Why we made MakerOS free.
By Mike Moceri
About a month ago, my team and I made the MakerOS platform free. It was an easy decision once we stepped back, zoomed out, and realized what we were trying to accomplish as a company. Let me explain.
In addition to founding MakerOS, in my career I’ve also started and ran several product development studios in Chicago and Detroit, and I’ve been a mentor at the Stanley + Techstars Additive Manufacturing Accelerator where I closely worked with many manufacturing startups and their founders. Trust me when I say that being an entrepreneur is scary, especially in the engineering and manufacturing space when there are so many institutionalized companies in practically every vertical. How do you break through? How do you get noticed?
If you’re an entrepreneur, just as you would with any project, you put so much of yourself into a company with all of your conviction, hope, and spirit. There’s always a reason why you start something. Most of the time, it’s the sense of independence, accomplishment, purpose, and sometimes just for the joy of it.
For those of you who have been or are independent contractors, small business owners, or even established companies, you all have had scary feelings of failure, fears of running out of money, lack of time, and stress (lots of it).
Just in the United States alone, we discovered over 150,000 engineering firms, contract manufacturers, product design services, and job shops under 50 employees. That number doesn’t even count the thousands of the solo entrepreneurs out there who are in the most need of support. These companies are the engine of global innovation where products are designed, prototyped, and produced. But how can these businesses compete with large online platform aggregators with millions of dollars invested in customer portals, instant quoting algorithms, and custom ERP systems? There lies a huge moat that these small businesses must cross and decide to either adapt or die.
If you’re reading this, you very well may be a small fabrication business owner, or part of a small team running a fabrication business. MakerOS is for you. MakerOS exists for their adaptation and to make it easier, stress-free, and scalable. That way, the small guy or gal can get a leg up on the big guy, balancing the scales of industrial and engineering power.
Main street, small business owners, makers – MakerOS is for you. Our mission is to democratize product development. We believe that every maker should have access to the software tools and infrastructure to build and operate a successful fabrication or design business. We believe that access to those tools should not be cost-prohibitive. We want to democratize product development, and that’s why we made MakerOS free.
We want to give the power back to smaller businesses. By introducing a free option of our platform, we hope that it lowers that barrier to entry for any other aspiring fabrication or engineering service to grow. Any leg up that these businesses can get, we want to support that and give them that advantage. We want to make it easier for them to run their business, serve their clients, reduce their expenses, and increase their margins. We’ve been in their shoes before.
Learn more and start for free at makeros.com. There’s no credit card required to get started. Build your production business today.
About the Author, Mike Moceri
Mike Moceri has deep experience in manufacturing, design, and software. In 2013, he co-founded the world’s first 3D printing retail service bureau in Chicago. In 2014 he founded Manulith, a 3D printing, and product design agency, where his clientele included Fortune 500 companies within the aerospace, automotive, and medical industries. Mike is also a mentor at Stanley+Techstars Additive Manufacturing Accelerator, a mentor at WeWork Labs in NYC, and formerly a mentor at TechTown Detroit. He’s previously been featured on MSN, Make Magazine, NBC, and the Encyclopedia Britannica. D-Business Magazine called him the “Face of 3D printing.” Mike is currently the founder and CEO of MakerOS, an all-in-one business operating software for manufacturers, engineers, designers, and fabricators to facilitate modern product development.
