I don’t think you understand what this machine is intended to do. If you’re trying to compete against companies with commercial laser cutters, you’re doing it wrong.
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My best advice would be: find your niche.
Whether they have 5 or 20 forges, that shouldn’t be the small businesses competition. Not that they’ll be using the GF for production - more likely prototyping and then they’ll send those off for mass production.
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Maybe, if the competition is a race…
and even so, it still comes down to the “driver”.
Get your ideas & designs in order, learn to work the machine well, and you won’t be competing against the ‘big guys’, you will have them begging you to come work for them. You will likely have had way more 1-on-1 time with the machine than any of their employees.
Granted, if you are trying to break into the large-scale, high-quantity manufacturing industry with a single basic glowforge, you may have an uphill struggle.
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With some15,000 shiny new Glowforges landing in the craft zone over the next little while, it’s going to make making money on Etsy (and the like) a pretty challenging proposition going forward. 
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My Son attends GenCon, and mentioned this year how much more he sees that is laser made than he did previously.
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my mantra
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Ya. . . OK. . . so what’s you point? ? ? 
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Love this! 
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But the $85 buys the education also, along with a tool or two!
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Plus the next one if free as the $92 was enough material to make 3 or 4 and they are all bespoke thus worth much more than $7
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Yeah, that’s what I tell my wife everytime I buy a new tool - the first project pays for it, the 2nd one is all gravy (so long as there is a next project requiring the use of that tool 
).
She doesn’t really buy it.
She does buy a lot of shoes though 
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I laughed so hard my neighbors heard it hahaha
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Every time my wife wants to buy a new pair of boots she says “you just spent x hundred dollars on tools.” I told her I did return-on-investment calculations showing the tool will pay for itself in x months and ask what the ROI on her boots will be. I don’t recommend that line of conversation.
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You’re either a very brave or a very foolish man! Chuckle!
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Nooo…!
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My wife and I were at Home Depot one afternoon pricing power tools. A young couple was next to us, and the guy says “***…but honey, I’m bored! I need something to do.***”
I spoke up and said ,“Dude! No. Just no.”
We still laugh about it years later and has become part off the family lexicon…
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I swear on a stack of Proofgrade™!
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Yup, I did.
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Nothing good can ever come from that conversation.
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