In June 1999, Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins invested $ 25 million in a fledgling company developing a new search engine called Google, paving the way for a revolution in organizing and sharing knowledge online.
Now Sequoia Capital is making another bet on a different kind of search engine, one for physical three-dimensional objects, just as the introduction of three-dimensional sensing technologies on consumer phones is poised to create a revolution in space computing.
At least, that’s the bet Shaun Maguire of Sequoia Capital is making on the start-up * Physna from Columbus, Ohio.
Maguire and Sequoia lead a $ 20 million stake in the company with Drive Capital, the Columbus, Ohio-based venture capital firm founded by two former Sequoia partners, Mark Kvamme and Chris Olsen.
“There was this open problem in math, it’s how to do three-dimensional research. How do you define a metric that gives you other similar three-dimensional objects? It has a long history in mathematics, ”said Maguire. “When I met [Physna founder] Paul Powers, had already developed an extremely new distance metric to compare different three-dimensional objects. If you have a distance metric, you can find other distant objects. Your underlying thinking is incredibly creative. If I were to put it in the language of modern mathematics… it just involves a lot of really advanced ideas that work too.
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The idea of Powers and the technology of Physna were slow in coming.
A lawyer by training and an entrepreneur at heart, Powers tackled the problem of three-dimensional research through his former position as an intellectual property lawyer.
Powers chose intellectual property law because he believed it was the most interesting way to operate at the intersection of technology and law, and that it would provide a good foundation for any business that the serial entrepreneur will then launch. While practicing, Powers ran into a big problem, while some intellectual property thefts related to software and services were easy to spot, it was more difficult to identify when real products or parts were being stolen as trade secrets. “We could still find the IP theft in 2D,” Powers said, but detecting the IP theft in three dimensions was difficult.
From its launch in 2015 to 2019, Powers worked with co-founder and CTO Glenn Warner Jr. on product development, which was originally intended to protect product designs from theft. Tragically, as the company prepared to reveal its transformation into the three-dimensional search engine it had become, Warner passed away.
Powers moved on, rebuilding the company and its leadership team with the help of Dennis DeMeyere, who joined the company in 2020 after a stint in the Google office of the CTO and CTO of Google Cloud.
“When I moved, I got on a plane with two checked bags and moved to a hotel, until I could rent a fully furnished house,” DeMeyere. he told Protocol last year.
Other heavyweights were also drawn to the Cincinnati-based company thanks in large part to the Silicon Valley connections of Olsen and Kvamme. Among them is GitHub CTO Jason Warner, who sits on the company’s board of directors alongside Drive Capital co-founder Kvamme, who serves as its chairman.
At Physna, Kvamme, Maguire, and Warner, they see a combination of GitHub and Google, especially after the launch of the company’s mainstream site, Thangs, last year.
This site allows users to search for three-dimensional objects by using a description or by uploading a model or image. As Protocol’s Mike Murphy pointed out, it’s a lot like Thingiverse, Yeggi, or other sites used by 3D printing fans. What the site can also do is show users the collaborative history of each model and the components of the model, if they are different objects.
Hence the combination of GitHub and Google. And users can set up profiles to store their own models or collaborate and comment on public models.
What caught Maguire’s attention to the company was the way users turned to the free site. “There were tens of thousands of people using it every day,” he said. It’s a replica of how many successful businesses are trying a hybrid professional or freemium consumer approach to selling products. “They have a free version and people use it all the time and love it. It’s a foundation they can build on, ”Maguire said.
And Maguire believes the wave of space computing will come sooner than anyone imagines. “The new iPhone has LIDAR … It’s the first consumer device to come with a 3D scanner with LIDAR and I think 3D is about to explode.”
Over time, Physna could become a hub of technology where users can scan three-dimensional objects on their phones and have a representative model for reproduction, either as a virtual object or as something that can be converted to file for 3D printing.
Right now, hundreds of companies have approached the company with different requests on how to apply their technology, according to Powers.
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Typical contracts for company software range from $ 25,000 to $ 50,000 for business customers, but the software that powers the Physna product is more than just an application, according to Powers.
“We are not just a product. We are core technology, ”said Powers. “There is a gap between the physical and the digital.”
For Sequoia and Drive Capital, Physna software is the technology to fill this gap.