The Philips Electronics spinoff Shapeways has raised $5 million from its first external financing. The participants have been Union Square Ventures and Index Ventures.
The Dutch company, with headquarters which will move to New York, works on a platform for 3D printing that may have more disruptive potential than the internet:
"Shapeways is at the vanguard of a group of companies democratizing physical production in the same way that new technology has allowed millions of people to create and share digital content like videos or podcasts. Other examples include Ponoko and 100K garages."
Shapeways enables 3D printing with glass, steel, plastic or a performance composite material which hardens like cement.
To create and produce your own objects you upload your design to Shapeways where a printing feasibility check is done. If positive, the product will be manufactured and sent to the orderer.
Ben Holmes from Index Ventures on the business model from Shapeways:
"Many other companies such as eBay, ETSY*, Notonthehighstreet.com* and Moo* have all become very successful by tapping into people’s creative instinct and providing a marketplace for the long tail of designers to access production capacity or by exposing the small producer to mass market online.
In this sense, Shapeways is operating a model which had substantial prior validation and where many network effects can help rapidly build a big business. Some of the effects are already coming into play for Shapeways, yet there is great opportunity to learn more from the success of other great companies and harness the network and scale effects to our advantage."
As Ben Holmes explains, Shapeways doesn’t build their own machines:
"Shapeways itself doesn’t develop the machines although it does work in very close collaboration with machine producers and operators to maximise product quality and minimise costs passing these savings onto the consumer.
Our sense was that both on quality and price there were already many interesting applications for 3D printing (e.g. Puzzles, Jewellery, Homewares, etc.) but that the universe of potential applications could explode if prices and quality continue to progress in their current direction over the next few years."
Albert Wenger from Union Square Ventures on Shapeways:
"Shapeways motto is "Personalized products FOR you and BY you" which captures the two goals for the company.
The "BY" part of the motto is about empowering 3D designers to sell products without having to invest in their own production capacity (and is a good example of our belief in the Internet's force in shifting "power to the people").
The "FOR" part is about making it easy for anyone to find a product, customize it further and then have it delivered all without having to know anything about the underlying 3D printing technology."
The portfolio of Union Square Ventures includes amongst others: Etsy, Twitter, Tumblr and the open source hardware manufacturer Bug Labs.
Union Square Ventures is more active than other investors (and successful at it) when it comes to platform type business models. Shapeways is also following a platform model which in essence is not so different than Etsy: Shapeways has a shopping platform where users can sell their designs directly via Shapeways to other customers.
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Originally posted in German by Marcel Weiss, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.
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