Macro Micro Michael Marco & Startups at the Edge (M4Edge)

Growing up, Jessica Trybus, Founder and Chief Games Officer of Simcoach Games knew she was going to be a CEO. But she also wanted to be an actress, so she studied acting, majored in theatre and went into the film industry. Then she moved to Silicon Valley, and then back to Pennsylvania, to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. With this kind of background, she was bound to come up with something unusual and out of the box. 

Doing a Master’s in Entertainment Technology at CMU, Jessica realized that the principles of good games design mirrored those of effective learning. So she started developing videogames that companies could use for internal training. Large companies were quick to see the value: they need to train a younger generation to replace their aging workforce. Plus, videogames turned out to be a lot more effective at changing behaviors than the old traditional methods used for example for safety training. It turns out that driving a virtual forklift off a ledge and killing your avatar in the process is a lot of fun, and leaves you with a very vivid impression of why you should be careful with the real forklift…

Jessica then pivoted to games aimed at a younger generation, students getting ready to enter the workforce. She developed the Simcoach Skills Arcade, a powerful platform with games that allow you to test your skills for different manufacturing jobs, and to acquire the basic behavioral skills you will need at a job interview. Playing the games you discover what you are good at, you accumulate badges, and the platform will give you information on what job opportunities you might have in your area. Similarly, your badges can show a potential employer that you are “pre-qualified’ for a specific career. 

Jessica makes a compelling case that gamification of learning will transform education and training. We put her games to the test: tune in to hear Michael and Marco’s crushed egos…and more importantly Michael’s kids’ reactions. Enjoy the episode!

And now, for something completely different…  Our show today was recorded live at American University, with Professor Jeff Sosland and the students in his International Business—Global Entrepreneurship class. And our guests today come from another side of the tech world: the Venture Capital on which entrepreneurs rely to turn their ideas into a successful business. We talk to Anna Mason and David Hall, partners at Revolution Ventures’ Rise of the Rest Fund.

We talk about strategy, and what VCs look for as they try to identify the next big success story, the ideas worth funding among the many pitched to them every day. What makes a successful strategy? How do you build the right team starting with limited resources? Should you focus on perfecting your technology and protecting your IP, or on growing your market share as fast as possible? Anna and David will give us some enlightening examples of how some of their portfolio companies have evolved their strategy over time, identifying new opportunities and quickly adapting to capture them.

Rise of the Rest seeks to fund startups outside the traditional tech hubs like Silicon Valley and Boston. Anna and David explain why they believe the companies located in less tech-dominated areas might well have a better chance of disrupting some of the large traditional industries, from manufacturing to agriculture. And indeed some of the companies we have already hosted on M4Edge fit the description—can you spot them in our episodes list?

Professor Sosland and his students get a chance to pepper Anna and David with questions at the end—and to decide whether all they’ve heard makes them more or less likely to test their mettle as entrepreneurs. What about you? After you hear from two experienced VCs the good bad and ugly of startup ventures, do you feel more or less tempted to give it a try? Drop us a note on [email protected] and let us know!

Our show today is part 2 of our interview with Ben Redwood of 3DHubs. Ben is bookend-ing our miniseries on Additive Manufacturing, otherwise known as 3D Printing. In part 1 of our interview with Ben, we spent most of our time discussing many of the different additive manufacturing techniques, which was a great intro to the next set of episodes.  Ben has also written a book about 3D Printing, and M4Edge listeners can get part of that book for free by going to https://www.3dhubs.com/podcast/m4edge/ .  Also on the 3DHubs site, you can check out their really useful trends report about what‘s happening in the industry, by going to https://www.3dhubs.com/get/trends/.

In between parts 1 and 2 of the Ben interview, we spoke with 4 fascinating founders of additive manufacturing companies, each with a really amazing technology, each markedly different from the next. They were Greg Mark of MarkForged, Bob Swartz of Impossible Objects, Nanci Hardwick of MELD Manufacturing and Blake Teipel of Essentium.  If you’ve missed those, I encourage you to go back and give em a listen. 

Today we close the miniseries with Ben and discuss 3DHubs' business model, which is manufacturing as a service, we discuss the 3D Printing industry and its place in the global manufacturing chain, and of course, since Marco can’t help himself, we discuss SciFi.

NB: It turns out that if you live outside the US, chances are that Marco and I haven't seen your review. Please let us know if you've written one, so we can give you a shout out on the show - send an email to [email protected]

Where else will you find a podcast on 3D printing that references cassette tapes and cowboy hats???

In this new episode of our 3D Printing series, we talk with Blake Teipel, CEO and cofounder of Essentium. Blake is perhaps the best person to explain how the success of 3D printing relies on the synergy of machines, software and materials. He started as a design engineer, went back to school for a PhD in materials science, and then set out to create 3D printing solutions that can better solve the hard design problems faced by engineers. 

Before co-founding Essentium, Blake worked at two large industrial companies, John Deere and Caterpillar. Based on this experience, Blake concluded that the primary advantage of Essentium’s 3D printing solutions had to be speed: only speed can allow 3D printing machines to produce large numbers of parts at lower cost, and make them economically competitive at large scale against traditional manufacturing techniques. For Blake, this is the secret sauce that will allow 3D printing to play an increasingly large role in industry. 

In the episode, we discuss cybersecurity, and how Essentium uses software to check the materials and the production protocols, including for example the extrusion temperature, so that the parts produced can be certified, protecting against counterfeiting (and without using blockchain, to Michael’s great satisfaction and relief…)

We also discuss how 3D printing will transform global supply chains, shifting production closer to the ultimate consumers. While at the moment this has supported reshoring of manufacturing to the US, as in emerging markets wages rise and consumers get wealthier, we should see more production move closer to these increasingly attractive developing markets. 

An important note: don't forget to stick around for our Ricky's Reports from the Edge segment, at the end of the show.

Our journey into the world of 3D Printing continues today with Nanci Hardwick, CEO of MELD Manufacturing Corporation—Last year, MELD was voted the Most Disruptive New Technology Award at the R&D 100 awards.

3D Printing includes a variety of techniques and processes, each with their own advantages and each best suited for a different use. (You can learn about several of these technologies in the first episode of this miniseries, with 3DHub's Ben Redwood.) So what makes MELD unique, and what is it best suited for? Nanci argues that MELD offers two key advantages:  its ability to produce large-size parts and seond, the fact that MELD machines can operate out in the field, not just in a controlled environment.

MELD machines are not what you would use to print the nifty, intricate, paper-weight sized metal objects that you often get handed if you visit a 3D printing shop. No, MELD comes into its own with big parts like a 30-feet long tractor-trailer rail. Other 3D printing companies we have interviewed on our show say that they can reach large scale thanks to the speed of their machine. When they say “scale”, they mean the large number of parts they can print in an hour or in a day. When MELD boasts about scale, they talk about the actual size of an individual part—though it can’t print an entire spaceship yet… 

We also discuss with Nanci how additive manufacturing—3D printing, that is—will change our lives, and why you should encourage your children to pursue interdisciplinary passions. Nanci’s vision of the future was truly inspiring.

Don't Forget: please share the episode with a friend!

Today’s episode is  a conversation with Bob Swartz, the founder and chairman of Impossible Objects. Although that title does a disservice to his resume. He literally grew up in in the manufacturing business, watching his father figure out how to design and build things; he’s been a consultant to the MIT Media lab, he’s got several patents, which he’s licensed to major corporations … through his own patent licensing company; he’s founded and operated software companies, advertising companies, telephony companies; he is a true polymath. He’s also something of a philosopher, which makes for a wonderful conversation.
As for Bob's current company, Impossible Objects, It uses a composite based additive manufacturing process - CBAM -  which yields superior material properties. Like the other additive manufacturing companies we interview for this miniseries, Impossible Objects is aimed for the big boy manufacturing market – some of the users they brag about include Ford and the US Air Force. But this conversation with Bob is about much more than their customers, its about technological change, psychological lock in, economic ripple effects of new technologies, and more. AND, outside of a fantastic and fanstastical scene in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, this conversation has my favorite use of Marshal McLuhan to make a point. :)

If you haven’t already done so, you may want to check out episode 1 with Ben Redwood of 3DHubs, both to help you understand some of the technical terms used in this conversation – Ben goes through many of the different technologies that make up the current universe of 3D printing, and to get the URLs for some free material about 3DPrinting, created by 3DHubs. Ben also talks about the industry at large, which may give you some useful context. 

One last thing – immediately after the conversation with Bob, we’ve got a quick update from Ricky Buch, so stick around for Ricky's Reports from the Edge.

For the second episode in our miniseries on Additive Manufacturing, we interview Greg Mark, founder and CEO of Markforged (along with their Director of Communications Trak Lord).

Deloitte recently ranked Markforged 10th in their 2018 North America Technology Fast 500 Rankings. Forbes put them on a list of next billion dollar startups. 
But the company's success isn’t the only thing that makes this interview interesting.  Business economists should listen closely to what Greg says about, for example, the increased economies of scale. And investors should pay attention when he talks about massive consolidation that inevitably will hit the industry. And technologists should be on the lookout for his predictions on breaking technology barriers and the certainty of advance. And manufacturers should pay attention to the things that his technology can do. And for the rest of us – just keep being curious!

If you've not yet listened to episode 1 of this miniseries with Ben Redwood of 3DHubs, you may want to go back and listen, as Ben explains some of the technical details of the industry and different types of 3D Printing technologies. AND, 3DHubs has made available to M4Edge listeners two free resources about 3D Printing; you can hear the URLs for the downloads in the episode.

P.S. PLEASE forward this episode, or one of your favorites, to a friend. We want to build this community and we need your help.

In our view, 3D Printing - also known as Additive Manufacturing - ranks up there with Artificial Intelligence as one of "those technologies," meaning one of those that truly holds potential for fundamental changes in how the economy functions. To say that 3D Printing represents a new way of building things is like saying that commercial aviation represented a new way of getting places. 3D Printing will change the who, what, where and how of manufacturing. The “when” is starting now.

Our interview with Ben Redwood of 3DHubs is split into two parts. In this episode, we use Ben as our technical expert, and he’ll explain to us all the different kinds of additive manufacturing processes that exist, go over some technical terms, and talk to us about the industry in general. It’s a bit technical at first, but there are two rewards for listening through to the end of the episode. First: Ben’s written a book on 3DPrinting, two chapters of which are being made available for free, to you. Second: later in the episode Ben reveals insights from their latest Future Trends report, which is also available for free, and we dive into a discussion of how 3D printing will change everyone’s life. 

In part two of the interview, which we’ll air in a few weeks, we’ll talk to Ben about 3D Hubs, where he’s the Director of Supply Chain. In between, we’re going to hear from the founders of 4 of the most interesting and promising 3D Printing startups out there, including Greg Mark of Markforged, Nanci Hardwick of MELD Manufacturing, Bob Swartz of Impossible Objects, and Blake Teipel of Essentium.

3D Printing is coming. To a factory near you. And a garage. And a desktop. And to the M4Edge podcast. Next up: interviews with 5 companies in the space.

This week's M4Edge is solely a Ricky's Reports episode. Ricky talks about how his idea continues to evolve, and we discuss whether forcing startups to chase the $Billion dollar idea is a barrier to entry.

Stay tuned: Marco and I are preparing a mini series on Additive Manufacturing, also known as 3D Printing. We have a great line up for you, including guests from Essentium, Impossible Objects, MELD Manufacturing and MarkForged, as well as 3DHubs, a Manufacturing as a Service company based in Europe.