Zane Hengsperger, founder and CEO of Nox Metals is focused on fixing one of manufacturing’s most overlooked bottlenecks; getting raw material fast, reliably, and without friction.
In this episode of Just Gonna Send It, Jim and Zane walk through his path from growing up around a machine shop to a brief run in tech, and ultimately back into manufacturing to build something of his own. They get into why software alone is not enough, how applying technology to simple processes creates real leverage, and what it actually takes to stand up a physical operation from scratch. From buying and rigging a massive saw to running the shop themselves after hours, it is a conversation about moving fast, learning by doing, and building where it matters.
In this episode of Just Gonna Send It, Jim Belosic sits down with Zane Hengsperger, founder and CEO of Nox Metals. Zane is known online for talking about reindustrializing America, but this conversation goes deeper than manufacturing talking points. He shares how a childhood interest in filmmaking, time around his dad’s machine shop, a brief stop in tech, and a growing obsession with industrial capacity all led him to build a modern metal service center designed for speed, software, and real factory impact.
Before metal, Zane wanted to be a director. He spent his early years filming skate clips, making short videos, and learning how to edit and tell a story. That creative instinct never really went away. It just followed him into manufacturing, where content, distribution, and taste became part of how he thinks about building companies and getting people excited about hard tech.
Zane’s dad owned a machine shop, so his first jobs were not glamorous. He started by scrubbing floors, then worked his way into machine operation, delivery trucks, cranes, forklifts, and all the random tasks that come with a small shop. At the time it just felt like work. Looking back, it gave him a front row seat to how real manufacturing businesses run, and how much opportunity exists when you understand the basics.
Zane studied economics, partly because it felt broad and flexible, but says knowing what he knows now, he would probably have chosen computer science. After college he briefly joined Uber, where he learned how much energy he could bring to a fast growing company, but quickly realized he wanted more ownership and impact. That pushed him into his first startup, a software company focused on simplifying ad buying for physical advertising spaces like billboards and stadiums. The business found customers, but eventually Zane sold his stake and moved on.
The shift back into manufacturing happened when he started spending time in a factory again and realized how much he missed the physical world of making things. Books, conversations, and broader trends around industrial decline pushed him to think bigger about American manufacturing. Instead of building more software disconnected from physical products, he wanted to work on a problem that mattered to real factories and real supply chains.
That led Zane to Delta 70, a custom rack manufacturer, where he became deeply involved in day to day operations. He spent a year in the business, learning the rhythms of a shop, helping lead a team, and seeing firsthand where cost, lead time, and material sourcing created pain. The more he looked at the numbers, the more one problem kept standing out: getting metal was still too slow, too manual, and too painful.
Nox started with a simple question. Why is buying metal still this hard? Zane saw that service centers were critical to manufacturing, but still operated with huge amounts of friction. Quotes took too long, decisions were too manual, and customers often had to wait days just to get an answer. His idea was to build a modern metal service center where software handles the complexity and customers get what they need faster and more easily.
Zane describes Nox as a metal service center, but the real differentiator is software. The company is designed to quote quickly, estimate jobs intelligently, optimize material usage, and eventually predict customer demand before customers even place the order. Instead of treating software like an add on, Nox is being built around the idea that code should solve every painful operational problem possible, from quoting to nesting to inventory decisions.
As Zane started talking publicly about the problem, his posts caught the attention of Y Combinator. That turned into a fast moving process, an acceptance, and a near immediate flight to San Francisco. He joined the batch while Nox was still taking shape, and used that momentum to sharpen the vision, raise support, and push the company forward while still handling the realities of setting up a physical operation.
In the early days, the Nox team handled everything. They sold during the day, worked on software, managed operations, then put on shop gear in the evening and cut metal themselves. That blend of startup urgency and factory discipline shaped the culture early. The business was not built from a spreadsheet alone. It was built by actually moving material, running the saw, and staying close to the work.
At its core, Nox is about making raw material easier to access for American manufacturers, especially the companies too small to get white glove treatment from traditional service centers but too important to keep waiting around for quotes and lead times. Zane believes one of the biggest gaps in reindustrialization is not flashy robotics or futuristic slogans, but simply making the basics more available, more efficient, and more responsive.
Zane Hengsperger joins Jim to share how a mix of early shop exposure, time in tech, and a growing focus on industrial capacity led him to start Nox Metals. The conversation follows his path from software back into manufacturing, where he saw firsthand how slow and painful sourcing metal still is. They break down how Nox is building a modern service center powered by software, what it took to get the operation off the ground, and why solving simple, foundational problems can have an outsized impact on the future of manufacturing.
