Standard Cyborg's YC W15 bet: $800 3D-printed legs vs $23,000 hand-made

Jeff Huber was born without a fully formed fibula and has used a prosthetic leg most of his life. As a child he outgrew a new leg about every nine months; as an adult, insurance covered a replacement only every three to five years, and his current leg cost $23,000. He first thought about cheaper prosthetics as an undergraduate at North Carolina State, dropped out to build education startup Knowit, and later worked at MightyHive before returning to the idea.

Back in an Emeryville workspace, Huber interviewed other amputees about what they wanted most. Shower legs topped the list: more than half of amputees are over 50, and a fall in the shower can be life-threatening. He experimented with 3D printers and plastics, then blended printing with traditional technique — a printed plastic limb covered with carbon fiber, finished with two hours of hand lamination. The 2015-02-09 TechCrunch feature put the list price at $499, updated to roughly $799, and called it the first prosthetic leg made with a printer that is worth less than $10,000.

At YC W15 Demo Day on 2015-03-24, the roundup described waterproof 3D-printed legs selling for just $800 against the $23,000 hand-made prosthetic its founder wore, and said a much wider range of prosthetics was next. Huber, still the sole founder and employee, planned to sell directly and through prosthetists against a market dominated by 150-year-old Hanger Prosthetics and Orthotics, which holds roughly a quarter of the market and, in his words, has so few players they can charge whatever they want.