Layer By Layer

Layer By Layer was a San Francisco 3D-printing software startup founded in 2012 and part of Y Combinator's Summer 2013 batch. It operated a marketplace for buying, selling, and sharing printable 3D designs, and built streaming and digital rights management technology that let licensed content partners distribute 3D-printable intellectual property without handing over raw model files. MakerBot (Stratasys) announced its acquisition of the company in November 2014 and folded the streaming and DRM technology into the MakerBot Digital Store. The company no longer operates independently: layerbylayer.com is a parked domain, and there is no developer portal, documentation, public API, or GitHub organization to enrich.

Layer By Layer is profiled on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Company, 3D Printing, Additive Manufacturing, Marketplace, and Digital Rights Management.

📡 Source on GitHub

5.0/100 minimal ▬ flat Agent 0/100 human only Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-09-08 · rubric v0.20.0

0 APIs

Company 3D Printing Additive Manufacturing Marketplace Digital Rights Management Acquired Y Combinator

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-09-08 · rubric v0.20.0

Composite quality — 5.0/100 · minimal

Contract Quality 0.0 / 25

Developer Ergonomics 0.0 / 20

Access Clarity 0.0 / 20

Operational Transparency 0.0 / 13

Contract Governance 0.0 / 12

Discoverability 5.0 / 10

Agent readiness — 0/100 · human only

Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 0 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 0 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Create-or-Update Ergonomics could not be measured. We hold no machine-readable contract for this provider to read, so there is nothing to measure a write surface against. Excluded rather than scored zero: never-measured and measured-empty are different facts. Publishing an OpenAPI is what makes this facet — and several others — scorable at all.

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Resources

Company 1

The organization behind the API

Crunchbase

Crunchbase

Other 2

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

CompanyProfile

CompanyProfile

Acquisition

Acquisition

Source (apis.yml)

aid: layer-by-layer
deliveryModel:
  model: unknown
  open_source: false
  commercial: false
  callable_host: false
  label: Delivery model not determined — needs a product licence on record
  confidence: low
  source:
  - none
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: unknown
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Unknown
  confidence: low
  source: []
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/layer-by-layer.png
name: Layer By Layer
description: 'Layer By Layer was a San Francisco 3D-printing software startup founded in 2012 and part of Y Combinator''s
  Summer 2013 batch. It operated a marketplace for buying, selling, and sharing printable 3D designs, and built streaming
  and digital rights management technology that let licensed content partners distribute 3D-printable intellectual property
  without handing over raw model files. MakerBot (Stratasys) announced its acquisition of the company in November 2014 and
  folded the streaming and DRM technology into the MakerBot Digital Store. The company no longer operates independently: layerbylayer.com
  is a parked domain, and there is no developer portal, documentation, public API, or GitHub organization to enrich.'
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/layer-by-layer/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
x-type: company
x-source: vc-portfolio
x-backed-by:
- a16z
x-backed-by-source: https://a16z.com/investment-list/
x-tier: stub
x-tier-reason: acquired-no-api-surface
x-status: acquired
x-acquired-by: MakerBot (Stratasys)
x-acquired-announced: '2014-11-13'
x-acquisition-source: https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/makerbot-acquisition-layer-36425
x-accelerator: Y Combinator (S13)
x-founded: '2012'
x-headquarters: San Francisco, California, United States
x-founders:
- Jonathan Schwartz
- Max Friefeld
- Graham Tremper
- Dustin Kane
- Becca Schwartz
- Oliver Ortlieb
x-former-website: http://layerbylayer.com
x-website-status: parked
x-api-surface: none
x-enrichment-note: Enrichment pass 2026-07-19 found no live provider surface. The former domain layerbylayer.com is parked
  and soft-404s every path (including /.well-known/* and /llms.txt) with a lander redirect, so no well-known, llms.txt, or
  security.txt artifacts exist. No GitHub organization, package-registry presence, OpenAPI, docs, or status page were found.
  No artifacts were generated, because there is nothing real to ground them in.
specificationVersion: '0.23'
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-07-19'
tags:
- Company
- 3D Printing
- Additive Manufacturing
- Marketplace
- Digital Rights Management
- Acquired
- Y Combinator
apis: []
common:
- type: CompanyProfile
  url: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/layer-by-layer
- type: Acquisition
  url: https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/makerbot-acquisition-layer-36425
- type: Crunchbase
  url: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/layer-by-layer
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
  email: info@apis.io
x-enrichment:
  date: '2026-07-19'
  status: backfilled
  pass: local-v1
  note: backfilled from .gitignore signal + verified work evidence

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