Originally Posted by
Jason Hilton
I've been thinking about similar circumstances to the Glowforge in the product world and the best example I have come up with is Red Camera. Red published incredible claims about their Red One camera and the response had a similar dichotomy: People either were floored and believed they could deliver (and pre-ordered) or they were like most of the folks on this forum and aggressively shared their doubts and misgiving with reasons both real and invented. Red struggles to this day to hit their shipping goals (usually because they can't manufacture fast enough to meet demand), but their products are almost universally considered to be the best cameras available and shoot tens of thousands of projects every year (including a large percentage of the big blockbuster films I'm sure you've all seen). Red has other manufactures struggling to keep up with their innovations, even 10 years after their first camera was introduced. They have an active user and staff community that provides direct access to the people using their cameras, and they've been able to create features and functionality directly with participation from the community, often significantly improving their final product.
I compare Glowforge to Red because, thus far, they've followed much the same pattern. They're responsive to questions and feature requests, they're carefully beta testing their hardware AND software, and they've got a pre-order significantly higher than they'd anticipated. If they deliver the usability they've been showing in screenshots they'll be significantly farther along than other manufacturers in terms of ease of use and ease of onboarding. If they have a good roadmap of products they'll almost certainly move into larger, faster laser hardware in the future. The founder and the team have a good past track record of success in different businesses (just like the founder of Red, who made his fortune founding Oakley) and a passion for the new business they're in. Glowforge has a passionate and active community. And based on their openness and communication with their customer-base, and their commitment to quality over delivery dates (a key metric for product success) they've got a great chance of following Red's model to continuation and becoming a big player in the laser market.
Could they fail? Sure, but the odds are very much in their favor to succeed, and if they do, like Red did with cameras, they will shake up the market to the point where the current big players will be struggling to keep up.