Ficta3D

This photo is only 3 days of resin printing waste. And honestly? Waste management is becoming a bigger bottleneck than printing itself. Most people see the “cool part” of additive manufacturing: the printer, the final object, the speed, the precision. Very few see what happens around it. These are only cured supports and failed drafts. Probably the easiest waste to handle: we wash them, UV cure them, remove toxicity, and dispose of them as non-recyclable waste. But this is just the visible part. Real resin manufacturing also generates: - contaminated liquids, - dirty solvents, - gloves, - masks, - filters, - paper towels, - cleaning materials, - chemical residues. The dirty secret of resin 3D printing is that scaling production often means scaling chemical waste too. And honestly, I think this problem is massively underestimated by the industry. That’s one of the core reasons behind Ficta O. Not just faster printing. Less waste by design. We engineered the system to: - reduce supports up to 90%, - reduce liquid consumption by ~60%, - eliminate most disposable consumables entirely, - operate as a closed-loop workflow. Because the future of additive manufacturing cannot depend on scaling toxic manual processes forever. At some point, manufacturing has to become operationally sustainable too. #3DPrinting #AdditiveManufacturing #ResinPrinting #Hardware #DeepTech #Manufacturing #Sustainability #WasteManagement #Ficta3D

14 months ago, Ficta3D started in a garage in Poland. Since then: – 3 different labs (including an 11 sqm basement) – today: a real 80 sqm lab – 5,000+ models printed – €15K+ generated – +30% MoM growth – 200+ customers – shipped to 20+ countries (including Japan, UAE, Canada, the US, and across all Europe) Not bad for something that was supposed to be just a hobby / side project… something I hoped would maybe allow me to leave my main job after a few months. It actually took three. But here’s what I’m most proud of. Not the numbers. Not the growth. The fact that I didn’t ignore the problem that was slowly killing the business - and limiting the entire industry. Because while all this was happening, the OPEX was brutal. Nights in the lab. Toxic fumes. Contaminated waste. A technology with massive potential - but not designed to scale the way it should. Some investors pointed it out early: “OPEX. Scalability. Defensibility.” They were right. So instead of defending it, I took it head on. What started as a service is becoming something much bigger. Not just a better way to print - but a new way to think about resin 3D printing entirely. And for the first time, I’m not alone anymore. Over the past months, I’ve been working with professionals and engineers to turn this into something real - a system designed to scale, protect, and unlock this technology at a completely different level. Something validated not just by the market, but also by external innovation experts. We’re moving from service to hard-tech infrastructure. The service will stay. It’s our blue ocean. But what we’re building next will redefine how photoreactive polymers are used - and where they can exist. Places where today it’s simply not possible. Because of complexity. Because of toxicity. Because of OPEX. This is not an iteration. This is a shift. And for the first time, Ficta3D is becoming something bigger than Gerardo. Stay tuned. We’re going to reveal more about Ficta O in the coming weeks. #startup #founder #3dprinting #additivemanufacturing

Having to sleep in a van because we weren't able to get a £10k bank loan for Games Workshop when we founded the company in the 1970s seems a bit crazy now that it's worth £6 Billion! https://lnkd.in/edwUdXpH

LEGO just did something quite revolutionary. For the first time, the LEGO Group has introduced a mass-produced 3D-printed element into a retail set. Not a prototype. Not a concept. A product you can buy off the shelf. This matters far beyond toys! LEGO is one of the most precision-obsessed manufacturers in the world. If they are comfortable putting a 3D-printed part into millions of hands, it signals something important: Additive manufacturing has officially moved from “interesting” to “production-ready.” What stood out to me was not that LEGO used 3D printing, but why they used it. The geometry they wanted simply could not be achieved through injection moulding without compromise. Instead of forcing design to obey manufacturing, they changed the manufacturing method! That mindset shift is the real story. For years, 3D printing was boxed into prototyping. At CRAV3D, we see daily that its real power lies elsewhere: • Design freedom without tooling constraints • Faster iteration without waiting months for moulds • Small-batch and complex parts that make economic sense • Hybrid manufacturing where AM complements, not replaces, traditional methods This is also deeply relevant for India. As manufacturing here evolves under Make in India, additive manufacturing offers a shortcut. Not to cheap production, but to smarter production. Local. Agile. Design-led. LEGO’s move tells every manufacturer, designer, and founder one thing: The question is no longer “Can 3D printing scale?” The question is “Where should we use it intelligently?” This isn’t a gimmick. It’s a milestone. And it’s only the beginning...

We’re officially living in the era of the kidult. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence. Many Millennials grew up being told that what they loved was wrong. Games were a waste of time. Miniatures were “for kids”. Comics, RPGs, LEGO, anime, board games, pokemon, MtG? Grow up. A whole generation went through nerd-shaming during adolescence — hiding passions, downplaying hobbies, learning very early that curiosity and imagination weren’t “cool”. Fast-forward to today. Those same kids are adults with purchasing power, creative confidence, and — finally — permission to enjoy what they love. The kidult trend isn’t just nostalgia. It’s a quiet cultural correction. In a world where work is intense, always online, and emotionally demanding, play has become legitimate again. Not as escapism, but as expression. Not as regression, but as balance. Collecting, painting, building, gaming — these aren’t childish behaviors. They’re craft, community, storytelling, identity. And maybe this explosion of adult play is also a way of reclaiming something we were taught to suppress. Of saying: “This mattered to me then. It still matters now.” So I’m curious — and genuinely interested. How many of you collect? How many play? How many build, paint, or create something with your hands? And how many of you are finally doing it openly, without apologizing? Maybe growing up was never about giving things up. Maybe it was about choosing them freely. #Kidult #NerdCulture

Last night I was walking home from the lab with my eyes burning from alcohol fumes and sheer exhaustion. And I thought about how much a founder has to really believe—especially at 40—to go back to getting their hands dirty (literally) for a vision. For a dream. Another dream. Not the kind you pitch. The kind you build. Day after day. Print after print. Mistake after mistake. Being a solo founder isn’t romantic. It’s resilience in work boots. It’s execution before everything. Because talking is cheap. Building is not. Here’s the funny part: I was wrong about the roadmap. I thought we’d reach these numbers around February 2026. We got here in September 2025. And now I’m trying to control a traction curve that looks like it wants to do its own thing: I turned off all ads in July? We kept growing organically. I launched a new platform and basically reset SEO? Traffic still came. Growth continued. I didn’t ship the multilingual site for the MVP like planned? Orders still arrived from English-speaking countries. Reality didn’t follow the plan. It just followed the value. Yesterday we received the biggest order ever on Ficta3D: $300 in miniatures and bits. This month we’ve already crossed €2K in revenue and it’s not even over yet. That’s: 2x October 3x August 4x July I’m proud, grateful, and honestly a little stunned. Not because it’s huge money—yet. But because it’s proof. Proof that the market is pulling, not me pushing. And when traction starts pulling like this, you don’t need more hustle. You need a bigger engine. So now the next step is clear: I need a couple of #Angels. Not just to invest money, but to help me carry the weight of growth, to guide me, to help me choose the right path to sustain what’s happening—and really unleash what this traction can become. Still smelling like resin. Still tired. Still building. Execution first. Always. #startup #founder #execution

Just walked into Formnext - Where ideas take shape in Frankfurt. Zero planning, one last-minute flight from Kraków, and a full day packed into a few hours. That’s what building at this stage looks like: you produce all week, you ship orders at night, and when there’s a chance to learn, connect, or spot what’s coming next in the SLA world — you jump on a plane. Formnext is where the future of additive manufacturing gets real, and being here, even for a single day, is worth every hour we’ll make up tonight in the lab. If you’re around and want to talk resin printing, miniatures, or on-demand manufacturing at scale — I’m here. Let’s meet. #Ficta3D #Formnext #3DPrinting #SLAPrinting #AdditiveManufacturing #Miniatures

There are four equity journeys in startups. But only one of them explains why founders age 17 years in 18 months. “But Shuaaaannnnnnn why can’t I just raise $10M based on my idea for AI for hashbrowns?” Because you, my sweet summer child, must choose your path. And each path comes with its own special flavor of chaos. Let’s break down the 4 Startup Journeys with this chart from Stephane Nasser and OpenVC that has ruined more founder group chats than term sheets. Bootstrapping: The “I don’t need investors, I have grit and a dangerous level of optimism” route. This is where you: Fund everything yourself. Own 100 percent. Live on Lululemon returns and black coffee. Tell everyone you’re “lean” when you really mean “broke.” Most startups follow this path. Or at least many do after realizing no investor is going to take them seriously. Seedstrapping: This is where you raise one small round. Just one. $250K to $2M. The financial equivalent of a protein shake. This is the “I WILL NOT BECOME A VC PUPPET” model. You raise once, get to breakeven, and then spend ten years telling founders, “I don’t know why you give up so much equity, we didn’t need to.” This is also the moment every VC quietly puts you on mute. Bootscaling: This is the path for psychos. The ones who say, “We’ll bootstrap until PMF, THEN raise.” So what you’re really saying is: “I want to suffer alone until I find traction, then I want to suffer with investors once scaling gets expensive.” Congrats. You’ve unlocked the GitHub path. High pain tolerance, low bank account, massive exit potential. Classic VC Route:  The alphabet soup pathway. Pre-Seed → Seed →Seed Plus → Post-Seed → Almost-A → A → A2 → A2 Turbo Edition → B Your cap table becomes a modern art piece titled “Chaos.” You raise every 18 months like it’s a gym membership. You stop explaining what round you’re on. You just whisper, “We’re somewhere between letters and vibes.” Your board meetings begin to feel like quarterly performance reviews with a very disappointed family. So which path should you choose? The one where:   You keep your sanity You keep enough equity to matter and you don’t wake up one day realizing your startup owns you Every founder thinks they want the VC rocket ship. But the chart forgets the fifth journey: The “I saw my dilution and immediately needed therapy” route. Choose wisely. #startup #founders  #venturecapital

Last week I had a conversation with someone working in a VC fund. They said something simple, but brutally true: “Founders confuse building a startup with starting a traditional business. They’re not the same sport.” And it stayed in my head. Because when you look at it honestly, the difference is there: A traditional business is built on stability, predictable margins, repeatable operations, and a clear market you already understand. A startup is built in fog: – you don’t know the real market size – you don’t know if your model can scale – you don’t know if people will behave the way you expect – and you learn everything by crashing into walls at full speed A business optimises what exists. A startup searches for what doesn’t exist yet. One isn’t better than the other — they simply serve different personalities, different appetites for uncertainty, and different definitions of success. In the last months with Ficta3D, I’ve realised how easy it is to mix the two. You think you’re “building a company”… then you wake up and realise you’re actually running experiments disguised as a company. And that’s okay. As long as you’re honest about which game you’re playing. So here’s my takeaway from that conversation: Startups aren’t companies — they are hypotheses. Companies come later, if the hypothesis survives. Curious to hear other perspectives: How do you draw the line between a startup and a business? #startup #vc #business