3DPrint Interviews Jaglom About Layoffs and MakerBot's Direction

[Eddie]

We interviewd MakerBot's new CEO Jonathan Jaglom on a variety of important topics which we feel the 3D printing community would be interested in learning. This includes the recent major layoffs at the company, it's tie-ins with Stratasys, possible future machines and technologies that Makerbot will be using, the 3MF consortium and much more. The entire interview with Jaglom can be found here: http://3dprint.com/65989/makerbot-jaglom-interview/

What are your thoughts on Jaglom's responses?

[TGO]

I think the responses are really just trying to fend off and buy time to hopefully fix the bad decisions that they made in launching the new Makerbots.
The "smart extruders" have too many problems which is compounded by the closed software environment, ideally they will fix this and offer replacements to early customers. They could go a long way by opening up some of the settings in the software so we can try to deal with the shortcomings of the "smart extruder" heads. The concept is good, the execution is awful.
I think the reason they are seeing 40% fewer calls to the support desk is because users have given up on the new "smart extrudes"!
I know I have.

[raysspl]

Makerbot grew rather quickly & in doing so needed to hire new employees but forgot about the pullback from the market.

[Brian_Krassenstein]

Though it's been a rough year for MakerBot, new CEO Jonathan Jaglom isn't too concerned. In a recent interview with the New York Business Journal, Jaglom discussed his optimistic views of the company's future and dropped some hints about an upcoming project that could turn Thingiverse into a massive networking tool for educators. With their priorities redefined and their management structure rearranged, things are looking brighter for MakerBot as they go into 2016. Read more at 3DPrint.com: http://3dprint.com/112939/makerbot-ceo-jaglom-future/

[ServiceXp]

Why is it that every interview I read on MakerBot seems hollow at best.. I think perhaps I'm just to biased...

[LambdaFF]

HAHAHA... ok. Still don't buy it.

Quality assurance is nice but it doesn't help when your design is flawed at the root. But I guess he wouldn't admit that outright.

Landing education contracts was a good thing and working with them is smart too as there is money there but if you don't have reliable products the teachers will move away from you too : they have even less time to invest in this than the average hobbyist.

[ServiceXp]

HAHAHA... ok. Still don't buy it.

Quality assurance is nice but it doesn't help when your design is flawed at the root. But I guess he wouldn't admit that outright.

Landing education contracts was a good thing and working with them is smart too as there is money there but if you don't have reliable products the teachers will move away from you too : they have even less time to invest in this than the average hobbyist.

Well said.