As you read in the 1st of this 2 part series you got a background into what Jon Hirschtick’s upbringing was like. Well we are now at the point where Jon was noticing some trends developing in the CAD industry and developing the formula for SolidWorks. It was a 3 part formula – 3D, Microsoft Windows and the business model that Autodesk used. After seeing this formula Jon began to work out of his house, beginning to lay out the new software and a month later he called another co-founder and yet a month later another co-founder. Well these 3 guys were all working out of their houses and took turns hosting meetings every couple of days to touch base with how everything was going. This setup was beginning to get difficult so they decided that they needed an office, with no capital. Jon himself, co-founder of SolidWorks went 13 months without an income all in an effort to establish the software as we know it today. I asked Jon if he had any inclination that SolidWorks would be where it is today and he said in regards to the relative position in the industry, his answer was yes. He always felt that this would be big, he told people that they were going to be the largest user of this technology in the future. He was telling people that SolidWorks would be the biggest user of component technologies for CAD ever. The one thing Jon admitted that he didn’t foresee was how big the world market would be, that it would expand so much that they could have over 700,000 licenses out there and there is still people that are using 2D design software that have never seen SolidWorks. The first years orders totaled around 12 million dollars so as you can see a lot of people jumped on board right away with this new software. Jon was a fantastic interview with awesome insight into a wide variety of issues, be sure to say hi to Jon and introduce yourself if you see him in passing, he is a great guy.

Stay tuned for more from San Diego!