Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Hey, they’re entrepreneurs. My name is Sushant, and welcome to Trep Talks. This is the show where I interview successful e-commerce entrepreneurs, business executives, and thought leaders, and ask them questions about their business story, and also dive deep into some of the strategies and tactics that they have used to start and grow their businesses.

And today I’m really excited to welcome Jeremy Simon to. Jeremy is one of the co-founders of 3D Universe. 3D Universe is a company dedicated to making 3D printing and digital fabrication accessible to professionals as well as everyday people. And Jeremy is also doing a really, uh, a different exciting project, which is called, uh, enable Volunteer Community.

And this, uh, this is a community which prints 3d uh, prosthetic devices like hands, arms. As well as other types of as assisted devices and really provide a free of charge to people in need, uh, all over the world. And today I’m gonna ask Jeremy a few questions about his entrepreneur journey, as well as his other, um, project, um, uh, the enable volunteer community.

And, um, yeah, so really looking forward to seeing some of the strategies and tactics that you have used to start and grow your. So thank you again for joining me today at Trip, Jeremy. Really appreciate it. 

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: Hi Shan. Thank you for having 

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: me. Yeah. So it seems like you’re really, um, very deeply involved with the three 3D printing community.

Can you share a little bit about, you know, how did you get into it and what motivated you to start your business? The 3D. 

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: Sure. Uh, well, my last business was a consulting company that I owned with a couple of others, uh, that was completely unrelated to what I’m doing now. We, we were focused on information security and, uh, learned a lot, had a lot of fun doing that.

But I came to a point where I felt I wanted to spend more time with my family, and that was a job that was requiring a lot of long hours. So I sold my shares in that company, decided to take some time off and sort of figure out what I wanted to do next. And during that time off, this was back in, uh, 2012.

I decided to get myself a desktop 3D printer. They were just becoming affordable at that time and, and very accessible. There were some good options becoming available. And I’ve always been sort of a technology buff. I’ve really enjoy keeping up on the latest and, and so the 3D printing really caught my attention.

I got one and started like most people do, sort of going on to sites like Thingyverse where you can download all sorts of different objects for free print them. And I was printing all sorts of interesting little things just like you see behind me to sit on your. And that was a lot of fun. But then it wasn’t long before I came across a design for a 3D printable prosthetic hand called the, at the time it was called The Robo Hand.

And this just blew me away because I had never thought about the possibility of being able to 3D print something. Really functional like that, you know, not just something decorative, but something that could not only serve a function, but in this case really change somebody’s life. And I, uh, I, I continued to look into it and found my way to a group of people that was starting to work on.

A number of different open source designs that they were sharing with each other and, and building upon for 3D printable, uh, prosthetics, hands at first and later got into arms as well. And this is what, uh, very quickly turned into what we now call the enable volunteer community, um, which you can learn about@enablingthefuture.org.

And, uh, so I, I quickly got involved there and I fell in love with it so quickly with what you can do. I found a gentleman in my local community, um, a lot of what we were doing in the early days of this volunteer community was, was making devices for children because there was a particular challenge there because insurance companies don’t like to pay for, uh, what was very expensive, uh, for a prosthetic device for kids when they’re gonna outgrow them very quickly.

And so kids especially had a hard time getting access to prosthetics. . And so that’s what Enable was focused on in the beginning. But I met a, uh, a full grown adult in my community who was born with a limb difference. He was born missing most of one of his hands, and, uh, came to me and asked if I might be able to make a device for him.

And this is a man who not only has this limb difference, but it was a, a, a, a particular challenge because he works, uh, as a box handler in a warehouse. So he really needs something functional that can hold. and he actually was lucky enough to have been given one of those myoelectric devices that has a, a muscle sensor and has one of those, you know, claws that opens when and contracts when you, uh, tense your muscles.

Mm-hmm. and, and these things are expensive. He told me his cost over $40,000, but he didn’t like it very much. It was very heavy and it didn’t respond well. It often, there were a lot of false positives where golf when he didn’t want it to, and so I made him one of these 3D printed prosthe. and he loved it.

Um, and he found that it worked much better than his very expensive device. He came back and sat down and talked with me on, on camera like we’re doing now. Um, and he talked to me after he’d been using it for a while and his work, and he told me about it and why he liked it better. and I put that video on YouTube, um, thinking, you know, that others might benefit from it.

Surprisingly, it, it, it became a very popular video, got lots of attention, uh, which, which led to, uh, Fox News inviting me on to, to have me as a guest on their show to talk about the work we were doing. And that led to some very rapid growth in Enable, cuz it got the word out there and let people know about what we’re doing.

So our community very quickly started to grow and we now. Tens of thousands of volunteers all over the world, including a lot of schools that have gotten involved, hundreds of schools where they, they get their classrooms involved in making these and connecting with people that they can help. And, uh, we have, uh, about 200 chapters all over the world in, in all different countries that have gotten involved.

And it’s just been a wonderful community to be a part of. And it’s, it’s been one of the most exciting. , uh, things that I’ve seen done with 3D printing, and so that actually, I, I got involved with enable. Before I started my business 3D universe, because I, it was then that I really fell in love with the power of this technology and, and what it could be used for and how an, if an ordinary guy like me, I know nothing about prosthetics.

I know nothing about, you know, any, I was new to 3D printing even, and yet I was able to make one of these devices that changed somebody’s life and I went on to do this for a bunch of other people. And that was so fulfilling, so rewarding that, uh, I wanted to help others to sort of realize what a powerful technology this is.

And so my, uh, uh, my wife and I, and a partner of of mine started 3D Universe mainly to be able to, to help others to, to sort of learn about this technology and understand all these exciting things that you can do with 3D printing and other digital fabrication tech. 

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: That’s, that’s really awesome. That’s really interesting.

I mean, I have so many questions that are coming to my mind as you’re going through it, but I guess where we can start is for anyone who doesn’t know what’s involved in 3D printing, so I’m assuming there’s like this machine aspect, the 3D printer itself, but is the value really in the design? How exactly do you take something and actually able to print it?

Can you walk me through the process of like, how would you actually. Print a 3d, uh, 3D printed prosthetic limb. Uh, absolutely 

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: through. Well, you, you are exactly right. It all starts with the, the design side, which can be very challenging. Luckily, we’ve had some very smart and capable people in our community, including engineers and 3D designers and uh, uh, professional, uh, occupational therapists and all kinds of different skill sets.

And so we have been able to create some, uh, excellent designs. We have quite a few designs in our catalog, and the wonderful thing about enable. Every single design that’s been created has been shared as an open source design freely so that anybody can use it and anybody can take that design and build off of it and, and make changes and make it better.

But generally speaking, when you want to 3D print something, you have to first have a 3D design, which you can use CAD software for, computerated design, lots of different CAD platforms out there. Some of the popular ones include things like Tinkercad, which is a free platform that you can use on the web.

There’s, uh, more advanced platforms like Autodesk Fusion 360, which also has some free licenses available. Uh, there’s things like SolidWorks, there’s all kinds of very, uh, popular 3D packages out there. Uh, another popular one is Onshape that our community has been using, which also has some very powerful functionality available for free.

So lots of CAD options to choose from. And you can use any CAD package that you like, whatever CAD software you prefer, you create your 3D design, you create your model, and you can do that using all sorts of different methods that are, uh, you know, uh, depending on the CAD software you’re using. Usually you’re starting with primitive, so you create a.

A sphere or a block, and then you start carving away at it and putting channels through it, or you know, cutting away from it. And, and you start to create your model using these different tools. Once you have your model the way you want it, you export that model in a certain format that your 3D printer is ready for.

Mm-hmm. And then there’s another piece of software that you use, which is called slicing software. , and that’s how you, that’s where you take your 3D model and you bring it into the slicing software and you, here’s where you tell the 3D printer how you want it to print your object. For example, normally when you’re 3D printing an object, you don’t need it to be solid.

You don’t need it to be completely filled in on the inside. Um, and so you can control how dense you want it to be, how much infill you want, how thick do you want the walls to be, how thin do you want each layer to be? Uh, there’s all kinds of settings that you can control. . And so you define those settings in the slicing software and then you generate the print file and send it to the 3D printer and it’ll do whatever you told it to do.

It’ll take over from there and start printing. So that’s the general process. Yeah. 

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So it, it seems, um, that once you have the design, um, the CAD design and, and I guess the, the mold of it, um, that design can be mass printed, not just through like a simple. Uh, 3D printer, but, you know, uh, someone could really take it and create, you know, create many copies of it, uh, on an industrial basis perhaps.

So, is that not something that bigger companies or industries, I mean, if, if prosthetic limbs is a requirement out there and you know, the, the only thing that is required is to have a design and you can create it, is it not possible to. Create, you know, uh, just, just industrially print them and just give everybody a hand who does not have it at a, at a much very low cost.

So what, what is stopping people from really solving this, this problem for people who are missing limbs and so forth? 

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: Sure. Uh, well, it’s an important question. We’ll talk about it two ways. One, in relation to the, to the, um, limb different community and the ones we’re trying to help. Three enable, but also we’ll talk about it a little bit more generally and how this applies to manufacturing in general.

So with regards to enable and, uh, what we’re trying to do, you’re exactly right. Uh, theoretically we have a lot of people out there with 3D printers, and even in our community, we have a lot of people that are ready to help, that are ready to. Produce these devices and we know statistically speaking, that there are a lot of people out there that need our help.

There are a lot of people that have lost limbs or were born with a limb difference that have not been able to get help or can’t afford help. The problem is, , a lot of them don’t know about us, and we haven’t done a good enough job of getting the word out there to them or connecting with those people in those communities.

We we’re, we’re doing a lot of work to try to connect with other organizations, uh, that work with the limb, different community. There are a lot of good organizations out there already, and if we can connect with them and they can let their members know about us, then maybe we can help more people. We’re trying to do a better job of improving, uh, what we have on our websites and the way that.

Talking about what enable is and how we can help people. There’s just, there’s a lot of work to be done in how do you, how do you find those people and get the word to them about how you can help them? And then, uh, connecting them with the volunteers that can help. So we’ve made great progress, but there’s a lot more work to do.

Um, But taking it a little bit more generally, it it, you, you open up a very important discussion about, well, you know, when somebody wants to bring a new product to market, you know, why can’t they just 3D print a whole bunch of them? And, uh, they, they can to a certain point. And so we’re seeing a lot of businesses starting to do this.

Um, that’s why 3D printing has become so popular. Mostly we’ve seen it be about. Speeding up and reducing the cost of bringing new products to market. You can prototype new designs much more quickly and much less expensively than sending that design out to somebody else for prototyping and then waiting for them to get it back to you.

That’s very expensive and it’s very slow, but that’s what companies had to do in the past. Now they can do that in-house, and they can, not only can they get it done much more quickly and, and more cheaply, but that facilitates a lot more creative exploration of ideas. You’re, you’re able to iterate more quickly and try things you’re not afraid to, you know, to, to, to take chances because if it doesn’t work, you can just do another one in a matter of hours or, or a day or two.

And so it really facilitates, uh, rapid development of, of ideas and, and product, uh, prototype. Now it’s good for small quantities, 3D printing, it doesn’t do as well when you get into much, much bigger quantities. So if you want to make, you know, uh, tens of something or dozens of something, a 3D printer can do an excellent job for you.

If you need to make 10,000 of something, it’s probably gonna be more cost effective to. outsource it and do injection molding, but there’s a lot of ground in between those, right? Where maybe you need to make hundreds of something and, and there’s a big gray area there. 3D printing probably can help. There are also other digital fabrication technologies that can help as well.

Like, for example, we do a lot with, um, uh, desktop forming. 3D forming is now another popular technology. So, uh, vacuum forming and pressure forming. So you can 3D print an object. Use that as a template to then create a form using pressure forming, and then use that to cast uh, copies of the mold that you’ve created.

And very quickly you can now duplicate your object and that way you can make hundreds and hundreds of something that would take a very long time to do on a 3D printer. But that’s again, something that companies, small companies can now do in-house very afford. Very interesting, 

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: very interesting. What is the, um, what is the cost involved in printing?

Like one of these, uh, prosthetic hands given that you’re, it’s, it’s on a volunteer basis and, you know, um, you are giving it away in a way. Um, I’m assuming it’s the cost is really just the material. What, what kind of material is used? How, what does it cost 

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: actually to It is, so the cost depends on a number of different things.

It depends on the type of device you’re making, you know, uh, making a hand device, for example, takes less material and making an arm device. So that factors in. Um, it depends on what type of material you want to use. There are different options you can work with. You know, you can make a device with, for example, pla, which is a very popular material and very inexpensive.

The problem we found with p l A, you know, we’re helping people all over the world and in some areas where they have a hotter climate, p l A actually doesn’t hold up well in higher temperatures, and we’ve found that those devices will start to deform. So as a community, we have been, uh, pointing people towards PET G as a recommended material, and we, we like to use PET G for our devices.

It’s still a very eco-friendly material, but it’s a lot stronger and it holds up in higher temperatures. Than, than p l a. Um, but cost-wise, it’s, it’s not a huge difference. So generally speaking, uh, and it also depends on how big the device is. You know, if you’re making a device for a very small child that costs less than one for a large adult, But on average we say that it costs about 25 to $50, uh, US dollars on average to make a device.

And I’m including not only the the 3D printing material that you’re going to use, but also the other assembly materials that you need to put one together cuz you need some screws, some Velcro straps, some medical grade foam padding, some cords. You know, there’s some other things that go into putting one together and all of that together.

Somewhere in the range of 25 to $50 on average. And we’ve been very lucky to have volunteers that have been willing to absorb those costs. Um, and so they, they pay for that out of pocket and the devices are given free of charge to those who need them. 

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So it’s almost like, uh, a donation model, you know? So 

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: somebody, it’s crowd, it’s crowdsourcing.

Yeah. It’s like crowdsourcing, prosthetics. 

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So somebody buys this machine and you know, they’re learning about 3D printing. They’re, they’re, they want to create some things and, you know, this is one thing that they can create. And of course, it can be very useful to someone who missing.

Um, so, so I guess, you know, it, it makes them for, for, you know, they feel good about creating something that helps other people and in the process they learned and, you know, uh, that’s right. The, you know, being creative and everything. So that’s, that’s very interesting. 

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: Um, that, that, that’s an important part of it.

And I, what I found is what that, what that led to also, not only do you have this wonderful way that you can contribute and help change people’s lives, but. You start to sort of look at things around you differently when you get into 3D printing, and especially when you start creating your own designs.

When you learn some 3D modeling and you learn how to create something from scratch, from an idea, you really start to look at things differently and you’re, you’re going through your day-to-day life and you start to see things and realize even around your own home that. , oh, you know, I could make that better if I had a little such and such that did this or that.

And you, you start having ideas of how you can improve things around you or maybe fix something that was broken that you couldn’t find apart for, and you start improving things in your own home, in your own office, and that can be so much fun and so rewarding when you do something like that totally on your own that you created from scratch, brought it to life with this machine, put it in place and, and see that it works just right.

It’s, it’s really a wonderful experience. 

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: And I think that could be very useful to entrepreneurs. Like, you know, somebody looks at a product, you know, they’re not completely satisfied with it, and, you know, they, they think of an idea. Um, I, I guess from an entrepreneurial perspective, if you want to bring something to life, you, you maybe you don’t want to, you know, learn the whole thing.

Maybe you just want. Connect with someone who is, you know, uh, a shop that is already doing 3D printing. Sure. And, you know, help to get their help in this. But I think, um, like the, in your shop 3D universe, like do you see a lot of people, uh, the people who are coming to buy your products? Um, , are there some of those who are entrepreneurial type or you know, what, what kind of people do you think are, are actually buying?

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. We, we definitely have a lot of customers that have either started businesses using, uh, 3D printing or have been able to advance their existing businesses by bringing 3D printing into it in a number of different ways. We have some that are actually selling. 3D printed, uh, parts as end use products to their customers.

For example, we have some that are in the automotive, uh, industry that are using 3D printing to produce parts that they sell directly to their customers. Uh, things that have to withstand certain temperatures inside of a, you know, under the hood of a vehicle. We have some that are making lighting fixtures, uh, for vehicles.

We have some that make custom mounts for, uh, police vehicles. There’s all kinds of different things being done. And, um, then another very large segment that we see is education. We have a lot of schools and libraries and maker spaces that buy from us because this is, uh, you know, especially here in the United States, it’s, it’s become almost indispensable as a part of the education process, um, which I’m thrilled to see because these students, when they get into the workplace, they’re gonna be dealing with these technologies.

So it’s wonderful that they’re learning them as they go through. And so we see a lot of schools investing in, in more and more 3D printing and other digital fabrication tech. Um, and, and that’s through all levels, uh, K through 12, all the way up through the university and, and post-grad level. We’re, we’re seeing different, different types of 3D printing being used for different reasons.

And then, uh, in the professional sector, uh, you know, well-established businesses, uh, everything from large companies, you know, like automotive, uh, aerospace, um, uh, product design companies that are starting to realize, like I said before, that they can, they can, um, Uh, pick up the speed of how they develop new products.

They can test ideas in-house, uh, government entities, and even the military. You know, it’s a little controversial with some, but one of the reasons that the military loves 3D printing is that they can, uh, test out ideas and prototype things internally without having to worry about confidentiality. They don’t have to worry about sharing their designs, uh, outside of, of their, their internal teams.

So there’s a lot of different, uh, reasons that people, uh, go to 3D printing. , but we see it across almost every different industry at this point. Um, you know, it plays into obviously architecture. They’re using it to show off different architectural models, the medical, uh, field. They’re using it for surgical models and planning and uh, actual implants and, and all sorts of other things.

Uh, we even get into bioprinting here. We have a 3D bioprint that you can use for experimenting with 3D printing, you know, uh, cellular structures and biomaterials. All kinds of advanced, uh, possibilities that can be explored there. Um, you know, there’s, there’s, there’s all sorts of different, uh, aspects of it being explored across all different industries, which is part of what’s exciting.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So on your, on your shop, I see you are selling 3D printers, you’re seeing selling all other kind of accessories and uh, uh, and materials and so forth. Can you talk a little bit about, um, how this came about? Are you selling these products, um, from. Other manufacturers who, who create these machines and you’re basically That’s right.

Uh, selling them to consumer. 

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: That’s right. When we, when I started the business, what I realized myself when I got started with 3D printing is that you can very quickly become overwhelmed with the number of options that there are. There are so many different 3D printers on the market and trying to figure out which is going to give me a good experience and do what I need and, uh, fit my budget and.

All that is, is can be quite difficult. And so we, we wanted to create something that really would help people to make that journey easier, to help them find something that would fit them. And, and we, we consider ourselves to be very consultative. We don’t, we don’t do, you know, sales people here. We just, we have conversations with people and if, if we feel like there’s a solution out there that’s a good fit for them, even if it’s not something that we offer, you know, we’ll point ’em in the right direction.

We really just wanna help people find. How these technologies can benefit them. And, and that’s what we’re here to help with. So our, our store represents sort of a, a very, uh, uh, filtered down list of all the different products that we’ve tested. Uh, these are the ones that made the cut. These are the ones that I felt had a really good.

Uh, experience right from out of the box all the way through how it works and the kind of support that you get after the fact. And these are the ones that I feel our customers are going to have a good experience with. So it’s a very carefully selected list of products that we offer that we’re always adding to.

So 

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: someone like, you know, someone who’s just getting started with 3D printing, you know, may maybe they read about it and they just wanna test, test it, test the idea out what, uh, among all the products that you’re selling, like how, what is the best way for like a beginner to start with 3D printing? Is there like a specific machine that.

That works well for beginners. Um, and, you know, what advice would you give to a beginner, let’s say, you know, even an entrepreneur who has an idea and they, they wanted to just test it out themselves, like Sure. How can they get 

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: started? Well, that’s why I really like the one-on-one approach that we take because a, as much as I’d like to say that there’s, you know, this is the machine that you want for a, a new user, I don’t think it’s that simple.

I think it really depends on, well, you know, not everyone has the same budget as a beginner. You know, do you, do you have a couple hundred dollars to work with, or do you have a couple thousand dollars to work with that’s gonna change your options? What kinds of things are you thinking about doing? What do you want to be able to do with this machine?

And when I hear you talk about, The kinds of things that you want to be able to print, that leads me down the path of what kind of printer you want to be able to do that, what kinds of materials you might want to be able to work with. And then I can make some recommendations for specific printers.

Generally speaking, I will say that from what we offer, the CRE printer line has been very popular for new users. Uh, these are very inexpensive printers that are for the most part, uh, kits that you put together yourself, but they’re very easy to put together. They’re partially assembled. And, and you just sort of finish it up.

And, uh, they’re a great way for people to get started. Like anything in life, you kind of get what you pay for. And there are trade-offs, you know, when you get a very inexpensive machine, uh, you know, maybe a little bit less reliable than something that you, you know, spend 10 times as much on. But there’s a very large online community there that can help when issues arise.

And. You know, so there’s all kinds of different options that you could look at, but is one that we see very popular with new users because it’s a very inexpensive way to get started. See if it’s something that you want to go fur forward with, and then maybe you can upgrade to something else down down the road.

But we also have, uh, other lines and for example, the Ulta Maker printer line that a lot of people are familiar with is, That’s by far our most popular printer line. It’s more expensive, but we do have quite a few users that are getting into 3D printing. They’re new users and yet they want to go for something that they know will be reliable and they do buy an Alta maker.

So, uh, like I said, it depends on your budget and it depends on what’s important to you. Some people are a lot more comfortable doing some tinkering and doing some troubleshooting if needed, and getting under the hood if they need to, and maybe making changes to the code other people. No, no, I just want it to work, you know?

So it really depends on the kind of person that, that we’re talking to, uh, in terms of what we’d recommend. So 

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: as, as a business itself, um, can you share about, uh, I mean it’s an e-commerce business. It’s, so when you started it, like what kind of. I mean, whenever somebody starts a business, because something like this, I’m assuming, requires a good amount of investment.

Like if you’re purchasing, uh, machines to sell mm-hmm. , uh, that may require a good amount of investment. Like how did you know that? This is a business that’s actually going to be successful. And I mean, it’s a, for, I’m assuming it’s a for-profit business. It’s, but you’re, at the end of the day, it’s gonna be able to make, you know, run like a successful business, make profit Sure.

And so forth. Yeah. Um, what was, you know, can you talk a little bit about the business aspect of, of Sure. This whole project. 

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: Sure. Uh, I don’t think you ever really know, do you? I mean, I, I, I guess I had a feeling. I feel like I have a pretty good business instinct at this point. I’ve, I’ve owned and, and started several businesses throughout my career, and I guess I, I have a pretty good instinct for technology in particular and sort of where things seem to be going.

So when I started, uh, following 3D printing in the news and started playing with it myself, I, I became quickly convinced that this is definitely going to be part of the future. You know, I don’t mind saying that. I’ve always been sort of a sci-fi fan myself, always a sort of a Star Trek fan and that kind of thing.

And so immediately for me, this brought back, you know, uh, ideas of replicators and, you know, that sort of thing. And that’s ultimately, that’s where this is headed, right? I mean, that is a form of 3D printing. It just happens to be at the molecular level in that case, but, and we’re not there yet, but somebody will get there, right?

So this is very exciting to me. And I, I knew that it was going to be, uh, important and like I said, I wanted to be part of it. Um, but then there were also a series of sort of, um, uh, nice accidents and having some good luck and things like that that happened along the way. When we started the business, the, uh, the 3D printer, uh, profit line that we started with was the flash forage line.

Which is another popular, inexpensive line. And because they were less expensive machines, yes, we had to bring in inventory, but it wasn’t a huge out-of-pocket investment to do that. You know, we didn’t have to have hundreds of them on hand. We just had to have, you know, a handful of each model to get started.

And then as we sold them, we, we bought more, uh, for, for inventory. And so we actually were able to start the business with a total out-of-pocket investment of $27,000. Believe it. That’s all it cost us to start out of pocket. And we were able to get things going quickly enough that we were able to, uh, shortly thereafter, we were able to pay ourselves back on that initial investment.

And, uh, we were running, uh, profitably from there. And so we, we kept a lot of the money, uh, in the business so that we were able to grow. We started to expand our product portfolio and get into other product lines. And as we’re able to, you know, as, as our, our, you know, financial assets grew, we were able to bring in more and more inventory and, and, And, and start to, uh, grow from there and start to expand our staff and offerings 

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: and your customer base.

Uh, to me it seems like, or maybe it’s logical, if more b2b. 

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: Uh, it is more b2b. It’s not entirely b2b, but the majority of our business is b2b. Um, I’d say probably 80% at least, is b2b. And then we have some, some b2c. 

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: and, um, is it, is it mostly a sales-based approach or are you like, um, marketing first and then you attract people and then you, you do the consultation?

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: Actually, I think that’s where we’re a little bit unique. We do almost nothing in terms of sales. We actually go out of our way not to do any selling. Um, even when people call us, I’ve just, I’ve never liked salespeople very much. I don’t like people trying to push things on me. And so I don’t wanna do that to anyone else.

Um, we don’t have salespeople. We don’t do any outbound cold calling or anything like that. We feel like what, what we do best is putting good content out there on our blog, on our YouTube channel, which by the way, I started the blog on the YouTube channel before I ever started 3D Universe as a for-profit business.

I started at first just as a blog. That’s why our domain is 3D universe.org, , because we started as just a, a, a blog to help share this information with people, and we’ve kept that going. What we do is we put together a lot of really good videos to help educate people and show them the cool projects we’re doing and what you can do with these things.

And we put that out there and we let people find that. And if they find that and they say, yeah, that’s something I think I could benefit from, they’ll reach out to us and then we’ll have a discussion. You know, we, we trust that they’ll find their way to us if, if we, if they, we have something they need. So we, we don’t, we try not to bother people too much with a lot of, you know, uh, traditional sales and.

Trying to go after people. We, we try to put out as much good educational content as we can and draw people into us using, you know, good search engine optimization. We do a lot of paid advertising on Google to, to help bring attention to us. We do paid advertising on YouTube. Um, so it’s not that we don’t invest in that, but we, we try to make it content based to, to try to make sure that we’re bringing people to us that we can really be of, of value.

And is this 

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: really, um, right now the main market or your main audience is in the US or do you also see, um, cause I mean creative people are every everywhere and Oh, absolutely. These kinda things. Um, which, um, but I’m assuming is probably more directed in the Western nations rather. It is 

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: developing. Yeah.

The vast majority of our business is focused within the United States. We service the entire United States. We ship all over the country, but most of our products we ship only in the United States, uh, because of restrictions with our, our partners. They have other resellers that handle other territories.

So the whole world definitely has these needs, but I think other areas are pretty well covered. We handle the United States. That it’s not the case. Across the board, there are some product lines that we represent for all of North America, including Canada. There are other products that we do sell globally.

Uh, most importantly, the things that we do for enable. So for example, we produce, uh, assembly materials, kits for those prosthetic devices to make it easier for people to help out there. So these kits that have all of those materials that you need to make one of these devices, all the screws, the Velcro, the padding, the, all those other things that I mentioned.

All in one little kit that you can buy. And we’ve shipped thousands of those all over the world cuz nobody else makes them. We, we make those all here. So there are certain things that we ship, uh, internationally, but most of what we do, especially when it comes to the machines, the printers themselves, those are US based, we ship in the us.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, what does your team look like 

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: right? Well, we’ve taken the approach of trying to keep a pretty small team and rely very heavily on technology and automation to be able to do quite a lot with a small crew. And so we currently, our, our team is, is made up of four people internally that handle operations and sales and support.

Uh, myself and my wife are the two owners of the organization and we have two other employees that work with us for our marketing and blogging and operational support, um, on the backend. But aside from those internal employees, we also have our whole warehouse team because we use three pl, third party logistics, which I imagine you might have a question or two about.

And so that’s a whole separate team. And we have several dozen people, uh, on the warehouse team because of course those aren’t our employees. Those are handled separately, but they are very much a part of our team in terms of how we work with them. We work with them every day, uh, dozens of times throughout the day.

We work very closely with them. So I include them when I think of our. . Yeah, definitely. I 

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: mean, are there, I mean, at the end of the day this, you know, you’re selling a product and it’s an e-commerce business. Like, are there any peculiar peculiarities for this e-commerce business when you’re shipping out these products, um, to consumers?

Like, uh, does it have to be handled in a certain way, or, oh, 

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: yes. Uh, can you talk a little bit about that? Uh, we learned that the hard way over the years. Um, I think the. probably the, the most painful lesson that we learned was the, when the, um, when Ulta maker launched the Ulta maker S five, um, which if you’re not familiar with it, is their, their current sort of flagship 3D printer.

And it’s a larger desktop 3D printer. It’s the largest of the ones that they offer. And so it ships in a fairly large box. It’s, it’s sort of the largest box that you can ship via ground shipping before you go to freight on a pallet. And so it ships via normal ground services. Well, when we started shipping those out from our warehouse, we were shipping them using u p s ground and the first five.

Consecutive shipments that went out. The first five printers all got damaged during transit, and I mean, badly damaged. Like they were, they were dropped and crushed in on a side, and it, we had to file claims three Ps and, and it took us, I don’t remember how long, a year and a half I think, to get reimbursed on all of those.

We quickly switched our, our shipping for those particular units over to FedEx ground and never had an issue. We’ve shipped hundreds of these things since then. So it was pretty amazing to us what a difference it was in terms of how carefully, uh, some of these different shipping carriers handle the larger packages.

Um, other things u p s does fine with, but this particular larger, heavier package they, they did not do well with. So that was a lesson learned. Um, but there have been a lot of other things when you’re, you know, the first thing that you think about when you’re in an e-commerce business like us. , is this product something that we are going to have to stock in our warehouse or is it something that you can drop ship?

Um, because there are benefits and drawbacks of both? So we do a little bit of both. We have some products that we stock in our warehouse and we ship to our customers. Um, uh, as sales come in, there are other products that we drop ship directly through our partners and we just send them the order and they ship it out.

And, um, you know, the benefit of drop shipping is you don’t have to stock anything. You don’t have those upfront costs and there’s additional costs for stocking things in your warehouse. You know, we pay storage fees, we pay the pick and pack fees whenever they have to send out an order. Um, you know, so there’s, there’s other costs of, of doing that.

But on the other hand, um, usually. And it, it depends. It varies from one partner to another, from one manufacturer to the next. But a lot of times if they offer both options, they’ll give you better margins if you’re willing to stock it in your warehouse compared to drop shipping. So if you bring it into your warehouse, you can make a little bit more margin that way.

Um, so that’s the benefit of, of having something in your warehouse. The, the benefit of drop shipping, um, like I said, you don’t have that upfront investment. You can just have them shipped on demand. Uh, the downside of that that we found though is. . Often if, if a particular manufacturer offers drop shipping, they often tend to want as many resellers as they can find.

And because it’s so easy to drop ship, you often find that there’s a lot of competition. You know, so if there’s one product, I’ll give you an example. You know, MakerBot, which is another product that we offer, but. , it can be drop shipped and they open it up to just about anybody that wants to sell them.

And so there’s a lot of other people out there that sell them. And as a result, we don’t sell nearly as much of that as we do the other products that not everybody offers. Mm-hmm. So you gotta think about that and think about what’s best. Uh, is it, do we want to drop ship this, what we’ve found over the years as a certain, not, not necessarily a formula, cuz it’s not always the same.

Usually what we find works best is we, we try to evaluate products carefully. We try to test them and make sure it’s really a good product that we wanna offer, and we try to really get to know the manufacturer, make sure it feels like it’s gonna be a good partnership. But if we wanna move forward, ideally we try to start with drop shipping, because what that does is it lets us just get going with it quickly and easily.

No upfront investment. We put it up on our. We start selling it, and that gives us some time to see what the demand is and we start to see how many orders we have on a monthly basis. And it usually starts slow with a new product. Cause you have to build awareness of that product and you have to build demand, which takes time.

So it usually starts slow, but after a few months you start to see a pattern and you start to see. What the demand is and how many you’re selling per month. And now you know how many you’re going to sell next month, cuz it, it’s pretty repeatable. Hmm. And at that point, we then go back and start looking at, at buying inventory and bring it into our warehouse because then maybe we can get better margins and we have less risk at that point because now we, we know that, you know, we’re gonna sell them.

It’s not taking so much of a chance. So that’s what we like to do, is we like to start with drop shipping and then move over to stocking. Once we know what our monthly sales are like. . So 

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: to me it seems like, I mean, there there are, there are competitors in the marketplace that you’re competing with. So this is not completely a unique product out there.

Uh, that’s right. So your, is your value proposition really the education part of it? What, what you can, or, or how seamlessly you can enable an individual or an organization to start using those products. How do you describe your what, what your value Pro. 

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: Yeah. Yeah, I think, I think it’s a few things. Um, number one, we, I think are very easy to work with.

We’ve, uh, gone out of our way to keep things, uh, very easy from a process standpoint. So when an organization wants to work with us, we don’t make them mess around with credit applications and all that. We make it very easy to get them set up and get on net 30 terms and send us their purchase orders and we’ll get the orders entered for them.

We just we’re very. Uh, we’ll, we’ll make it very easy for the purchasers and, and our customers like that. Um, another thing is our support and that consultative approach that I talked about. We are always here. When you call, you can always talk to a person. You know, you’re not going to be talking to some overseas help desk team.

You’re, you’re talking to us, you know, you’re usually talking to one of the owners. And you’re talking to people that are using these machines on a day-to-day basis, extensively, we’ve run into whatever issues you might have run into already, and we can help you to, to work through them. Um, we’re very, very familiar with these, these technologies.

So I think that experience of how we work with our customers, both before the sale and then after the sale. Is a big, big part of why our customers like working with us. We, we really focus on personal attention and, and sort of direct human contact as much as we can. 

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Definitely. So, um, as, as entrepreneur, as a business owner yourself, like, how do you, what do you as the future for this?

Like of course you probably want to get the name, um, you know, the whole idea of 3D printing. Well known, uh, not just in North America, but all over the world. But how do you see your business growing or your idea, um, growing in the future? 

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: Sure. Well, I’m happy to say that my primary mission and goals really remain the same as when I started the business, and that is to just help, uh, share these very powerful technologies with as many people as I can.

And along the way, of course, you know, make sure that we’re keeping food on the table, which, which we’ve had no problem doing so far. So essentially our plan is more of the same, but not too quickly. We don’t want to grow as fast as we can. I am not in any way trying to build the next multi-billion dollar company.

I don’t even want anything like that. That’s not the kind of life, uh, lifestyle that I want. Um, you know, I don’t want a business that’s going to consume every moment of my day. I built this company in a way that would allow for a very good work-life balance so that I could continue to spend time with my family.

I don’t want this business to take over. And so we have been very happy to see that we have. Continual growth year over year, but slow and steady growth, not ridiculous, crazy growth. And I want to keep it that way. I want to keep slow, steady growth. I want to keep adding to our product portfolio because there are so many wonderful products out there.

You just need more time to keep testing them and, and find the best ones to bring, uh, to our, our product portfolio and, um, continue to reach out to more and more people that we can help. , definitely. 

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, I always ask this, this question, and I know you, you mentioned one, uh, failure or mistake around, you know, um, your machine is getting broken, but are there, you know, since you’ve started this business, was there any big mistake or lessons learned or failure that, that, that you learned from, uh, from and, uh, other entrepreneurs can, can learn from your, uh, experience?

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: Uh, well, uh, so many of them, I’m sure after 10 years of this, um, thinking of, uh, one or two to, to highlight is always the challenge on the spot. But, um, I, I think of a lot of little ones. Um, one that comes to mind is, is really being careful about the partnerships that you get into. Um, don’t just get into a partnership because they’re willing to do business with you.

Make sure. There are, that there are shared values, that the partnership is mutually beneficial, that both sides of the partnership are prepared to work at making the partnership be successful and invest time and energy into it. Um, because those are the ones that will really work, um, and, and grow and help you grow the business.

Um, align yourself with worthy causes. I, you know, the fact that we have aligned ourself with the Enable volunteer community has actually worked, uh, to our benefit, you know, companies and organizations and individuals like working with companies that are doing good things. And so when we tell companies about the kind of work that we do with Enable and the kind of, uh, teaching work that we do, and, um, other kinds of, of charitable work that we’ve done, they, they.

Uh, to, to use that as a reason to do business with us instead of, you know, maybe two or three other companies that can offer them the same product at the same price, but they don’t have that particular aspect, uh, to their, to their organization. Um, what else? What else? Um, less. 

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: That’s good. That’s good.

There are some that come to. That’s awesome. So now I’m going to move on to our rapid fire segment. And in this segment I’m gonna ask you a few questions. Um, uh, and you have to answer them in one or one or two words, or a sentence or so. Oh wow. So the first one is, uh, one book recommendation for entrepreneurs or business professionals.

Um, and why? 

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: Oh gosh. I know I’m supposed to give a book recommendation that’s some kind of a business book or something. Technology or 3D printing. But honestly, I don’t do a lot of that kind of reading. Okay. This is gonna be a very weird answer, but I, I’m gonna, I’m gonna go ahead and say the bug VAD Gita is, is a personal favorite.

Okay. I know it’s, Considered a religious piece, but I have found it to be an immensely, uh, inspirational and, um, and helpful guide in my personal life and my work. And so it’s been a personal favor of mine. Cool. Cool. 

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, yeah. a good one. I, I don’t necessarily, I look at it as a work of philosophy rather than 

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: I would agree.

I would agree more, more than that. Yes. 

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, an innovative product or idea in the current e-commerce retail or tech landscape that you feel excited. 

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: Uh, new products. Did you say 

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: any new product or idea in e-commerce 

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: retailer tech? . Well, so here I will focus on the 3D printing side of things that we’ve been talking about.

We’re very excited about the 3D printing of houses that’s starting to happen. Architectural 3D printing, the way they’re starting to actually 3D print full scale houses. I, we think that’s very exciting and we think. There’s gonna be a lot more of that. My wife comes from Romania, that’s where she grew up, which has a lot of impoverished areas, uh, that, that have problems with housing.

And so she’s also very excited to see what’s happening there. 

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: and the on the difference there is that you just need a much bigger 3D printer 

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: or much bigger printer and you’re printing with different materials. You’re usually using, uh, some kind of cement or something like that. Yeah. Wow. 

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Uh, a business or productivity tool or software that you would recommend or a 

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: productivity tip?

Okay. Um, there are quite a few of them, but one that I use every single day is called work. W O r k f l o w y.com. It’s a, uh, an outline and collaboration tool. Very easy tool for taking notes in an outline format, sharing those with your team, doing collaborative note taking and that kind of thing. I use it to keep track of all my notes, all of my to-do items and everything like that.

So, is, is 

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: it kind of like, uh, Evernote 

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: or very much like Evernote, except that it’s entirely cloud-based. It’s all in your browser and they have mobile apps for. And, uh, it’s completely free of charge. They have paid plans available, but we use the free version, which is fully functional. So we found it to be a great tool.

Another 

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: startup or business, um, in e-commerce, retail or tech that you think is currently doing great. 

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: Uh, another startup, another startup, um, or, or business. Okay. Um, You know, I’ll, I’ll highlight one of my, uh, customers, re re suspension. Uh, they’re in the automotive industry in the, in the motor sports industry, re suspension.com.

And they, um, they, they make, uh, suspension solutions for those that are into motor sports racing, both professional and, um, non-professional. But I mentioned them because they’re one of those that have really embraced 3D printing, and they’ve brought in a number of 3D printers and they’ve found ways of using it to both p.

Parts that might be produced differently later, but they’re also 3D printing end use parts that they sell to their customers, like little piston trays and things like that, that they found they can actually 3D print for themselves and ship ’em right out to their customers who, who value them as a, as a tool in their workshop.

So they’re, they’re using ’em for all kinds of interesting things. Awesome. Yeah. 

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: A peer entrepreneur or a business person whom you look up to or someone who inspire. 

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: Uh, I would say my, uh, my partner and co-founder with Enable, uh, John Shill. He’s been a fantastic, uh, guy to work with. He was, uh, one of the ones that helped to start the Enable Volunteer community with me.

And while he has still a very active part of the Enable community, 10 years later, he has also gone on to start another nonprofit, um, which I believe he’s calling the Eco Restoration Alliance. Which is focused on solving some of the very big challenges we have on a global scale for climate and looking at what we can do to sort of crowdsource, uh, solutions, uh, for that.

And it’s a very exciting initiative he’s working on there. So he’s been a man that’s always inspired me. He’s, he’s always had very big ideas and is always looking to do things that can help make the world a better place and, and help people. . 

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Final question. Best business advice you ever received or you would give to other entrepreneurs?

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: Best business advice. Um, I’d say there’s, there’s two things that I’d have to, uh, say. Two things that have helped me the most. One is the importance of commitments in business. Um, you know, everything is, is like a supply chain of commitments. Each person commits to the next person in the supply chain, and if any, anyone of those person fails to follow through on their commitment.

Things break down. So the importance of following through on commitments is, is really critical. And the other thing that I think was really important is, is learning from a management point of view. The importance of, of praising somebody in public, but always criticizing in private. You don’t criticize people in front of others.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: That’s, that’s, that’s great advice. Um, well, Jeremy, those were all the questions that I had. Thank you so much again for sharing your, um, your passion for 3D printing and your business, uh, advice and, uh, you know, some of your lessons learned. So, yeah, thank you again. Uh, if somebody wants to, watching this video, wants to get in touch or, you know, check out your products, what is the best way to, uh, to do.

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: Yeah. Thank you again for having Meha Hanton. They can email us info 3d universe.org or they can visit our website, shop 3d universe.com. 

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. Thank you again, Jeremy, for joining Trip and appreciate 

Jeremy Simon of 3DUniverse: Thanks so much. Bye everyone. Thank 

you.