for Rev A remain available on my wiki, sources and schematics for Rev B now are available on the same wiki."
ChuckMcM 12y ago
The challenge of being an open source hardware manufacturer in the presence of an economy that is better suited to create hardware than you are (China in this case) is that you really have to execute well. I agree it was a huge mistake on Bre's part to leak the upcoming Rep 2. Without incoming orders you have to fund current orders and R&D out of cash on hand, and that doesn't work without a big line of credit. But it is also really unfair to second guess someone who is riding a bucking bull in a nursery. That is what running a very successful startup can be like, lots of money coming in, decisions needing to be made with too little information, large outcome swings based on them with precious little runway to correct for errors. When you are in that space and someone reaches in and offers to lift you out, it can be hard to be rational about the choices you are making. It seemed to me that Stratasys knew exactly what they where doing, and less so for Bre and crew. Unfortunately for Stratasys they failed to understand why Makerbot had been growing like it had, probably taking the late product launch as all the rationale they needed for a cash short company. I believe that had they understood what they had stepped in to, they would have approached it very differently and made very different choices. Not the least of which would be a mixed model of open and proprietary gizmos for their printers. I am convinced that their lack of openness lead directly to the C.F. that is their "SmartStruder" which now has people calling for class action lawsuits. A company with the Goodwill of a Printrbot and the resources of a Stratasys would have dominated the 3D market completely. Instead small printer companies are flourishing and kickstarters for new printers regularly cross $1M in pledges (and that is for printers no one has any right to believe can even be built!) I found it hugely ironic that Bre is on the cover of this month's Popular Science [1] [1] http://www.popsci.com/2015-invention-awards http://www.popsci.com/2015-invention-awards
- fixxer 12y ago
  Seconded regarding his cover on popsci. You have to admire his knack for self promotion.
  - saalweachter 12y ago
    I don't think it's entirely self promotion. Despite their looming fall and whether or not you feel betrayed by the switch to closed-source, IMO MakerBot played an important role in turning 3D printing from "a thing in movies and high-end research labs" to "a thing hobbyists and consumers could do". Their place in history may not be as large as they would have liked, but it's definitely there.
Animats 12y ago
The MakerBot's problem is simply that low-end extruder-type 3D printers don't work very well.[1] They're easy to make, so there are lots of variations on that theme. TechShop has, over time, had one or two of all the major flavors. They're useful for making relatively thin parts, but anything taller than 3cm or so usually founders on the basic fact that ABS has too big of a coefficient of expansion to build something tall without delaminating due to thermal stress. The frontier in 3D printing seems to be to get the cost down on the high-end processes, which are now very good. The Form1, the low-end stereolithography printer, is a nice little machine, and it's real. TechShop SF and Hacker Dojo in Mountain View both have one. Form1 charges $145/liter for the working fluid, so that's how they make their money. Eventually, somebody is going to get low-cost laser sintering of metal powder figured out. But not quite yet. The Aurora Labs 3D metal printer turned out to cost about 10x the original $4000 price. MatterFab hasn't shipped their device. There's a low-end electroplating printer, but that's inherently a very slow process. [1] http://gizmodo.com/why-3d-printing-is-overhyped-i-should-know-i-do-it-fo-508176750 http://gizmodo.com/why-3d-printing-is-overhyped-i-should-kno...
- deleted 12y ago
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- snom320 12y ago
  I'm not sure that's their main problem. Other companies are alive and well selling similar printers to customers that know what they buy. I think MakerBots biggest problem is that they've marketed (and with Gen5, designed) their products as being "consumer ready" when they're far from it. With the huge brand name of MakerBot, I can't help feel that this is going to create a setback for the 3D printer market. It's just sad.
- fit2rule 12y ago
  I think Aurora Labs are still working hard (iterating) on their design to get the costs down and will have something to show, shortly ..
- dragontamer 12y ago
  > The frontier in 3D printing seems to be to get the cost down on the high-end processes, which are now very good. The Form1, the low-end stereolithography printer, is a nice little machine, and it's real. TechShop SF and Hacker Dojo in Mountain View both have one. Form1 charges $145/liter for the working fluid, so that's how they make their money. High quality desktop CNC Mills are out. http://carbide3d.com/ http://carbide3d.com/ $3000 for a proven technology. Home-made CNC mills have always come in between $1000 to $3000, and now professional turnkey solutions are available in that price range. I do realize CNC machines are the "opposite" of a 3D Printer. But if a CNC machine can get a software stack as easy to use as the 3d printers, then I think they'd get a lot more use.
jjwiseman 12y ago
I'm curious to see how 3D Robotics handles a similar situation. Their drone platform has been open source hardware plus open source software. There are Chinese companies cloning the hardware and selling it for much cheaper than 3D Robotics sells it for. 3D Robotics just raised $50M in a series C. It will be interesting to see how their commitment to openness holds up.
- erkkie 12y ago
  I'm curious about that as well, some people have bet it's gonna be a mix of open hardware and proprietary (even if just by code) "governors", something the newest launch, the solo (http://3drobotics.com/solo/ http://3drobotics.com/solo/), would be well-equipped to do (I haven't done the research to confirm/deny that yet).
- steve19 12y ago
  3D Robotics only open source the flight controller hardware and software and ground control software. delivering a safe drone platform requires a lot more hardware (the aircraft itself, camera and radio gear) and firmware (camera, gimbal, speed controller radio gear).
  - erkkie 12y ago
    Technically the ground control software is a separate open source project, also the px4 project is looking to release a open hardware esc (electronic speed controller) soon as well (https://pixhawk.org/modules/pixhawk_esc https://pixhawk.org/modules/pixhawk_esc). Agreed though, the magic is in the total sum.
  - jjwiseman 12y ago
    My guess, though, is that as the industry matures, low-level components like ESC & radio firmwares are not really going to be where most value gets added. Software is definitely going to eat the drone world, and it's going to be at the higher levels: First it will be flight software with amazing new features (VSLAM, sense and avoid, swarm control) and then once that's more mature, it will be the operations-level super-ground-control-system stuff.
argonaut 12y ago
Gee, thanks, Bre. Again, why do you think that's true? How did you come to that conclusion? What do you know that those of us still in the "fantasy world" don't know? Aha, that's it! MakerBot fell victim to the Osborne effect, where talking openly about future products hurt the sale of their current products. Sales dropped, so they got scared and went closed. That sounds like a way more honest and real answer than the non-existence of an open source steel bender. Commenting on the tone alone, this strikes me as the logic of someone who has already arrived at a conclusion (the MakerBot founders are concealing the real reason behind their abandonment of open-source), and is merely searching for evidence to back up a conclusion they've already arrived at.
- gaius 12y ago
  Agreed; this is a hit piece.
- monochromatic 12y ago
  My thoughts exactly. If the statements about open source hardware don't fit your worldview, just deride them and make up some other explanation!
  - hugs 12y ago
    I didn't deride his statements because they didn't fit my worldview, I derided them for making no sense. He was the one that kept coming up with new explanations. His latest (which I quote in the post) is other-wise known as the Osborne effect.
    - monochromatic 12y ago
      Ok. But you blew off the main justification he gave for no sensible reason I can see. You just didn't like it, so you found some other explanation.
- msabalau 12y ago
  The author may have a dog in this fight, but it would be incorrect to claim they have a beef with MakerBot's founders, given that Zach “Hoeken” Smith, one of the founders, has been openly critical of the move to closed source, and also was forced out of the company.
fsk 12y ago
I interviewed for a software job there twice. It seemed pretty dysfunctional to me. For one project, they had 20 people working on something that I thought would take 3-5 people.
- mrfusion 12y ago
  I've found that's the case with almost all software projects.
teslaberry 12y ago
'doomed' , really? we are in an epic financial bubble right now that DWARFS all previous bubbles of the past 20 years so much so that janet yellen herself said "cash is not a good store of value"; meaning the bubble is so big that those who created and sustain it with unlimited cash are so scared of it popping that they will publicly allude to the possibility of unending limitless printing ( and the inevitable hyperinflationary boom it would conclude with ) . all of the self congratulatory lying and self deception of silicon valley is that it is 'libertarian' and 'independent' , when in fact ALL THE NEW MONEY IN SILICON VALLEY COMES FROM THE FED THROUGH EITHER BANKS OR THE TREASURY BY WAY OF VC AND THE MILITARY RESPECTIVELY. the boom will end as all booms do and the headline of what 'doomed' makerbot will seem like a joke. laying off 20% isn't 'doom' by any stretch of the imagination. if there are problems with makerbots business model, then they were relegated to the parent company which now owns it. bri pettis is a political genius for ousting his 2 compatriots and keeping the control, and the spoils of the buyout , all for himself.
blhack 12y ago
Makerbot is doomed because not only will nobody in the hobbyist market buy their printers anymore, but when the people who are in the hobbyist market get asked about what printer to buy, the will recommend against makerbot (well, more specifically against Bre Pettis).
- devopsproject 12y ago
  We just bought a 3d printer and noticed this. There were so many negative comments about makerbot
ericflo 12y ago
Anecdotally, I stopped hearing people talk much about Makerbot right around 2012. Seems to coincide with when they closed source their stuff.
stefanix 12y ago
MakerBot has just not been very innovative. I see their contribution more like that of a cheerleader of 3d printing (who layer got involved with too much sugar-dadiness).
Jack000 12y ago
I think they would have been fine had they shipped a better product. When I was doing research to buy a 3d printer every review I read said that the closed source metal version was every bit as unreliable as the previous plywood laser cut makerbot.
iammaxus 12y ago
The author is somehow making a connection between what "doomed" Makerbot and why they went closed source. Makerbot biggest growth year was 2013 (approximately quadrupled booking rate over the course of it), the year immediately after going closed source.
pmorici 12y ago
This leaves out some really important background. Makerbot quietly sold out to Stratasys in 2013. When they did that they lost their soul and their independence. The first sign of that was when they went closed source alienating a huge portion of their customer base. This is just another shoe dropping now that Stratasys owns them they are moving to more tightly integrate Makerbot into the rest of the company. These layoffs are supposedly to remove duplicative positions due to the buyout. There is a good documentary on Netflix about the 3d printing revolution called "Print the Legend" It covers a lot of the history behind Makerbot including the fact that there were really 3 co-founders instead of just the one that gets regularly mentioned in news coverage.
bane 12y ago
I'm pretty tech savvy, and I honestly can't find a reason, other than tinkering, to buy a 3d printer. In almost every case, the thing the printer would be making for me, at huge effort in time and materials, is solvable with a cheap, sub-$1 Chinese made part or some other more convenient alternative. The lack of real use-case is what's killing consumer-level 3d printers. Most people just don't need to run off a couple copies of a 3d trinket or toy with enough frequency to make it worth it. And the subset of those people with useful 3d-modeling skills is some tiny fraction of that number. Whenever I see somebody using a 3d printer at the consumer level for something useful, it always seems to have just been for a one-off Arduino case or something like that. That's really just not incentive for me to spend the time and money to get setup with 3d printing, when I can just buy a case off of Amazon or whatever and be done with it. The cost of the parts is the cost of your time + materials + setup costs (the printer). Is an Arduino case really worth $1400-$6500? That price only comes down if I print off more stuff I suppose, but at what point do the trinkets and dodads I'm printing off start to make economic and time sense? That's pretty far down the production chain, and I simply don't have that much stuff to print.
- auxym 12y ago
  I'm in mechanical engineering and love tinkering with stuff, and I also can't really find an excuse to get a 3D printer. In the research lab I used to work in, we had both a printer and trotec laser cutter (for acrylic and similar), and the cutter was used multiple times every single day while the printer was fired up once a month or so. Note that we also had two CNC milling machines, a lathe and a full complement of power tools, which likely contributed to the printer seeing very little use. Also, your post reminds of a recent blog post by a friend of mind who is cofounder of a makerspace in the college town we were in. Loosely translated, he deplored how the maker culture has shifted from a utopia where everyone could learn to make their own durable and useful objects instead of buying into mass-production, planned obsolescence and consumerism, to a bunch of people manufacturing mostly useless plastic trinkets. All in all though, when I move into a home with a garage, I'd love to get of those chinese mini-lathes which can be had for sub-1000$ :) And I wish laser cutters were less expensive (the trotec we had was bought around 40k I think, actually more than our CNCs).
- 12y ago
anonbanker 12y ago
TL;DR - If your corporation is extremely open/transparent, including R&D, you may risk losing sales from people willing to wait for a version 2.0. If so, don't close up/make opaque your business as a response, or you'll end up killing your core audience.
copsarebastards 12y ago
MakerBot is still in business. Yes, a 20% layoff is not a good sign, but it's a little early to say MakerBot is "doomed". Taking it one step further and saying that it's the Osborne effect which caused their troubles is even less valid. There are a ton of different possible causes for MakerBot's troubles. The only honest answer here is that we don't know why MakerBot is having trouble, although there are a number of very good guesses we could venture. The OP seems to be frustrated with MakerBot going closed-source. I share that frustration, but let's call that what it is, a frustration with MakerBot going closed-source, rather than using MakerBot's failures as an excuse to gloat.
protomyth 12y ago
I'm not quite sure we are at the stage where 3D printers are a home market item. I figured they would go into copy shops first with models priced like big copiers. It just seems a little early days.
deleted 12y ago
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159 points by hugs 12y ago

Did no one see "Print the Legend" on Netflix. Pretty well discusses this matter in detail. It also deals with funding a new business and the various pitfalls.

sleepychu 12y ago
It was discussed in the article but the author didn't find the answer given in the documentary convincing.

orionblastar 12y ago

The Osborne effect whee announcing a future product before it is made way too early cancels sales of the current project. People forget when Osborne was losing sales, the IBM PC and PC-DOS was gaining sales and CP/M systems like those made by Osborne had a lot of competition. Microsoft/IBM had a converter program that could convert CP/M-80 programs to DOS programs. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2015/04/17/10608077.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2015/04/17/10608... Also Kaypro had won over Osborne customers with their own CP/M machines that reached the market before the new Osborne models. Commodore had the VIC-20 and later Commodore-64 that provided cheaper computers as did the 8 bit Atari line. Some people would rather buy a $399 Commodore or Atari computer and hook it up to their TV screen. So announcing a new product too far ahead of time was only one factor in the Osborne effect. Makerbot has Chinese competition, and they had technical issues as well. There are more factors here than just announcing a new product too far ahead of time. Instead of Osborne it is more like the Apple III http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_III http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_III

hugs 12y ago
(Author here.) I agree with you, there are several factors at play in what happened to MakerBot. I believe Bre learned the wrong lesson -- going closed might have looked like the obvious solution to their drop in sales. But the one huge advantage MakerBot had over their competitors (and the cloners) was the good will and support from the open source community. With that support gone after going closed, MakerBot had to sink or swim on its own. I think they could have found a way to stay open while dealing with concerns of revealing future plans. For one, they could have kept the plans closed during development, but released all the plans on launch, forcing their competitors to play catch-up. As a user, I wouldn't necessarily need access to future designs for future models, but definitely would want designs to the current model that I owned. But anyway, I now buy LulzBot 3D printers, which are fully open. The latest version is TAZ 5.0. I can't tell, though, just by looking at the LulzBot online repo [1] if plans for future versions are also posted there ahead of official release. [1]: http://download.lulzbot.com/TAZ/ http://download.lulzbot.com/TAZ/ [Edit] LulzBot is more awesome than I thought. They post the source for future versions that they're working on, too: http://devel.lulzbot.com/TAZ/README.html http://devel.lulzbot.com/TAZ/README.html "'Kauri' - EVT version of the next printer after TAZ 5.0"
hyperpallium 12y ago
And Osbourne probably preannounced so early because of the competition (to pre-empt users switching). Preannouncement and failure were correlated due to a common cause. OTOH MS vapourware has scuttled competitors. So it depends on your market power. Osbourne was against IBM and a disruptive tide.
- xorcist 12y ago
  Also Intel with Itanium.
- jkestner 12y ago
  Right - it was a move of desperation. Perhaps Osbourne could've marketed/distributed their way out. But it's hard to position yourself as the brand that no one gets fired for buying when someone's already got that spot. With MakerBot, another issue may be that the market is approaching saturation. As they're being eaten by cheaper competitors, they haven't been able to create a new market to grow into. I suppose the Replicator is an attempt to do that - how has that done?
hga 12y ago
Furthermore, Osborne himself in a front page Wall Street Journal article and/or interview admitted he lied about the cause of the company's demise. This section from Wikipedia casts further doubt on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect#The_Osborne_Myth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect#The_Osborne_Myt... and I should really get around to working with someone with a Nexis account to properly source that article.

jacknews 12y ago

To avoid the Osborne effect, they could simply have produced new versions and only open the source once released. That's not the real problem. I guess it was a combination of chinese knockoffs and stratasys proprietary instincts. In any case, IMHO, the layoffs are a result of losing the open community, which is now being serviced by true open-source proponents like Aleph with their excellent Lulzbot printers.

hugs 12y ago
Yup, I only buy LulzBot printers (I own 3 now), pretty much a direct result of MakerBot's decision to go closed.
- simcop2387 12y ago
  Just got a taz 5 a few days ago. Been really impressed with them. I still don't have the bed fully level but the PEI surface has been wonderful compared to everything else i've ever used. it's like it's a completely different kind of machine. I looked at them for the same reason, open source but they really deliver on the actual product. my only complaint is one i'm going to fix myself if i can't find any other way. the LCD is bright at night when printing in the dark.
- kreitje 12y ago
  If you are around northern Colorado, they give tours of their place.

deleted 12y ago

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dsjoerg 12y ago

doomed is a strong word, and the article makes no attempt to argue that makerbot is doomed, but rather assumes it without any argument or demonstration at all. i have no stake in it myself, but if you're gonna make a strong statement like "doomed" you should back it up. layoffs != doomed

hugs 12y ago
It wasn't just layoffs. "Stratasys also announced a $100 million write-down on Makerbot’s valuation in February." Link: http://makezine.com/2015/04/17/makerbot-lays-off-100-employees-closes-retail-stores/ http://makezine.com/2015/04/17/makerbot-lays-off-100-employe... But you have a point, they're not dead yet. They might turn the corner, hire again, and regain that $100 million in value someday.

tarr11 12y ago

Perhaps an open source model might have mitigated the atrocious quality of the 5th generation Makerbot. I must have replaced our extruder 5 times already, and the entire machine had to also be replaced once. This is all on a maker care warranty, so no matter what they charge, there is no profit left. If I could have replaced the extruder with an open source clone that functioned better, I would have.

gonzo 12y ago

Personally, I'm wondering how many on HN actually owned an Osborne machine.

bjelkeman-again 12y ago
I never owned one. But touched one when they were sold in shops.
bigiain 12y ago
Me. (Well, my Dad...) I learnt _huge_ amount pretty much accidentally from that machine and the user manual that came with it. Nobody told me at 12 or 14 years old that kids weren't supposed to solder together a handful of parts to add a joystick to the parallel port and write Z80 assembler routines to speed up the inner loops of games written in basic.
empressplay 12y ago
I still have one! Flyback is shot on the CRT though =(
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Heat and vibration rubbing the coil wires against each other is what kills flyback transformers, you can usually get replacements for about $50 or so and replacing them isn't hard.

alayne 12y ago

This seems like a normal result of post buyout restructuring by Stratasys. Does anyone have sales numbers to know if they are actually having issues?

ChristianGeek 12y ago
This is what the business press is reporting, and it makes sense. The author of the article obviously has a grudge against MakerBot and decided to go postal against them when he read the layoff headlines without doing due diligence first. (Wait until he finds out they closed their retail stores!)

spiritplumber 12y ago

What I generally do is "I've got Rev C for sale. Source and schematics for Rev A remain available on my wiki, sources and schematics for Rev B now are available on the same wiki."

ChuckMcM 12y ago

The challenge of being an open source hardware manufacturer in the presence of an economy that is better suited to create hardware than you are (China in this case) is that you really have to execute well. I agree it was a huge mistake on Bre's part to leak the upcoming Rep 2. Without incoming orders you have to fund current orders and R&D out of cash on hand, and that doesn't work without a big line of credit. But it is also really unfair to second guess someone who is riding a bucking bull in a nursery. That is what running a very successful startup can be like, lots of money coming in, decisions needing to be made with too little information, large outcome swings based on them with precious little runway to correct for errors. When you are in that space and someone reaches in and offers to lift you out, it can be hard to be rational about the choices you are making. It seemed to me that Stratasys knew exactly what they where doing, and less so for Bre and crew. Unfortunately for Stratasys they failed to understand why Makerbot had been growing like it had, probably taking the late product launch as all the rationale they needed for a cash short company. I believe that had they understood what they had stepped in to, they would have approached it very differently and made very different choices. Not the least of which would be a mixed model of open and proprietary gizmos for their printers. I am convinced that their lack of openness lead directly to the C.F. that is their "SmartStruder" which now has people calling for class action lawsuits. A company with the Goodwill of a Printrbot and the resources of a Stratasys would have dominated the 3D market completely. Instead small printer companies are flourishing and kickstarters for new printers regularly cross $1M in pledges (and that is for printers no one has any right to believe can even be built!) I found it hugely ironic that Bre is on the cover of this month's Popular Science [1] [1] http://www.popsci.com/2015-invention-awards http://www.popsci.com/2015-invention-awards

fixxer 12y ago
Seconded regarding his cover on popsci. You have to admire his knack for self promotion.
- saalweachter 12y ago
  I don't think it's entirely self promotion. Despite their looming fall and whether or not you feel betrayed by the switch to closed-source, IMO MakerBot played an important role in turning 3D printing from "a thing in movies and high-end research labs" to "a thing hobbyists and consumers could do". Their place in history may not be as large as they would have liked, but it's definitely there.

Animats 12y ago

The MakerBot's problem is simply that low-end extruder-type 3D printers don't work very well.[1] They're easy to make, so there are lots of variations on that theme. TechShop has, over time, had one or two of all the major flavors. They're useful for making relatively thin parts, but anything taller than 3cm or so usually founders on the basic fact that ABS has too big of a coefficient of expansion to build something tall without delaminating due to thermal stress. The frontier in 3D printing seems to be to get the cost down on the high-end processes, which are now very good. The Form1, the low-end stereolithography printer, is a nice little machine, and it's real. TechShop SF and Hacker Dojo in Mountain View both have one. Form1 charges $145/liter for the working fluid, so that's how they make their money. Eventually, somebody is going to get low-cost laser sintering of metal powder figured out. But not quite yet. The Aurora Labs 3D metal printer turned out to cost about 10x the original $4000 price. MatterFab hasn't shipped their device. There's a low-end electroplating printer, but that's inherently a very slow process. [1] http://gizmodo.com/why-3d-printing-is-overhyped-i-should-know-i-do-it-fo-508176750 http://gizmodo.com/why-3d-printing-is-overhyped-i-should-kno...

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snom320 12y ago
I'm not sure that's their main problem. Other companies are alive and well selling similar printers to customers that know what they buy. I think MakerBots biggest problem is that they've marketed (and with Gen5, designed) their products as being "consumer ready" when they're far from it. With the huge brand name of MakerBot, I can't help feel that this is going to create a setback for the 3D printer market. It's just sad.
fit2rule 12y ago
I think Aurora Labs are still working hard (iterating) on their design to get the costs down and will have something to show, shortly ..
dragontamer 12y ago
> The frontier in 3D printing seems to be to get the cost down on the high-end processes, which are now very good. The Form1, the low-end stereolithography printer, is a nice little machine, and it's real. TechShop SF and Hacker Dojo in Mountain View both have one. Form1 charges $145/liter for the working fluid, so that's how they make their money. High quality desktop CNC Mills are out. http://carbide3d.com/ http://carbide3d.com/ $3000 for a proven technology. Home-made CNC mills have always come in between $1000 to $3000, and now professional turnkey solutions are available in that price range. I do realize CNC machines are the "opposite" of a 3D Printer. But if a CNC machine can get a software stack as easy to use as the 3d printers, then I think they'd get a lot more use.

jjwiseman 12y ago

I'm curious to see how 3D Robotics handles a similar situation. Their drone platform has been open source hardware plus open source software. There are Chinese companies cloning the hardware and selling it for much cheaper than 3D Robotics sells it for. 3D Robotics just raised $50M in a series C. It will be interesting to see how their commitment to openness holds up.

erkkie 12y ago
I'm curious about that as well, some people have bet it's gonna be a mix of open hardware and proprietary (even if just by code) "governors", something the newest launch, the solo (http://3drobotics.com/solo/ http://3drobotics.com/solo/), would be well-equipped to do (I haven't done the research to confirm/deny that yet).
steve19 12y ago
3D Robotics only open source the flight controller hardware and software and ground control software. delivering a safe drone platform requires a lot more hardware (the aircraft itself, camera and radio gear) and firmware (camera, gimbal, speed controller radio gear).
- erkkie 12y ago
  Technically the ground control software is a separate open source project, also the px4 project is looking to release a open hardware esc (electronic speed controller) soon as well (https://pixhawk.org/modules/pixhawk_esc https://pixhawk.org/modules/pixhawk_esc). Agreed though, the magic is in the total sum.
- jjwiseman 12y ago
  My guess, though, is that as the industry matures, low-level components like ESC & radio firmwares are not really going to be where most value gets added. Software is definitely going to eat the drone world, and it's going to be at the higher levels: First it will be flight software with amazing new features (VSLAM, sense and avoid, swarm control) and then once that's more mature, it will be the operations-level super-ground-control-system stuff.

argonaut 12y ago

Gee, thanks, Bre. Again, why do you think that's true? How did you come to that conclusion? What do you know that those of us still in the "fantasy world" don't know? Aha, that's it! MakerBot fell victim to the Osborne effect, where talking openly about future products hurt the sale of their current products. Sales dropped, so they got scared and went closed. That sounds like a way more honest and real answer than the non-existence of an open source steel bender. Commenting on the tone alone, this strikes me as the logic of someone who has already arrived at a conclusion (the MakerBot founders are concealing the real reason behind their abandonment of open-source), and is merely searching for evidence to back up a conclusion they've already arrived at.

gaius 12y ago
Agreed; this is a hit piece.
monochromatic 12y ago
My thoughts exactly. If the statements about open source hardware don't fit your worldview, just deride them and make up some other explanation!
- hugs 12y ago
  I didn't deride his statements because they didn't fit my worldview, I derided them for making no sense. He was the one that kept coming up with new explanations. His latest (which I quote in the post) is other-wise known as the Osborne effect.
  - monochromatic 12y ago
    Ok. But you blew off the main justification he gave for no sensible reason I can see. You just didn't like it, so you found some other explanation.
msabalau 12y ago
The author may have a dog in this fight, but it would be incorrect to claim they have a beef with MakerBot's founders, given that Zach “Hoeken” Smith, one of the founders, has been openly critical of the move to closed source, and also was forced out of the company.

fsk 12y ago

I interviewed for a software job there twice. It seemed pretty dysfunctional to me. For one project, they had 20 people working on something that I thought would take 3-5 people.

mrfusion 12y ago
I've found that's the case with almost all software projects.

teslaberry 12y ago

'doomed' , really? we are in an epic financial bubble right now that DWARFS all previous bubbles of the past 20 years so much so that janet yellen herself said "cash is not a good store of value"; meaning the bubble is so big that those who created and sustain it with unlimited cash are so scared of it popping that they will publicly allude to the possibility of unending limitless printing ( and the inevitable hyperinflationary boom it would conclude with ) . all of the self congratulatory lying and self deception of silicon valley is that it is 'libertarian' and 'independent' , when in fact ALL THE NEW MONEY IN SILICON VALLEY COMES FROM THE FED THROUGH EITHER BANKS OR THE TREASURY BY WAY OF VC AND THE MILITARY RESPECTIVELY. the boom will end as all booms do and the headline of what 'doomed' makerbot will seem like a joke. laying off 20% isn't 'doom' by any stretch of the imagination. if there are problems with makerbots business model, then they were relegated to the parent company which now owns it. bri pettis is a political genius for ousting his 2 compatriots and keeping the control, and the spoils of the buyout , all for himself.

blhack 12y ago

Makerbot is doomed because not only will nobody in the hobbyist market buy their printers anymore, but when the people who are in the hobbyist market get asked about what printer to buy, the will recommend against makerbot (well, more specifically against Bre Pettis).

devopsproject 12y ago
We just bought a 3d printer and noticed this. There were so many negative comments about makerbot

ericflo 12y ago

Anecdotally, I stopped hearing people talk much about Makerbot right around 2012. Seems to coincide with when they closed source their stuff.

stefanix 12y ago

MakerBot has just not been very innovative. I see their contribution more like that of a cheerleader of 3d printing (who layer got involved with too much sugar-dadiness).

Jack000 12y ago

I think they would have been fine had they shipped a better product. When I was doing research to buy a 3d printer every review I read said that the closed source metal version was every bit as unreliable as the previous plywood laser cut makerbot.

iammaxus 12y ago

The author is somehow making a connection between what "doomed" Makerbot and why they went closed source. Makerbot biggest growth year was 2013 (approximately quadrupled booking rate over the course of it), the year immediately after going closed source.

pmorici 12y ago

This leaves out some really important background. Makerbot quietly sold out to Stratasys in 2013. When they did that they lost their soul and their independence. The first sign of that was when they went closed source alienating a huge portion of their customer base. This is just another shoe dropping now that Stratasys owns them they are moving to more tightly integrate Makerbot into the rest of the company. These layoffs are supposedly to remove duplicative positions due to the buyout. There is a good documentary on Netflix about the 3d printing revolution called "Print the Legend" It covers a lot of the history behind Makerbot including the fact that there were really 3 co-founders instead of just the one that gets regularly mentioned in news coverage.

bane 12y ago

I'm pretty tech savvy, and I honestly can't find a reason, other than tinkering, to buy a 3d printer. In almost every case, the thing the printer would be making for me, at huge effort in time and materials, is solvable with a cheap, sub-$1 Chinese made part or some other more convenient alternative. The lack of real use-case is what's killing consumer-level 3d printers. Most people just don't need to run off a couple copies of a 3d trinket or toy with enough frequency to make it worth it. And the subset of those people with useful 3d-modeling skills is some tiny fraction of that number. Whenever I see somebody using a 3d printer at the consumer level for something useful, it always seems to have just been for a one-off Arduino case or something like that. That's really just not incentive for me to spend the time and money to get setup with 3d printing, when I can just buy a case off of Amazon or whatever and be done with it. The cost of the parts is the cost of your time + materials + setup costs (the printer). Is an Arduino case really worth $1400-$6500? That price only comes down if I print off more stuff I suppose, but at what point do the trinkets and dodads I'm printing off start to make economic and time sense? That's pretty far down the production chain, and I simply don't have that much stuff to print.

auxym 12y ago
I'm in mechanical engineering and love tinkering with stuff, and I also can't really find an excuse to get a 3D printer. In the research lab I used to work in, we had both a printer and trotec laser cutter (for acrylic and similar), and the cutter was used multiple times every single day while the printer was fired up once a month or so. Note that we also had two CNC milling machines, a lathe and a full complement of power tools, which likely contributed to the printer seeing very little use. Also, your post reminds of a recent blog post by a friend of mind who is cofounder of a makerspace in the college town we were in. Loosely translated, he deplored how the maker culture has shifted from a utopia where everyone could learn to make their own durable and useful objects instead of buying into mass-production, planned obsolescence and consumerism, to a bunch of people manufacturing mostly useless plastic trinkets. All in all though, when I move into a home with a garage, I'd love to get of those chinese mini-lathes which can be had for sub-1000$ :) And I wish laser cutters were less expensive (the trotec we had was bought around 40k I think, actually more than our CNCs).
12y ago

anonbanker 12y ago

TL;DR - If your corporation is extremely open/transparent, including R&D, you may risk losing sales from people willing to wait for a version 2.0. If so, don't close up/make opaque your business as a response, or you'll end up killing your core audience.

copsarebastards 12y ago

MakerBot is still in business. Yes, a 20% layoff is not a good sign, but it's a little early to say MakerBot is "doomed". Taking it one step further and saying that it's the Osborne effect which caused their troubles is even less valid. There are a ton of different possible causes for MakerBot's troubles. The only honest answer here is that we don't know why MakerBot is having trouble, although there are a number of very good guesses we could venture. The OP seems to be frustrated with MakerBot going closed-source. I share that frustration, but let's call that what it is, a frustration with MakerBot going closed-source, rather than using MakerBot's failures as an excuse to gloat.

protomyth 12y ago

I'm not quite sure we are at the stage where 3D printers are a home market item. I figured they would go into copy shops first with models priced like big copiers. It just seems a little early days.

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