They are coming to Hartford from all over, from Israel and Ireland, Spain and Germany, India and Canada — from New York, Texas and California, too.
Dmytro Skomorokhov, 36, arrived two years ago from, of all places, Ukraine.
He liked it here right away. His family is in Connecticut now, and he is planning to expand his additive manufacturing business here. Kwambio 3D Printing — with a little help from its new friends at Stanley Black & Decker, the New Britain hardware manufacturer — is putting down roots in Connecticut.
On the eighth floor of 1 Constitution Plaza in Hartford, home to the Stanley+Techstars Additive Manufacturing Accelerator program, which helps budding businesses like his, Skomorokhov spreads out a diverse array of products that his firm manufactures, layer by layer, with its proprietary 3D ceramic printing processes.
Kwambio was one of 10 new businesses to graduate from the inaugural Stanley+Techstars accelerator program in 2018. This year will usher in a third class of 10 fledgling firms to undergo the 13-week mentoring regime in Hartford. Founded in Colorado in 2006, Techstars partners with manufacturers like Stanley to run these programs worldwide, at some 50 locations, to nurture (and often invest in) “early stage” companies like Kwambio, which was founded in 2015.
“We are not an incubator, meaning we are stage agnostic,” said Claudia Reuter, Techstars general manager for Americas East. “We take companies from wherever they are today and help get them to the next level. The goal is to improve the success rates of startups, taking them from a 10 to an 85 percent success rate.”
Skomorokhov’s pop-up exhibit includes a handsome green vase, a mold for casting an industrial part, and a multi-nozzle component purchased by Coca-Cola, which is testing it to see if ceramics prove superior to metal in its production process. One industrial ceramic part on display is used by a Stanley subsidiary for welding.
In addition to printing things on demand, Kwambio makes and sells compact 3-D printers so that customers like Stanley can make their own ceramic products. It has sold Stanley one $6,000 printer to date and hopes to sell it dozens more, including its larger $45,000 model, which is the size of two microwaves stacked one atop the other.
Among the benefits a 3-D printer proffers is making the manufacturing process more efficient. For example, rather than ordering a critical replacement part from a supplier and waiting weeks, or sometimes months for delivery, a manufacturer with an in-house 3D printer can turn a digital prototype into a finished part in days if not hours. Time is money, as they say.
Skomorokhov, one of three Ukrainians who own Kwambio and its vice president of business development, exudes positive energy. He is sold on Hartford and Connecticut, neither of which he had heard of two years ago. So is CALT Dynamics, an Irish company, another additive manufacturer from the same accelerator class as Kwambio. It is working on developing large-scale industrial 3D printers. “We’re coming to Hartford, having recently set up a subsidiary here,” said CEO Ross Lawless. “We plan to start hiring people this year.”
Helping smaller companies grow is not a strictly philanthropic endeavor for Stanley, which selects startups each year based on their expertise in areas that can assist it with its own business development. For example, Stanley has committed to making all of its plastic packaging either reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025, and it is looking for some outside expertise to accomplish that goal. So the class of 2019 included companies with a proficiency in sustainable packaging, such as Occo, a New York firm that, like Kwambio and CALT, plans to maintain a presence in Connecticut and a relationship with Stanley.
“Innovation is the new life blood of business — in a disruptive world we have to innovate to be current with our changing customers,” said Martin Guay, Stanley’s vice president of business development. “We have to disrupt ourselves to make sure we’re relevant; we’ve been around for 176 years, but we need to constantly evolve.”
As Stanley employees are mentoring the new firms, they also are evaluating them for future promise. Its venture wing has invested in four of the 10 young firms from the inaugural class of 2018, including Kwambio, which has received $10 million to date. Program mentors, some 100 all told, also come from other Connecticut companies and institutions such as Yale and UConn. As with mentoring, the funding of accelerator firms may come from other local manufacturers as well.
But business as usual isn’t the whole story: Old school civic responsibility and local patriotism are at play as well. “We are in Connecticut to stay, and we established the accelerator program in Hartford to make a commitment to the city and to help drive its revitalization,” Guay said. “We are trying to build an advanced manufacturing ecosystem in Hartford. We want the city to be known again as one of the world’s centers for advanced manufacturing.”
Like others taking part in the accelerator program, Skomorokhov has found Hartford and environs to his liking, in fact, an ideal place to live and to do business. He likes the concentration of large companies in Connecticut, such as Stanley and Pratt & Whitney, which are potential customers — plus the fact that Stanley can help open doors for his firm.
Kwambio has established a research lab in Groton next door to Pfizer, which it hopes to interest in its latest innovative idea, the Adam Project: replacement ceramic bones fashioned by a 3D printer from MRI scans. Dr. Cato Laurencin, a surgeon and professor at UConn, is serving as an adviser. The concept has been tested on laboratory animals, and Kwambio is applying this year to the FDA for approval to market its product as an alternative to titanium for replacement bones in humans.
Skomorokhov raves about the Stanley+Techstars accelerator experience. “It was very important because you get networking and the support and mentoring of Stanley’s employees, and many others, too,” he said. “They help you with everything, from filing applications to running board meetings. They want to be at your board meetings to be sure you cover all the questions; it is very important.”
Although Skomorokhov says his company is cash positive, fulfilling a thousand orders a month as well as manufacturing dozens of 3D printers at its factory in Ukraine, Kwambio still needs additional investment to support continuing research and growth. It is looking into establishing a factory in southern New England. In its next round of fundraising, it will be seeking an additional $25 million in seed capital. Stanley and Techstars, both already Kwambio stockholders, have every incentive to see that effort succeed.
