Reindustrializing America: Building NOX Metals & The Future of Manufacturing with Zane Hengsperger (#430)

This week Chris sits down with Zane Hengsperger, Founder and CEO of NOX Metals, a metal supplier in Detroit he started in 2025. NOX buys metal from the mill, cuts it to the exact size a machine shop needs, and ships it out. The whole operation runs on software the company writes itself.

Zane is 26, and his first job was scrubbing the floors of his dad's machine shop at 14. He went into software, then came back to run a machine shop. That is where he saw that metal was the bottleneck for everyone making parts in America. The incumbents have been around for 200 years and have never put software to work. NOX is a year old and has raised an $11.5M seed round. It has written a million lines of code and quotes an order in 10 seconds.

They discuss:
• The 18-minute call with Y Combinator that put him on a plane the next day
• Why his dad hired software engineers for a machine shop back in 2017
• How one piece of software does the work of 20 salespeople
• Why two of his engineers moved their desks onto the factory floor
• Why the forklift driver gets equity after three months
• The 7pm order that was in Dallas by 10 the next morning
• Why he says America needs 100x more factories
• Where AI has let him down so far

This one is for anyone betting on American manufacturing.

Timestamps
(00:00) Intro
(01:10) Reading Alex Karp and Walking Back Into a Machine Shop
(06:06) Hiring Young Technicians Who Want Hard Work
(09:10) Why the Brand Is the Moat
(14:28) Lessons From a Dad Who Ran a Machine Shop
(16:14) Getting Into Y Combinator With One Day's Notice
(22:06) Buy a Saw and Write Instant Quoting Software
(27:37) Software Engineers on the Factory Floor
(34:29) Is America Actually Reindustrializing?
(40:55) America Needs 100 Times More Factories
(45:26) Quotes in 10 Seconds Instead of Eight Hours
(50:09) Delta Cargo Deliveries and Why Detroit Is Ripping
(56:07) Where AI Falls Short and What the Next 24 Months Hold
(59:13) The Customer Is the Core Thing Left in America

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