There’s something about Estonia. Maybe it’s the Skype phenomenon—the Estonian-born company (now part of Microsoft) certainly helped create a strong culture of engineering there. But the Baltic nation of 1.4 million seems to have a greater concentration of engineers and technical talent than almost anyplace else.
That’s probably an exaggeration, but at least one recent Boston-area company hails from there—GrabCAD, a nine-person startup that graduated from the TechStars Boston incubator program in June. If all goes well, the company, which splits its staff between Cambridge, MA, and Tallinn (the Estonian capital), will do its part to advance a traditional strength of the local tech scene. That would be computer-aided design, or CAD software, the means by which most technical components we take for granted are designed and built—and the basis of iconic companies like Parametric Technology (PTC), SolidWorks/Dassault Systèmes, and Autodesk.
GrabCAD has built an online community and marketplace that connects mechanical engineers with people and companies who need stuff built—everything from auto parts and motorcycles to custom furniture, toys, and mobile devices. The startup provides a Facebook-style feed where users can see other engineers coming online, uploading their designs, and looking for business. That also means the company is accumulating a large library of CAD models and tutorials that engineers and companies can use as a resource, says co-founder and CEO Hardi Meybaum.
Last week, GrabCAD unveiled a new dimension to its offerings. It is letting companies host their own design contests to take on specific engineering challenges, such as building a new ventilation system for a luxury yacht or designing a new kind of electrical “superbike.” Engineers upload their designs in response, and the companies choose the winners and award them cash prizes.
Meybaum, 29, and his co-founder Indrek Narusk—they went to Tallinn University of Technology together—started working on a product development company back in 2007. They got some customers, but they found running the business took too much of their creative time.
Around 2009, when GrabCAD started working on its current idea, the founders “didn’t meet anyone who said it’s going to work,” Meybaum says. People thought (and still think) the company would get besieged by orders for impossibly complex designs like rockets, for example. But in fact its first order
