Insight
Sundblad: Pitching AI as operator craftsmanship works better than selling science
“I used to always say that we are trying to add science to it, but I've come to the realization that it's way more effective to say that we want to make it easier to become artists for these operators, because they are really amazing, and they've got so much do…”
Opinion
Sundblad: Efficient production enables localized manufacturing instead of global offshoring
“And if we can make it efficiently, we can make it close to where it should be consumed and we shouldn't just be shipping it off to wherever it's cheapest in the world.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sundblad: Factory operator training takes three months with 50% completion rate
“Oftentimes like a ramp period for a new operator is at least three months. And they very often have like a 50% success rate of that training program in that 50% even end up starting the job in the first place.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sundblad: Many manufacturing plants face 70% factory floor turnover
“A lot of them have 70%, you know, year over year turnover on the factory floor, or at least 70% if you look at it on a 24 month cycle.”
Insight
Sundblad: Vertical focus standardizes industrial software integrations versus broad manufacturing approaches
“And also by being vertically focused on a couple of key verticals, you end up with a lot more standardization on like the technology that we're integrating with. So like, if you go after paper as one industry, they tend to look very similar and they tend to ha…”
Opinion
Sundblad: Manufacturers lose labor primarily to logistics warehouses like Amazon
“I think the biggest problem for manufacturers when it comes to labor is that people are leaving the manufacturing industry as a whole. They might be going to work at an Amazon warehouse instead of in operations.”
Insight
Sundblad: Manufacturers deploy software during economic downturns, not production boom periods
“When they're so production constrained that all they need to do is make as much as possible. They don't have time to take meetings. They don't have time to do deployments and they know that it's cyclical themselves. So in downturns, they try to like, okay, wel…”
Disclosure
Sundblad: Oden Technologies raises $28.5M round of equity, debt, and notes
“The total round is 28 and a half million. But that includes part debt facility, a little bit of convertible note but the biggest portion is newly issued equity.”
Assertion Partly supported
Sundblad: US plastics industry has approximately 16,000 factories
“So you'd have about 16,000 factories in the U.S. In the plastics industry alone. Out of those, and Europe is about the same, Asia is about the size of U.S. And Europe combined.”
Assertion Contradicted
Sundblad: 60% of US plastics factories are small businesses
“Out of those 16,000 factories, about 60% of them are SMBs. And so the ones we're targeting fit into the, like, 40% category, because the majority of factories in the US as a whole are mom and pop small, small businesses.”
Disclosure
Sundblad: Oden relocated to US in 2015 due to European cloud resistance
“And then we went to a trade show in Germany and I'm probably going to make a lot of Germans angry now, but that's fine. But this was in like, 2014, 15. And we told them, you know, them what we're going to do. And they just shook their head and said, like, you'…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sundblad: Oden grew 3x from 2022 to 2024 with flat headcount
“From summer of 2022 until we closed the round early in Q one, we had well over three X growth while, you know, having burn rate to the point where it was going to go away completely increased margin and essentially not adding to the team.”
