Carving out their niche
Alumni business partners find Kickstarter enthusiasm for their creation — a programmable desktop 3-D router with a consumer-friendly a price tag.
UC Santa Cruz student Bar Smith just wanted to solve a problem: How could an electrical engineering major like him turn ideas into prototypes when the equipment he needed to do so was out of financial reach?
Two years later, the shaggy-haired College Ten graduate and his business partner, Tom Beckett (Kresge ’13, history, minor technology and information management), not only came up with a solution but now find themselves entrepreneurs. After a successful Kickstarter campaign netted them more than $80,000, the two are marketing a programmable desktop 3-D router that carries a price tag within reach of the masses.