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What @jimbelosic thinks was the hardest part about bootstrapping his manufacturing company @sendcutsend to $140M ARR:
"The hardest part is doing many, many things at once. And you need to resist automating it for as long as possible.
We were lucky because we started by just cutting sheet metal. A lot of people told us that was never going to work because sheet metal fabrication really needs a hundred more steps. Bending, painting, anodizing, whatever. I said, “Nope. I’m just going to cut it.” Then we slowly added over time.
What I see now is people saying, “I’m going to build a factory and make bicycles.” It’s incredibly complex. You need the raw materials, cutting the tubes, welding, managing supply chain for gears and sprockets and pedals and all the little parts, then the assembly. Doing all of that at once is really challenging. It’s almost overwhelming.
And what people try to do today is automate it all. And that’s where things go really sideways. You can over-automate.
We’re very sensitive about when to use people and when to use robots. We put robots where robots make sense. But we also have great people who can adapt within seconds and move all across the factory to where they’re needed. Automation is very difficult to set up accurately the first time.
Doing everything at once in manufacturing is hard. If you have the luxury of a slow ramp, start with one very simple product.
If I were going to make a humanoid robot, I’d start with just winding copper around an armature. Then make it into an actuator. Then maybe make some PCBs. Then make the cameras. All over months and years, before I had to do the whole humanoid. People with much more ambition and resources are doing the whole thing at once, but it’s very, very hard.
So start with something, do it manually, get really good at it, and then automate around the edges as you expand.
And we were able to do this because we were bootstrapped. We had no pressure to deploy capital fast.
And I think that's one of the biggest problems with venture right now. They're throwing a shit ton of money at people without a ton of experience, with the expectation that you figure it all out very quickly because they need to make their money back.
And it takes longer than that. Where you start and where you end are often different. You might start out trying to make toasters and it turns out you’re really good at the electrical components, so you become an electrical component manufacturer instead."
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