Nox Metals closes $4.6M seed to cut and supply US metals amid industrial supply chain crunch

Zane is in the reream waiting room. I believe we're bringing him into the TBP Ultra Dome. You know, we couldn't miss out on getting Zayn on the show. Is he on? I think we're on. Here. He's coming in. We got Hey, we're rotating our camera. Thank you. That's better. There we go. Uh, give us the number.

Why didn't you tell us? Why didn't you tell us? I know you were on the show a few weeks ago, but I know, but we had to we had to run it back. We were so close. And first of all, thanks for having me, guys. Good to see you again. We were so close.

And uh yeah, no, it just wrapped up in like like literally two days after that. Fantastic. Let's go. What's the final number? Uh 4. 6. There we go. [Applause] Fantastic. Fantastic. Congratulations. Thanks. Uh what uh what are you doing with the money?

Essentially, we're going to be building factory 1, which is already in in production. We want to be able to cut two types of metals, the tube and plate, and be able to supply, you know, the Midwest or most of the country in terms of uh of factories that we want to reach out to.

Are you at the point where you would think about bringing debt into the business yet? I I feel like a lot of the hard tech companies are doing that really early. seed round seems like maybe still a little bit too early, but when does that come into the picture in your opinion?

Um, for us, I I think we can start cycling debt immediately. Like the way I think about is like if we're going to be holding inventory and cycling that throughout the factory, then we almost need to do it immediately. So, we're having those conversations now.

I'm actually at the office in New York City where we're trying to get debt money from. So, Oh, there we go. I go and you bought a factory, too. Was that is factory 1 something that you acquired and and uh or did I misread that? Hey, sorry guys. One sec. This is the last minute uh appearance.

You might be getting kicked out of the conference. They're like $500 million for you. What's that in the background? Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. They have a building together. What's this? Wait, they're competing. They're competing for the deal. I think we lost your audio. Can you uh can you still hear us?

Austin takes me out of his office and No way. Austin that guys, no worries. No worries. Um you got a lot of fans. You got a lot of fans in the chat. You got a lot of fans in the chat. Everyone's happy to see you. Yeah. But what happened? You guys like you guys like wrote me like uh what was going on? Oh.

Oh, we just uh everyone was calling out on the timeline that you raised. Oh, he's got to get on the show. He's got on the show. So, he So, he sent you the link. So, here you are. Did you hop on? Anyways, I I had asked I'd ask, did you you acquired an existing factory?

Is that what you're turning into factory 1 or was that something else? No. So, that was like kind of a previous life. I was like buying selling well mainly just buying, you know, with the hopes to sell one day. But like how do we revitalize like machine shops?

So, like uh I think what Hdream is working on is like an interesting problem that we're losing machine shops. thought maybe an interesting way to do that would be like through private equity or like basically running a small shop that revitalizes some of these these existing factories.

So did that um with like a small team got hired to run that factory for a few months and then decided to take the leap to solve a much bigger problem with the metal supply. How's the how's the customer development process going?

Do you have a do you have a shape of customer that you're targeting for this like f next stage of the business? customers is actually the easy part of this business. Like I think $800 million worth of metals gets sold a day in America. Um so that's that's kind of like the easier part.

We're targeting like small medium machine shops. Um you know procuring anywhere from like5 to$10 million a year in metals. Wow. But really where where we want to focus long term is like the OEMs. Um the bigger problem is actually how you get the material.

Um there's there's a bit of strong arming in the industry with some of the existing incumbents. Uh so being able to develop those supplier relationships is actually much more difficult. Amazing. Well, I know you got it done. You got the money down. We're rooting for you. Thanks for jumping on.

Thanks so much for hopping on out there. Next time in Manhattan the factory behind me. Yeah, we're excited to see it. Give us a full tour. Well, we're behind you. Thank you so much for hopping on the show. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you. See you. Bye. And let's refresh the timeline. Make sure we didn't miss anything.

news. Oh, I want to give a shout out to Ragnar Drees who says in a reply to Rune, "I kind of want to start a company just to be mentioned on TBPN. " You don't even have to start the company. We're mentioning you right now. You're mentioned. You're mentioned. Uh but you should start that company.

If you have an idea, you want to build something, become a founder. It's a fun fun life. Zero struggles whatsoever. But make sure you're having fun. Our president Dylan Embercato went viral yesterday. Uh quote tweeting Tommy. Tommy said, "You cannot compete with someone who is having fun.

" Dylan said, "This has been the secret to my entire career. " 14,000 likes. Absolute banger. Adam Ryan says, "Make work fun is more of a tag, more than a tagline. It's the main ingredient. " And VC is congratulating themselves. Says, "If you ain't goofing and joshing, what's the point? if you ain't goofing and joshing.

Well, we've enjoyed goofing and joshing with you all today and we'll enjoy it again tomorrow. We welcome you back in the [Music]