MakerBot’s next job: print a new CEO

CEO Bre Pettis took off after pocketing millions, and then his replacement, Jenny Lawton, also bailed. And now, after failing to make the company relevant again by diversifying it into education and enterprise, CEO Jonathan Jaglom, installed by his dad, Stratasys’s chairman of the board, has called it quits.

A quick recap of the Makerbot leadership rollercoaster from Fast Company.  For some more context, check out our meeting with Jonathan Jaglom from summer 2015, and our take on the reorganization that began later that fall.

However, a brighter development from Makerbot’s turbulent 2015 has been Voodoo Manufacturing, who just raised $1.4 million from Y Combinator and KPCB Edge.

“Voodoo is the only high-volume 3D printing provider that we know of. Instead of focusing on low volumes of high-value parts like prototypes or jet-engine components, we are making ‘everyday’ plastic parts,” said Friefeld. “We use a 160 printer cluster of regular desktop 3D printers and control them with software that we write in-house to produce parts. By number, this is the largest cluster of printers in US, possibly the world, and they are all co-located so that we can ensure the best prices with top quality and consistency for our customers.”

The product is based on work the team did at Makerbot on the idea of Botfarms. The company let the trio spin out a bigger Botfarm solution and they’ve been independent since May 2015.