I'm very excited to share that Skyforge, the 3D printing software platform I co-founded, was just acquired by Jabil, Inc.
Some events in life are unplanned gifts: this is definitely one of them.
When John Feusi and I started our company, Element Robot, we thought Skyforge was a 3D print vending machine, but within a few pivots Skyforge had turned into the cloud-based 3D printing software platform we have today. But every pivot was based on our vision that 3D printing would change the way the world manufactured goods, and that we could help make that happen.
The past few years have been tumultuous for the 3D printing industry, to put it nicely. I'll save details of the Skyforge story for later, but many companies lost sight of the realistic potential of 3D printing, instead focusing on a limited consumer market or diving into delusions of 3D printed pizza.
That's precisely why the opportunity to use Skyforge at Jabil is so exciting.
Jabil has 180,000 employees focused on world-class manufacturing for the brands you know and love, like Apple. At this level of performance, Jabil has zero tolerance for fantasy. They've emerged as a thought leader in adopting 3D printing at scale -- a vision I can appreciate.
We initially discussed setting up Jabil as a pilot customer, but it became clear that it made better business sense for them to own the platform and use their manufacturing expertise to direct the platform's future growth. This is pretty much the ideal use case for Skyforge: Jabil has close relationships with some of the most innovative 3D printer OEMs and a global scale.
Every startup takes a tremendous amount of teamwork, so a few thank-you's are in order:
- Our customers, who took a chance on a new team, tolerated software bugs, provided feedback that hugely improved Skyforge, and 3D printed lots of unexpected things.
- Jonathan Staab, our first "employee" / co-owner and great software developer, who is now hooked on startups.
- Our investors, board members, and advisors: Andrew Crapuchettes, David Miller, Timothy van den Broek, and Mike Stoltzfus.
- Our competitors and friends in the 3D printing space: Tom Bielecki, John Dogru, Dylan Reid, Benoit Soete, and more. According to René Girard, competitors are probably more like mirrors than enemies, and I have a lot of respect for anyone who's dedicated time and energy to advancing 3D printing.
- Independent contractors, tolerant friends, sages, fellow entrepreneurs -- Josh Hartung, James Heilman, TJ Kastning, Joel Lohrmeyer, James Prado, JT Grauke, Nick Smoot, Ben Nieuwsma, Andrew Chorlton, Joe Harby, Mike Meehan.
- Most importantly, my family -- who put up with decreased time and increased stress -- and especially Kate, my amazing wife, who met me at the beginning of this journey and has had the patience to see it through until the end.
Thank you.
I can't provide too much detail on the upcoming changes, but we're relocating to San Jose, CA, and within a year we'll be deploying Skyforge at manufacturing facilities across the globe ... which is what I've wanted to do since day one.