How I Made It: Nick Pinkston, Founder/CEO, Volition

Nick Pinkston is a serial entrepreneur in the manufacturing industry. Source: Nick Pinkston

They say manufacturing is a heritable industry. My uncle had a machine shop. My dad was an ops guy and purchaser at a production facility. I got to see many factories, so certainly, something in my family got me into it.

I really like making things, but I didn’t think about it as manufacturing at first. I’ve always had a bunch of maker hobbies.

In college, I was studying bioengineering, and when I realized that it would take a PhD to make anything, I was like, ‘Screw this.’ And that's when I encountered the Pittsburgh tech community.

The first thing I ever started was a nonprofit called HackPittsburgh. Pittsburgh did not have what people now call a maker space. It’s basically a membership workshop. I wanted to have a lab that everyone could use. I wanted to provide more access to invention.

My first tech startup was a 3D printing marketplace called CloudFab. I had all the additive processes, and you could upload a 3D file and instantly price it out. We did it for injection molding, too, and I ended up selling each service to a separate company.

When I was working on CloudFab, I encountered injection molders who didn’t want to change. So I decided if they're not going to adopt it, I'll make my own factory and software and I'll do a full vertical approach so I can control all the pieces. That's where Plethora came from, which was a machine shop and CAM software company with the goal of making an automated CAM and MES system for the shop with an automated quoting function.

At Plethora, I had to make my own machinist boot camp to train people because I couldn't find enough machinists. I think we got 20 or 30 machinists through that program and they're all still in the industry.

This is the hard thing about startups in the space — you’re making CAM software that takes a lot of time and a lot of money, and investors in Silicon Valley are not known for their patience.

At Plethora, buying off-the-shelf components for us and our customers was annoying. I wanted to make the industry better for those shopping from off the shelf. Anything from bolts and motors to chips and sensors. I think we're the largest repository of those components. We've got 26 million components right now.

The ultimate goal of Volition is to help the industry get better. Engineers are like, “Where is the perfect motor?” And the perfect motor guys are like, “Where are the engineers?” It’s a matching game.

I started my first company as a nonprofit for a reason. I actually care about this stuff existing, not just making money off it. I think growing up in the Rust Belt motivates me to make the industry more competitive and to help these regions and these people.