Before Dennis DeMeyere joined 3D modeling startup Physna as CTO in April, he spent nearly 8 years ushering Google Cloud from a small collection of disparate services to a giant, comprehensive platform that now competes with Amazon and Microsoft.
At Google Cloud, DeMeyere served in the Office of the CTO and as a technical director, helping it grow into the $10 billion-dollar business that it is on track to become this year.
Though Google Cloud still has plenty of challenges ahead, it's no longer the scrappy organization that DeMeyere remembers.
"If you've been part of an early stage product, it's genuinely exciting everyday," DeMeyere told Business Insider of his time at Google.
So, when he learned about Physna, a young company which helps businesses work with — and collaborate on — 3D models, he decided to take the leap, moving from Silicon Valley to Ohio to be its CTO.
"When you think about 20 years out in California working with some of the larger tech companies and you think about making that move to an early stage series A in the Midwest, how do you make that decision?" DeMeyere said. "It was a combination of two things: underlying technology and the people."
Physna launched in 2015 and has raised a mere $8.9 million, but DeMeyere believes it could eventually solve problems related to medical imaging, supply chains, and 3D printing.
"For me at least, I think less about what the product is now and what the future of that product could be," DeMeyere said.
Like Google Cloud's ascent from a service that only offered storage and a few other paid services into a behemoth with an annual revenue run rate of over $8 billion, he believes Physna has the potential to become a giant.
He also wants to bring some of Google's philosophies to the startup. Google Cloud employees thought about product development in a "heavily user and customer centric" way, he said, and would get feedback by interviewing users to improve their products. He's bringing that style to Physna.
"What you're going to see is that idea we are focusing on simplicity, users and solving problems in a unique way that's better than any solution that they can get access to," DeMeyere said.
Right now, Physna is building products for large businesses, though it eventually plans to build products for individual consumers. Physna has already gotten inbound interest from enterprise customers and it has a backlog of people who want to try out its products, says Paul Powers, Physna cofounder and CEO.
