It's 2013, MakerBot CEO Bre Pettis and 3D Systems CEO Avi Reichental have become accustomed to the attention coming their way.
Whether it's from peers in the industry, the ever-monitoring trade media, or the film crew now hovering just over their shoulder, they have - consciously or otherwise - assumed the roles as the faces of 3D printing.
3D printing, some 30 years after its founding by Stereolithography inventor Chuck Hull, is being hyped up to oblivion. So much so, consumer magazines, the rolling news channels, and even Netflix, have taken an interest. Pettis and Reichental are at the fore of it.
Through its Print the Legend documentary, to be released in 2014, Netflix is providing a platform for co-directors Clay Tweel and Luis Lopez, along with producer Steve Klein, to explore the 3D printing movement. They begin by tracking Pettis, as well as Formlabs founder and CEO Max Lobovsky, but soon rope in Reichental, who in his ten years working in the 3D printing sector, has become somewhat of an evangelist - and an outspoken one at that.
That the start-ups (MakerBot, Formlabs) seem to be making headway with their desktop-sized 3D printing technologies has caused the legacy players (3D Systems, Stratasys) to pivot. And while these businesses find their way, Netflix is there to capture it all, with the filmmakers keen to explore the impacts on company culture.
The quality of the resulting documentary, and the consequences of this period, are the source of much debate. While some suggest the movie acts as a time capsule, others (such as Pettis) disparage its branding and focus. Some proffer that the period built up expectations that couldn't be matched, while others (such as Reichental) suggest the investment and talent present in the market today wouldn't be so prevalent without the aforementioned hype.
Whatever the truth, there were certainly learnings to be had. As TCT reached the 100th episode of its Additive Insight podcast, it sought to explore how those involved in the Print the Legend documentary reflected on that period, what really happened during filming, and what they have taken into their latest ventures. Though Lobovsky declined to be interviewed, Pettis and Reichental were happy to share their perspectives.
Highlights of the podcast included:
"About halfway through it, I realised they were making me out to be the bad guy. And the stories that they were focusing on were the most dramatic ones so that they could sell their product. Whereas we were doing so many cool things and there were so many stories, they really focused on this story of me shifting away from open source as like a betrayal of my roots. And it was such a disappointment to me because we were doing all this cool stuff. They had recorded hundreds of hours of footage. And I guess they had to have their drama." - Bre Pettis on the Print the Legend documentary.
"To a large extent, I would say that, but for this hype period, probably half of the companies that are playing the space today wouldn't be here. If it wasn't for that hype, probably billions and billions and billions of investment dollars would have gone to other industries. If it wasn't for this hype, perhaps elementary schools and high schools would still have only wood shop but not 3D printing is part of their digital literacy." - Avi Reichental on the long-term benefits of hype in 3D printing.
"The sort of populist consumer product and that dream that we talked about, we really only talked about that in like 2009, 2010, and by 2011, we had pivoted to talk about engineers and solving problems. But I think it says something that the world still remembers that first message we had of MakerBots for everybody. I think there's some fantasy, whether it's realistic or not, it's still very compelling. This idea that we'll each have our own factory on our desktop is still really, really interesting." - Bre Pettis on the idea of mass consumption of 3D printing technology.
"Look, I'm probably my own worst critic. And so, there isn't a day that I don't get up in the morning and begin to think, 'well, I should have done this and I should have done that.' Not just about things that happened a decade ago, but about things that happened yesterday. So, it makes me who I am i good and then in failure." - Avi Reichental on handling responsibility as a CEO.
"I mean, the biggest difficulty in growing a company is making decisions that affect other people's lives. A company in many ways is an organic life form that has a life of its own. And we all work there. We're all doing that for one reason or another. For some people, it's just to make money, for other people, they want to see something exist in the world that doesn't exist yet. So, I think the hardest part is was having to make decisions that involve letting people go or changing the team. That year of 2013, MakerBot grew from 100 people to 600 people and we cycled through 500 people that year. So, we actually hired 1,000 people that year, and then cycled through so many people. And we were just trying to hold on, like we had too many orders, we couldn't meet demand, people were criticising us from all directions, and we're just trying to meet the demand of what people want. I think I'm still learning to this day, but the hardest thing is just disappointing other people by making by making decisions about the business." - Bre Pettis on the challenges of leading a growing business.
"I think that when you have the opportunity to really follow your passion, you have to persevere. And I'm not trying to win in a court of public opinion. I'm trying to do what I believe in, what I know how to do to the best of my ability. And God willing, if I'm still healthy, I'll be doing it 10 years from now." - Avi Reichental on his mission to democratise access to 3D printing.
TCT recorded its interview with Bre Pettis and Avi Reichental in December 2022.
The first ever episode of the TCT Additive Insight podcast also focused on Print the Legend, with Laura Griffiths interviewing Tweel, Lopez and Klein in November 2014.