Thanks for the kind words!
My target market is SMB manufacturers in the US and Germany. My ideal SaaS customer has 10-15 employees and 5M in annual revenue, around 50% coming from a mix of services and government contracts.
The United States is ramping up domestic manufacturing, since the pandemic revealed weakness in "just in time" supply chains.
Automation/AI-assisted production is the only way to make the unit economics work though. Picture Zapier, but laser-focused on automating service/production tasks.
Here's a rundown of the public-private programs committing resources to replacing imported parts with domestic 3D printed parts.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
The second line of business I want to add in 2023 is a white-labeled PrintNanny appliance, with a SaaS sub. A few 3D printer manufacturers have reached out to me and are interested in white-labeling PrintNanny for their large format printers, which retail for 5-10k/unit. This will give me access to trusted/mature distribution networks while I'm building the business's credibility.
I've talked to 3D printer manufacturers who've tried to build their own stuff in house, since the margins of software (90%+) are VERY attractive to a hardware biz with margins around 30%. The tl;dr is:
1) 3D printer manufacturers are only willing to invest in in-house software for their hardware, but most manufacturing shops use like 10-20 different pieces of hardware from 5+ vendors. No one wants to spend money supporting their competitor's hardware.
2) Shapeways (consumer and pro-sumer on-demand printing) is not where the money is.
Compare to 2D printing: the overhead of print-on-demand t-shirts is not an attractive investment. Shapeways is the Rush Order Tees Dot Com of 3D printing.
The REAL money in 3D printing comes from companies who are manufacturing drone parts for the US gov, misc plastics for OEM and after-market automotive industry, satellites, commercial plumbing, Ag Tech. Ask someone who works at John Deere their ballpark budget for domestic manufactured parts.
The next 10 years of plastics and metal additive manufacturing on US soil are going to be important, and the stuff sci fi nerds like me used to dream electric dreams about