If you have ever wondered who actually makes the metal parts behind America's rockets, robots, and cars, the answer is increasingly a quiet company in Reno called SendCutSend. We drove to Nevada to spend a day with founder and CEO Jim Belosic, the guy whose name keeps coming up at every hardware startup, aerospace company, and defense shop in the country. You upload a design, his machines cut, bend, and machine it, and the finished part shows up at your door, sometimes by noon the next day. No venture capital for years, no outside sales team, no hype. Just a fast, easy way to turn an idea into a real piece of metal.
Jim takes us through the whole story, from the $750,000 fiber laser he bought before he knew if anyone would buy anything, to the first paid order ever placed, a batch of pickleball keychains. We get into how a graphic designer turned Facebook software founder ended up running one of the most important on-demand manufacturing businesses in the United States, why he built almost all the software himself, and how SendCutSend now serves more than 300,000 customers that range from his mom to rocket companies, Zipline, DoorDash, and Fortune 500 names he is not allowed to mention. Along the way he explains the Teslonda, his half Tesla, half Honda hot rod that forced the whole company into existence.
This one is really a conversation about American manufacturing and whether the reindustrialization everyone keeps talking about is real or theater. Jim has strong, unhyped views on competing with China, why "software first" is often a pitch built for investors, how he trains a 19 year old with no experience to run a million dollar machine, and why he refuses to build a business that only works if there is a war. Full disclosure, SendCutSend later came on as a Core Memory sponsor, but this interview was filmed months before that and was done independently.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ashlee Vance is a best selling author, filmmaker, and journalist who has spent more than twenty years chronicling science and technology for The Economist, The New York Times, and Bloomberg Businessweek. He wrote the best selling biography of Elon Musk and created the Emmy nominated series Hello World. On Core Memory he travels the world to drop into labs, garages, factories, and hangars and spend time with the scientists, inventors, oddballs, and startups pushing the future forward.
SPONSORS
Brex: https://www.brex.com/?partnerId=corememory
Send Cut Send: https://sendcutsend.com/corememory/
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Chapters
00:00 Intro
04:09 What Does SendCutSend Actually Do?
06:01 The Black Market for One-Off Parts
08:31 The $750,000 Bet That Started It All
11:22 From Facebook Software to Cutting Metal
18:02 What on Earth Is a Teslonda?
24:31 The One Thing Nobody Else Tried
30:28 300,000 Customers, From Rockets to His Mom
35:23 Is Reindustrializing America Just Theater?
42:20 Why "Software First" Is a VC Trap
50:22 Is U.S. Manufacturing Stronger Than We Think?
1:03:42 Anodizing, Nevada, and What They Can Build Now
1:13:29 The One Competitor That Scares Him
