There is a particular kind of founder bio that makes you want to close the tab.
Kenneth Cassel’s is refreshingly fucking different.
In his public YC profile, he describes having his first kid at twenty, spending most of a decade in the trades, then stumbling into software. Four kids later, he’s building RMFG, a manufacturing company with its own factory in Fort Worth, Texas.
Sheet metal. Tubes. Machined parts. Assemblies that somebody actually needs delivered.
The interesting part is the combination. A software engineer can look at a factory and see processes to automate. Someone who has worked in the trades might also understand why those processes exist, which workarounds are essential, and which clever ideas will get laughed off the floor.
You probably want both perspectives before you start promising to reinvent manufacturing.
RMFG says it develops software to handle quoting, production scheduling and machine control inside the operation it runs. The team gets to find out whether the software works by using it to make customer orders.
That is a fairly unforgiving feedback loop. A part either fits or it doesn’t. A shipment either leaves or it doesn’t. Nobody gets extra credit because the dashboard looks expensive.
We like the shape of this bet. Own enough of the operation to learn where the actual bottlenecks are. Improve them. Make the next order easier to deliver.
Can that become a repeatable advantage as the factory takes on more complicated work? That’s the thing to watch.
For now, Cassel has picked a place where his unusual background might be useful every damn day.
Budera Founder Files. The people building before the rest of us know what to call it.
