Eric Paley, Managing Director of Founder Collective, a seed-stage venture capital firm, comments on what makes entrepreneur Bre Pettis and his 3D printing company, MakerBot, so special.

Eric Paley:  Somebody told me to go see Bre Pettis.  I had been in 3-D printing before and we had bought $750,000 machines.  And I've heard about MakerBot and they were making low cost a couple thousand-dollar type machines and I didn't really believe it was possible.  I went to see the Bot Cave thinking that they basically have something that wasn't interesting or usable or have any value whatsoever.  And then he showed me a MakerBot and it was early and it was hard to put together and it had limitations, but I could see for the first time that anyone could make anything.  That vision, that possibility was real.  You couldn't do anything with that device yet but it was the beginning of something incredibly powerful and I was blown away when I saw that.