Lloyd Armbrust
Founder & CEO, Armbrust American. On 2 shows, 3 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutive@larmbrust ↗lloydarmbrust.com ↗
Lloyd Armbrust is a serial entrepreneur who founded OwnLocal, a digital advertising platform for local media. He also established Armbrust American to manufacture domestic personal protective equipment and co-founded healthcare startup RonanRx.
2shows
3appearances
51statements
7resolved
2supported
3contradicted
29%fully supported
Everything Lloyd Armbrust said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Domestic mask production capabilities cost $5 million to build, Armbrust says
“I'm pretty sure for like five million dollars, you could make the capability of making that many masks.”
Chinese manufacturers sell surgical masks below production cost, Armbrust says
“I mean, they sell it for less than the cost of actually making the mask at this point.”
Raising venture capital forces startup founders into emotionally wrecking company sales
“Like startups, the thing they don't really tell you is when you raise VC, it's like, you have to sell it. So you're building this thing. You put your blood, sweat and tears into it. And your job is to, if you're successful is you sell it. I mean, it's like, yo…”
US lacks the manufacturing supply chain infrastructure of China and Taiwan
“They have that infrastructure in place in, in places like China and Taiwan that we just don't have here anymore. And so it is so hard for us to be actually successful because we do not have the infrastructure to actually make stuff anymore.”
US lacks specialized industrial talent like sonic welding technicians, Armbrust says
“I had to become an expert in sonic welding because there just aren't any experts in sonic welding where you could go in China or you could go in Taiwan. And like, there would be just like, there's people that, you know, are experts in plumbing. They're experts…”
Armbrust claims a $5M investment builds domestic capacity for 1B masks
“That for five million in investment, I could build the capability of making a billion masks, and then we would have that forever.”
Armbrust: Traditional VC forces startups to pretend they are billion-dollar companies
“In the way that traditional VC works, as you well know, is that you know, you're kind of always pretending you're going to be a billion dollar company. You have to, the problem is not every company is meant to be a billion dollar company.”
Armbrust structured financing as machine payback converting to a lifetime royalty
“What I did was I created a royalty based model. Where it is, it's structured as a note that is paid back as the machine makes money. And then once the investor hits their one X of payment back, then it flips into a royalty agreement where they make money for t…”
Armbrust predicts manufacturing is the last industry technology will eat alive
“I really think that ironically, manufacturing is, is the last area that technology is going to eat alive.”
Armbrust: Private equity roll-ups destroy newspaper value by cutting local talent
“The problem with some private equity I feel like they're really gutting the value that the newspapers have in the in their local markets by eliminating a lot of the local talent.”
Pre-pandemic surgical masks were mostly made by hand globally
“And I found that mostly masks were being made manually one at a time by hand at the time.”
Pandemic meltblown fabric prices in China surged to $120,000 per ton
“It was selling for a 120,000 dollars a ton in China. Wow. And it was going up every day”
Medical supply chains remain entrenched with 3M and overseas providers
“We really tried to get traction with hospitals and governments, but those existing supply chains, like, they already exist. The relationships are with three M or with overseas providers. That's kind of, it's very entrenched. It was, we still haven't broken int…”
Armbrust generated $320,000 in direct-to-consumer Shopify sales on day one
“I signed up for Shopify at seven a.m. And we did 320,000 dollars in sales that day.”
Many US-assembled air filters rely on overseas-manufactured fabric
“A lot of filters are actually surprisingly they're formed here in the United States, but the fabric is made overseas.”
Armbrust relies on Japanese robotics and pneumatics despite domestic manufacturing goals
“Even though we are sort of like supply chain proof, and that's something we talk about a lot, we're not really because of some of our parts, like our robotics, like our pneumatics are all Japanese. So what happens if we can't get our Japanese parts? Like they …”
Armbrust: Sam Altman organized effort to import 1B masks at $0.38 each
“I remember Sam Altman put out you know, a call to buy a billion masks from China at 38 cents a piece because it was really hard to get masks.”
Armbrust: Armbrust American generated over $10M revenue in six months in 2020
“It was just over ten million dollars in about six months of time.”
Armbrust: Mask manufacturing in China was not fully automated before pandemic
“None of this before the pandemic was fully automated.”
Armbrust is the only surgical mask manufacturer with a dedicated sales team
“We have a 15 person sales team. We're the only surgical mask manufacturer that has a 15 person sales team.”
Hospital groups are now mandating 30% domestic procurement for PPE
“We have some hospital groups who have come to us and said, look, 30% of our PPE needs to be purchased in the United States next year, which was not a thing ever before, so they're looking at that strategically.”
OwnLocal turned down a $17M buyout offer in 2010 after YC
“We were just at a Y Combinator. It was 2000. 10, we'd just raised, I mean, we had just closed, so we'd, we'd only been running the company for a matter of months, and we got an offer for about seventeen million dollars valuation to buy the company from let's j…”
Armbrust: Local newspaper ad revenue depends on community-level personal relationships
“One of the big reasons why people work with newspapers is they know that they can go down to the local office and talk to the guy, you know, or talk to the gal that, you know, is on their PTA with them, and that's why they continue to advertise in the newspape…”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Lloyd's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 TOP FOUNDERSLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Armbrust American | 2 | 28 | 0% 0/2 | full record on Top Founders → |
 HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Armbrust American | 1 | 23 | 40% 2/5 | full record on How I Built This → |