Whats the history of Desktop Factory, and whats the connection with Idealab?
Cathy Lewis: As with all companies out of Idealab, that’s where the history starts. As you probably know, after the tech bubble Idealab started looking at companies beyond the IT and search space. They came up with a couple of fantastic companies that are more hardware-based–an energy company, a robotics company, and other firms which turn out actual physical products. As a result, one of those companies had acquired a 3D fabrication system from Stratasys. That system cost $40,000, and every time you printed a part–a physical output of a CAD/CAM design, or some other object physically rendered–it cost several hundred dollars. One day, Bill Gross was walking past the machine, and thought–why couldn’t we find a way to take this concept down to the desktop, make it low cost, and put it in everyone’s hands? It’s so phenomenal to print out what you envision. So he talked to one of the folks standing by, Rich Diephius. Rich Diephuis and Bryan Bedal are the cofounders of Desktop Foundry.
