#228: Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) — Techno-Industrial Optimism and Exascaling American Manufacturing (REWIND)

Nearly a year and a half after our conversation first aired, Aaron Slodov and Atomic Industries have reached an important milestone worth celebrating. Atomic recently announced the close of its $25 million Series A, led by MaC Venture Capital and DTX Ventures, with participation from Narya and others, to accelerate the rollout of its AI-driven manufacturing platform.

With this funding, Atomic is expanding its software-defined factory footprint and advancing the AI systems at the heart of its vision—one that has already moved from pilot to production, shipping parts to some of the world’s most demanding OEMs. At its core, Atomic is working to strengthen America’s industrial base by making the manufacturing of physical goods more localized, resilient, and technology-enabled.

This felt like the perfect moment to revisit my conversation with Aaron, where we unpack his techno-industrialist philosophy, the deep history of Ohio manufacturing, and why the future of physical production matters so much for our country.

So, with that timely update, please enjoy this timeless conversation from the Lay of The Land archives with Aaron Slodov, CEO of Atomic Industries.

00:00:00 – The Rise of Techno-Industrialism
00:05:56 – The Journey from Bits to Atoms
00:10:41 – The Challenges of Manufacturing
00:15:47 – Reindustrialization and the Post-Industrial Myth
00:20:48 – Atomic Industries: Innovating Manufacturing
00:25:42 – Exascaling the Industrial Base
00:30:49 – The Future of Manufacturing Talent
00:40:46 – The Shift in Manufacturing Careers
00:42:50 – Incentivizing the Return to Manufacturing
00:44:58 – Cultural Integration of Tech and Manufacturing
00:50:38 – Defining Success in Modern Manufacturing
00:52:03 – The Importance of a Techno-Industrial Framework
00:56:12 – Policy and the Future of Manufacturing
01:02:33 – The Potential of Reindustrialization
01:05:57 – Storytelling as a Tool for Founders

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LINKS:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/abslodov/
https://twitter.com/aphysicist
https://www.atomic.industries/
https://www.piratewires.com/p/techno-industrialist-manifesto
https://twitter.com/newindustrials


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Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:00:00]:
The stars are very aligned in a lot of ways to not only see all of the hype and the real things that are happening in manufacturing going on right now, but to actually incentivize people to move back into this field. And one company is great, but we need more. And so I'm hoping as more entrepreneurs and founders jump into the fight, there's so many problems to solve. Honestly, I don't want to say that startup companies are kind of like, you know, the last bastion of hope, but I think they can be the vanguard for it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:37]:
Nearly a year and a half after our conversation first aired, Aaron slowed off and Atomic Industries have reached an important milestone, having recently announced the close of its $25 million Series A, led by Mac Venture Capital and DTX Ventures, with participation from Narya and others, to accelerate the rollout of its AI drill driven manufacturing platform. With this funding secured, Atomic is expanding its software defined factory footprint and advancing the AI systems at the heart of its vision, one that has already moved from pilot to production, shipping parts to some of the world's most demanding OEMs. At its core, Atomic is working to strengthen America's industrial base by making manufacturing of physical goods more localized, by more resilient and more technology enabled. This felt like the perfect opportunity to revisit my conversation with Aaron where we unpack his techno industrialist philosophy, the deep history of Ohio manufacturing, and why the future of physical production matters so much for our country today. So with that timely update, please enjoy this timeless conversation from the Lay of the Land archives with Aaron Slodov, CEO of Atomic Industries Foreign. Let's discover what people are building in the greater Cleveland community. We are telling the stories of Northeast Ohio's entrepreneurs, builders and those supporting them. Welcome to the Lay of the Land podcast where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio.

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:11]:
I am your host Jeffrey Stern and today I had the real privilege of speaking with my friend Aaron Slotov. Aaron studied physics in College, pursued a PhD in power systems engineering where he focused on electrical grid infrastructure and energy storage systems, had a stint at Google as an operations engineer and then went on in 2014 to co found Remesh, an AI market research startup which has gone on to raise over $40 million in funding. Today Aaron is the CEO of Atomic Industries, a company which he founded back in 2019 and has raised over $20 million for Atomic is on a mission to exascale the American manufacturing sector, starting with a focus to make tool and die, making orders of magnitude easier and faster through advanced automation through the lens of Aron's underlying techno industrialist philosophy, we will unpack what exascaling our industrial base even means. Confronting the post industrial myth and rich history of manufacturing in Ohio and throughout the Midwest, the opportunity for technology and implications of automation in building physical things why more young, smart, ambitious people should consider careers in manufacturing and heavy industry relative to software as a service companies, the pursuit of monazakuri atomic industries role to play in all of this and.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:03:34]:
A whole lot more.

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:35]:
You can find a link to Aaron's Techno Industrialist Manifesto which he published in February of 2024 and which has gone viral in pockets of the Internet in the show notes to this episode. This was truly one of my favorite conversations on the podcast so far. Aaron's passion for applying technology to solve big picture social and scientific problems and his ambition in building companies to that end is genuinely inspiring. So with that, please enjoy my conversation with Aaron Slotev after a brief message from our sponsors. As a disclaimer to this episode, I am personally a small investor in Atomic Industries. Lave the Land is brought to you and is proudly sponsored by Roundstone Insurance. Headquartered in Rocky River, Ohio. Roundstone shares Lay of the Land's same passion for bold ideas and lasting impact from our community's entrepreneurs, innovators and leaders.

Jeffrey Stern [00:04:26]:
Since 2005, Roundstone has pioneered a self funded captive health insurance model that delivers robust savings for small and medium sized businesses. They are part of the solution to rising healthcare costs, helping employers offer affordable, high quality care while driving job creation and economic growth throughout Northeast Ohio. Like many of the voices featured on Lay of the Land, including Roundstone's founder and CEO Mike Schroeder, Roundstone believes entrepreneurship, innovation and community to be the cornerstones of progress. To learn more about how Roundstone is transforming employee health benefits by empowering employers to save thousands in per employee per year healthcare costs, please visit roundstoneinsurance.com Roundstone Insurance built for entrepreneurs, backed by innovation, committed to Cleveland so this may be.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:16]:
The longest Slave Land podcast episode in the making, probably over three years, but I think conversation well worth the wait.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:05:26]:
We've done it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:29]:
So thank you for joining us here, Aaron.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:05:31]:
Absolutely.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:32]:
I think this is going to be a lot of fun, so I want to dive right into the heart of what you're working on, thinking on and talking about most recently, which is techno industrialism, this kind of powerful collision between technology and manufacturing to set I think the grand stage for a lot of what will impact today with the work you're doing with atomic industries. And again, just thinking about More broadly, waging this war against stagnation in the world of atoms. So I'd love if at the highest level you could just tell us what that is, you know, what, what is? Techno industrialism.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:06:12]:
So my definition of this is basically how are we transforming two classically very distant fields. Right. Technology and manufacturing are very much an oil and water kind of scenario. Yeah, it's, this is, this is a function of multiple things. I think you have crazy adoption curves because of shifting demographics with people in heavy industry and manufacturing. The challenge that's also presented plainly is just that manufacturing is very challenging to do. Right. Many of the manufacturing processes that exist are not just something you can transform overnight, and they're also super capital intensive.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:06:57]:
And a lot of the tribal knowledge around, you know, these different areas requires an immense amount of transfer to go from like one generation to another. So you, there's a lot of barriers, a lot of friction to do something like this. So, yeah, I mean, building up capacity and tribal knowledge in these areas. Right. Like merging technology with industry is something that I think we'll see a lot more of. That's kind of like where my definition rests. I have a lot more I can go into on that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:07:32]:
And, and, and, and we'll get there. We'll, we'll unpack, I think the entirety of, of the manifesto, as you put it down into words and galvanized for all of us to, to look at. But I, I thought a fun way to explore, you know, your own inspiration for it, and, and some of the work you're doing with atomic industries would be to unpack your call to arms, if you will, kind of applied to yourself because you had this impassioned part of your manifesto that was urging top technical talent to leave lucrative and prestigious jobs in the technological world, which has afforded them a lot of real capital, social capital, to take up these entrepreneurial arms to combat the hard industrial challenges that you've begun to introduce here. But I'd love to hear how you heed your own counsel in that regard as you ultimately made that same shift.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:08:28]:
Yeah, I think the genesis for me really has been a very long path. Right. I've always been pretty enamored with moonshot type thinking in a lot of ways. And I guess I've never been super afraid to really get my hands dirty, and I've always loved to build things. But taking that to heart, you know, going from working on kind of like physics in my undergrad and then shifting from that to going to Silicon Valley and like working, you know, at a faang company and then getting exposure to real world projects like working in renewable energy and self driving cars and software and seeing the spectrum of how all these things kind of would play out in my mind and also in real life. And yeah, the world of atoms is always a longer, more arduous path. And maybe I'm just a total masochist, I don't know. But there's something more interesting inherently because I genuinely think when I'm on my deathbed, do I want to imagine having worked on like a SaaS product, you know, or do I want to try to build and engineer something that literally pushes humanity further and forward.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:09:52]:
Right. And I think you need that type of insanity to really dedicate yourself to something in this, in this field because it's really challenging. Right. And it's, it's not something that has the easiest and most apparent returns. So for me, I think, yeah, going through that whole process and then ultimately like starting Remesh, right. And going through the journey of building a SaaS company. Right. Was fascinating.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:10:22]:
And ultimately I just keep coming back to stuff like this. So I don't know, I think I'm probably ultimately just more attracted ultimately to, to doing things in the physical world.

Jeffrey Stern [00:10:37]:
What drew you to entrepreneurship in the first place?

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:10:41]:
I think in a lot of ways I believe in the agency that these types of endeavors grant you. And I know that that's not a possible thing for a lot of people just trying to survive. That was me though, at some point. Right. I genuinely don't think that the opportunities out there are just like calling it people. You really have to just like forge it yourself. And I'm pretty hard headed about that in a lot of ways. And so a lot of times I would just suffer.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:11:17]:
Right. And like, probably needlessly. And I made my way through somehow. I think it's just kind of on each individual. You know, there's no, there's no, I don't think there's like a grand framework for this stuff.

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:32]:
Yeah.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:11:33]:
And I do, I do genuinely think though that like, if you go through the gauntlet, basically you can come out on top. It might take, you know, 10 or 15 years to do it and you might be struggling the whole time. But you know, ultimately it's cool that we have, you know, willpower and we can do this stuff ourselves. I, I don't know, it could sound like a really entitled thing to say stuff like that because I just like, you know, listen to myself say it and then I actually think about how I, I didn't have Help from. Right. Like, my parents, genuinely. And, like, I worked my ass off working, like, two jobs during school and, like, paid for it. And it took me, like, six years to get through undergrad, you know, just because I was working so much to support myself.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:12:26]:
And I chose really strange things to study in undergrad and ultimately took these jobs that brought me in different directions. I don't know. It's really fascinating. But, yeah, for me, I think entrepreneurship is a form of freedom in some way. You just really have to put your head down, ultimately.

Jeffrey Stern [00:12:50]:
Well, if you'll indulge the Remesh detour for a moment, you know, what. What was the catalyst that. That drew you to wanting to pursue something at first in the world of. Of bits?

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:13:01]:
Yeah. So the. The kind of, like, moonshot thinking around Remesh was, you know, we genuinely thought that we had come up with a new novel way to communicate and, like, facilitate communication with people. Yeah. Which I still think. Right. Like, there's no social platform on the planet that allows you to have a conversation with thousands of people on the other side of it. And it's like a fluid dialogue.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:13:29]:
Right. I still think that's really novel and interesting, and I wanted to see that and push it to some grand scale. One of our fantasies was always just having the president speak to 100,000Americans and just have an open dialogue. I mean, ama. Right. But it, you know, it would be this real fluid dialogue where a hundred thousand people could respond instantaneously to a question that the President asks. Like, it's kind of crazy. And I still.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:14:03]:
I genuinely still believed in that. And that's why I went into working on Rematch, because I. I thought that we could push that into the world. And, yeah, I mean, it's still, you know, using Twitter as much as I do now today. I. I genuinely think there's still, like, a huge opportunity for something like Remesh. There's a lot of noise in the world, for sure. Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:14:27]:
So when you reflect on that, knowing the work you're doing now, was there a particular moment that opened your eyes to or catalyzed this desire to shift your focus to working in the world of atoms over bits, or was it really this end of life, regret aversion framework? What inspired that?

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:14:53]:
Well, there's a really specific story that kind of led me to this. But yeah, after I stepped away from Remesh, I picked up a couple side projects while I was trying to just reset. And one of these was making a consumer product, and it was something I had to get manufactured.

Jeffrey Stern [00:15:15]:
Yeah.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:15:16]:
So I think the interesting part about this was I genuinely didn't have any exposure to manufacturing up to this point. So I had asked some of my friends that still worked on hardware teams at big tech companies and just out in the world, and a lot of them told me, you know, you need to go find a supplier to make this thing that you're. That you want to do. Yeah. And I was like, okay, like, what the hell is that? Like, go on Alibaba and look for, you know, like a factory in China and send them the designs for your stuff and they'll turn it around or go to some American suppliers and they'll charge you like, five times the price and it'll take longer. So this whole thing was really fascinating because what I was trying to make were toys basically, right? These were like little figurines for Warhammer and D and D. I didn't think this was a big deal.

Jeffrey Stern [00:16:13]:
Right.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:16:14]:
They're stupid little figurines. I mean, it's a hobbyist item, so people expect them to be, like, high quality. They get really into it. But the way I wanted to manufacture them too, right? Like, I wanted to turn more product more quickly than most of the legacy companies were doing. And I thought that was something that, you know, like, why are people not doing this?

Jeffrey Stern [00:16:36]:
Right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:16:36]:
Why not?

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:16:37]:
And I wasn't trying to make a, like a venture company out of it. I was just trying to have fun and make some stupid consumer thing. And, yeah, it made me want to, like, jump off a bridge. It was just crazy, like how. How much effort really had to go into, you know, designing the product and then taking that design and translating it into something in my hand. So going through all of that, I kind of just stepped back after a while. And, you know, I tried conventional manufacturing and working with some of these suppliers, and then I was like, maybe I'll just do it myself. Tried some 3D printing, and that sucked.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:17:18]:
But ultimately, yeah, I just imagined that if I'm having this many problems as, like, a nobody trying to manufacture, like, a stupid toy, I can't even imagine how this extrapolates to, like, global scale manufacturing. It must be orders of magnitude more frustrating. Painful. Challenging. And it is.

Jeffrey Stern [00:17:39]:
And it is.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:17:40]:
I mean, they obviously have much more process wrapped around it, and it's very dialed in, but it's still something that's, like, extremely challenging and painful for everybody. Right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:17:51]:
And is that line of questioning how you essentially kind of amplify the scope and ambition of what you're doing from, you know, as. As you put it Kind of a toy and consumer goods to there's an opportunity to re industrialize the American manufacturing base. Like when how does that shift come in?

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:18:09]:
Yeah, yeah. I mean a lot of this is going back to that oil and water analogy. Yeah, right. Like you really have to look at individual manufacturing processes and kind of like rip them apart and rebuild them in more efficient ways with more technology, basically. And I genuinely do think that, you know, Tesla is a great example of this. And it's not just like Tesla's the only people in the world doing this, but they're very forward thinking in how they do it. And it's also really challenging for a lot of existing, well established mega companies that do manufacture things to transform their production lines. It's not just this snap of a fingers.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:18:54]:
So I think looking at that kind of model where we really take the time to scrutinize different manufacturing processes, especially ones that, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars of goods go through to come into existence, are worth looking at and potentially worth optimizing in a way where you can build a scalable company around that. And I think that you'll see more and more of this stuff as a function of the technology that exists today. And that's kind of where the idea came from in the first place. Right? Like machine learning, robotics, different kinds of autonomy, material science. Right. Like there's, yeah, a primordial soup of good, good things happening across the board that might actually make this job easier.

Jeffrey Stern [00:19:48]:
Right.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:19:48]:
And so taking that kind of like last mover advantage type of mentality and applying it now, there's just so much opportunity because the markets are absolutely enormous and people are changing a lot of their attitudes about how technology can really impact this stuff. Some of that is a function of just witnessing more and more technology in the world. And some of it's also pressure from a macro standpoint. Right. A lot of companies are being forced to adopt and transform how they manufacture in today's, you know, environment. So there's, yeah, there's a lot of really interesting tailwinds, I think.

Jeffrey Stern [00:20:33]:
Yeah. And I definitely want to touch on some of those. But I think now might be as, as good as any place to introduce atomic industries. You know, what, what is it and what are you working on there?

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:20:48]:
So yeah, going back to the story of the figurines, basically what I learned through that was to make these things, I needed to get a mold. Yeah, right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:02]:
What is a mold exactly?

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:21:04]:
I mean, you have a part that you want to manufacture, right. If you look around on your desk a Lot of this stuff is probably made in molds, but you need a reliable, consistent way to make a single part over and over again.

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:18]:
Yeah.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:21:19]:
And there are different manufacturing processes to do that with different types of material. Right. So with metal, you might stamp something or you might machine it or cast it. With plastics, there's molding. Right. You shoot liquid hot plastic into a metal cavity and put a lot of pressure on it and it forms your part and you open up the mold and pop out your part. Right. Like this is.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:21:43]:
There are all kinds of fundamental ways of making individual part geometries. And so the mastery around each of these different areas varies. And, you know, there's basically like a translation layer where you go from a design to making this mold for that part. And it's fascinating. I mean, this is the kind of mysticism right around these trades. Because this is not something that you go to school for. It's not an engineering field. You.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:22:16]:
You sit in a factory for two decades, right. And learn how to solve these problems over and over and over again.

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:23]:
And to your point, I think to most of us it's entirely obfuscated. Like, I don't know who on average has exposure to the manufacturing process. You just get the product.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:22:34]:
Yeah. Genuinely. Like, if you were somebody like me, you might be a little bit more connected to it because you have to go through all the pain, Right. Of presenting somebody your design and then they're going to scrutinize your design for manufacturability. They have to tell you, right, like, this angle is not good. Right. Like, I can't use that in a mold. Or this feature that you have here is actually just not manufacturable.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:23:01]:
So you have to scrutinize the design first before you even design the mold to make that thing. There's this whole process of tying end to end knowledge from how you design the tool, how you machine it and then put it together, and how it works in a factory to pump out your thing. So the best humans that know how to do this stuff have that kind of end to end knowledge. And they can just. Without any software or simulation tools, they can just look at your design and, you know, they have a vague idea of how challenging it's going to be and how much it's going to cost and how long it's going to take. This is an analog to searching through in their brain. Right. Like a, an open solution space for that target.

Jeffrey Stern [00:23:51]:
Yeah, yeah.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:23:52]:
It's basically like I can kind of string it together. I obviously my brain is not, you Know like a end to end physics simulator or anything. I mean like it kind of is, we, we kind of have them in our brain, it's just loose. But their job is to, to do this like mystical translation job. So we think that we can actually teach machines how to do that faster. Or at least once we teach a machine how to do it, we will be able to search through that space much faster. And that's kind of the premise of what atomic is. Basically we respect and appreciate the art and mysticism around a lot of these different fields.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:24:31]:
We just want to make the process more efficient. I don't think many people in this field, which is called tool and die making, would sit there and genuinely tell you with a straight face that they enjoy a lot of the, you know, like arduous repeatable tasks that they have to do in, in the design process. There's, you know, if we leave the highest creativity pieces and functions right to humans, that's okay because even taking away 90% of the low hanging fruit would be enormous for what they do.

Jeffrey Stern [00:25:06]:
Right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:25:06]:
And then. Which is what we've always done with technology.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:25:09]:
Exactly. We're not trying to build a faster horse. Right, right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:25:15]:
So, okay, a lot of, a lot of directions we could go from here. Let's, let's layer on, I think some of the headwinds, tailwinds, context. I think that, you know, a lot of which you lay out in the manifesto itself, but I think will add to, you know, the, the color of atomic story here. One of the things is, I think we could just actually layer in Ohio for a moment because, you know, knowing here we have this incredible history, you know, right after the Civil War, you begin to see Ohio emerge, particularly around Akron, Cleveland, as arguably one of the greatest, you know, industrial hubs, accounting for I think about half the world's rubber production. And then over the subsequent, you know, decades, through World War II, layering in oil, iron, steel, and then on top of that, the manufacturing layer and competency over that raw material base, this place became a formidable production unit with the end to end knowledge that you mentioned earlier. But obviously things have changed. And so one of the things I wanted to ask you about was layering in your own historical context, but this idea of the post industrial myth and what that is and how you've thought about it.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:26:30]:
Yeah, I mean, at the very highest level, I mean you, you can kind of, you see a lot of evidence for it today in the news. Right. And Covid highlighted a lot of this where the supply chain sensitivities that we experienced and are currently experiencing were almost a direct result of that. Right. Like if you outsource enough of a skill set like that, it becomes less incentivized over time and people obviously won't go into it and that transfer of knowledge fails to continue and that's incredibly detrimental. Right. Because the trade knowledge is basically all that matters ultimately. So yeah, I think you really see some of this stuff appearing in the news today.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:27:22]:
Right. And I talk about this with building submarines and artillery and semiconductors. Yeah, it's crazy, right? Like there's a whole litany of things that we just literally don't know how to make anymore. And that's happening with the tacit like trade knowledge around manufacturing processes as well. So the more pronounced that becomes over time, there's naturally going to be, you know, like a, there's going to be a reaction to that which is either going to come by way of trying to re. Incentivize some of these trade skills very quickly. Right, right. And we're seeing that in semiconductors right now.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:28:00]:
So they build these giant fabs, right, in Columbus and in Arizona and we don't have enough workers to work in them or even build the fab in the first place. They were trying to bring in Taiwanese people, right. To build the fabs in Arizona and they got banned. So we're trying to like greenlight them and get them in to help build those things. But even intel right now has a one year training program basically for technicians to work in their fab to just blast people through really quickly. So it's really fascinating because when you think about how much time it takes to accumulate and build up trade knowledge and we're kind of at like a global minima almost in a lot of ways because we've hollowed out so many of these different, you know, areas of trade skill. So yeah, losing and forgetting how to make things and actually how to build things, it's terrible because we ultimately need physical products. Right.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:29:02]:
Like we are an industrial society and we can't escape that. That's the whole idea is like you can't just not pay attention to these types of things. And that also speaks to just where all the incentives ultimately went. Right? Yeah. Getting a software engineering job at Netflix is or used to be great at least. Right, right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:29:24]:
Like where are the smartest young people going to work?

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:29:26]:
Yeah, it's. And it's challenging because you have, you have technology drawing people to these very shiny things. Right. And the compensation is obviously amazing. And same thing in like finance. Right. Are These things a net positive for society in the face of. Right.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:29:45]:
This diminishing kind of stagnation in the physical world. And so this is something that a lot of people have obviously argued for a long time, but eventually it's really going to be painful. So I think I obviously am biased about this. Right. But I want that to go more full into swing right now, because these problems fundamentally are much more challenging than things in computer science and finance. They're not highly incentivized today, but we can make them something like that. And I think in a fundamental way, having a common enemy to unite against is this theme that's easy to galvanize people around. And so if that stagnation is something that we can actually rally around and fight against, I think that we can create the kinds of incentives that draw people like that in.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:30:44]:
I mean, on a very small scale. I have a pretty crazy amount of people that apply to our company. Right. That come from all kinds of amazing areas in technology, and they're fascinated with these problems because they're so hard.

Jeffrey Stern [00:30:58]:
Well, and part of it, I think, is that. But I think you've also been able to articulate what this common enemy is in kind of a succinct, clear, thoughtful way. At the same time, it's like a beacon for people who are, you know, wanting to perhaps work on something that they think matters like this, but don't maybe know what the options are.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:31:23]:
Yeah, it's. It's definitely challenging, and I think. I think a good amount of people have a. An innate, you know, desire almost to want to build something with their hands. Right? Yeah, it's just not. It's not every day you get a chance to. To really merge both of these fields together. So I think that's why it's kind of a really interesting, unique time.

Jeffrey Stern [00:31:48]:
Lay of the Land is brought to you by impact architects and by 90. As we share the stories of entrepreneurs building incredible organizations in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio, Impact Architects has helped hundreds of those leaders, many of whom we have heard from as guests on this very podcast, realize their own visions and build these great organizations. I believe in Impact Architects and the people behind it so much that I have actually joined them personally in their mission to help leaders gain focus, align together, and thrive by doing what they love. If you two are trying to build great, Impact Architects is offering to sit down with you for a free consultation or provide a free trial through 90, the software platform that helps teams build great companies. If you're interested in learning more about partnering with Impact architects or by leveraging 90 to power your own business. Please go to IA LayOfTheLand FM. The link will also be in our show notes.

Jeffrey Stern [00:32:50]:
So what is Atomic's role to play in this techno reindustrialization? And I'd love to also just introduce another terminology here that you can layer on, which is exascaling.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:33:02]:
Yeah, so the idea of exascaling is something I stole from computing, basically, right. It's a measure of how many basically, like operations per unit of time you can get away with ultimately. Yeah, in like supercomputing. Right. So I kind of think about the industrial base as a giant supercomputer or like aws basically. I just kind of imagine it as this obfuscated layer where we need to make a submarine or 10,000 drones or something. We should be able to do that in a pretty flexible, adaptive way from the raw materials all the way through the manufacturing process and then obviously distribution. But I think exascaling the industrial base in my brain is kind of how I laid it out in this manifesto, where you've got these different layers of all the applications and these are things that you want to make.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:34:04]:
And then the middle is this layer of execution, which is the raw trade, skill and knowledge of how. And then the bottom layer is the capacity. So these are the machines and the factories and the raw materials that you need to go through that stack and actually perform the miracle of production. So in a lot of ways, there's no shortage of applications, right? Like, we can all come up with really cool stuff, but we still need to improve the other layers, right? Like execution and capacity. If you can't scale those along with your application layer, you're kind of just where we are right now, like treading water, basically. And I think that when you look at any. Any manufacturing process that leads from the kind of ground level up in terms of throughput, right? Like I want to produce more submarines. What do you, like, take apart that entire supply chain, right, and understand what it would take to actually make more than four submarines per year, which is basically what we can make where, you know, there are probably hundreds or thousands of different suppliers attached, right, to like make all the different componentry, not to mention, like the design and simulation that goes into those things too.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:35:28]:
But it's crazy because if you silo them all into different buckets, like, they can all be optimized in some way. And this is what happened in World War II as well. Obviously, things were more simple in terms of their build materials. A Columbia class submarine has 2.5 million components and it takes 14 years to design. I don't think that ships during the World War II era were at that level of complexity. So you've got this kind of function of complexity as things increase over time. Is that actually matching the manufacturing process on the other end of it? And we really only have two companies that can make submarines now. But again, going back to your question, I think the way that we see ourselves positioned in this and what exascaling really means is taking a tech enabled approach to improving and optimizing the foundational layer of manufacturing processes that are required to make all this stuff.

Jeffrey Stern [00:36:35]:
Yeah.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:36:36]:
So am I just like a glorified part maker or can we actually apply these kinds of techniques to other manufacturing processes as well? That's kind of a question that's, you know, TBD over the next five to 20 years, basically. But I think that it's something that we can measure, which is why I like the idea of exascaling. I mean, capacity and throughput of the industrial base is something that's measured by economists in general. I just think that we can probably do a better job at pushing it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:08]:
So yeah, so if today we're treading water, as you say, and what needs to happen for exascaling to come to fruition and what, what specifically is atomic industries working on in pursuit of that?

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:37:29]:
So I'm going to answer the second part first. So for tool and die making, right, like this is a pretty classic problem in production. You want to make a new car model or you know, a new toothbrush or deodorant, whatever it is.

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:47]:
Yeah, yeah.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:37:47]:
You ultimately like the product development life cycle goes from market research all the way down through, you know, the physical design of the components to ultimately hitting the manufacturing where you have to go through the same process, right. Where you like study the feasibility of the design itself for the manufacturing process. And then you sign off on that, start designing like the tooling for these different parts and then they go into production ultimately. And then, you know, if you're a car, you have to obviously assemble all of these parts together into your final vehicle. If it's a deodorant, you still have to kind of assemble that too. You make the, you know, the plastic container and then you shoot the goo into it and it becomes deodorant, toothpaste, whatever. It's all, everything is really fascinating when you kind of look at it at that in that light. So for us, we want to help people go from the design through tooling and Actually getting into production vastly more rapidly.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:38:51]:
And the idea behind that is that you need tradespeople to take your design and go through that mystical arcane process to come up with the tool and then ultimately reach production. So if we can make that one or two orders of magnitude faster, you can literally accelerate all manufacturing across many different domains. I mean there are plastic parts. Right. But you can also apply a lot of this stuff to different areas of manufacturing that use tool and die making, which would be high pressure die casting for aluminum components. You've seen the gigacast, right, in a Tesla factory.

Jeffrey Stern [00:39:33]:
Yeah.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:39:34]:
So that's die casting basically and then stamping, like sheet metal, stamping out parts for cars or airplanes and things like that. Forging is another one. Right. There's a crazy. Cleveland has like one of the largest stamping presses in the world here that does, you know, wing structures for the F35s made out of like titanium. It's crazy. Yeah, but you need, you need like a, an engineered die to do that with. And so I think we can vastly accelerate manufacturing processes.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:40:09]:
And so that's kind of how we see ourselves is improving the speed of going from design to production. Basically.

Jeffrey Stern [00:40:17]:
On the talent piece, when you, I think we've kind of loosely outlined, you know, there's, there's a generational challenge that we're about to face where this, you know, traditional knowledge embedded within, you know, people's experience and heads is won't translate to the next generation. On top of the fact that, you know, we haven't tapped into this latent desire. People maybe have to build things with their hands, although it's there. But the, the younger generation is not going into manufacturing. How do you, how do you address this?

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:40:54]:
Yeah, I mean, so this is kind of the idea behind really trying to drive incentives in this direction. So you have Tesla and SpaceX and this big movement happening in aerospace and defense. Right. Where people can see this stuff happening on a regular basis. I mean, I don't even know how many Falcon launches there have been. I think like almost a hundred ninety six or something like that. It's crazy. It's a lot.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:41:29]:
It just become like the hedonic treadmill. Right. It just becomes regular all of a sudden. And you're like, we're actually reusing and landing rockets now.

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:36]:
It's very cool all the time.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:41:39]:
I, I think that is just human nature, honestly. But more and more people are getting psyched about that kind of stuff. Right. And I think startup companies, technology companies are very interesting, like purpose built vehicles that are Made to scale around like a single problem. And so what I'm excited about at least is seeing more companies enter into this space. We obviously need to prove that they are scalable and like, get them to these states where they can become very large tech companies. Right. And attract more people, more resources, more talent into them.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:42:20]:
And the whole idea, I think, is that the Overton window is very squarely positioned over this right now, where not only policy can be reshifted and reoriented to support stuff like this, but a lot of capital in the world is looking at this space right now. So honestly, the stars are very aligned in a lot of ways to not only see all of the hype and the real things that are happening in manufacturing going on right now, but to actually incentivize people to move back into this field. And one company is great, but we need more. And so I'm hoping as more entrepreneurs and founders jump into the fight, there's so many problems to solve. Honestly, I don't want to say that startup companies are kind of like, you know, the last bastion of hope, but I think that they can be the vanguard for it. Right. Like leading the charge in this stuff. And I don't want to keep going back to Elon's company.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:43:30]:
He's really doing that in a lot of ways, whether you love him or hate him. Right. Like he's out there building gigafactories literally like all over the world and being able to demonstrate the reduction in like the footprint of these factories while improving their efficiencies. Right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:47]:
As time goes on, the ephemeralization. Doing more with less.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:43:52]:
Yeah, I mean, like, and that's honestly some of the highest level examples of this that we have today. But I think that's possible in so many different areas. So it's. Yeah, I think we want to move in a direction where maybe you can make as much working in a factory, like a future factory as you could at Netflix. And maybe it wouldn't be some garbage union job. It might actually be like a cool, more tech oriented job where you get equity and you can get rich working. You know, like this would be new, new wave industrialism, basically. Right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:30]:
And with that the prestige and you know, as a respected path.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:44:34]:
Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:35]:
As you made this transition yourself and ultimately, I think in an attempt trying to recruit others to do the same, what did you find in reflection were the most transferable things you learned at Remesh, you know, from this world of bits and software that apply and you can leverage with atomic and where does that transfer Ability. Stop. And how do you address that?

Jeffrey Stern [00:45:00]:
Delta?

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:45:01]:
Well, yeah, I think one of the most fascinating things, with at least my Mutt pedigree, if you want to think about it like that, like, my path is how much of the culture of Silicon Valley and, like, technology I've scooped up.

Jeffrey Stern [00:45:20]:
Yeah.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:45:21]:
And, you know, you obviously just get to, like, make your own culture ultimately. But rebuilding the culture of manufacturing with that is pretty fascinating. I think, in a lot of ways, some of my peers that came before atomic, right. Like, that was a classic interaction that broke down and failed in a lot of ways. Like getting some of the best machinists in the world to work at a tech company, they're like, what the hell is this? What's Trello? Or, I don't know, why do I have to have a laptop and a phone and use Gmail? And why are you trying to text me on Saturday? And don't get me wrong, people in manufacture, factoring, they grind really hard. It's just they're different worlds colliding. So I think it's really fascinating to get them overlapping and aligned. And a big part of that is really building something that in a lot of ways converts them into believers in technology.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:46:35]:
It's not that they don't care about it or anything. Right. It's like, if you try to do what we're doing, like, 10 years ago, even a lot of people in manufacturing probably would have just laughed you out of a room or not taken it really very seriously at all. Right. And that, that literal cultural barrier has held back tech and manufacturing for a long time. Because a lot of people probably just assume that, you know, people from tech are just trying to build like a dashboard or a piece of software that's trying to make some other aspect of the manufacturing process more efficient, when in reality they're really just like, all they care about is when they start cutting steel. Right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:47:16]:
I mean, to me, it's really fascinating because to your point about the Overton Window, I think there's a reason it's within it now because there's this confluence of all the, I think the macro things we're talking about so far that is like, well, the common criticism of Silicon Valley is like, well, what has it done to actually improve my life? I mean, we're at a point now where we're talking about banning social media overall, and we face this, you know, wake of what happened throughout the pandemic. And I think there's a recognition that we have to actually, you know, maybe do something about it.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:47:46]:
Yeah, yeah. I think a lot of people are kind of waking up to that idea and it's, you know, like the market and the timing of the downturn. Right. Are also really fascinating when, when you're talking about stuff like this because I think people look at that and they're like, wow, maybe the party's over now. I don't know. I mean, we had a crazy bull run for a long time and a lot of people make fun of, you know, this like zerp era of companies that just popped into being basically right. With hardly any oversight at all. And some of it's highly questionable.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:48:24]:
Right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:48:25]:
But inherent in what you're doing and at least the vision you've painted is.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:48:30]:
Optimism, I would say. So. Yeah. And real world value, it directly translates to making the real world more positive in a lot of ways. So it's not that I'm. If you make manufacturing more efficient and higher throughput or whatever, does that translate to just making more garbage, I guess, in the world or. No. Right.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:48:57]:
There's a real need for physical goods, as we know. And I think that you will have. It's all very cyclical. Right. If you look at how manufacturing works, the supply and demand levels always fluctuate. The steady state of demand for any good is, you know, questionable, I think. But one thing is pretty certain though, is that manufacturers want to have more flexibility and agility when they make something. So yeah, ultimately having that real world impact and very tangible value chain I think is just more meaningful, honestly.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:49:41]:
Maybe ultimately AI will just literally automate away the business layer. Right. And SaaS companies can just kind of be this automated function and that would be great. But ultimately this is where post industrial society really goes. Right. You want to think about the worlds of Blade Runner and Star wars. Right? Yeah. People are using computers and terminals and things, but there's also cities or megascale and you've got, you know, starships and things like colonizing other worlds and stuff like how do you get there from where we are? Right.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:50:18]:
It's industrialism. It's not more software, basically, even though you still need software to guide a lot of these processes. So that's kind of. I know that's a giant leap, but yeah, I think it really takes, you know, the ultimate successful marriage of technology and manufacturing to get to something like that. Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:38]:
Well, I think you've alluded to what I want to ask about next from this perspective of, you know, avoiding end of life regrets. But what, what does success mean to.

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:47]:
You in the context of all of this?

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:50:49]:
I mean, Ultimately, in a real quantitative way, it's just demonstrating, you know, the optimization of this manufacturing process that we're doing. So yeah, if we, if we can prove, you know, very scalable unit economics and being able to refine and improve them over time, just very analogous to Tesla's model, I think that's a win. Right. And if you can do that across other areas of manufacturing, that's huge. And that all adds up into this idea of exascaling basically. And we need it in every different area. I could list off a thousand different things right now that I would love to see that happening. But yeah, for us that's at the end of the day, being able to prove out what we started.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:51:36]:
Right. I mean, that's it. Yeah, that makes sense to me.

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:44]:
Well, I'll ask then. Why have you opted to, I think, be more public with the thesis itself and the vision more generally for techno industrial optimism? You know, why, why, why write a manifesto?

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:52:03]:
Well, yeah, I mean, I think it's important to, to at least have a framework. And I'm not like deeming my framework as the framework, but I think it's a good start to one at least. Yeah, that's my idea of kind of like open sourcing something. Right. Just put it out there.

Jeffrey Stern [00:52:21]:
Right.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:52:21]:
And get the feedback of the public. Yeah, I mean, I think in a lot of ways it's super challenging too to think about what improving the industrial base even means, you know, because it's, it's so vast and you know, ubiquitous in a lot of ways. So having a framework with potentially even like a roadmap is something that, you know, is super valuable to people trying to work on this stuff. And I discovered the problem by just running into a brick wall with my face. How do I make this figurine? Yeah, pretty much. And I think there's a ton of really driven people looking for stuff right now in this world. And I think as more incentives open up, especially if more funding comes down the pipeline for re industrialization, there will need to be. I really don't want to say this, but I think there has to be a little bit of thought leadership.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:53:24]:
I really don't want to say that phrase ever around this stuff. I mean, I'm just out there building one of these companies right now and this is kind of the internal model that I came up with for it. And so yeah, I mean, I talk to people all the time about what they could potentially go into and work on. Maybe next should be like a tech tree or like a roadmap. Or something of areas that people could attack. Yeah, I like that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:53:56]:
What is monazakuri?

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:53:59]:
Oh well, so yeah, this is a. It's a really interesting Japanese principle like to their culture and society, which is. It really just boils down to the idea of like knowing how to make something is key to like their success basically. And they celebrate it. It's kind of like a, you know, an internalized nationalistic principle basically. Like being able to make a certain thing. Right. And like the knowledge wrapped around that is something they hold very like highly.

Jeffrey Stern [00:54:35]:
Yeah.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:54:36]:
And it's not something that we hold highly. Not at the moment. And you know, like, I genuinely, I don't think that the American industrial base is about to explode. We're still number two in the world. Right. We're overall kind of all over the place in terms of how we rank in terms of GDP per capita in terms of value add in manufacturing compared to the top 20 countries that do this stuff. Because some really small countries are obviously way more.

Jeffrey Stern [00:55:10]:
Yeah.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:55:11]:
Productive and have higher output per capita. But yeah, that idea is, it's fascinating. It is fascinating and like I want us to be able to internalize something very similar. Right. And that's kind of like the idea of we're losing touch with the physical world and we need to kind of like rein it in. And we have an amazing opportunity to do that using technology. So it could be some kind of like cybernetic monoz occurring. Right.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:55:36]:
Where we, we basically teach machines how to do a lot of this stuff. But at the time we regain a lot of that, you know, trade knowledge and preserve it basically like with machines, which is fascinating in its own self, but. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:55:53]:
Well there, I mean there's still so many things I could ask you about. I want to, I want to ask though, is there something particularly important that we haven't talked about, you know, in your analysis of what you're working on at Atomic, the kind of more macro level thing that you would want to.

Jeffrey Stern [00:56:10]:
Introduce here or call attention to.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:56:12]:
Yeah, I think like something I think about a lot too is just the policy side of this. Yeah. And it is generally something that is quite unique in its ability to be bipartisan in nature. Like pretty sure everybody agrees that we should have more capability stateside and domestically and that the security of the industrial base is obviously very important, especially in the face of potential global conflict or destabilization. I mean the trend of de globalization right now is fascinating. Right. And I think you'd find people that would argue different sides of that itself. But overall I think it's accepted that we're kind of moving that direction and that's one of those macro forcing functions and ultimately the policy around it, which I think there's two very distinct angles.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:57:16]:
One is basically we need to make more stuff in America, right. I have a great company or idea kind of like at that application layer, right. I want to make a new drug or a drone or whatever it is. Like are the incentives there for me to spin up a factory and start producing more stuff? A lot of times from the capital risk perspective, the ROI is very questionable, right? Like on paying for somebody's factory. So having the ability to spin up more like physical capacity is a big component of that. When you are kind of sitting and waiting at the application layer, like to scale. Yeah. That also calls in a question whether or not there are enough people, once I build the factory, right, to work in it and help me make more of these things that I want to make.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:58:08]:
Allah, like semiconductors, right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:58:10]:
To your point about Intel.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:58:12]:
So that, that's, that's a fascinating conundrum, but you still need, you know, you need to either train people really quickly or accelerate how they're trained. So if you can somehow condense trade knowledge and go from like a 10 year time span to a 1 year time span, right, like that's massive. How do you do that? Is that something that, you know, do we use like these LLMs or some type of AI to regurgitate or kind of like to be an aid for you to like learn faster? I mean we have a natural learning rate as humans, right? So you can only make that go so fast and you want to make sure that to get off the ground, that escape velocity for trade, whatever trade it is, you can short circuit it somehow through any kind of technology. So there's a ton of really fascinating ideas there. And the other side of this is that yeah, we know that machines are expensive, right. And factories are not generally the greatest investments. And it's hard, right, to make good margins on capex heavy businesses. So what about like the other side of this, which is how do we actually improve the factory, right? Like maybe it doesn't have to be that bad.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [00:59:38]:
There's a natural physical limit, right, to how much machines actually cost and what their throughputs are and energy and all these other real world, you know, problems when you put it together. But we don't really focus on that either, right. Like this is, this is why the optimization of different things in manufacturing is fascinating because you, you can, you know, you can make them better and you can make them more scalable. And this is why I like, I like the analogy of aws. Right. When Amazon first came out with that, there was basically an explosion of software companies because now they could just build on top of, you know, Amazon. They took away all the complexity of like setting up your own servers and all, like all that stuff. And I really think that we can do that for the physical world in a lot of ways.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:00:27]:
We just, it's. I don't know, you've probably seen what an Amazon like AWS dashboard looks like and how many services they offer. It's really crazy.

Jeffrey Stern [01:00:38]:
It's a lot.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:00:38]:
Yeah. There's literally a lot of hundreds of things that AWS does for a company. And like, it's very similar in manufacturing. So it's this real hairy problem. But over time that's kind of what we need to do. We need to AWS ify the industrial base.

Jeffrey Stern [01:00:56]:
Right. I mean, it's to such a degree that, I mean, one of the best framings of AWS that I've heard is it's basically a tax on software and the Internet at this point.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:01:07]:
Basically. Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [01:01:08]:
But arguably a productive one.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:01:10]:
Yeah, well, Right. I mean, that's why, you know, Sam Altman and other people think like, pretty soon you'll see companies that only need like two, two or three people and they're just billion dollar companies that are pure software. Right. Can we get to that kind of level with physical hardware companies or manufacturing companies? Right. Yeah. There's a tremendous amount of bad capital allocation that could be redirected into stuff like this. Right. That just has so much more value ultimately.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:01:44]:
And these types of companies are. I think the other problem too is there's not enough sophistication around how these things play out because this is really a frontier, a very new frontier. And we don't have many good, you know, comps on companies doing stuff like this. So it's hard, it's hard to compare like what a multiple would be on, you know, a true like cybernetic manufacturing company, if you want to think about it like that.

Jeffrey Stern [01:02:16]:
Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [01:02:17]:
But man, it's exciting.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:02:18]:
It is, yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [01:02:19]:
I mean it's, it's so compelling as well.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:02:21]:
Yeah. We really have to prove it out. So who knows? I think there's. Yeah, there's a really, a really, really interesting frontier out there to be explored.

Jeffrey Stern [01:02:33]:
Yeah. What an opportunity. I mean, it really is fascinating to think about. Well, I think we can work to bookend the conversation here. I'll leave a little space if you have any parting thoughts and then I can ask our traditional closing question.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:02:46]:
Yeah, I think just a little bit more on the policy side because my brain kind of locked onto that a little bit. But these two distinct sides of, you know, like how do we use technology to improve manufacturing? And also we need more manufacturing. Right.

Jeffrey Stern [01:03:01]:
Yes.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:03:02]:
I just think it's important that if moving forward, we do think that these things are existential threats or, you know, areas for policy improvement. That, that we really take a look at areas in the country, at least geographically, that are going to be more, I guess, supportive or I guess it is kind of like a form of support for this. But you really want to find areas to rebuild the industrial base. Right. Obviously the Midwest has great DNA for that. From a policy perspective, is it really the best place? Right. So if you get one of these companies off the ground and it hits Unicorn Decacorn kind of, you know, status. Yeah.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:03:44]:
Are the unions going to come like crushing down on it like a big three automaker? Right. Like there's a reason Tesla doesn't have a factory up here. This is the kind of stuff where it's very, very, you know, culturally combative, I think, and potentially harmful. Yeah. For something like this to really flourish here, I don't know. But I genuinely hope that we can like explore that and move beyond it if it is.

Jeffrey Stern [01:04:13]:
I share that hope and desire. You know.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:04:19]:
I just don't want ourselves to shoot it, shoot ourselves in the foot. That's all. Because there's like a massive, massive opportunity for it.

Jeffrey Stern [01:04:25]:
Right.

Jeffrey Stern [01:04:25]:
But it does require overcoming short termism, like you.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:04:31]:
Right.

Jeffrey Stern [01:04:31]:
You have to.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:04:32]:
Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [01:04:32]:
We would have to collectively invest for the long term.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:04:36]:
A big, big investment. Yeah. And also just get over those kinds of like cultural humps that I think keep Silicon Valley culture and thinking from merging with, you know, this old world, salt of the earth kind of Midwestern mentality, which is also great. But if they can't work together, it's going to be, you know, probably just have to go to Texas or something. Right, right.

Jeffrey Stern [01:05:03]:
But you know, it's worth saying out loud because practically.

Jeffrey Stern [01:05:06]:
Right.

Jeffrey Stern [01:05:06]:
That's, that's what's happening.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:05:07]:
Yes. And it's really like, to me, it would just be a total shame. Right. Because this really is like the most fertile ground to do this. Right.

Jeffrey Stern [01:05:16]:
And I mean, hearkening back to that history piece, I mean, there was a point in time where it was like literally half of the world's stuff came from this area.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:05:24]:
Yeah. And this was the Midwest was basically, you know, between Ohio and Michigan. The highest salaries per capita in the country were here. So I'm not saying we can make that happen again overnight, but potentially in the future, that could be a reality.

Jeffrey Stern [01:05:40]:
Yeah.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:05:41]:
It's fascinating.

Jeffrey Stern [01:05:42]:
It is, it is. Well, with that, I'll ask you about Cleveland. And. Well, the traditional closing question is for a hidden gem, for something that folks may not know about that perhaps they should.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:05:56]:
I think this is something that popped into my head the other day, and I tweeted about it a little bit. But in storytelling, I think that there's a fascinating, endless refinement kind of property to storytelling that. I mean, genuinely, I don't care who you are, like, everybody's pitch or story can be improved, and you will find ways to. To do that. I always find myself thinking about, you know, how I said something and being like, wow, that's. Actually I should just do that. And I know this is probably, like, not a really interesting realization for a lot of people, or maybe it is, I don't know. But I think telling these stories can be very tiring.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:06:46]:
Right? Like repitching the same thing over and over and over again, but which is.

Jeffrey Stern [01:06:51]:
Almost the nature of the job.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:06:52]:
It is. It is. A lot of the job is doing this, and maybe that's why it's this little nugget of wisdom, I guess. But I think, yeah, like, discovering that in, you know, the stories that you tell or even that you. That you pick up over time over and over again is a really fascinating property and something that I don't necessarily pride myself on that, but I just find myself doing it almost just through osmosis, I guess, of doing this over and over and over and over again. Yeah. I would say that that's kind of my weird little. My weird little nugget is that having this repeatable, endlessly refined, refinable, like, process of storytelling is incredibly valuable for some reason.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:07:40]:
And I think it's not. Everybody needs to tell stories all the time, but it's cool.

Jeffrey Stern [01:07:44]:
But it's certainly requisite for founders.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:07:46]:
Sure. Yeah. I would highly recommend anybody trying to get out there and do this stuff to seek that out, basically, in their own storytelling.

Jeffrey Stern [01:07:59]:
And what about Cleveland?

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:08:00]:
I have so many high hopes. The reason I wanted to throw in the storytelling thing is that after going over this so many times now. Right. I really always. And this might just come back to, like, me being a masochist, I guess.

Jeffrey Stern [01:08:17]:
I don't know.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:08:17]:
I really don't know. I look at this place and I genuinely see, you know, like, empire building kind of potential and I want that for here. I think ultimately, yeah, some kind of grand opportunity or vision has to collectively be bought in. Right. And like, again, this is just why I think this story is so fascinating, because it is our DNA. And if there were ever a time to do this, it would be now, in the near term future. Right. If not just right now.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:08:56]:
And so, yeah, my. My hopes and dreams for this place really kind of squarely rest on the re. Industrialization efforts of the United States. And I think. I think it's just honestly, like the most perfect place to do it.

Jeffrey Stern [01:09:11]:
I sure that sentiment wholeheartedly. I mean, if the hidden gem of Cleveland is the latent potential that we can tap into right now, I mean, that's.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:09:20]:
That's pretty good. I think that's what I'm saying. Yeah. Yes.

Jeffrey Stern [01:09:27]:
Well, I appreciate that. That sentiment very much. Wow. I mean, yeah. Fascinating stuff. This was awesome, Aaron. Thank you.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:09:34]:
Well, thank you. Good to finally, ultimately do this. And hopefully it's not the last one either.

Jeffrey Stern [01:09:40]:
I hope not.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:09:41]:
Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [01:09:42]:
Well, yeah. Wow. If folks had anything they wanted to follow up with you about, what would be, you know, where. Where can they find you on X Twitter. Where's the best place?

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:09:51]:
Yeah, yeah. X slash, Twitter is good. That's probably the best place, actually. Yeah. What's.

Jeffrey Stern [01:09:56]:
What's your handle?

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:09:56]:
Aphysicist. All one word.

Jeffrey Stern [01:09:59]:
Perfect.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:10:00]:
Sweet.

Jeffrey Stern [01:10:00]:
Well, thank you again.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:10:01]:
Thank you, sir.

Jeffrey Stern [01:10:04]:
That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show, so if you have any feedback, please send over an email to jeffreyofthelandfm or find us on Twitter oddleoftheland or SternFA. J E F E. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on itunes or on your preferred preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland founders and builders.

Jeffrey Stern [01:10:36]:
We love having on the show.

Jeffrey Stern [01:10:38]:
We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land. The Lay of the Land podcast was developed in collaboration with the UP Company LLC at the time of this recording. Unless otherwise indicated, we do not own equity or other financial interests in the company which appear on the show. All opinions expressed by podcast participants. Participants are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of any entity which employs us. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as.

Aaron Slodov (Atomic Industries) [01:11:06]:
A basis for investment. Decisions.

Jeffrey Stern [01:11:08]:
Thank you for listening, and we'll talk.

Jeffrey Stern [01:11:10]:
To you next week.