Autopsy of a Failed 3D Printer Company – Riley Knox

Mar 7, 2024

Riley Knox, a mechanical engineer and co-founder of the failed 3D printing company Accelerate3D, shares candid insights from his entrepreneurial journey. He discusses the hurdles of scaling 3D printing technologies and the lessons learned from his company's collapse, including the importance of market validation and team dynamics. Riley also highlights the role of innovation incentives in tech development and his involvement with programs like Techstars. Currently, he’s gearing up for an exciting new aerospace venture, which he hints at but can’t reveal just yet!

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INSIGHT

Fill The Mid-Volume Manufacturing Gap

Accelerate3D targeted large, high-speed polymer 3D printing as a production service for hundreds-to-low-thousands runs.
Riley defined the goal as filling the costly gap between prototyping and injection-mold scale-ups.

INSIGHT

Timing Failed: Demand Lag, Not Tech

Riley said the tech existed but the demand side hadn't embraced 3D printing yet.
He described 2023 as a die-off year when many companies expected demand that never materialized.

INSIGHT

Small, Cheap Machines Beat Big Ones

Riley pointed to companies like Slant 3D that optimized cheap, networked desktop machines for mass production.
He warned that big general-purpose hardware risks being undercut by cheaper, specialized factories.

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Riley Knox is an entrepreneur that I met when I was hanging out in Austin, Texas, and I was just truly impressed with him, his energy, his outlook, his technical approach to building these companies that are hard. He had this company called Accelerate3D that he built to advance 3D printing for manufacturing, make it fast enough and cheap enough that it will be compelling, which has been one of the big challenges in 3D printing. Accelerate3D had some real trouble, unfortunately getting the support it needed to go all the way.

Riley was kind enough to sit down, open up and let me interrogate him about his company’s demise. And so this is kind of a post-mortem on Accelerate3D. It is going to be very useful to people who are interested in 3D printing, trying to advance 3D printing. You can learn from some of his experience what not to do. I think this is always very precious when entrepreneurs are willing to share their story. Especially the hard story. It’s not a tear jerker, but you’ll learn something from it and Riley is off doing the next thing, which we can’t tell you about yet, but I’m really excited about that too.

Riley also has been helping out with the Founder Institute program in Austin, Texas. He talks a little bit about that and Techstars and about how both of those helped him out as an entrepreneur as well. Hang out with us, learn something and don’t make the same mistakes twice.

Recorded in Austin, Texas on February 12, 2024 with Pablos and Riley Knox

Important Links

About Riley Knox

Riley describes himself as a “mechanical engineer by education, mad scientist inventor by practice., entrepreneur by heart,” building the future of on-demand production though local high speed 3D printing.

Knox was the CEO and Co-Founder of Accelerate3D. He´s currently the CEO of “Stealth mode aerospace startup”, bringing a much needed third option to transporting freight across oceans, offering a middle option with short travel times but at a fraction of the cost and CO2 emissions of air freight.

Also, he is a Director at Founder Institute in Austin. He attended Texas Tech University.

Recorded on February 12, 2024

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