Historically when a new and initially expensive piece of technology became available, all we could do was admire it from a distance and hope that some day in the future a cheaper version would be available for all of us to afford. Now with companies such as Science Exchange and Shapeways, the latest technology can be available to anyone on a shared basis from day one. So I am thrilled that today Shapeways announced that it will have the latest in 3D printing technology that is coming from HP....

Shapeways is a partner for Google’s brand new MadeWithCode initiative aimed at getting more girls excited about coding and computational thinking. What is important about this initiative is that it will broaden the understanding of what can be done with code. Code is not just games or websites. Increasingly it is everything and everywhere (even in a long piece on computational thinking in MotherJones). So what I am particularly excited about is how this initiative will introduce a many more p...

I am a bit of a grinch around the holidays as I really don’t like getting more stuff. As a result I am also not all that excited about buying stuff for other people. Thankfully this year there is a terrific solution – gift cards from Skillshare and from Shapeways. With these you can give the gift of learning and discovery! What could be better? The recipients can of course take any class or buy any item but when you give both, they can first take the Introduction to 3D Printing on Skillshare ...

When we invested in Shapeways at USV, one of the trends we liked was that 3D design tools were getting cheaper and more accessible. I am happy to report that Tinkercad is now an amazing entry level and free tool that runs right in your browser. This Sunday afternoon from a standing start all five of us (Susan, myself and our three kids), each took the excellent Tinkercad tutorials and then designed a model, uploaded it to Shapeways and ordered it. All of that in under two hours and you could ...

In 2008, I wrote a mini series about Kaizen and Software Development. Kaizen or continuous improvement asserts the centrality of quality as the only way to achieve the trifecta of quality, speed and cost. Simply put incremental improvements around quality will result in lower cost and higher speed. Much of agile development has really been the re-invention of techniques long known in manufacturing. In my series I cover lot size one, no inventory, visualization, root cause analysis and customi...

I’ll be the first to admit that I am a sucker for the command line. Hence I was smiling yesterday, when I saw the Duck Duck Go Terminal hack. But I realize that it is not mass market behavior. So I am happy whenever a bit of command line like goodness finds its way into broader usage. The rise of @mentions and #hashtags on Twitter is one such example. By adding a tiny bit of syntax to an expression we wind up with a lot more value without requiring a lot of extra work on behalf of the user. I...

A couple of years ago Shapeways was a tiny company based in the Netherlands with a big idea: providing 3D printing as an on demand service and marketplace. Following an investment from Union Square Ventures and Index Ventures the company relocated to New York City (and recently raised more money including from new investor Lux Capital). Today marks a critical milestone in the growth of Shapeways: Mayor Bloomberg presided over the groundbreaking for a large 3D printing facility in what used to...

It may be a bit of a stretch to call a redesign and new brand identity a feature but bare with me for a minute. Earlier this week Shapeways launched a redesign of the site including a complete overhaul of the brand identity. This was designed to clear up several years of detritus that had accumulated and offer a more welcoming experience. I love it and it has been well received by existing community members. Why do I call it a feature? Much the same way in which speed is a feature. You can ha...

I have not been writing nearly enough about many of the cool things that our portfolio companies are doing. To correct that I will start doing Feature Friday posts. The opener is the feed introduced earlier this week by Shapeways. I love activity feeds. They are a fun way to see what’s happening on a site. But more than that, I have come use them in board meetings as way to think about what a company does (even if they don’t yet have a feed). It’s a powerful way to organize one’s thinking abo...

I usually take weekends off from blogging, but this one is just too good to pass up: Shapeways and Soundcloud have teamed up to bring out “the Vibe” an iPhone case which comes with a completely custom waveform as its back. I love this because it shows off the power of the platforms that Shapeways and Soundcloud have created. It also represents a completely unexpected use case for a sound file. And it is a completely organic, API-enabled collaboration between two of our portfolio companies. Al...