268: Reindustrialization in the Heartland, Live from +Venture North 2025

Reindustrialization isn’t going to be driven by a single mega factory or a headline-grabbing announcement on the coasts. It’s going to be built region by region, by places that already know how to make things and are willing to evolve how they do it.

This episode was recorded live at +Venture North in Milwaukee, bringing together investors, founders, and operators to talk candidly about what it really takes to scale manufacturing in the heartland. The conversations cut through the buzzwords and focus on fundamentals: affordable power, experienced talent, corporate customers, and ecosystems that actually support manufacturers beyond the pitch deck.

You’ll hear why innovation may start anywhere, but scale almost always moves to regions with space, infrastructure, and people who know how to run plants. We also dig into how legacy industries adopt new technology without putting uptime at risk, and why reindustrialization won’t happen if workforce strategies stop at new graduates instead of upskilling the people already on the floor.

In this episode, find out:

1. Why reindustrialization scale-up is likely to happen “between the coasts” (and what regions need to compete)
2. How places like Tulsa and Milwaukee can win by leaning into their industrial DNA instead of trying to copy Silicon Valley
3. Why the cost of power is quietly becoming one of the biggest deciding factors in where manufacturing expands
4. How Carmen Industries is electrifying thermal processes (and why process engineers hate watching usable heat go “out the roof”)
5. What it really takes to get legacy plants comfortable adopting new technology without risking uptime or performance metrics
6. Why reindustrialization requires upskilling today’s workforce, not just training new entrants
7. What healthy ecosystems measure (and what they don’t): founders getting funded, exits, corporate engagement, and a community that’s genuinely welcoming

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Tweetable Quotes:

1. “Once you start needing manufacturing facilities for making hundreds, thousands of products, that’s when companies really start looking elsewhere.” - Rosa Hathaway
2. “If we only look at giving new manufacturing skills to 18- to 22-year-olds, we will never meet the workforce needs fast enough to reindustrialize the country.” - Bill Berrien
3. “Fifty percent of all end energy use is for thermal management, heating things up or cooling things down, and we do it in very inefficient ways.” - David Tse

Links & mentions:

1. NVNG Investment Advisors, a venture capital fund-of-funds backed by local corporations, focused on strengthening industrial innovation ecosystems.
2. Starframe Capital, a Tulsa-based firm supporting hard tech scale-up across the middle of the U.S., connecting founders with capital, industry, and municipalities.
3. Karman Industries, developing breakthrough thermal technologies that transform industrial energy use, reduce cost, and eliminate emissions.
4. Pindell Global Precision, a precision manufacturing company based near Milwaukee, with a focus on workforce development and upskilling.
5. Moxa, delivering the reliable and secure connectivity foundation that advanced analytics and AI depend on, with solutions in edge connectivity, industrial computing, and network infrastructure.
6. Hexagon, the global leader in precision technologies. Their digital twins, robotics, and AI solutions are transforming industries through automation, simulation, and real-time quality control.

Make sure to visit http://manufacturinghappyhour.com for detailed show notes and a full list of resources mentioned in this episode. Stay Innovative, Stay Thirsty.