One 3D Printer's Astonishing Kickstarter Success

 

Consumers are always on the lookout for truly innovative products, and this is no different with Formlabs, maker of a low-cost 3D printer that was embraced before it even came to market. But along with innovation often comes ethical or legal issues, and for the founders of Formlabs, that issue is the potential to use printers to create plastic guns.
The Formlabs team behind this innovative product are three MIT graduate students Maxim Lobovsky, David Cranor and Nate Linder. The three met in 2009 in MIT's "How to Make (Almost) Anything" class, and founded Formlabs together in September 2011.
Formlabs shattered its $100,000 goal on Kickstarter, and raised $2,945,885 — making the Form 1 3D printer the highest-funded tech campaign in Kickstarter history. The Form 1 can be pre-ordered at the discounted price of $3,299 through its website. Your products will be delivered in May; all pre-orders for April delivery are already sold out. Most 3D printers cost tens of thousands of dollars, so $3,299 is extremely low-cost, to put that price in perspective.

 If you've ever wanted to print 3D objects at home on-demand, now is your chance. Formlabs has completed development of the Form 1 3D printer, which is said to revolutionize the 3D printing landscape. Although there are a lot of 3D printers in the market today, the Form 1 is innovative and affordable compared with similar products — it is the highest-resolution low-cost 3D printer and uniquely uses a process called stereolithography.
We chatted with Maxim Lobovsky, who comments on Formlabs' Kickstarter success, offers some advice for aspiring tech startups and briefly touches on potential legal issues with 3D printing. Read on for the highlights.

Q&A With Maxim Lobovsky, Co-Founder of Formlabs

These days, we're seeing more and more 3D printers on the market — what differentiates the Form 1?
The Form 1 is interesting for a couple reasons: 1) It is the highest resolution desktop printer available by far, and the reason for that is it uses a different process than any of the other desktop printers out there. It uses a process called stereolithography, as opposed to all the other low cost machines that use a process called fused deposition modeling (FDM) and our process allows for much higher accuracy and smaller features, and smoother surfaces than the FDM process does. We brought the technology which is gold standard to 3D printing and was only available in more expensive printers; we brought that down to a desktop and low cost. The other reason is that we made a complete end-to-end system with the software, machine, materials everything designed to work together, work out of the box; it's not meant to be maintained by the user. And in the end it is in a different class from the other desktop machines out there which are really kind of hobbyist, with our machine the goal is the get great quality output and use it in some other project.
How do you see the Form 1 changing the tech landscape?
I think there are a lot of applications for 3D printing and Form 1 will contribute to all of those: prototyping for new products, one-off parts for manufacturing and research, art or jewelry applications; we'll do all of those things but what we're most excited about is how we'll actually help people doing what we did, which is doing product development on a shoestring budget, launching on Kickstarter and stuff like that. This is actually the perfect tool for people doing a lot of work like that, so it's kind of a virtuous circle that we've built.
Can you shed some light on your incredible success with Kickstarter?
I think Kickstarter worked really well for us. Initially we were worried that Kickstarter wasn't perfectly aligned for the prosumer, higher-end product that we wanted to produce because it sort of looks a little hobbyist and informal. But I think it worked out great. We really focused on looking professional and showcasing the product and why it's innovative. We put a lot of effort into nice photography and a good video, but you know in the end it really comes down to people recognizing that this is a new and interesting product, and that's the most important thing.

 Why did your team decide to use Kickstarter instead of similar platforms, like IndieGoGo?
I think Kickstarter is the premier platform at this point; it has the biggest user base and more importantly for us, because it does some amount of curation of its projects it generally has higher quality content I would say, and it's important for us that we're seen in that light.
What social platforms did you leverage to build awareness of the campaign?
We tried to build it up before the launch by putting up the pre-launch website and doing teaser stuff on Twitter and that helped to get a number of people ready to go for when we launched. I think that is important because Kickstarter is a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you do well on the first day you get press not just about your product but about how well you did on the first day. I don't know if it's true, but it seems like how well you do on the first day really defines the rest of the campaign. So it is important to be ready to go.
What tips could you give to other tech campaigns using Kickstarter? Tech campaigns are the second category least likely to reach their funding goals on Kickstarter, only above dance.

Honestly I think that's a good thing and maybe the ratio needs to be even lower, because I think typically people aren't raising enough money or charging high enough prices for their actual hardware products on Kickstarter

Honestly I think that's a good thing and maybe the ratio needs to be even lower, because I think typically people aren't raising enough money or charging high enough prices for their actual hardware products on Kickstarter. Especially if it is your first product, people categorically always underestimate all the costs it's going to take to deliver their product. To generalize, some advice I could give is you have to prove that you can deliver on your product and it will do what you say.
Most people have a good idea for a product that somebody wants, and that part is maybe the less hard part, the harder part is convincing people that you can do it and it really is what you say it is. The biggest thing is to do everything well from the graphic design to the video — high production quality is important. One thing we did and what other successful campaigns have done was to get industry experts or people recognized in the field to talk about your video and your product, I think it helps to get a lot of third party approval. The biggest thing is tech projects need to get more serious about thinking about what is it actually going to take to deliver the project they want and on what timeframe.
Are you worried about any upcoming legal action on 3D printers? Could Joe Schmoe be allowed to print a gun, for example?
I think 3D printing is definitely going to bring up some interesting questions, copyright and things like that; we're following it as closely as anybody. Honestly, I think people may be overblowing the whole situation, I'm generally optimistic and I think things will work out generally positively. On the gun issue, 3D printers will change some of that, but generally you can do with 3D printers what you could do with other tools before, so I don't think 3D printers in everybody's home means there are going to be guns everywhere. That's not the case.
Watch the video below to see the Form 1 3D printer in action. What would you print if you had a 3D printer? Let us know in the comments below.