Radiant Fabrication

A startup chapter centered on commercializing a child-friendly 3D printing platform and learning every job a small company can throw at one person.

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What happened

Build story

Radiant Fabrication was my startup education in the most practical sense possible. It did not make me independently wealthy, but it taught me an enormous amount about building a company, developing a product, and managing the endless list of responsibilities that appear when a team is small.

I co-founded the company with colleagues from the Morgridge Institute for Research to commercialize a 3D printing platform for the K-12 market. The system combined a four-color 3D printer, a 3D scanner, and our own software so children could begin making objects quickly.

On the technical side, I handled much of the path generation, 3D scanning functionality, electronics prototyping, and machine experimentation. On the business side, I managed investor relations, fundraising, trade show exhibits, demonstrations, customer support, hiring, accounting, outreach, and whatever else needed doing that week.

That stretch made it very clear that I could wear a lot of hats, and also that there is a hard limit to how many hats one person should wear at the same time.

Why it mattered

Project notes

Helped secure roughly $500,000 in angel investment.
Worked across both deep technical development and day-to-day company operations.
Learned firsthand how product design, fundraising, support, and staffing all collide inside a startup.