Next up, a CNC head for the Glowforge?!
Cringeworthy quote: “While Glowforge has seen its share of troubles including a ridiculous policy on field-replaceable laser tubes…”
Geebus… you make one mistake and reverse your stance on it less than 24 hours later, and people highlight it as being the most despicable horrendous act in the last 18 months. 
Interesting. I thought he started making high-end watches? Didn’t realize he was angel investing.
Not sure Bre Pettis and and angel belong in the same sentence.
I don’t think Bre Pettit has any right to be pointing out mistakes other people make running a business. He is the poster boy of bad mistakes.
I did not realize. I hope dan and company don’t take his example and build something awesome just to sell out to a company that cares nothing about what you built for 30 pieces of silver.
If that’s the worse thing, that’s doing pretty good.
I dodged a bullet not buying a makerbot, now it looks like I dodged another not buying an Other.
That quote I snuck in wasn’t attributed to Bre, it was the story’s author, Brian Benchoff.
Did you notice the spot in Dan’s book about startups always being available for sale (paraphrasing here)? That one one sunk in for me.
or paragraph?
Has Glowforge given any info at all on how users can replace tubes themselves? The last I heard was that the forum would be notified when GF had something to share.
Not yet, but seeing as it’s likely as much as 2 years from now before it’s needed, detailed instructions probably aren’t high on the priority list.
No, I never really read it. Looks like I need to. I don’t really mind selling, just not to a concern that doesn’t care.
To me that would be like giving up a child for adoption and not caring if it was sold to the circus!
Yes, of all the things I hear in Dan’s voice in my head, the title of the chapter: Of course this company’s for sale. But I’m ok with that. It’s how things work. I’d say whatever happens, version 1.0 will be usable for a long time!
Well, that and “you don’t understand, I have a laser!”
this is the main reason i’m excited for the potential for open-sourcing the firmware. with glowforge around i’m not very worried, it’s what happens should they decide to accept an offer at some point.
Having not seen a 'Forge in person. I wonder if the gantry would support a small CNC head. That would be fun, but I kinda would think the dust and debris would play Mary Hob with the delicates.
Assuming the firmware is released as promised. While I think commitments made about the promised featureset being free forever are binding, companies that acquire other companies can always structure the deal so that it isn’t binding to them. So having that firmware in hand is pretty critical for my personal comfort level.
Glowforge is about to recognize $27M or so in revenue over the course of a couple months, with more coming in as positive reviews are put out. They may be a ripe target for acquisition by a bigger player (Stratasys, Formlabs, 3DS come to mind.)
I think it would end up being impossible to clean out the mess from a CNC operation. The best use case I’ve been able to think of is a vacuum pick-and-place head that can also lay down circuit traces and dabs of solder, then use the laser to do the soldering and cut out the board.
Correct. We really should consider the very real possibility that at some point in the future the GF cloud will go away and we’ll be bricked. But we shouldn’t freak because an open source effort could easily be mounted to keep the hardware going - probably using a 3rd party hardware controller and bypassing the whole firmware need.
Please God no to Stratasys. I can just see them trashing the 
the way they did the Makerbot