Product development startup

This is slightly off topic, but I hope some of you might be able to help.

There is some amazing work on the RepRap scene, both in design and fabrication of printable objects and in the printers themselves.

I am in the (very) early stages of a startup, with the aim to create a service that helps people fund and create innovative new products. So I'm looking to chat with people who've developed their own hardware or end products, or who would like to but haven't yet.I am particularly interested in startup and independent product development that has been enabled by highly available design tools, low volume fabrication and crowd funding.

It can be at any scale - from a few handmade items to experiment with, to selling a full commercial product.

If you'd be willing to answer a few dumb questions, could you drop me a message?

Thanks for the few responses I've got so far.

It'd be good to hear from a few more people who've gone into making parts or even complete printers, as well as those of you who've used a RepRap to help build a completely different product. There seem to have been a few interesting failures as well as entirely new printers developed around the core RepRap concept. That adds up to a lot of experience of what makes a project work well.

... I've tried to start a business with lasercutter/engravers around 1995 in Germany, but had no real success then, so changed my focus on consultant jobs for technology-transfer and such ...

Thinking about restarting with a similar setup capable of laser powder sintering and UV-curing for a great variety of printable materials (and methodes), but here in Germany this isn't so easy

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]