Techstars has long been known for its seed funding of tech startups. Its accelerator counts 1,200 startups among its alumni, including PillPack, the online pharmacy recently acquired by Amazon, and cloud computing company Digital Ocean. Now, in partnership with tools giant Stanley Black & Decker, it launched its first additive manufacturing accelerator to fund new ideas in 3-D printing, rapid prototyping and generative design.
Today, the Stanley+Techstars Additive Manufacturing Accelerator, which will be co-located with Stanley Black & Decker’s advanced manufacturing center in Hartford, Connecticut, announced the 10 companies selected for that first class, and they show the breadth of innovation going on in the industry. There are startups from Ireland, Israel and Canada, as well as from the United States, in areas that include 3-D printing of metals, ceramics and soft materials; 3-D printing software; and technology that would use nanomaterials to make plastics electrically conductive. Techstars would not disclose how many applications it had received for the new accelerator, noting only that they came from 11 countries. Each of the chosen startups will receive $20,000 in funding in exchange for 6% of the company’s common stock and will be offered a $100,000 convertible note.
“Advances in materials and hardware allow for innovation and disruption in manufacturing,” says Claudia Reuter, Techstars’ managing director of the new additive manufacturing accelerator. “We were looking across the spectrum of what startups out there were doing.”
The highlights of the new class include Micron3DP, an Israeli startup that created the world’s first glass 3-D printer and is now working on faster metal 3-D printers; Kwambio, a ceramics 3-D printing startup that is the only member of the class to have previously gone through another Techstars program; NanoQuan, a spinoff of the University of Waterloo that’s working to make plastics electrically conductive; Structur3D Printing, which created a device that allows the 3-D printing of soft materials, such as biomaterials and elastomers; and Mani.me, a Palo Alto, California-based startup using 3-D printing to create tailor-fit, customizable, ready-to-wear designer manicures that it will sell by subscription.
Charles Mire, cofounder and CEO of Structur3D, recalls how he couldn't find an off-the-shelf product that would let him 3-D print biomaterials and conductive materials while working on his Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia, so he hacked his own device by strapping a syringe onto a CNC machine. After he graduated, in 2010, the 3-D printing market was taking off, but he still didn't see another company selling the device he and other researchers needed. "They kept doing plastics, plastics, plastics," recalls Mire, now 45. So, in 2013, he and his co-founders started the Ontario, Canada-based company, subsequently raising around $100,000 on Kickstarter for their paste extruder. Today, it sells its extruders for $5,000 to $20,000, and Mire hopes the Techstars accelerator will help him crank revenues above $1 million. "The next frontier to us is this soft material," he says.
Kwambio, similarly, is focused on an underserved area of 3-D printing: ceramics. Cofounder and CEO Vlad Usov, 34, says that when the company launched in 2015, "ceramics was a white spot where there were no stable technologies." So Kwambio began offering designers the ability to 3-D print kitchenware, household objects and other ceramic products on-demand. That required the company, which is headquartered in New York and has a factory in Odessa, Ukraine, to come up with a ceramic powder that could be used in a 3-D printer. This year it began offering its ceramics 3-D printers for sale. Ultimately, Usov hopes that ceramics 3-D printing will go beyond consumer products, and be used for more complex applications such as healthcare, where it could be used to create better implants, pending FDA approval. "Ceramics is close to bone structure," Usov says. "We think we can have a special powder so that we can implant it inside [the body]."
A completely different use for 3-D printing comes from Mani.me, an early-stage startup founded by three Stanford Graduate School of Business students that 3-D prints custom manicures. Cofounder Grace Chiang, 25, worked in a nail salon in Taiwan during the summer between high school and college, and later became frustrated that she could never find time to get her nails done while working crazy hours at McKinsey. "It's always been something that is deeply important to me," she says. When she arrived on campus with an elaborate manicure with a lace design, she met her cofounder, Jooyeon Song, who had a pink manicure with French tips and designs. Mani.me, which launched in April, sells its custom manicures, by subscription, starting at $50 per month. "It's like watching an Instagram come to life," she says.
With the exception of Mani.me, the companies in the new accelerator are all focused on industry, where 3-D printing technology is beginning to change how modern factories operate, rather than on consumers. “If you look across the list, the majority of the companies are business-to-business or industrial-focused,” Reuter says.
She expects that Techstars' focus on additive manufacturing will continue to ramp up as changes in the industry accelerate. The partnership with Stanley Black & Decker is currently slated to have two more classes, in the summer of 2019 and then again the following year.
