Derek Vogt

Worth knowing

He has taken hardware from a student prototype to a Kickstarter launch to a factory-scale system used for production runs, and knows what it costs to manufacture and support physical product from Toronto into Europe and Asia. He has also grown an engineering team from three people to forty-five. Founders building hardware, and anyone looking at additive manufacturing for supply-chain resilience, should write.

Story

Derek studied mechanical engineering at Queen's University in Kingston, and in 2014, the year he graduated, he and classmates Mitch Debora and Chris Labelle won the Queen's Innovation Centre Summer Initiative with the pitch that became Mosaic Manufacturing. The first product went to Kickstarter in April 2015. From there the company moved from desktop accessories to Array, a factory-connected automated FFF system for production-scale printing, and raised $28 million CAD in 2024 to push additive manufacturing further into supply chains. Derek runs the technology side from Toronto, with operations reaching into Europe and Asia.

Highlights

• Co-founder & CTO, Mosaic Manufacturing (founded 2014, Toronto)
• Co-designed Palette, launched on Kickstarter in April 2015
• Grew Mosaic's team from 3 to 45 people
• BEng, Mechanical Engineering, Queen's University (2014)