Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Ali. Thanks so much for joining us.
Ali Forsyth, Alloy Enterprises
Thanks for having me.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
I'm excited talk to you because we're talking about Alloy Enterprises, which is a company that is disrupting the manufacturing industry, which is obviously massive. So let's talk about Alloy Enterprises and what the company does.
Ali Forsyth, Alloy Enterprises
Yeah, no, thanks for asking Keith. So at Alloy Enterprises we've developed a new additive way to manufacture aluminum components. And so why would why would we do that? And why is that disruptive. So aluminum casting is a $75 billion industry and the technology hasn't inherently changed in over 400 years. And yeah, it the situation is ripe for disruption. We have household name customers, fortune 100 manufacturers across multiple market verticals that are waiting two years to get aluminum components out of foundries. Since 2000, the US has lost 67% of of its boundaries that make cast or forged components. So the White House is involved. And it's a matter that considered a matter of national security for the Defense Department to really think about reshoring manufacturing and getting the ability to fabricate metal components back here in the US and really building that up the same time, you know, manufacturing 2.0, and digital transformation is hitting. And there's so many improvements and technologies out there that we really need to start capitalizing on in the manufacturing industry. So we decided specifically to focus on aluminum. It's an incredible material, it's twice the strength to weight ratio of steel, and it's infinitely recyclable. So we want more aluminum and everything that moves to reduce co2 emissions. And so there's an incredible need for aluminum both a need for disruption in this older industry. With supply chain challenges, it needs to be reassured. And we have an increasing demand and need and justification for why it should grow in the transportation sector. As well, the same time, it's a hard material to work with aluminum specifically, right? So aluminum powder, which traditional 3d printing metal 3d printing relies on. It explodes. It's also an inhalation hazard. And so it's pretty difficult and costly to work with. And so what we came up with is a new process specifically for aluminum. Based on sheets as an input feedstock. It's a novel technology, we then made new developments or inventions all the way from the feedstock up through the software and algorithms in order to make these sort of complex components that we sell directly to our customers. So that's what we're up to. And it's been a fun ride. The company is about four years old at this point. And we're 47 people strong today and have doubled in size in the last six months.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
And you've touched upon some like industries I thought would be helpful to kind of talk about like maybe, you know, not a specific customer, but maybe like a industry example, you talked about transportation automotive, so it would be like, like just a real world example.
Ali Forsyth, Alloy Enterprises
Yeah, so nice real world example. So aluminum, in addition to being really strong and light, and infinitely recyclable, it also has great thermal conductivity. And so we found a lot and gotten a lot of traction. And some of our early customers are actually semiconductor or industrial equipment sector, and they're looking to cool their electronics with higher efficiency. So think power inverters think, cold plates for say a photonics company that builds lasers. Right? Those are great examples where there's incredible demand. And like, our ability to manage thermal and pull heat away from electronics is really what's limiting computational power, as well as performance of critical components like lasers. So that's a nice example where we've gotten a lot of traction and from early customer base.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Now, you announced funding earlier this year. So talk about kind of the State of the State of the company in terms of that, you know, plans for that funding round? And what's looking ahead.
Ali Forsyth, Alloy Enterprises
So we're growing, that's for sure. was pretty exciting time for us. So yeah, we closed the Series A, so that was a third price round, in April of this year. So in about six months, we've doubled the size of the company. And so we are growing quickly, and have runway for quite some time. And yeah, bringing in people across the board, still growing our engineering team and software teams as well. But you know, that was really our core competency early seed stage, you know, a really incredible r&d, engineering and software team. And now we're scaling more so into operations, right? Finance as well and bringing in more business development, building up our sales and applications engineering team, to to build out and build upon that base of the core commercialization and go to market efforts that that we had obviously.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
So what's it like working at the company? What's the day to day culture like?
Ali Forsyth, Alloy Enterprises
So definitely relevant for for new hires. We're mostly an in person company. So we were, we founded the company in February 2020. So about six weeks before the six weeks before the first shutdown. And so as a result, we were really small team that knew each other pretty well. And we were in person throughout COVID. As a really small team, we actually, how's the company in my carriage house in my backyard in Somerville in order to stay safe and limit our exposure to a larger group of people? But yeah, so I'd say, people just like to come to work and be in the office just because of the energy. That's actually when I interview new people are really common piece of feedback. It's like, everyone's excited. Everybody, there's energy in here, there's just like this vibe, this kind of energy that's going about. And so I think that's a pretty good representation of pretty good point that I hear from quite a few people. And so that was a culture really, of sharing and thinking out loud. And so we're constantly getting feedback and giving feedback on work that's not done yet. And thinking about problems out loud and respectfully, being critical and poking at things and making sure that we're getting to the right solution, regardless of who comes up with the idea. Most of the ideas are not mine or somebody else's. And so it's that sort of that kind of culture around you
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
know, regardless of market conditions, top tier talent always has choices. So why should Alloy Enterprises be on the radar for job seekers?
Ali Forsyth, Alloy Enterprises
So one, I think it's the environment and that excitement of what we're building here and a great culture here at Alloy Enterprises, but we're gonna we're taking that and revolutionising manufacturing, we're talking about reshoring manufacturing, we're talking about making lighter vehicles and reducing carbon emissions with an infinitely recyclable material. And this is just the start, right? We're still building the early stage company, it's a chance to get in at the ground level and help us grow and scale this company and help us to define where and what it can do in the future. I can't think of anywhere that would be more exciting to work.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Well, if you are in some exploring opportunities at Alloy Enterprisess, you need to go to the company page on VentureFizz, which has all their job listings, go to venturefizz.com/alloy-enterprises, and you'll see their listings there. Ali, thanks so much for taking the time to walk us through all the details on the company.
Ali Forsyth, Alloy Enterprises
Alright, thanks so much, Keith. I appreciate the opportunity.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
