What doomed MakerBot? The Osborne effect

159 点作者 hugs大约 10 年前

24 条评论

Animats大约 10 年前

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] <a href="http://gizmodo.com/why-3d-printing-is-overhyped-i-should-know-i-do-it-fo-508176750" rel="nofollow">http://gizmodo.com/why-3d-printing-is-overhyped-i-should-kno...</a>

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ChuckMcM大约 10 年前

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] <a href="http://www.popsci.com/2015-invention-awards" rel="nofollow">http://www.popsci.com/2015-invention-awards</a>

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bane大约 10 年前

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.

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jacknews大约 10 年前

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.

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orionblastar大约 10 年前

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. <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2015/04/17/10608077.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2015/04/17/10608...</a>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 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_III" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_III</a>

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argonaut大约 10 年前

<pre><code> 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. </code></pre> 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.

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blhack大约 10 年前

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).

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tarr11大约 10 年前

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.

alayne大约 10 年前

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?

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jjwiseman大约 10 年前

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.

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spiritplumber大约 10 年前

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."

fsk大约 10 年前

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.

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pmorici大约 10 年前

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.

anonbanker大约 10 年前

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.

dsjoerg大约 10 年前

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

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deleterious大约 10 年前

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.

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gonzo大约 10 年前

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

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ericflo大约 10 年前

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

iammaxus大约 10 年前

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.

copsarebastards大约 10 年前

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.

Jack000大约 10 年前

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.

protomyth大约 10 年前

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.

stefanix大约 10 年前

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).

teslaberry大约 10 年前

'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.