Vice President of Software, Hardik Kabaria, has seen Carbon grow from a small Silicon Valley start-up to a midsize company serving major clients like Ford and adidas. Carbon is a 3D printing technology company that helps businesses design better products and bring them to market in less time
Organizations that use 3D printing for product design often customize it to fit their needs after learning how to use the system. For example, dental providers can use Carbon’s 3D printing technology to develop customized dentures for their patients. This process allows for efficient production of the final product, which is designed to fit comfortably in a patient’s mouth.
Kabaria began his tenure at Carbon in 2015 as a software engineer after graduating with a Ph.D. from Stanford University. When he joined the start-up in its early days, it had just 50 employees. Since then, the company has significantly expanded to employ over 400 talented workers.
A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
Kabaria currently oversees the software team, ensuring that software products delivered to customers enable them to create what was not possible before. As the group manager, Kabaria gives his team leeway to develop their own solutions.
Dental modeling represents a significant portion of Carbon’s clientele, but customers also include organizations in the automotive, consumer, and industrial industries. Each customer has different requirements, and Kabaria’s team seeks to provide a platform that clients can tailor to their needs.
Kabaria’s team must regularly collaborate with the engineers in the hardware and materials department to ensure that everyone is on the same page with the goal of solving the same problem. There are no silos in Carbon. Instead, everyone learns to value the creativity and expertise of others.
Whenever Carbon collaborates with a partner, the customer describes their goals and gives parameters for their needs. Generally, they want to achieve specific performance, time to market, and cost within a given period.
Carbon partners with different organizations to review unique designs while suggesting ways to improve part performance, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. For example, Adidas utilized Carbon’s 4DFWD lattice to build a better, more efficient midsole. The end product added 23% more cushioning and reduced braking forces by 15%.
Carbon’s specific enhancements to the Adidas product resulted in a better midsole. Software, hardware, and materials combine to issue a final product to the consumer in line with their expectations.
Kabaria’s team is constantly looking for innovative processes to meet the needs of its clients. They are responsible for software updates occurring every six to eight weeks. Updates, pushed over-the-air to machines, provide new features and capabilities that progress hardware performance. A connected manufacturing system also allows remote troubleshooting, to more quickly diagnose and solve problems.
CARBON CULTURE AND DIVERSITY OF IDEAS
Kabaria credits Carbon’s ability to maintain effective communication among departments as a central part of the company’s success. No single person can know everything. Instead, Carbon employees collaborate and share their skills, which leads to a more efficient and accurate production process.
“The culture at Carbon is designing the solution with a diverse mindset and expertise,” Kabaria says.
No one in the company comes to the table believing that just because they know specific things means that they’re experts in every field.
“There’s mutual respect of culture. It transcends titles. When critical discussions occur, the organization is very flat. Instead, the stakeholders care about expertise, opinions, and how both can combine to create an efficient solution,” Kabaria says.
He cites the diversity among Carbon team members as one of its greatest assets. “The goal is to connect between departments, understand their deliverables, and create real solutions,” he explains. “Diversity of ideas and cultures continues to foster innovation, even at the larger scale the company operates in today.”
Kabaria joined Carbon from an academic environment. He assumed that most solutions required complicated answers. At one of his first team meetings, he experienced a lightbulb moment, when the team said, “Just because it has been that way, doesn’t mean we are going to follow the same path.”
It struck him that the team sought simplicity rather than complicated problem resolution. Employees put effort into making the process as simple as possible for users. The memory still sticks with Kabaria, even though the problem in question wasn’t solved at that time. He says he realized then that failure was okay and that not all problems would resolve in the desired outcome. He attributes the constant questioning of norms as part of the creative development process.
As Carbon expands, it has kept its commitment to diversity and inclusion. Kabaria credits diversity as being highly beneficial for the development of ideas.
“At Carbon, people come from different expertise, backgrounds, and geographies. They work together to solve problems. As a manager at Carbon, I understand how important it is to get out of the way. Let information flow so that the right people solve the right problems in the right priority,” Kabaria says.
CARBON GROWTH
As Carbon has grown from start-up to midsize organization, the company has tried to retain that early mentality.
As part of his role as Vice President of Software, Kabaria understands who is responsible for different functions. He often introduces people working on similar problems, encouraging them to collaborate and work toward the same goal.
Another way that Carbon keeps everyone informed is through regular all-hands meetings with tailored sessions to engage the Company’s employees. These meetings allow for teammates to learn from each other, especially those that may have different experiences, expertise, or views.
Kabaria sees the continuity in providing information as helping everyone understand the company’s goals so they can achieve them together.
DEVELOPING TALENT
One essential characteristic of Carbon’s hiring and employee development process is its internships and mentorships. Many engineers started working at Carbon through internships, where they gained exposure to problems that the engineering team was working through at the time.
Through their experience as interns, they witnessed product development and saw the feedback that the customers provided and the way that clients used the product. Interns receive a taste of the entire product development cycle from beginning to end.
Carbon has an established mentorship program to support employees’ growth. Many teams also have more informal mentor relationships set up so employees have someone to turn to for questions or for help with developing key skills.
Employees stay on because they enjoy the problems and looking for innovative solutions. They feel safe trying out new things. As Kabaria says, “Shoot for the moon. It’s okay if we land on a satellite — that’s pretty good, too.”
When asked about his guidance for an individual seeking to follow his path, Kabaria offers two pieces of advice.
“First, look for problems that others don’t see. It doesn’t matter if the problem doesn’t directly relate to your job. Ask the question, and even if people aren’t happy you asked, it’s part of the learning process, especially in a start-up environment where people wear different hats,” he advises. “Second, take an interest in other areas that aren’t your own. Seek to expand your skills by appreciating those of someone else.”
