Jim Belosic, the Co-founder and CEO of SendCutSend, discusses building a manufacturing business in the US. He shares how he built a bootstrapped sheet metal manufacturing business into a company with a $140 million revenue run rate in just eight years.
Key Themes & Business Strategies
Solving the Quoting Bottleneck: Belosic realized that traditional machine shops avoid small orders because the manual quoting and setup process is too expensive. By using custom software to automate quoting and "nesting" (fitting parts together like cookies to minimize waste), SendCutSend made custom manufacturing accessible for low-volume orders.
Creative Financing: To get started, Belosic acquired a $750,000 laser with 0% down by leveraging a Japanese equipment bank. He eventually raised a small "safety net" angel round in 2021 but emphasizes running the company like a "lemonade stand"—buying lemons, selling juice, and reinvesting the profit.
The "Gaslight" Launch: Instead of flashy marketing, the company turns on new features (like welding or CNC machining) quietly. They wait for customers to discover them organically to ensure they can handle the capacity and fix bugs before scaling up.
Speed as a Moat: To compete with cheaper overseas manufacturing, SendCutSend focuses on extreme speed. Their "noon by noon" service allows customers to receive parts the next day, a timeline that even "teleporting" international competitors couldn't beat.
Solving the Labor Shortage: Rather than hunting for rare "skilled machinists," the company hires based on attitude and "soft hands" (hiring bartenders, nurses, and donut shop workers) and trains them in-house through a "learn by doing" model.
Practical Advice for Founders
"You can't run a factory from a spreadsheet."
Belosic argues that leaders must walk the factory floor to identify true bottlenecks.
For example, a dashboard might show a "bin shortage," but physical observation reveals the real issue is a slow shipping department that isn't emptying bins fast enough to reuse them.