Host (Aaron Moncur): Hi everyone, we've set up this Being an Engineer podcast as an industry knowledge repository, if you will. We hope it'll be a tool where Engineers can learn about and connect with other companies, technologies, people, resources, and opportunities. So make some connections and enjoy the show.
John Hirshtick (clip): ...and I could have given up. I could have given up when people said no with SolidWorks. And I think as an engineer, I can tell you two things: one is, if you try, I can't guarantee you'll succeed, but I can guarantee that if you don't try, you won't succeed. And the other thing is, failures and problems, those are the neighbors of successes.
(Music & Applause)
Aaron Moncur: Hello and welcome to another wonderful episode of the Being an Engineer podcast. Today we're speaking with John Hirshtick, who is a legend in the CAD industry. If you're not familiar with John by name, you certainly will be familiar with him by his product, which we will get into – products, multiple, plural, that is. John is currently Chief Evangelist at PTC, where he focuses on Onshape, the world's first and only Cloud native CAD and PDM system, which includes rendering, collaboration, workflow, analytics, and many other tools. John is also the former General Manager as well as the co-founder and former CEO of Onshape. Prior to Onshape, in 1993, John founded SolidWorks and served as CEO, Group Executive, and board member until 2011, watching the platform grow to 2 million users and over $500 million per year in Revenue. John, what a treat it is to have you on the show today. I feel like I'm speaking with CAD royalty. Thank you for joining on the Being an Engineer podcast.
John Hirshtick: Well Aaron, I'm delighted to be here and thank you for making such interesting podcast episodes for the engineers of the world that we both serve.
Aaron Moncur: Oh, right, yeah, we love doing this. Well, same question I ask everyone to get started, and then we'll dive into SolidWorks and Onshape and all those wonderful things. What made you decide to become an engineer?
John Hirshtick: I think it was as a child, I found I liked building things. You know, building, it was just cool to build something and see it work. Now mind you, I am not one of these people that grew up in a household of building things. You know, I didn't, I grew up in a small apartment in Chicago. The only tools we had in the house were pliers and a pair of pliers and a screwdriver, that was it, in the kitchen drawer. I didn't learn at home any of this. We didn't, we didn't take apart cars or build anything. But what happened was, I had a friend who was into electronics, and he invited me over. We went in his basement, he had a little, his dad had a workbench, we built electronic circuits. And just as soon as I had any experience building things, and then also fueled by the Space Program when I was a kid, which is back now, but you know, watching the Rockets take off for the moon, you know, I'm talking 1960s and 70s. And then, also, I started subscribing to magazines like Popular Science and Popular Electronics, and it was just that draw to make things, I think.
Aaron Moncur: Yeah, that's, I can relate with that myself. I loved building things when I was a kid, everything from Legos to clubhouses and everything in between. Well, we will certainly get into your current, it's more than adventure, your current activities with Onshape and PTC, but I was hoping to spend a few minutes talking about SolidWorks before we dive into Onshape. I read some stories about where the funding came from for SolidWorks back in the '90s, and they had to do with gambling and Las Vegas casinos. You tell me, is that true or is that apocryphal?
John Hirshtick: Well, it's pretty much true. You know, and I'll give you the truthful version is that I was able, I was in a financial position to start SolidWorks, which required me to go about one year with no real income and spend money to, you know, to rent office space, to buy a phone system, to take, you know, we're talking 30 years ago, Aaron, so remember, it was a different world. So I bought a phone system and buy a computer, which were much more expensive relative to today's prices. Anyway, that ability for me to have the money to start the company came from my prior experience as a professional gambler, a professional blackjack player with the MIT blackjack team. So, you know, I made money playing Blackjack and it allowed me to be able to start the company, but it's not like that we took company money and gambled with it or anything. No, no, no, this was all personal. I was personally enabled by that.
Aaron Moncur: Still, that is, that's wild that you were able to earn enough money gambling in Vegas to start SolidWorks. I just, I love that. It feels so, I don't know, Wild West in a way. It's just a great story.
John Hirshtick: Well, you know, it was really exciting. And since that time, there's been, as you know or may know, there's been a movie, TV shows, books, and so forth about it. And but at the time, it was just a lot of work, just like engineering is. The parallel I draw is just like some, some listeners build exciting products that everyone would know about, you know, and like I suppose if you work at Apple or you work at Tesla, or you, you know, you work at a toy company and everyone knows your products, people will say to you, "Oh, it must be so exciting." You're thinking, "Well, it is exciting, but it's mostly just a ton of work." And in the same way, when you hear about Blackjack, it's kind of like, you know, it sounds so exciting, but and it is exciting, but it's a ton of work, really.
Aaron Moncur: Sure. Yeah, amen to that. Well, let's go back in time a little bit, and this is in the '90s. And back at that time, AutoCAD was kind of the big name, maybe not quite the only name, but certainly by far the biggest name in CAD, and they dominated the scene. PTC was on its way as well. How was SolidWorks able to get its foot into what was essentially AutoCAD's market back then?
John Hirshtick: Yeah, well Aaron, you're really, it's really smart of you to mention AutoCAD because so many people talked to me about those days, and mind you, we're talking 30 years ago. SolidWorks was founded 30 years ago, 1993. So you really, you know, it wasn't five years ago, 30 years ago, you have to think about the world. So AutoCAD is like, these days, it's forgotten. I mean, really, I don't mean it's forgotten that nobody uses it, there's a lot of people use AutoCAD, it's a good product, people are very successful with it. But in the mechanical engineering scene, the world Onshape, SolidWorks, Creo is in, and so forth, NX, and so forth, you just don't hear about AutoCAD at all. Like if, you know, you just don't hear about it as being used so much. But anyway, at the time, AutoCAD was everywhere, and it was viewed as almost a monopoly, you know, it was viewed as just a standard, standard CAD system, but for 2D, 2D drawings, you know, doing drawings. And I don't mean for your listeners who grew up using SolidWorks or use Onshape or use Creo or modern systems, they think, "Oh, drawings, you take the views of the 3D model." No, no, no, no, I don't mean taking views of 3D model, I mean laying out lines in the drawing. That's what people did with AutoCAD. So AutoCAD was sort of a everywhere standard, everywhere you went.
And then also what had happened in the late '80s, Pro/ENGINEER came along from PTC, where I work now. At the time it was called Pro/ENGINEERING, today it's called, it's evolved into Creo, it's evolved in many ways, but Pro/ENGINEER was a landmark 3D product, not the first 3D product, but the first one that really worked well, that engineers could really use, real engineers could use to make product models. So you had this, and but, you had this world of AutoCAD everywhere in the 2D market, and Pro/ENGINEER not everywhere, but the clear leader in 3D. But there, and there's a "but." So you want me to get to the "but" here? So where was the room in the market?
Well, AutoCAD was a DOS-based product. It ran on a PC under DOS. I don't know, some people don't even know what DOS is, that was the operating system before there was Windows. So it ran on PC, and it was like $4,000, which was relatively cheap at the time compared to other CAD. But Pro/ENGINEER, while it was 3D, it was pretty expensive, $20,000 a license typically, and it ran on Unix. Now, Unix workstations at the time, and some listeners don't even know what I'm talking about with a Unix workstation. Imagine a purpose-built computer that ran something like Linux before there was Linux, it was called Unix. And these systems were very hard to use, you know, command lines and weird, weird UI, you know, the Pro/ENGINEER UI was really weird. And so you had AutoCAD with the right kind of price and running on a PC, that was a good idea, but it was only 2D. You had Pro/ENGINEER with the right modeling technology, 3D, but expensive and hard to use. And you had nobody using Windows or Mac style UIs, which I said, "Wow, that's the future." So the idea of SolidWorks was pretty simple: have the 3D like Pro/ENGINEER, have the 3D power of Pro/ENGINEER, have the cost and PC platform of AutoCAD, and have the Windows of Microsoft. And we felt that would be, overall, a formula for bringing, making 3D as popular as 2D was, that every engineer could have it. And that's the SolidWorks formula.
Aaron Moncur: Wow. Well, this, this brings me back. When I was a freshman in college, which is the first time I ever used a CAD program, it was Pro/E, Pro/ENGINEER. And I remember that we were on Unix systems back then.
John Hirshtick: And were these days, oh yeah, you don't hear anything about a Unix system.
Aaron Moncur: But I think we were probably on the tail end of that era.
John Hirshtick: Yeah, I mean, Unix has come back as Linux. And by the way, you know, if you know Linux, there's no such thing as Linux, really. There's Linux-based operating systems, and there's, you know, a hundred varieties, you know, Red Hat, whatever. But anyway, Linux-based operating systems have come back quite a bit. And what we're seeing is, particularly among users who are entrenched in software, they have a great interest in running their CAD on Linux. And really, the only pro-grade CAD that runs on Linux, of course, is Onshape, you know, that you can use in a browser. And so we get a lot of Linux fans come to the Onshape, you know, show, you know, show up in our user base. But yeah, so you're, you're obviously older than I thought to go, a baby face.
Aaron Moncur: Yeah, people often mistake my age for like 10 years younger. I'm 43 right now, so I'm not old, but I'm not young.
John Hirshtick: Okay, you were probably at the tail end of the Unix workstation stuff then. Yeah, yeah, yeah. By the way, people told me when I went around to start SolidWorks, I told people what I was doing, you know, engineers, I said, "Hey, what do you think?" And they're like, "Ah, that's a bad idea. World doesn't need another CAD system." You know, it's like, you know, AutoCAD, everyone uses AutoCAD. And the people who, the few people that need 3D use Pro/ENGINEER. And they're already doing Windows versions of AutoCAD and Pro/ENGINEER. And they told me the PC Windows isn't powerful enough, because there was no 3D graphics drivers for Windows yet. So it's not powerful enough, it'll be too slow. Windows is slow, and it was at the time, okay? And they also told me nobody will take it seriously, people won't trust it, it won't be secure, you're running, running engineering on Windows. This is all the stuff they told me.
And I, I'll just tell you, I got turned down by zillions of investors. I went to investors and said, "Here's my plan," and "No." You know, I'd be like, "Yeah, we're going to build a complete CAD system." "Get out of my office." You know, it's like, "And we're going to compete with AutoCAD and PTC." PTC at the time, one of the most successful companies in the software industry. They're like, "Get out of my office." You know, come on. I had one venture firm didn't even finish the meeting. You know, we had like an hour meeting, and like 15 minutes in, they're like, "Yeah, I'm going to end the meeting early." I'm like, "We haven't even shown you the demo." "Yeah, yeah, we're not going to invest in this. You guys are crazy." You know, so it was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Aaron Moncur: How did you finally get to a yes?
John Hirshtick: We kept trying. You know, we believed in what we were doing, we kept trying. And then also what really helped was we added another team member who had been one of the founders of PTC. And when he came on board, that gave us more credibility. And we kept trying, and our prototype got better and better. And then I still remember the moment that it all tipped. We were in this meeting with a venture capitalist. I don't know if I should say who, I don't think it's a problem to say who. This fellow, John Flint, great guy, he was at a company called Burr, Egan, Deleage. And he came in late, you know, the meeting was, let's say it was a 2:00, you know, we're sitting in the conference room, he rolls in at like 2:18, you know, for an hour meeting. And I had told my co-founder, Scott Harris, "Just once we get to the demo, just keep it rolling, keep the tape rolling, no matter what." You know, even if we start talking, don't stop the demo because I want to have the sight, you know, CAD's a pretty exciting demo if you watch it. I said, "I just want that demo, keep going if we don't stop demoing." "Okay, okay."
And so he shows the prototype, and we're showing the demo, and he's very, this guy John is very disinterested. And then there's this moment where the light goes on. He's like, "Wait a minute, this is all running in Windows on a PC?" "Yeah, yeah." "And that's 3D model?" "Yeah, we're showing a solid model and drilling holes and stuff." "Yeah, yeah." He's like, "And nobody else really runs in Windows with a real UI like, you know, Word or Excel?" "No, no, they don't." You know, he goes, and he points to my co-founder, "You're one of the founders of PTC?" He goes, "Yeah." And he looks at me, he asks me, he goes, "Okay, I'm in." That was it. He goes, "I'm in." He says, "I want to fund this deal." And then, and the other person I'll really give tons of credit to, actually, I got to be fair here. John was the second investor to commit. The first investor to really get what we were doing was Axel Bichara of then Atlas Venture, today at a new firm called BONS that Axel just created. Fantastic venture investor who focuses on hardware and industry. He does other deals too, but he really knows the hardware world. Anyone out there trying to raise money, if you've got a hardware startup, you want to contact Axel at BONS, great investor. Axel believed in us first, but we needed another VC, and that's when we got John, and we ended up getting Northbridge as well. But Axel was amazing. He got it. He understood CAD, he knew the market, and he got it. So anyway, I just want, a great story. Long, I don't want to, I don't want to chew up all the time here, but it was a fun time.
Aaron Moncur: Oh no, that, you had me on the edge of my seat, John. That was, that was excellent. Yeah. Well, what were some of the biggest problems that your team had to overcome technically as you developed SolidWorks?
John Hirshtick: Well, a couple big technical problems. One is, nobody, nobody had ever built a solid modeler on a PC or on Windows before, not one that worked. You know, people had built little ones, but you know, engineers need a lot of power in their tools. So no one had built one that worked. That was one big problem. And Windows was a little bit of a green banana, you know, so like, so that was one, you know, the platform was an issue. The second thing was, we were the first successful production-level CAD system that used component technology. No one had done that successfully before. Meaning, we licensed a lot of chunks of technology from other companies, particularly like, like for instance, the geometric modeling engine, we licensed Parasolid from what was then Unigraphics, now Siemens. We licensed translators. And people at the time, the kind of wisdom in the CAD insiders was, "Well, that's okay if you're doing some small application, but if you're doing a real application, you need to build your own." It would be kind of like talking about batteries and electric vehicles today, Aaron. If we were talking and I said, "Oh, I want to build, I want to build my own electric lawnmower," you'd say, "Yeah, you can order batteries online and it'll work." But if I said, "I want to build a car company to compete with Tesla," you'd be like, "You better, you better have your own battery plant, John, because you'd have to build that yourself." And I'd say, "Well, why?" You'd say, "Well, no one has ever done it without, you know, that scale. You know, you can't just go down the road and, you know, order it off Amazon." Well, times change, you know. So it was kind of this radical idea.
So that was, that was probably the two big problems that hadn't been dealt with before were the Windows platform, which was a little green and underpowered for the job. And the whole idea of doing it in Windows UI, we had to think about how do we take the paradigms of Word and Excel at that time, which were the defining user experiences that we were shooting for, and put CAD in there. And so that, those were the technical challenges, besides one more technical challenge: building a CAD system is just freaking hard. You got to be a little bananas to try it, okay? It's a very, very, so that, that wasn't unique because it was hard to build these other systems, and so I don't want to forget that point.
Aaron Moncur: Yeah, for sure. How long did it take before you started getting some real traction and success with engineers?
John Hirshtick: Let's see, I would say from the early days of SolidWorks to getting some traction, about three years. You know, in terms of, you know, it was probably, yeah, we, well, at the end of '95, we shipped the product. And so in a trade show called Autofact, that was a big event. So into '96 were our first users. Now, at the time, honestly, between you and me, the amount of functions in SolidWorks in 1996 were a little light by today's standards. You know, by today's standards, you'd get laughed out of the room. You know, it was missing so many things. But at the time, you got to remember expectations were lower. You know, this would be 1995, '96, so 27, 28 years ago. People didn't expect as much in the CAD system. But we did have people using it. And I would say it took, to hit its stride, you know, it was, you know, it was seven, eight years to really get the system where, where it was hitting its stride, I would say, in that era.
Aaron Moncur: You know, I remember the first time I used it, it was an internship I had in college, and I had been used to using Pro/E, and then Wildfire. And so moving to SolidWorks, at first it was really tough for me because I was used to, looking back, the Pro/E interface was so clunky back then, but I was just so used to it, you know. And then I moved to SolidWorks, and I remember little things, like there were, there were animations, like if you wanted to look normal at a surface, you didn't just snap normal, it was kind of a smooth animation. And I thought, "Oh, that's so cool," you know, just these little things like that. And then after not very long, I thought, "Well, I never want to go back to Pro/E because SolidWorks just is so much easier to use." I think that was 2004. So by that point, to me at least, it felt like a mature product that competed well with, with Pro/E.
John Hirshtick: Yeah, 2004, by 2004, you know, it was pretty, pretty good product. Now, SolidWorks doesn't, never had everything Pro/E had, but you know, it had enough. And yeah, that's right.
Aaron Moncur: Yeah. Well, once it did become established and was being used by engineers around the world, was there ever anything that surprised you about how users either were or were not using the application?
John Hirshtick: Um, I think, I was surprised, let's see, was I surprised? I mean, not principally. You know, SolidWorks was a company, was a business that pretty much did what we set out to do. You know, it wasn't like, like a lot of companies start doing one thing and then they pivot to do something else. You know, like, you know, Apple was founded to do computers, but today, I believe most of the business is phones and iPads and music, you know, and streaming television. You know, where did that come from? You know, and but SolidWorks, I would say, pretty much, we built the product we set out to build. It was used largely in the way it was. Now, I could think of some, you know, some interesting things. I mean, people probably built bigger things with it than I might have anticipated. And I think the size of teams that started to use it was surprising too. But no, it was, you know, it wasn't a huge, you know, huge pivot in what people did with it versus what we expected.
Aaron Moncur: Did the magnitude of success ever surprise you, or did you always kind of have a feeling that, "Yeah, this is, this is going to blow up and be huge"?
John Hirshtick: I, I think I always had the feeling that this was going to be huge. I mean, I would tell people when we were building the prototype, I got an argument with a vendor one day. I said, "Look," one of these component suppliers, the people who built ACIS. I flew out to Colorado using frequent flyer miles, and I met the guys, and I said, "Look," you know, they're like, "You know, yeah, we're being nice, we're letting you try it out for free, you know, you're lucky to have it." And I'm like, "Look, your product isn't that great, but we can help you make it a lot better if you work with us." And they're like, "Who are you, man? You don't even have any money to pay us." And I go, "Look, I'll tell you right now, if you make us successful, we're going to be a bigger customer than all your other customers today put together." That's what I told him. He's like, "Get, get out of here, John. You're, you..." So I wasn't being arrogant, I was just being like, so I always thought SolidWorks would become an extremely popular CAD system. What I didn't understand is how big the CAD market would get. So our place in the market was pretty much what I thought would happen for SolidWorks. What I didn't understand was how big the CAD market would get. I remember sitting around with John McEleney, who was the second CEO of SolidWorks after I was, we were like, "How big can this get?" And we were like, "Well, maybe it would get to $300 million a year." Well, today it's probably a billion dollars a year. I don't know, you have to look at Dassault Systèmes financial statements or something, but it got way bigger than we ever dreamed it could. More users use 3D CAD, but the position in the market was, you know, I mean, I, you know, it was pretty much what I had thought, what I told people would happen when we financed the company and built the product.
Aaron Moncur: That's amazing. Yeah, like you said, not often does a company end up where it thought it was going to be, but SolidWorks did. So congratulations, what a huge accomplishment there. And apparently, that was not enough for you. You wanted to do it again. And so now we get into Onshape. For those who aren't familiar with Onshape, can you just share like a 30, 60-second summary of what Onshape is and what its benefits are over some of the other major CAD systems out there?
John Hirshtick: Sure. Well, Onshape is the first and only true cloud-native CAD and PDM system. So what it means is, cloud-native offers huge benefits and solves huge problems people have with CAD and PDM. Problems everything from installs, downloads, service packs, special computers, and all that nonsense, license codes. Is everyone on the same version? That all goes away. Everyone in the world's on the same version. And then also the data management and collaboration. You know, who's got the latest copy of the file? I don't know. Oh, we locked it in a PDM vault somewhere. You know, who's running a PDM vault? I don't know. You know, like, all that goes away, and it's just there. So we're kind of what we, we're, we are complete, and we're pro-level system. We've got incredible power and functionality in all these areas. And Onshape was built to solve a lot of the problems we saw with the old style systems. Today, it's used by, oh, I think it's over 2 million people, maybe more, in thousands and thousands of companies and schools and all that. And so we're, we're really, you know, really excited by, most of all, what our users do with Onshape and how much they love it.
Aaron Moncur: At what point did you start having this notion that there was a better solution for CAD that wasn't being solved by SolidWorks or any of the other CAD systems out there, and that you might like to have a second shot at, go another round with developing a CAD system?
John Hirshtick: So it was when I visited users. Back when I was at SolidWorks, I would visit users and customers. I've always visited users and customers. By the way, I worked in this industry before SolidWorks. I'd found another company, no one's ever really heard of it, called Premise. And before that, I worked at Computervision. So I started in the CAD business in '81, Aaron, '81. And I've worked in it ever since. So that's, 40, this is soon going to be 42 years I've worked in the CAD business consecutively. Okay.
Aaron Moncur: Lots of wisdom in that CAD area.
John Hirshtick: Yeah, well, wisdom, lots of wisdom, lots of time to eventually do it right. You know, it's like the monkey throws darts, you know, like I've thrown enough systems at the CAD dartboard that a couple of them are bullseyes, you know, whatever. But anyway, you know, my whole journey is really about studying users' problems. What are the product develop, you know, I develop products that other people use to develop products. So my customers are product developers, you're listeners, you know, engineers. And so I'd see the problems they had. So back at SolidWorks, yeah, good news, you know, SolidWorks was a lot, in 1993, hey, it was great news that SolidWorks was a lot easier to use than Pro/ENGINEER, had a Windows UI, and it was, you know, ran on a PC. That was all great.
But then you go into customers, and I would go visit them, and they would say to me, they'd sit me down in a conference room. I still remember visiting a medical company in Boston that made the coolest heart, heart valve repair or heart hole repair systems out of memory alloys. I mean, I just couldn't wait to talk about the product. But time out, before we talk about the product, into the conference room, and I get two hours worth of anger, really, over problems involved in, "Well, John, we're, you know, we got 24 users using SolidWorks." I'm like, "24? We thought maybe, you know, I don't know, I kind of never really imagined big teams using SolidWorks, but okay." And, "And we're trying to, we have to buy everyone these special computers." Okay, they're doing that. "Then they got to do installs, and they fail half the time." I mean, anyone's in, anyone who's tried to, anyone who's installed CAD has had installations fail, right, Aaron? You've, all your installations gone smoothly?
Aaron Moncur: No, they have not.
John Hirshtick: Right? I mean, you know, they fail, you know. And so the first thing they complained to me about was just getting the darn system running, you know, was just costing them all this time. And they're like, they're like, "Well, whenever we add a new person, we have to go through this again. And we're adding people all the time. You know, we hire somebody new in another city, we got to buy a computer, we got to get a license code for you, download it, install it, all that." Okay. Then the other problem they had is like, like they're like, "We need to get everyone in the same version of SolidWorks. And we've got our vendors on different versions, our customers on a version, we're on a version. We can't get everyone in the same version. So we run multiple versions." You, I'm like, "Ah, okay." And well, the multiple, of course, the files aren't compatible, we all know that. You know, you can go forward, but you can't go back. You know, and then again, you're nodding your head, right? And anyone who's used CAD knows these problems will exist. So then they're like...
Aaron Moncur: It's just that, sorry to interrupt, it's horrible that the versions aren't, I understand why they do it from a business standpoint, but it's just the pits for engineers.
John Hirshtick: It's not just a business, it's technology. You know, the technology was installed software and files. And by the way, I'm going to go through a few more problems because you say, "Why did I start SolidWorks?" Well, and "Why did I start Onshape?" Well, let me tell the whole story. So, so there's that. And then they tell me that, "Oh, well, what we did is we decided to run two different versions of SolidWorks. Two isn't really enough, but it's better than one." You know, they'd want to run three or four. Well, so then we discovered that the license code manager, you can't have two of them in the same network. So we set up a separate network for the people who are on the other version of SolidWorks. I'm like, this makes my freaking head, I'm like, "Poor you." You're like, "With these multiple versions, what should we do, John?" And I'm like, I don't know. Like, I don't know what you should do. And I'm thinking, "I don't even, I wrote this system, I'm a founder of the system and CEO of the company for many years, and I don't even know what you should do to fix this." I'm thinking, "How do they even get the product made? I don't understand."
And then, by the way, then, not done yet, because then they're like, "Well, we also want to talk to you about PDM and the files." I'm like, "PDM? Oh no," because that was always a problem, okay?
Aaron Moncur: Right. Yeah, we're going through this right now.
John Hirshtick: Yeah, yeah. Oh, you are? Okay, yeah. You know why? Because, you know how many people have come, I've been very lucky in my career, and people come up to me and say, "Oh, John, you know, Onshape, I love it. SolidWorks, I love SolidWorks, I love the CAD you built." You know what no one ever said to me? "PDM works, John. You built PDM, I love it. Can I take your pick, can I get your autograph? Because I love PDM." Said nobody, ever. Now, with Onshape, people love PDM because we've reinvented it. We have built-in, I'll get to that in a minute.
So what they said to me is, "Well, we have a vault set up, and we try to get everyone to lock files and copy it out, you know, but we never know who's really got the latest version of the files. Is it in the vault? Is it on the computer? Because we can't get people to do all the locking, because if they do try and do the locking, well, then it just slows people down. And what we did is, so that, what we started to do is we put each other's passwords on the walls of the cubicle on Post-it notes." Yeah, this is a good idea for security, right? Okay, you know, and I can't, I'm not making this up, man. You know, this is what I saw. Okay. And we tried at SolidWorks, we're like, "Let's try the cloud." By the way, all the vendors do cloud, right? So my competitors all say, "Oh, we're doing what John's doing, we run the cloud." Except they took 30-year-old code and they sort of used the cloud a little bit to help it along in some ways, but that's not the same thing.
So at the same time as I see this stuff going on with customers, and we, you know, we're trying to do our best, but it's hard because files are not a good way to collaborate, if you think about it. Anyway, at the same time, I saw what was happening with Salesforce, Workday, Zendesk, Google Docs, NetSuite, basically everything cool was going to the browser. And it wasn't just going to a browser. See, this is the key part. You know, you don't just take a file-based system and say, "I'm going to run it in the browser." That doesn't really solve any problem, solves a little bit of problem, not really big problems. You really have to rethink it so it doesn't rely on files and copies of files. And you might say, "Well, what's wrong with files? That works fine." Well, it doesn't work fine for most business systems. Like, do you use anything, you ever use something like Salesforce? You ever use an accounting system, NetSuite? Okay, or QuickBooks? Like, I use QuickBooks, even personally for a while online. And but, if you use NetSuite, if you do accounting, you use Salesforce, here's how you don't do accounting: you don't say, "I need to enter a debit in the ledger. Will everyone stop using it, please, so I can lock it? And I'll take a complete copy of the ledgers of the company onto my local computer, and I'll edit it, and then I'll check it in, and then you can edit it." If you try to do accounting that way, what would happen? Your company would be screwed. You know, you can't do that. You have everyone accessing your database.
Aaron Moncur: So I'm laughing because we actually did that a long time ago with QuickBooks Desktop. I would send the file to our accountant, they would do things, and they would send it back to me, and it was just a nightmare. So...
John Hirshtick: So if you use QuickBooks, understand exactly, files. If you use NetSuite, there's no file, because you need a hundred people editing at once. So anyway, I saw what was happening. I said, "We can solve the problem people have with SolidWorks and files and all that, but we have to build a new system that is built, you know, not like Word using files and installed software, but built more like Google Docs or NetSuite or Salesforce." So our design for Onshape was informed by those kinds of systems that didn't use files and didn't use copies. We have PDM. Hey, you need revision control, you need release process, we do all that stuff, but we don't do it by files and locking, okay? We do it using a database. It's in one place in the cloud, there's no copies of anything. There's no chance of two people being on different versions of software because you're all using the same master instance.
Okay, to record this podcast, you're using a cloud-based system you invited me to. I don't know if I should say the name of it, I didn't even know it existed. It's a cool system, Aaron, where we're recording this in a browser. I didn't have to install anything. I didn't have to ask which version of the software I should use, because it's all in the cloud. So, so we solve all that. There's, we don't worry about installations problems because there's nothing to install with Onshape, there is no installation. You know, you don't have to worry about what computer you have because we run on every computer. If you have a Linux machine, fine. Mac, fine. Chromebook, fine. You don't even need a computer. iPad runs on that. Android tablet, yeah, sure. What about a phone? Oh yeah. What about an Android phone? Yeah, it runs on that. iPhone? Yeah, runs on that. What about my old computer? Yeah, it runs on that too. You know, it's like, you don't have to worry about installing things. And you collaborate, oh my gosh, the collaboration is unbelievable, real-time collaboration. And so, anyway, I should, you know, I go on all day. I know you have, you know, I don't want to make this into a five-hour podcast. So...
Aaron Moncur: Well, I have a couple of thoughts to interject. Just supporting evidence, I guess, of everything that you're saying. The first time I used Onshape was probably a couple of weeks ago in preparation for this interview. And so this is, what is this, January 16th right now that we're recording. And I decided that for Christmas, one of the things I wanted to do is get a gift for my family that would help us spend more time together. And so what I did was I bought a 3D printer. We have plenty of 3D printers here at work, but you know, they're at work. And so I bought one for home. And my kids, I have two boys and a girl, and they're 8 to 15 right now. And so they're in that age where they're young, but not so young that they can't, you know, do things. So we got this 3D printer, and then of course, we need some CAD system to create files to 3D print. And I thought, "Well, I'm not going to buy a bunch of SolidWorks licenses, right?" And so I thought, "Well, Onshape, right? Doing this interview pretty soon anyway, it would be great kind of research for it."
So we all downloaded Onshape and, or not, I'm sorry, not downloaded it, signed up for an account for Onshape. And my, my daughter, she put it on her iPad. And I was, at first, I thought, "Okay, well, it's an, it's a mobile application, right? We'll probably be able to view a few things." But no, it's a full-blown CAD application on an iPad. And this is not a top-of-the-line iPad, it's a little bit older model, and it ran great. You know, you could do all the different things. It was, it was really cool. And then my, my, my dad also has installed Onshape, and he lives, you know, not with us, so he's remote. And we've, we've been able to share files back and forth and collaborate on them. So it's just, it's a really cool platform.
And one more thing I'll add, when I first opened it up, I was almost, this was like a gut reaction, kind of almost a little disappointed by the lack of snazzy graphics, I'll call them. But what I have come to appreciate is the simplicity of the design. It's so unpretentious, and I really like that now. It did not take long at all to get over that initial, "Oh, there's not a whole lot of like, you know, color or cool graphics." It's, I love it, actually. I think it's really cool. So anyway, a few thoughts by a very new user of Onshape. And it's been really easy to pick up. My, my boys, they ask me, "Hey, how do you do this thing in Onshape?" And well, I'm like, "Well, I don't know, but let's take a look." And I've used SolidWorks for so long that when I'm using Onshape, I think, "Well, there's, I know there's a way to do this, I just have to find the right button." And all the buttons are intuitive, and things are laid out pretty intuitively. So it's, it just, it has not been very difficult for me to transfer over to Onshape. And I have actually a couple more questions about that.
So it was easy enough for me to transfer over because we're just, we're, you know, creating a few simple things in the family with my boys and my dad and things. But if you're a company and you have a big team of people who are all using SolidWorks, and you're heavily invested into SolidWorks, you have this whole history of SolidWorks files, how do teams like that transition to Onshape? Are there tools that help facilitate that, or do you basically just say, "Everything before this date that was on SolidWorks, that stays on SolidWorks, and everything after this date will be on Onshape"?
John Hirshtick: Well, it depends on the situation in the business, but there are a lot of companies that move a lot of data into Onshape from SolidWorks. So there's the question of moving the people, moving the data, and moving, you know, sort of the processes and connections to other systems. And so, to start with the data part, it depends what kind of needs you have for the data. Most people need to certainly access the old data. If you just need the shapes of data, say you want to keep old designs around because you're going to use them as starters for new ones, but you really just need the geometry of it, not the whole feature history or assembly mates, and so, well, obviously we do that very, very well, reading the geometry. But if you are going to be, you know, there's different needs. Some people have big component libraries that they use, they need to bring those over. You know, so each approach takes some work. We have a customer success team that will work with customers on how to approach it. There is no magic solution, though, that just brings it all over.
With people, you run into a couple kinds of people. You run into people who will, you know, never change tools. You know, they're like, "I use SolidWorks, and that's all I'm ever going to use." You know, same way people said to me, "I use Pro/ENGINEER, it's all I'm ever going to use. I use AutoCAD, I'm never getting off AutoCAD." People used to ask us, "What do I do with all the AutoCAD files when I get SolidWorks?" And I'd give them these same answers, "It depends what you need them for," and so forth. Still no way to edit, you know, to really edit those AutoCAD drawings in SolidWorks. There are other products now that Dassault Systèmes has, and so forth. But anyway, and there's great tools from Graebert in Germany, they have this great tools, ARES, for editing AutoCAD. But anyway, back to Onshape. So you got to bring, you have, we can bring in huge numbers of files, and there's some great tools now that can migrate data much smarter and easier to do in bulk. We've had people migrate hundreds of thousands of, I mean, a single customer up to hundreds of thousands, I don't think I've heard of any million-file migrations.
Then moving the people takes training. Now, the interesting thing is, the emerging generation is way more comfortable with Onshape, as you saw in your own time at home. So every day, a little slice of the workforce that looks a little like me, like you spent 42 years doing this stuff, you know, they retire or step out, and a new generation comes in. And they don't, by the way, the new generation doesn't even know what files are. You're going to have to train them in a few years when you bring in new hires if you want them to use files and Windows. You're going to have to train them in what a folder is and what file copying is. And you're laughing, but it's true. Look at your kids, they don't know about any of that junk. They're using, I don't, I don't, you know, there ain't no kids using Windows computers for schoolwork at school anymore. They're using iPads, Chromebooks, you know, cloud-based tools. So anyway, migrating the people, it depends on the kind of people you get.
Then there's process migration. And the answer is, when people, people ultimately will change their process because of Onshape, but it's changed for the better. They discover that they can use more an agile process than a waterfall process. And that can be a little, that can be the most uncomfortable part of the whole thing. Is it's one thing to move a bunch of data files, okay, and live with whatever data you didn't bring and whatever. It's another thing to say, "I need to learn to use different icons for, you know, different workflows for part modeling," the way, you know, you're discovering. But the hardest thing is, "My team can work differently." "What do you mean we can all work on the assembly at the same time?" "Oh yeah, you can." "Well, wait a minute, that's not how we do things normally." "Well, could you work faster this way?" "Ah, yeah, it's a little uncomfortable." So what's happening is teams work faster, and there's process change involved. And ultimately, that's the, the real benefit isn't just, "Hey, I saved a little on the install time." The real benefit is making more innovative, making better products, getting the changes that you wanted into this release of the design and not the next product, because you can make changes faster. Being more innovative because you and three colleagues collaborated on something, you didn't have to wait two weeks till the design review, you all saw each other's work in real time. You said, "Oh man, I see an opportunity here." That's what's making better designs happen faster in Onshape. That's the biggest improvement and the biggest thing to deal with in migration is process change.
Aaron Moncur: About a year ago, we started using Office 365 products, and these are great because, similar to Google Docs, you can collaborate in real time. And when we started using them, we thought, "Well, that sounds like a useful trick that maybe we'll use here and there." What we found is we use it all the time, and it's really, really helpful. So I can understand the value in being able to collaborate on your CAD models in real time. That just blows my mind.
John Hirshtick: Right, like in Word or Excel, yeah, that's cool, that's helpful. But on a CAD assembly, wow! That's exactly, you hit the nail on the head, Aaron. And people say, "Oh, well, I suppose that I might use that," as if they'll plan it. People like, "Well, I suppose once or twice a month I might invite some colleagues, and we'll say, 'Let's model together.'" What happens is, once or twice an hour, you run into each other in the model, right? And you're like, "Oh, I didn't realize that Jane's working on changing that fillet. Wow, if she's going to do that, I can make this whole part on a different machine and save us some money." You know, it's like, "Let me, let me send a message." Now, by the way, a message doesn't mean an email, because email is too slow. If you use things like Teams or Slack, you know, today I go visit the fastest moving customers, they, they don't, you know, email's out. You know, email is to this new generation what paper mail is to my generation. I'm like, "I don't have time for that. I'm using texting or Slack." But anyway, yeah, that's it, man. That's it. So you're discovering the magic and the power. And so this is what we're bringing to, to the world of CAD and PDM.
Aaron Moncur: Amazing. How about pricing? What is the pricing model like for Onshape?
John Hirshtick: We charge just an annual subscription fee, that's it. There's no license fee, just annual subscription per user. Nope, you just pay, pay a subscription. People are always like, "Hey, what happens if I stop paying? What happens with my data?" Well, we leave all your data there. You can't edit it, but you could access it, download it, whatever. You know, you can, it's all there. And unless you, you can ask, you know, you can close your account, it goes away. But if you have a subscription and you say, "Hey, this year I don't need it, I'm not going to pay it," the data doesn't disappear, ever. That's a myth. And so, so it's just a simple annual fee, that's it. Per user annual fee, done. Oh, and we have a free plan, by the way. The free plan, like the ones your kids are using, maybe the education plan. We also have a free plan for makers, open-source kind of projects. Pros use it to try, kind of experiment with the system. If there's any pros out there, we have a trial program where you can get the professional Onshape for, you know, for, let's say two weeks, or maybe it's three weeks or whatever. You know, you can get, you can, you can trial the pro version. We'll set you up with that with training and advice and all that. But also some pros are just like, "Hey, I'll try the free version. I'll make some parts, I'll see." And be careful though, because like you say, when you look at it, you don't see all the power. Very deliberate design decision, by the way, was to go, I'm sure it was, the download of the UI, make it kind of more like the Google search page feel than the, and the, you know, 1100 color animation stuff. And we're the ones who wrote all that stuff, so we know how to do it, the animation. We just decided, no, different aesthetic. Anyway.
Aaron Moncur: Yeah. One of the issues that I could see being a problem is, let's say that, you know, company ABC, we try out Onshape and we love it. Like, "Oh, we see the value in this, this makes a ton of sense, we love the usability, etc." But all of our customers use SolidWorks. Is that a problem that your team has faced very often? And if so, how do you, how does company ABC overcome that?
John Hirshtick: So the answer is, you have to decide what's most important. And so, yeah, if all your customers use SolidWorks, that can be a problem. But do all your customers actively edit SolidWorks level information, or are you just sending them a model of a part and it's essentially geometry? So if geometry transfer works for you, then fine. So the answer is, there is no perfect solution. You can say, "Well, if we all use SolidWorks, then I won't have any issue with, or potential issue with data moving around." Well, that sounds good. But if your competitor's using Onshape and they're innovating faster and collaborating and getting better results, maybe that's more important than the once-a-month file they got to send over that's going to be geometry only, not features. And how many customers use the features they get from SolidWorks? And they'll say, "Well, what if we need to edit that model? We won't, we won't have the feature, we won't have Onshape to edit it." Well, anyone can run Onshape. You can share it with the customer, they have a link. And like I said earlier, they don't have to buy a subscription 'til they need it. If they ever need to, they buy a subscription, boom, they're editing it. They have to rethink their world a little bit because you don't need to be installing things and stuff.
So the question is, what's more important? That perceived need for compatibility with a customer/vendor? And sometimes that's totally important, but other times that's not as important as your team working faster, being more innovative. You know, so, and saving money on buying, you know, Windows computers and setting them up. And you know, the best, your best engineer is dealing with, you know, upgrading the Windows, the drivers on the PDM server instead of building a better product for your customer. That may be a bigger problem for you than, "We can only send it over in geometry-only form." But it depends, it depends. And so each situation is different. But you're right, those are real issues. But, but it's also real issues when your team's spending all this wasted time and, you know, checkout and locking and, you know, you know, I have a million stories about that stuff. You know, I ran into the parking lot and I stood in front of a car that had its engine on because the driver was leaving with files locked. You know, you got to think about how much that cost. And that's a real story, right? And you know it's true. You're not saying to me, "Oh John, you're just making that up." You're saying, "Yeah, John, I know that kind of shit's happening," excuse me, "stuff is happening."
Aaron Moncur: I just, I laugh because all these things that you're saying, we are going through these things, and it's a real problem.
John Hirshtick: It is. Yeah. But you got the same CAD system you had in college 23 years ago, so that's a plus, right? You know, I got it, you know, I got it. People don't like change, you know, you don't like change. But you know what, guess what? You know, nobody was using, you know, everyone changed to SolidWorks, you know, everyone changed to Windows because those things were, I remember when people came off the board. I was around when it was a thing, when paper was, you know, everyone was like, you know, I used to talk to people the way I'm talking to you now, they're like, "Well, our whole operation runs on paper, John. We can't use a CAD system. What would happen to our drawers of paper drawings? Our customers want paper drawings, they want the masters on paper. They don't want to hear some computer file." You know, and all that. And so, so like, you know, like time marches on, and changes seem impossibly large when you're staring in front of it, and almost ridiculously obvious when you look back.
Aaron Moncur: And so, that's a great analogy. Good place to, good way to put that. You had talked about the speed of design before. One of the things that I've appreciated with my very limited experience with Onshape is that I like to do a lot of multi-body part modeling, master modeling some people call it.
John Hirshtick: Yeah.
Aaron Moncur: And that's, that's almost, I mean, it's kind of an afterthought with SolidWorks, right? I think some people figured out this method and kind of hacked their way into using SolidWorks to do it. And over the years, some features have been added a little bit with, you know, here and there. Master modeling, multi-body part modeling in Onshape, it's, it seems like it was a very intentional decision to make that kind of a native function within the software. And that has been really cool to experiment with. Are there other features that Onshape has integrated to make the speed of modeling faster?
John Hirshtick: Oh yeah. Well, first off, Aaron, big, big credit to you for figuring that out, because I can tell you're absolutely right. At SolidWorks, the multi-part modeling was an afterthought, okay? And it was kind of glommed in there as best it could. In Onshape, we spent a lot of time, like I give big credit to my co-founder, Dave Corcoran, who was head of our product team, and he personally pioneered the idea of the Part Studio, where we really do multi-part modeling a very, very good, clean way. And features can operate on multiple parts, as you've discovered. You can change your part structure whenever you care to. And by the way, it's not just the modeling part, pun intended, that works with parts, also the PDM part. I don't know if you've had a chance there, and you haven't released things yet on Onshape, maybe, because it doesn't sound like you're using it at your company yet. But what'll happen is, each of those multi-body, those multiple parts you make, we're talking about making a bunch of parts with one feature list in what we call a Part Studio, those can each be released independently. How about that? Try doing that in your SolidWorks setup with a file that contains, you know, three parts. They're not real parts. In Onshape, those are real capital P parts, and you can release one of them independently of the others. You can use them in assemblies and control updating independently, and so forth. So you really have incredible power. You're absolutely right, it was a very deliberate decision.
Oh, there's so many areas where we have better CAD. I mean, if you look at how we do sheet metal, simultaneous sheet metal, where you can edit in the flat pattern, the bend table, and the 3D model at the same time, updates go, you know, made anywhere show up everywhere. Our approach to custom features will blow you away. Everyone knows that if you, if like, everyone wants a feature customized in their CAD system or wants a feature that doesn't exist, right? What do we do? We send an enhancement request. Good luck. Maybe in three years from now in a release, and two years after that when you upgrade. That's another problem getting CAD is, you know, it takes a year to get the release adopted and all that. So the time scale is too slow to innovate. Or you use, you know, what do you call user-defined features, library features, macro features, but those never turn out as well as the built-in features. Well, in Onshape, we have a language called FeatureScript. We wrote our own features in FeatureScript. You can write your features in FeatureScript, and they look, feel, perform just like the built-in ones.
Aaron Moncur: Yeah. Oh, wow, that is really cool.
John Hirshtick: And there's hundreds of features online that people share. So like, there's, there's a FeatureScript library for doing laser-cut tab and slot parts, for example, getting all the kerfs and all that stuff offset. Those are real first-class features. They, they're not slower, they run, they run just as, they have all the rollback and reorder and the preview slider. I don't know if you tried preview slider and final button in Onshape, those are two cool things that I don't believe SolidWorks has. All those things work with your own features. And but wait, there's more, as Steve Jobs would say, one more thing: those features we wrote, you know, fillet, loft, shell, extrude, sweep, those are all open-sourced FeatureScript. You can take the source code and reuse it to your heart's content to make your own features. We did that for you as a way for you to build features. I'll also tell you that a lot of our customers have written their own very proprietary FeatureScript custom features for their own particular uses in their company, and it is really freaking powerful. So custom features, we blow you away on.
I can give you 10 more things, but I'll only give you one or two. Configurations. Everyone knows configurations are a nice idea, but try and make a configuration really complicated, and your table blows up in CAD because you need one row for every possible permutation of the configuration. You know, we change all that. You can have really complex configs, it won't blow up. We don't, we can, you can have continuums of values in your configs. So configs work much better in Onshape. Bill of material, real-time bill of material shows up, not in the drawing as an artifact, but in the model where it should be. It's smart, it's two-way. You know, I mean, we've got so many better approaches. Oh, also, big benefit of cloud, things like rendering and simulation, they use cloud resources. So you can do photorealistic rendering. Yeah, killer idea. By the way, your kids will say, your kids will assume all the systems do this. They won't say, "Great idea." They'll say, you know, they're, "Why are we waiting so long for this to render? Why doesn't it use, Dad, why is your computer getting hot when you do a rendering or simulation? I do it in Onshape on my Chromebook at school, and nothing happens. And your computer, you got this big freaking graphics card. I'd buy that for gaming, but why do you need that to do CAD?" You know, so we do that too. So I could go on and on. But can I tell you one thing I'm really proud of on this subject of, well, actually, I think, let me go, we weren't talking, well, you asked to make things faster. I'll just get to the bottom line. This year, for the first time in speed modeling competition, open speed modeling competition, to Tall Toby, it's okay to mention another podcaster.
Aaron Moncur: Yeah, absolutely. You know him, Toby?
John Hirshtick: I do, yeah. So Toby, to Tall Toby's modeling competition, you got people showing up with their CAD system of choice. And frankly, the top guns show up with SolidWorks, let's face it, okay? So he's got these SolidWorks fanatics showing up, pro users, okay, showing up. Guess who wins the competition?
Aaron Moncur: I'm guessing Onshape, based on your...
John Hirshtick: A user with Onshape, and a student, a student engineering student using Onshape. All smidgens, surprising, all smidgens. You got to watch the tournament, it's amazing. So Al wins the championship using Onshape. So if you want to talk speed modeling, you know, we, you know, I'm not saying everything in Onshape is faster, but, and people are like, "Well, the desktop software has got to be faster." You know what, you know, "How could it be fast enough in the cloud?" I'm telling you, five, 10 years from now, people are going to say, "How could it be fast enough on the desktop? You only have one CPU, come on." You know, what do you mean? And also security, I haven't seen any trouble that people started like a few years ago was like, "Well, how, how's my data going to be secure in the cloud?" You know, a few years from now, people are going to be, "You keep, let me get this straight, you keep files on your laptop that have a complete digital representation of your company's products? That can't be secure, man." You know, you know why? Because it's not. I mean, people, people have their digital product definitions being sent out to vendors all over the place, customers, they're sitting on laptops in their car at the mall, you know, they're, they're, you know, in Onshape, your master files, they're not copied to your local computer, again, just like NetSuite or Salesforce. So we don't have those security risks. So really, it's really, I mean, sorry, too long. You can edit out some of these answers if they're too long.
Aaron Moncur: No, this is great. I love hearing all of this. That does bring up a point that we're about at time right now. I would love to keep going, but I want to be respectful of your time, John. Do you need to stop now?
John Hirshtick: No, I don't, actually. I'm, you know, I'm having dinner tonight with a friend of mine, he was SolidWorks customer number one. So I have, that's not why I'm having dinner with him, he's just an old friend, an old dear friend. We're having dinner, but I got a few more minutes.
Aaron Moncur: Okay, great. We'll just do a few more, and then we'll wrap things up. Anything that we should be looking forward to, you know, the next two, three, five years? Onshape already has all these really cool, innovative features. Anything else on the horizon that we should be expecting?
John Hirshtick: Well, you should be expecting a lot because Onshape is the, not only the only cloud-native system, we're also the fastest evolving system in the industry, with releases every three weeks, okay? That's incredible, every three weeks, and everyone's always on the latest version, okay? So, so there, so you get the features immediately, you're not waiting for a year or something. 2022 was a massive year, the biggest year ever for Onshape. We shipped major new areas like simulation and rendering, and we just bought a CAM company. We shipped ECAD-MCAD integration tool, that's super, okay? We shipped, we shipped a PLM connection with Arena, which is killer. So, so we, we, and we also doubled our rate of improvements to core modeling and drafting. So biggest year ever for the product. And even our insiders, I talked to one of our top engineers on our support and user experience team a couple of days ago, I said, "How's it going?" He said, "John, I'm so excited, product is moving so fast now. We are, we are loving it." So we got big things coming. Okay, now, you know, I just mentioned we acquired a full cloud powerful CAM system, it's not released yet. You know, we have to get the security and performance up to snuff and, you know, get it fit and everything, but that's coming. We've got, you know, we haven't, I don't know if we've officially announced generative design, but I'll just say we're working on generative.
Aaron Moncur: Oh, that's intriguing.
John Hirshtick: Yeah. And you know, a little spoiler alert, PTC owns Frustum, which was the company that had one of the really great approaches to generative. So we got a tremendous, and our simulation, if you look at our simulation and the way we did that, you should understand it was done that way because it leads to generative, and it uses the same solver and everything. But I'm just, I'm just, you know, wetting the appetite here. Huge new things coming. PTC is a fantastic company for their support of Onshape. And if I may, tell you two great ways you can see it yourself. One is, everyone can come to Onshape Live. If you do a Google search or on onshape.com, Onshape Live is our free virtual user conference, March 1st for US people, 2023. March 1st, 2023 for US time zone. March 2nd, a repeat of the event for European time zone. Of course, no one has to be in any place, but it's just the time zone kind of thing. And that's free. And one of the sessions is a sneak peek at Onshape. If that's all you're interested in, just tune in for that, but we'll have a few hours of sessions. Second conference in May is called LiveWorx, L-I-V-W-O-R-X. That's an in-person conference in Boston, May 15th through 18th, 2023. PTC's complete product line and user community. Last time they ran the event pre-COVID, 8,000 people, I think. We don't know, you know, with COVID, you know, post-COVID, hard to know conference, I don't want to say, but it should be thousands and thousands of people. You can meet us in person, I'll be there. You can learn more about Onshape and Vuforia, Creo, Windchill, Arena, ThingWorx, Codebeamer, all the cool things going on, AR, IoT in the PTC world. So a little pitch for those two conferences there.
Aaron Moncur: I'm curious, do you ever feel conflicted with, you built SolidWorks, right? Like that was your kind of first baby. And now you've got Onshape, and Onshape just seems like it's poised to take over the CAD world. Are there any feelings of, you know, being conflicted there, or is your attitude, "Hey, law of the jungle, eat or be eaten"?
John Hirshtick: Well, I think the difference between me and some of the other people in the industry is I'm focused on the user, the users of CAD. You know, I'm focused on serving you, Aaron, and the listeners here. And if you look at it that way, this is all part of a continuum. You know, Onshape, SolidWorks, the things I did before SolidWorks, Premise, Computervision. So if you look at it, if you look at me and my comp, there's discontinuity, but if I look at the customer, there isn't. You know, it's the same customer, I'm just trying to do good things for the same kinds of people. I'm not trying to do anything bad to SolidWorks, you know, like, like, you know, I'm not trying to do anything to SolidWorks at all. I'm trying to do something good for the users out there. And so, yeah, it is, I'll admit, it is awkward and weird to be competing with my old company and all that. But I also, you should know, I've spent my whole career, you know, being on and off different teams with different people. I mean, like I told you, there's a co-founder of PTC who built SolidWorks with me. And so, so anyway, it's weird, but it's all about, to me, the center of my world is not what I'm doing to other companies or what other companies are up to. I think they're a lot more, I think the other companies are a lot more preoccupied with what I'm up to and what PTC is up to than I am with them. I mean, I, you know, I look if there's, I look because sometimes there's something I can learn that helps me serve my customer better. Most of, so the center of our world is the customers and the users. And in that way, I just took the next logical step to serve them. And it happens to be now at PTC. And I think PTC is the best place in the industry to be to work on these tools right now.
Aaron Moncur: That's great, very refreshing to hear. Well, you've launched these two huge products now, companies, SolidWorks and Onshape. Any advice to engineer entrepreneurs out there who might be working towards launching their own products, be they software or hardware?
John Hirshtick: I guess it's be persistent. I mean, people look at these stories, and you know, like it's been nice to talk to you about two great successes in my career in Onshape and SolidWorks. But what we didn't talk about is some of the things I've tried that didn't work. Like my first company was not nearly as successful, Premise. And I could have given up. I could have given up when people said no with SolidWorks. And I think as an engineer, I can tell you two things: one is, if you try, I can't guarantee you'll succeed, but I can guarantee that if you don't try, you won't succeed. You know what I mean? So you got to keep trying. You know, and the other thing is, failures and problems, those are the neighbors of successes. You know, so you, you know, like some people think they're the opposite, you know, like, "Oh, I tried to build something, it was a total failure." Yet, total failures live in the same neighborhood as total successes, and they both live in different neighborhoods, it's a nice way, than mediocrity. So I encourage you, you know, just keep trying. I mean, don't try recklessly, you know, don't, don't endanger your, your, you know, your family finances or your career. You know, those can be, those can be somewhat endangered by doing these things, but don't bet it all or something. I would say just try to, try to understand that uncertainty and are part of it, and that it's going to take you a bunch of tries maybe to get where you want to be. That's more typical. Look at, you know, look at any other, other great story there. Yeah, but I love, I always love seeing our customers. The greatest thing to me is always watching them try and build new products. I just love the field of product development and watching them do it. And some work, some don't, but you got to keep trying.
Aaron Moncur: Awesome, great advice. All right, I've got one last question, and then we'll wrap this up. Specifically within the context of your role as an engineer, even though you've done so much more, you know, business owner, entrepreneur, what is one thing that frustrates you, and conversely, one thing that brings you joy?
John Hirshtick: Okay, frustrates me is bad user experience. So when I travel, particularly, why do I say travel? Because when you travel, you're in new places all the time, and you're using products you haven't seen before, and buildings you haven't seen, and just products in general. Bad user experience will bother me a lot. Like, you know, if you've read books like Donald Norman's "Design of Everyday Things" or Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think" is the website design, two great books, by the way. But anyway, they teach you about thinking about good UX. So bad user experience, you know, like, like elevators that have confusing button layouts bother me. Light switches in hotel rooms that don't work the way I expect, you know, those kinds of things bug me, okay? And it happens in software and hardware too, and it bothers me when I see it in my own product in Onshape too. So that's, that's frustration.
And then one thing that brings me joy, that's an easy one. When my customers build great products using Onshape and tell me that they did it faster, easier because of my tools, that's the excitement I get. I love, I love building CAD, I love the cool features I was telling you about, I love that we have lots of users, but none of that really means anything until a customer says to me, "John, I built this product." I built, whether it's a water bottle or a water balloon launcher or a watercraft or a car or a rocket ship or a medical device or a bicycle. These are all things people, medical, fitness wearables. I'm telling you, we have people building all those things. And that's what brings me the most joy, is when I see what they build.
Aaron Moncur: That's a great insight. As engineers, we really do love when we see our users succeeding because of, you know, something we were able to bring to the world. Yeah. Well, what a treat this has been, John. Thank you so much for taking some of your precious, busy time and sharing it with us here on the show. How can people get a hold of you? Is LinkedIn the best way for that, or other methods?
John Hirshtick: Yeah, LinkedIn, although I'm a little slow sometimes on the LinkedIn messages, but you can reach out on LinkedIn. Also, I'm, you can reach me on Twitter @jhirshtick, J-H-I-R-S-C-T-I-C-K. Those are two ways. And Aaron, thank you so much for inviting me. It's been a pleasure. You asked great questions.
Aaron Moncur: Oh, thank you, John. I appreciate it. I'm Aaron Moncur, founder of Pipeline Design and Engineering. If you like what you heard today, please share the episode. To learn how your team can leverage our team's expertise developing turnkey equipment, custom fixtures, and automated machines, and with product design, visit us at teampipeline.us. Thanks for listening.
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