TCT
In November 2014, TCT introduced the additive manufacturing industry’s first podcast, launching with an episode that featured the makers of Netflix’s exclusive 3D printing documentary: Print the Legend.
Following the CEOs of MakerBot, Formlabs and 3D Systems, Print the Legend captured the zeitgeist of an industry at the peak of its hype cycle. Twenty five years on from 3D Systems’ commercialisation of 3D printing technology with the Stereolithography process, the industry was starting to see the emergence of a wealth of start-up companies, bringing to market more affordable machines in the desktop form factor.
This ignited a spike in interest, investment and evangelism, with the Print the Legend film crew seeking to track the progress of the 3D printing industry’s newcomers.
A decade on from the documentary’s production, and to mark the 100th episode of the Additive Insight podcast, we welcome two of the movie’s protagonists.
Though Formlabs CEO Max Lobovsky declined to be interviewed, former MakerBot CEO Bre Pettis and former 3D Systems CEO Avi Reichental were happy to reflect on that period and share their learnings.
Sharing his thoughts on the documentary, Pettis said:
"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, the documentary.
"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. 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.
"So as soon as I realised that they didn't really understand what we were doing at MakerBot and were turning what we were doing into a drama instead of a documentary of the innovation we were doing, I pretty much lost interest."
Talking to the responsibility Reichental felt as CEO of 3D Systems at that time, he offered:
"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 I guess it makes me who I am in good and in failure.
"I think that our management team overall handled the period reasonably well. As I mentioned, by the time that this Print The Legend film came out, 3D Systems was in its 15th or 16th successive quarter of making a lot of free cash and growing the company exponentially and enjoying the fruits of our labours.
"And at its height, I mean, some people say at its hype, but at its height, the valuation of 3D Systems was 10 billion. Just to explain that part of it. And we had really good people in the company, not just at the leadership level, but across the board."
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