The New Industrial Base
Why reindustrialization is about systems, not steel
I’ve been thinking a lot about the role venture capital can play in reindustrialization. There’s a growing chorus pushing for “bringing manufacturing back”—but too often, that gets interpreted as reviving old industries. Using venture capital to catalyze or augment new steel production makes no sense. We’re not going to outcompete China on legacy commodities.
The real opportunity is to fund a New Industrial Base. I’m talking about the tooling, systems, and platforms that will enable modern production of the technologies that actually matter now: semiconductors, robotics, satellites, precision components, optics, and more. If we do this well, we likely create three new good jobs where before there was only one.
Take coordinate measuring machines (CMMs), for example. Every critical part gets inspected, and today that means someone manually programs each measurement path—a skilled, slow, and expensive process. Automate it with vision and AI? Sure, the CMM programmer disappears. But now you need:
A technician who can operate the automated cell
A systems engineer to maintain it
A software lead who understands tolerancing logic
One legacy role gets replaced. Three new jobs emerge!
Developing these tools is technically challenging, but that’s a risk venture capital has historically been best suited to bear.
I’m laser focused on it, and optimistic now is an amazing time for entrepreneurs building towards this future. Onward!