Opinion
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.”
Insight
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.”
Disclosure
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…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
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.”
Opinion
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.”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
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.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Assertion Contradicted
Armbrust: Mask manufacturing in China was not fully automated before pandemic
“None of this before the pandemic was fully automated.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Disclosure
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…”
Insight
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…”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Armbrust American raised approximately $5M in a single weekend in 2020
“And yeah, we raised about five million dollars in a weekend.”
Assertion Partly supported
Armbrust: Armbrust American has ~2,000 customer investors funding PPE machinery
“We've got about 2000 customer investors who are using the money to buy other machines. We bought an N-ninety-five machine. We were buying machines to make the, you know, head coverings that folks wear, the boot coverings.”
Disclosure
Armbrust spent $250K converting a Texas warehouse into a cleanroom facility
“And so we spent probably about a quarter million dollars turning some existing space that was very nice space, class A warehouse into a clean room space”
Disclosure
Armbrust American scaled from four to 50 employees almost overnight
“We had to go from, you know, four people to 50 you know, overnight.”
Disclosure
Armbrust American peaked at producing one million surgical masks daily
“The peak we got to was about a million masks per day when we were running three shifts all the time.”
Disclosure
Armbrust's unit production cost is about five cents per surgical mask
“Our costs are down to about five cents a unit.”
Disclosure
Fulfillment for direct-to-consumer masks costs twice as much as production
“If I need to put it in a box and send it to one person, that is like twice the cost of actually producing.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Armbrust says most of OwnLocal's 170,000 monthly ad campaigns are 'uniquely terrible'
“We process about 170,000 ad campaigns a month, and I would say probably a hundred and 60,000 are uniquely terrible.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Armbrust: OwnLocal generated $11 million in revenue in 2017
“Yeah, we did eleven million dollars in, in in 2017.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Armbrust: OwnLocal serves 4 billion monthly ad impressions
“So we do, you know, about four billion impressions a month on this ad network that we basically own and operate.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Armbrust: OwnLocal generated roughly $110M for newspaper partners in 2017
“In 2017, I think it was something like a hundred and ten million dollars. We made our newspaper partners with that ad position.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Armbrust: OwnLocal is cashflow positive and profitable
“We're cashflow positive and profitable.”
