I strongly encourage you watch "Print the legend"

[Flateric]

It's a very well aide documentary about the challenges and pitfalls that the 3d printer community has gone through and is continuing to go through to this day. You may understand why open source is important to this industry and why some companies are being heavily criticized for not remaining open source. This documentary show the struggles that affect everyone of U.S. wheat her we realize it or not.

How big industry has squeezed the little guy and both failed and succeeded in shutting down the little guys . It is on Netflix and it is well worth the watch. You have to know that these issues have been a concern to our very own seemecnc friends.

Glad to see the seemecnc team still standing and prevailing through tough times they surely faced in the past during their early growth.

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't one of the big guys recently attempt to patent the very process that all reprap printers use to print with?

Difficult to swallow the greed these larger companies show at times.

[bot]

Watch it if you feel like hating someone afterwards.

[teoman]

I had just watches it 2 days ago.

It is interesting. And going from full prototype working in on your desk to shipping hundreds a month takes more than most realize.

[Generic Default]

Too bad it isn't on youtube for free. Does it have a bias or marketing message, or is it more like an objective factual documentary?

[bot]

It is pretty unbiased. Decidedly anti-makerbot. No marketing message, just a story of business that kinda gets boring as its mostly "Do good, sell out, repeat."

[astroboy907]

It is pretty unbiased. Decidedly anti-makerbot. No marketing message, just a story of business that kinda gets boring as its mostly "Do good, sell out, repeat."

I feel like the anti-makerbot is somewhat deserved simply because of Makerbot's choice to go to a more closed style approach after the company founded itself on open source ideals.
Then again, I've never watched the series...

[teoman]

Yeah, it does seem that he sold out his ideals and generally sucked the hard work of the open source community. But once you get the marketing guys and all the other "take the buisiness to a whole new level" guys things become very hard to control or comprehend.

Personally i would not like to associate the with those kinds of people. The mentality is just so different...

[bot]

Yeah. Open source is why I like this community. Sharing is caring. Most business people need to go back to kindergarten and learn the absolute fundamentals, IMO.

[teoman]

One interesting thing that cought my attention was the guy saying that in the beginning they had an idea on Friday and they would have a working prototype by Wednesday. After they go corporate they were celebrating when they got something done in 5 months.

[Flateric]

That really stuck a cord within me as well.

While I disliked the fact that they went closed source after using the open source community what bothered me far more was his choices with the relationships to his friends and core group of original people.

How he seemed to use their passions and innovations and drop them to the wayside if the did not agree with him and the companies direction. Forgetting that there would be no company if not for them and their hard work in the begining. He sold his soul and violated any integrity with his personal relations to these people that had no less of a personal investment in the project than he did. Frankly cannot believe he can look himself in the mirror and be ok with how he used these people to get where he is without concern for appreciating them and sharing the rewards.

I am solidified in my resolve to not ever let that company have one cent of my money ever. I will however watch for the other discarded team members and support any projects they may gravitate too.

[bot]

You can be either a good businessperson, or a good person. He chose businessman.

[astroboy907]

I'm bookmarking this thread... honestly, I love entrepreneurship, but I want to be the kind of guy that cares about my customers, not my customers pocketbooks

[jeffhuber]

I think Henry Ford had the right idea here:

"A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large."

[geneb]

Yep.

Now days, it's all about boosting "shareholder value".

If priority #1 is your customers and priority #2 is your employees, those greedy little shareholders will be drowning in cash.

Time and time again I see good companies torn apart by asshat MBAs that sacrifice long term viability for short term profitability.

g.

[bubbasnow]

i wonder if bre stepping down was part of the merger details or if he got some karma back in his direction.

[lightninjay]

i wonder if bre stepping down was part of the merger details or if he got some karma back in his direction.

Ya know, I was kinda wondering the same thing. It really seemed to me like Bre started off as an unassuming tech nerd, who was having fun making something with his friends. When it started to take off, he wasn't ready for the publicity and all of the new power-dominant people who were now telling him his product was going to be big. Before he realized what was going on, he was turned into someone who drove away the two friends he built the company with. Looking at Bre's face shots in the film, there really did seem to be some deep conflict struggling within him about whether or not all the choices he had to make were really the best that could have come out of Makerbot.

[Flateric]

I could kinda get a sense of that in his face as well when comparing his expressions from the begining to to end shots.

The problem however is that he did not stop making the very same choices over and over and by the time he did step down he had already royally screwed those friends out of anything completely. While I am fairly certain he is sitting pretty at this point for the majority of his natural life.

[Nylocke]

I watched the whole thing twice, it's a really good look into the whole Makerbot story. I got involved in the 3D printing world right around the time they went closed source, and I wasn't fully aware at the time about what was going on.

One of the things that bugged me the most was when either Bre or the woman who replaced him was talking about "how the company was maturing" by going closed source. To me, the argument they gave about "having secrets" makes them sound like immature 5 year olds. It's easy to be closed source, to protect your IP, and to sue the crap out of anyone who uses it. What isn't easy, and what takes a great deal of actual maturity, Is to remain where your company was founded, in the open source community, to let people take your ideas, add to them, and improve them. That takes maturity.

[Chaos]

A good documentary. I'd recommend it. The unrehearsed candid scenes are interesting.

[RJLynn67]

I just watched this and thought it was really good.

It hit home on many levels over the fast growth startup trials and tribulations. I have been deep in that before, not in the 3D printing industry, but it is the same in all. I was one of the guys to get pushed out by our "Bre".

I am thinking Bre got a big dose of Karma as he should. Although he did get a decent payday to go with that. As it was said, the end should not justify the means...

[rpress]

Great documentary, thanks for the heads up!

[626Pilot]

This is a really interesting documentary. I had heard some talk about Bre being a bad guy and so forth, but never really knew why.

The most important thing I learned from accounting classes doesn't go on any general ledger. It's called goodwill. C-level execs often have a cutthroat nature that comes at the expense of various empathy disorders, up to and including psychopathy. We know that psychopaths are seen in upper management positions four times as frequently as they are in the general population. They, and people with related but less severe disorders, lack the senses that enable a neurotypical person to feel someone else's anguish as though it was their own. They grow up forming their entire notion of the world without ever feeling that sense, and they have little to no idea how neurotypical people feel when they cross someone unfairly. Their whole notion of what's fair is, really, what's good for them. The neurological deficits that make them weak in that area often cripple their ability to doubt their own "gut decisions," so good luck explaining any of this to them. You may as well try to explain the Mona Lisa to a person who was born blind, or music to a person who was born deaf. They may find it academically interesting, but nothing that has any application in any decision they have to make.

How do you explain goodwill to a person who's blind to how other people feel when they are presented with an inferior product, or have their customer service expectations treated as an irritation rather than a duty?

I don't know if Bre is one of these people or not, nor can I know, but I will tell you something. Whenever you have a small company and big money comes in, that big money usually burns the corporate culture to a crisp and replaces it with something far emptier than what was there before. Compromises ensue. The people handing you the millions don't care about the 72-hour shifts you pulled to make everything come together. They don't care about your idealism, which many of them don't share - either because they have an aforementioned disorder, or because their empathy has been slowly beaten out of them by working with others who do.

I have also seen more than a few small business co-founders throw away wonderful, tight-knit friendships with each other over money. Once the money coming in exceeds a particular threshold, the friendship is off. I've seen them writing heartbroken, betrayed messages to each other. These were people who let each other stay in their houses when they visited from abroad, people who invited each other to weddings and celebrated each others' childbirths, people who would've done anything for each other. A person handing you five million dollars on behalf of big business will often be completely insensible to any of that. They do due diligence to make sure they aren't violating the law, but only because they have to. That diligence rarely includes bringing in a co-founder who may not be on all the paperwork, but is nevertheless a linchpin of the company and whatever customer community surrounds it. I've seen small companies sell for 5-6 figures, and half of the company's success - the founder whose name isn't on everything - gets noooooothing. I wonder if that might be what happened with MakerBot.

Today, Hollywood and upper management celebrates sociopathic disorders as though they were strengths instead of a form of mental retardation. That's a shame, and I really wish it would change. If you look at these peoples' brain scans, you see areas that are shrunken, nerve fiber tracts that are far too narrow to do any effective work, entire areas that show no activation at all when they'd be lit up like Christmas in a neurotypical person's skull. They often lead shallow lives and feel utterly empty inside. Perhaps if they were given treatment rather than accolades and unrealistic praise, things would change a little.

And don't even get me started on what they have been doing to the CONSTITUTION since the day it was written!

[Flateric]

626pilot,

One of the most personally relatable and impacting posts I have ever personally been able to relate to that I have read anywhere!

Thankyou.

May I repost this to a select group of my past business associates?

[626Pilot]

May I repost this to a select group of my past business associates?

Please do. I hate seeing people get royally screwed, just because they didn't think it was necessary to insist that their name was on the paperwork. And, I have to say, this is one reason any business owner should consider NOT selling shares in their company, which is what they have to do if they want outside money. A lot of people sell their businesses because they're tired of running them, but seller's remorse tends to run high when they see what the new boss is doing to their creation.

[Generic Default]

Excellent post 626Pilot!

Moral of the story? Don't screw people over.

I just wish I could watch the documentary.