Me3D
Bringing 3D printing into the everyday
$750k
Round Size
$420K
Raised to date
0
Days left
The Pitch
Bringing 3D printing into the everyday
Round Size
Wholesale
Offer Type
Ordinary Shares
Security Type
$8M (pre-money)
Valuation
11.1%
Equity Offered
Series A
Funding Round
$1m
Round Size
No
ESIC Eligible
Co-invest alongside prominent investors including:
With core technology development complete and the product currently in use by paying clients, Me3D will focus on customer acquisition and expansion into new markets and geographies in 2020 and beyond. The business forecasts show Me3D achieving an annual recurring revenue of $27.6m by end 2022, positioning the business for a sale to a larger solutions provider or buy-out by a private equity firm.
BuildBee is a cloud-based intelligence platform that connects millions of users, printers, designers and retailers, enabling distributed production. This network feeds the experience and learning of every user back into the settings of each print job to dramatically improve the quality of the final product, reduce failures and simplify the user experience.
The BuildBee Online account is the core of our product suite and is the interface between a user (e.g. consumer or student) and 3D printed output. BuildBee Online removes barriers to entry by significantly reducing the complexity of the decision making process to 3D print and by delivering intelligently determined presets to the users chosen job. It is delivered as a cloud based web app and is optimised for operation from almost any 3D printer. Using BuildBee Online, anyone can print securely to any 3D printer, anywhere in the world. This platform enables the mass marketing of 3D printing at the consumer level.
BuildBee Enterprise connects extensive user and printer networks with managed rights. It is designed specifically for schools, makerspaces, Universities, printing services and commercial fleets. BuildBee Enterprise empowers fleet managers to securely open up their hardware to on-site, off-site or even globally distributed user groups. BuildBee Enterprise also leverages the learning of the network to provide predictive intelligence to fleet managers to maximise the quantity and quality of their output and minimise service disruption. Additionally, BuildBee Enterprise has the capability to act as the transaction intermediary for print bureau services (think Officeworks with 2D AND 3D printing), creating another business model opportunity.
The BuildBee retail function will provide sales and marketing actions at key moments of engagement for users of the platform. Created for Manufacturers/Distributors, the retail function facilitates in-app purchases and deals for BuildBee users for recommended hardware upgrades, consumables and targeted services at the right time.
The BuildBee API will enable 3D printing securely from anywhere on the web. The initial market will be for Merchandisers/Designers and enables the web as a 3D printable marketplace. Building on our existing secure tools, the API powers the disruptive change of supply chains and retail purchases by embedding the 3D print process directly into the retail purchase.
The first core to competitive functionality of the BuildBee suite its the ability to allow those that create IP to protect their assets whilst allowing them to merchandise those assets. Anyone with a 3D printable model can produce it on a printer, anywhere in the world, for any end consumer without having to share or transfer the underlying file.
The second core is the ability to collectively learn about 3D models, 3D printers and print process decisions and apply that learning to each print across the entire user base. This means that BuildBee’s value grows through network multiplier effects, building up stickiness and defensibility against competitors.
The BuildBee business model is primarily a SaaS model across various segments and end uses. The following table outlines the key SaaS products and their features.
In 2021 almost 30 percent of the 3DP/AM software market will come from application-specific tools – tools designed specifically for anatomical models, surgical guides, some consumer products, and others items that are fabricated around a specific workflow pattern. The low-hanging fruit for this kind of software will be found in the dental, medical, prosthetics and design industries. Already the medical industry seems well positioned for expansion, with a wide variety of increasingly well-established applications to target.
At least three primary software development companies seem to be focusing closely on the development of new application-specific 3D printing software tools. These are 3D Systems (Listed with 29 acquisitions), Autodesk (Listed with 69 acquisitions), and Materialise (Listed and 5 acquisitions).
Consumer products will account for $107 million in software in the same year. In consumer products, the number of installed systems across a wide variety of industries will mean build processing software will generate the most revenue. As adoption of 3D printing increases in both manufacturing and widespread prototyping activity, print prep tools will be the next most important category of 3DP/AM software purchased. This is where Me3D’s BuildBee’s is well positioned.
Despite the current market being fairly clearly divided between design oriented 3D printing software and workflow oriented 3D printing software, there is increasing evidence of feature-creep that is continuing to drive elements of workflow into design and vice versa. Optimization software will be of high potential value in the future because it can enable design for additive manufacturing and thus increase the total attractiveness of additive production.
Our platform is, as much as possible, built on open source software. Where we have sensitive and proprietary innovations (ML algorithms for example), we choose to protect this IP by treating it as a trade secret. The primary reason for this choice of protection is that formal protections require disclosure and are very difficult by nature to defend. All of our employees have employment contracts including non-disclosure, non-compete and IP assignment clauses.
CEO
Leanne is a trained economist, with experience in business analysis, forecasting and business process improvement. She spent 4 year with KPMG in economic and business consulting and 3 years in the planning and process improvement project teams with Blusescope Steel.
CGO
Matt has 4 years experience with Thales Australia, 5 years with Faiveley Transport and is trained as a mechanical engineer with experience in product design and project management. Matt’s forte is in the product market fit.
CTO
Fletcher has 4 years experience with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science / Intelligent Polymer Research Institute at the University of Wollongong and 4 years in Mechatronic Engineering Consulting and is trained as a mechatronics engineer with extensive experience in 3D printing technology research.
Our Advisory team comprises venture specialists, seasoned entrepreneurs and field experts:
Investor Director
Alex has a Bachelor of EE and 10 years experience in Angel investing in Australia, the UK and US. In 2018 he co-founded of Venture Builders to support exceptional Australian founders through capital and strategic advice.
Investor
David has extensive experience as an entrepreneur in building companies from scratch in the multimedia and internet products and services sectors. He recently successfully brought his company Audinate to IPO as it’s COO. He is now an active Angel investor
Advisor
Gordon is an OAM recipient and highly respected scientist in the fields of intelligent polymers and advanced bio materials. In his role as the Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, he has direct experience in commercialisation of cutting edge research projects involving additive manufacturing.
Our key driving metric is recurring revenue. This has been the impetus to build a great product that fosters regular active use and very low churn. (which we are achieving amongst our customers to date). Through a series of delivery and security innovations we have built out the BuildBee platform such that the cost-to-serve our customers is very low, making the businesses highly scalable. We also benefit from the network effects of the machine learning so that as our user base builds, the gap in capability of the BuildBee platform compared to other software will only widen. This is why the focus for the next phase of the business is on acquiring new customers and servicing those customers well to foster regular activity to feed the machine learning engine.
Valuations in the SaaS sector tend to be strong, with recent US SaaS IPO’s (Docusign, Smartsheet, Z-Scaler and Zuora) trading at an average valuation of 16x revenue. Whilst this is generally considered high, the median SaaS multiple in the US since 2014 has ranged from 4.43x to 9.32x revenue.
If BuildBee reaches its forecast goal of annual recurring revenue of ~$27.6M by December 2022, and assuming acquisition multiples continue at these levels, the valuation of the business on exit could be between $122.27M (4.43x revenue) and $257.23M (9.32x revenue). At the current post-money valuation of $8,400,000, this could result in a return to investors in this round of between ~14.5x and 30.62x their investment.
The key details of the investment opportunity are as follows:
Investing in private companies is risky. Issuers using this facility include new or rapidly growing ventures. Investment in these types of ventures is speculative and carries high risks.You may lose your entire investment, and you should be in a position to bear this risk without undue hardship. Even if the company is successful, the value of your investment and any return on the investment could be reduced if the company issues more shares.
Your investment is unlikely to be liquid. This means you are unlikely to be able to sell your shares quickly or at all if you need the money or decide that this investment is not right for you. Even though you have remedies for misleading statements in the offer document or misconduct by the company, you may have difficulty recovering your money. There are rules for handling your money. However, if your money is handled inappropriately or the person operating this platform becomes insolvent, you may have difficulty recovering your money.
Ask questions, read all information given carefully, and seek independent financial advice before committing yourself to any investment.
