“THAT’S A HELL OF A COMPELLING STORY!”
Bob Noftle and his quest to bring the In3D marketplace to engineers worldwide
November 28th, 2009 — Would you like to harness the wind to run your farm? Or your manufacturing plant?
Want to buy a 3D object over the web, design, and go? Now you can with two new entrepreneurs extraordinaire.
In3D is an online marketplace connecting design engineers with suppliers of component products. With In3D, anyone can publish rich 3D content that engineers can dynamically add into their designs, just like that. So what’s the impact? Today, if you’re designing a new product and looking for a particular part, you need to either parse through paper catalogues as big as phone books, or go from vendor to vendor trolling for just the thing to complete your design. Once you find it, there’s a good chance that it’s missing critical technical information you need in your spec. Enter In3D and Bob Noftle.
With In3D, engineers can shop for 3D objects and components complete with full technical information, grab the object and drag it into their CAD program and poof, it’s done! Like a backpacker jetting to Europe, passport in hand, 3D objects drag-n-drop from the marketplace to a CAD program with their technical specs in tote. The designer can complete their design, test it, and order the components (or about a zillion of them) from the supplier on-line because In3D sends you to the folks who make the stuff. As you can imagine, the brilliance of In3D is the fact that they serve as an aggregator of 3D components making 3D shopping fast and efficient. To the tune of $ 1.3 trillion in e-commerce spending from manufacturers alone; sir, would you like those gift wrapped?
The secret sauce for In3D is the ability to remove the “walled gardens” of the CAD world allowing file sharing between disparate systems. In3D Contextual Filtering™ uses the best search engine I know, Google, to find objects in their marketplace. With over 3 million engineers and designers in existing on-line marketplaces today, In3D is the first to aggregate, provide any-to-any CAD file sharing, and include drag-n-drop with complete specifications 3D components.
Bob Noftle, Founder and CEO, knows the industry like the back of his hand. He’s a former SolidWorks executive, engineer and entrepreneur with over 30 years in the business. (This is his third company; the last one was bought by SolidWorks!) Bob has assembled the dream team on his advisory board including the brass fromSpaceClaim, Ascentage Group, Anark, TraceParts, Aries Corp, and a few former SolidWorks types.
Our esteemed panel consisted of David Quigley, chief operating officer, East Coast CAD/CAM, Rich Moore, vice president of business development, SpaceClaim, andTim Powers, vice president of engineering, Wall Industries.
What a dream team of panelists! David Quigley pointed out that In3D is a, “hell of a compelling story”. Particularly with the ability for any-to-any CAD file sharing, like a .pdf file where anyone can view it but in a revolutionary way, drop it into a design with all of its intelligence and attributes, and continue designing in, pick your poison, CAD system. He also said In3D is great idea and that Noftle is the right person to do it with 30 years in the business, Noftle is truly an expert. His advice was to focus more on building a community for his marketplace to gain momentum. The 3 million users out today need to know you exist and jump in.
Rich Moore warned that “the big guys are going to come down hard” when they hear about your secret sauce, the any-to-any CAD IP. His advice was to protect it. Rich’s astute gotchas were: ability to attract end-users to buy, need for more investment than requested, and building the marketplace. He strongly seconded David’s score with, “If you’ve figured out how to get around different CAD systems, that’s big!”.
Tim Powers delivered the engineering and customer perspective about selling 3D designs, In3D’s ability to get designs to market, and the sales leads to follow. He added that the In3D pricing for content creation was a great value to engineering departments like his. The most powerful comment was that the In3D concept overall would have the network effect like explosively successful SaaS communities likeSalesForce.com. Go get ‘um Bob!
Our next presentation was from our pal Dimitri Cherny, blew us away (forgive the pun) with Highest Wind. Check this out, Highest Wind deploys a 10’ x 30’ kite called the energy glider tethered to a 30’ aerie or base. When the wind picks up, the energy glider flies upwards of 1,200’ into the sky. The energy glider communicates via RF to the power trailer below containing a capstan, motor reel, and flywheel connected to a generator converting wind to up to 100,000 kWh of usable energy directly to the grid. What’s more, it’s a portable unit on a trailer that can be hooked to a pick-up truck, assembled on site, deployed, or moved. A few other factoids: these units can be up and running in a few hours, generates 30 kWh in only 7 knot winds where traditional wind turbines require 17 knots. Where farmers use $ 34,000 per year of electric power for a 300 cow farm, highest wind would deliver a 5 year pay back. The target market is rural areas and farmers are idea candidates. Why not harness the wind, and help farmers too?
The esteemed panel included Dr. David Olinger, Associate Professor, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Partner, Energy Practice Leader, and Harvard Law School graduate, Attorney Curt Whittaker of Rath, Rath Young & Pignatelli, and Jack Clarke, Chairman, Homeland Renewable Energy.
Dr. David Olinger legitimized the fact that wind energy has been studied in-depth at technical universities and that he felt that Highest Wind’s IP is in the control system. His concerns were lightning strikes and the energy glider’s response to abrupt changes in wind direction, and Ekman spirals, if you will.
Attorney Curt Whittaker recommended that liability and warranty are two key areas to make sure to have your tail feathers covered on since the energy glider could glide into something or somebody, heaven forbid. Curt brilliantly recommended that Dimitri use a fleet vehicle business model to sell lots of units and attract large Wall Street-type investors. This would enable aggregation of tax credits, energy credits, and liability insurance. Or, aggregate the energy and sell it at a discount. Rural electric co-ops, now that’s something a farmer can get his head wrapped around. I buy my hay, feed, and power at the co-op. Think and sell beyond individual farmers, farm-by-farm. Go fleet, baby! Become the Hertz of distributed wind. Now that’s brilliant!
Jack Clarke, who also owns a farm, by the way, was encouraging in stating that wind energy has a role, takes time, and will mature. Highest Wind can help. He noted that investors tend to mimic the behavior of lemmings, running off a cliff en masse, after a hot tip rather than digging into innovative approaches to this huge issue, alternative energy. His sage advice was to partner with a university, take advantage of grants, and continue to improve the research and extend the state-of-the-art in portable wind energy devices. He was equally intrigued and offered his farm as a beta site. Watch out for the cows, please.
Just remember, Ben Franklin became famous with a simple kite and key in a lightning storm. All roads lead back to the high flying kite. Dimitri, you’re on to something big!
Keep flying high everybody and we’ll see you at the next Entrepreneur Forum on February 3rd!
Media Contact:
Catherine Blake
Sales Protocol International
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