Lots of smart people we talked to were skeptical. We didn’t want to take years of our lives to learn if they were right. The biggest existential question for the company was: Is the thing we’re building as groundbreaking as we think it is? We were breaking a fairly cardinal startup rule: “Don’t try to create a new market.” There were certainly laser enthusiasts out there, but for us to be a meaningful company, the vast majority of our customers would quickly be comprised of laser neophytes. The good news is niche technologies go mainstream all the time, often with spectacular results. MP3 players, touch screens, PCs, tablets, 3D printers– all of these were technologies that had been around for years before the timing/technology was right to consumerize them.