I was so happy to see the Instructables announcement — they are being acquired by Autodesk — and Eric and Christy and the team couldn’t be more deserving entrepreneurs. Anyone who knows Eric and Christy know that they *are* Instructables — ever-curious inventors and unstoppable makers, and that they build a flourishing community around Instructables over the past 5 years, since their inception in 2006. On Twitter, people were joking about how we found ourselves in The Big Make and that we’d all be talking about how, as Anil said, “the scene used to be indie, man” and yes, this is a sign that DIY is growing up.
MakerBot, O’Reilly’s Maker Magazine, Craft Magazine and Maker Faire, Etsy, Kickstarter, Inventables, Tinkercad — these are companies built by passionate members of a thriving community, and I am so happy to see it coming together, and some of its most notable practitioners having a good outcome for their work.
Instructables was also built for a relatively small amount of money — they didn’t raise a lot, and built a real business with premium accounts and advertising, which also shows that seed funding can be the right way to go to get a company off the ground, and subsequent financings may not be needed in some cases.
Congratulations Eric and Christy!
Caterina.net 