Fictiv co-founder and CEO Dave Evans [Photo courtesy of Fictiv]
Fictiv focuses on “helping companies produce better products,” co-founder and CEO Dave Evans said, with three main offerings: new product development, engineer-to-order products, and maintenance, repair and operations (MRO).
But the company doesn’t actually own any manufacturing equipment. Instead, it has built a vetted network of 250 manufacturing partners, Evans told Device Talks Editorial Director Tom Salemi in an interview. (Listen to the full conversation in an upcoming edition of DeviceTalks Weekly.)
After medical device developers upload their designs to Fictiv’s web-based platform, they get instant pricing and help to choose from different manufacturing methods, standards and prices to find the best fit, Evans said.
“I’m the go-between [with contract manufacturers] because we standardize all the information, the workflows, and that’s what we are experts at,” Evans said. “Think about those shops. They’re both running machines, trying to quote things, delivering the cut, they’re all over the place doing many different tasks. So you will talk to Fictiv’s application engineers, and they’ll walk you through and say, ‘Hey, change that design, or it’ll be cheaper if you do this, or try an additive process here that you might not even know about.’ We’re going to give you all of those different pieces of feedback and work with you hand in hand to get the best product built.”
Evans said Fictiv’s advantage for manufacturing partners is that they’ve already been tested and qualified for work by his company, so all they need to do is decide whether to accept jobs that come their way, complete with due dates and payment terms, without having to quote each project.
“We live in this capability world of how do you help build mechanical products — injection molding, additive manufacturing, CNC machining — and how do you help solve that supply chain challenge of driving speed with better quality and giving real transparency or visibility into that supply chain?” Evans said. “That’s our every day.”
The company said it has already delivered more than 19 million parts to over 3,000 companies, including Medtronic, Johnson & Johnson, Intuitive Surgical and Honeywell.
“It’s not our first rodeo by any means,” Evans said. “Now is the time where businesses are saying, ‘How do I put more agility into my supply chain? How do I de-risk my business by having better geographic resiliency? How do I digitize all this?’ All these big business-level questions, we’re seeing a huge adoption of solutions like our on-demand ecosystem.”
Evans said almost 10% of the company’s business comes from surgical robots using CNC machining for precision components, gear hobbling, end effectors and the like. Another large segment is augmented/virtual reality work with 3D goggles for healthcare applications. Altogether, medical product companies make up at least a quarter of Fictiv’s business, a figure that Evans wants to grow.
Fictiv CEO Dave Evans founded the company with his brother, Nate Evans. [Photo courtesy of Fictiv]
“Remote work is the way of the future and businesses scaling,” Evans said.
The latest funding round was led by Activate Capital and included new investors Angeleno Group, Cross Creek and The Westly Group, along with existing institutional investors Accel, Bill Gates, G2 Venture Partners and Standard Investments.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly included William Blair Merchant Bank as an investor based on information from Fictiv.
