The ReForge Podcast

Automation, AI, and the American Worker.
Conversations with the leaders reindustrializing America. 🇺🇸
Hosted by @MatthewChang and @ThaaatColin

[The ReForge Podcast @thereforgepod]

A junior engineer brought Matt Chang an analysis that was off by 100x. She’d checked the math. One of his top engineers had checked the math. Both were too close to the page to notice no factory on earth produces that much. It was a unit conversion. AI has no idea whether a number makes sense. (EP 033)

[The ReForge Podcast @thereforgepod]

“There is not a humanoid robot in the world that is being built by humanoid robots. So let that sink in. The humanoids can’t build humanoids.” — @MatthewChang, EP 033

[The ReForge Podcast @thereforgepod]

The ReForge Podcast - Ep. 043: Matt (@MatthewChang) & Colin (@ThaaatColin) Talk Maintenance & Reliability https://t.co/BmhVcr9cTT

[The ReForge Podcast @thereforgepod]

When electronic spreadsheets arrived, the accounting lobby tried to get Congress to ban doing accounting electronically. Nobody could trust the integrity of the work. Then the number of accountants went up 5x, because now you could afford to run five scenarios instead of one. (EP 033)

[The ReForge Podcast @thereforgepod]

“I don’t think AI is a super intelligence. I think it’s a very useful tool like Microsoft Excel and the way that changed the workplace.” — @MatthewChang, EP 033

[The ReForge Podcast @thereforgepod]

New episode! Matt and Colin on why AI is a really fancy calculator, what the spreadsheet dilemma predicts about AI jobs, and why there isn’t a humanoid robot anywhere being built by humanoid robots. (EP 033)

[The ReForge Podcast @thereforgepod]

The ReForge Podcast - Ep. 042: @olympianmotors Founder Eren Canarslan (@ErenCanarslanX) joins Colin (@ThaaatColin) on @theReforgePodcast https://t.co/1XKdyZpTRv

[The ReForge Podcast @thereforgepod]

Here’s the part nobody mentions about robot subscriptions. Past twelve months it goes on the balance sheet as debt, and after that it converts to a lease, which is also mostly debt. So the operational win becomes a debt-to-income problem, and the CFO starts worrying about finance covenants. (EP 032)

[The ReForge Podcast @thereforgepod]

“You’ll know humanoids work when you see the humanoid building the humanoid.” — @MatthewChang, EP 032

[The ReForge Podcast @thereforgepod]

Software as a service is sticky because switching is a headache nobody wants. Robot as a service isn’t, because the thing is on your floor every shift. When it underperforms, the ops team revolts and the maintenance team pulls it off the line. Matt Chang has seen contracts die in month three. (EP 032)

[The ReForge Podcast @thereforgepod]

Burn $100M a year. Make $20K contribution per robot. Matt Chang’s math: that’s 5,000 robots a year just to break even, before you’ve built the US assembly plant you’d need to make 5,000 of anything. The advertised backlog is a fraction of that, and it’s spread over five years. (EP 032)

[The ReForge Podcast @thereforgepod]

Matthew Chang, PE and Colin Russ take Episode 32 of the ReForge Podcast without a guest, and spend it on the economics of humanoid robots.

Matt runs the Agility Robotics pricing sheet the way a CFO would and lands on a 6.25 year payback, which is roughly double what e-commerce will tolerate. From there: why robot as a service subscriptions get ripped out by maintenance teams, why a lease past twelve months shows up on your debt ledger, what the ERP integration actually costs, and what a SPAC tells you about a company’s books.

👉 Watch the full episode on Rumble: https://t.co/wuJz4Oydh9

[The ReForge Podcast @thereforgepod]

Raising from angels and then venture is not a step in building the company. It is the job. Two years of your build, spent being a capital raiser instead. Scroll X and every startup looks venture funded, which creates the illusion that the money is accessible. It mostly isn’t. (EP 031)

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“It is not the founder of the company that wants the IPO. It’s their investors want the IPO.” — @MatthewChang, EP 031

[The ReForge Podcast @thereforgepod]

The ReForge Podcast - Ep. 041 https://t.co/pLYYEQ1THv

[The ReForge Podcast @thereforgepod]

Steel at six months pushes the whole project six months, because steel goes up early. Earthwork, foundations, columns. Switchgear at 80 weeks is worse. It lands at the back end, so you can have a finished building sitting there and still not be able to turn a machine on. (EP 031)

[The ReForge Podcast @thereforgepod]

“You have to get the steel ordered first, prior to even starting the earthwork on the site. That’s how busted we are right now.” — @MatthewChang, EP 031

[The ReForge Podcast @thereforgepod]

Matthew Chang, PE and Colin Russ take Episode 31 of the ReForge Podcast.

Two calls in this one. First, structural steel has become the critical path on factory builds. You cannot get a mill order inside six months, which means owners are now buying their steel package before the building permit is approved and before the earthwork starts. Second, the customer-funded founder is the one most likely to make it through this wave, and venture capital was never really built for someone with roots, kids, and a mortgage in a flyover state.

👉 Watch the full episode on Rumble: https://t.co/48hQQ23sDW

[The ReForge Podcast @thereforgepod]

The ReForge Podcast - Ep. 040 https://t.co/vLCwJ74yAR

[The ReForge Podcast @thereforgepod]

“If you’re trying to hit a bill of materials target of 65, 75 percent, you absolutely have to have your actuators and motors made domestically.” — @masonhensley, EP 030