A forum member sent me this article and I wanted to share it with the community. The forum member gave me permission to post it but they want to remain anonymous.
Gordon Gekko is just a tongue-in-cheek reference.
Start sending support all of your ideas for a better Glowforge. They NOW have the money for R+D.
I could swear I’d seen this posted already…but your suggestions about piling on the requests is a nice add. Time to go bump the folders feature idea!!
How about better tech support as well. When a person has a $7000 paper weight, they don’t have the patience to wait 3-5 days for someone to get back to them. I personally have not had problems with support, but reading this forum every day, it’s apparent that something should be done about it.
I expect that boat has sailed. No one gets money from VCs without having specific plans for it and those plans need to generate a return (e.g. profit) so if they won’t directly contribute to increase revenue (or to a lesser extent) or reduce expenses, it’s not getting funded. Support hasn’t been great at any point for them and it hasn’t cost them appreciably in the market so improving it is a feel good thing, not a necessity. My bet is more marketing spend and potentially something new in the product arena (and there, the likelihood is more software before hardware).
But that’s all just a guess from years of dealing with PE and VCs.
Hence no real improvements in the UI, just incremental changes to drive subscriptions (editing tools and such) and firmware changes to improve support diagnostics and make some remote repairs possible.
With that in mind I’m not sure why they haven’t sold longer lenses and thinner crumb trays… It would essentially print money. They could sell proofgrade cutting boards at huge markups and make a bunch of cash. All it would take is some [pretty easy?] software changes.
Sites like Techcrunch are viral posters for people who don’t understand tech and just twist facts to create clickable content using no original content of their own or educated opinions.
Their “article” is littered with inaccuracies, not only about the GF itself but also about the implications of more funding. It simply doesn’t work the way they imply. Nothing is going to change. The decline of their support for this community is more than enough to demonstrate that.
I’ve wondered if techcrunch is built by an algorithm for a while now. I’m not sure if it’s 90% written by bots and there are a skeleton crew of editors tweaking the raw output.
@swmisher I have been very fortunate I have always received a quick response from support. In the past I have read many nightmare posts regarding support.
I have 3 suggestions for a better experience with my Glowforge
Easier access to cleaning the left side of the machine.
Be able to pause the machine and return to where I paused it.
While I’m the kind of user that likes getting into the details, I feel like GF has largely delivered on creating an Apple-like experience… Stay on the path, and things work pretty well. I am predisposed to dislike that, yet I have liked the GF experience a lot.
They have squandered the opportunity to capitalize on that. Where’s GF 2.0, or a true pro-focused machine? Or a rotary add-on?
The slow pace of software updates and the total lack of hardware releases makes me wonder what’s going on.
I hope this new money can be used to give me reasons to stay a customer for the long term, instead of making the GF my starter machine… which is how it feels today.
A few weeks back, a commercial before a YouTube video appeared. It was the rotary attachment for a Trotec laser. Instantly I thought “Glowforge needs one of those!!”
I really enjoyed reading your post about an Apple like experience. I feel the same exact way. I have had my pro for nearly 3 years and I have barely scratched the surface of what the machine can do.