Rough Draft Prototyping
A marketplace to turn idle hobbyist 3D printers into a distributed, on-demand manufacturing network.
The problem. Thousands of hobbyist 3D printers sit idle most of the day, expensive hardware running far below capacity. I know because I spent years building custom printers that did exactly that. Meanwhile anyone who wants a single part printed has nowhere good to send it.
What it was. Rough Draft Prototyping was a marketplace to fix that: on-demand manufacturing built on idle consumer 3D printers, so owners could monetize hardware they already had and buyers could get parts made nearby. The idea came straight from my own pain, which is usually where the good ones start.
Why I stopped
Another company had the same idea, a serious head start, and Intel among its investors. They reached the market first. That settled the question rather than raising one. A competitor with that kind of backing running the exact same plan is proof the opportunity was real, not a reason to panic. Without the capital to win a land-grab race against an Intel-backed team, the durable call was to fold instead of burning time and money into a fight already lost on funding. Reading a market correctly includes reading when you cannot win it.