He Came From Oz To Save American Manufacturing - EP 80 Chris Power

**Ashlee Vance** (0:00)
A few years ago, a Australian gentleman named Chris Power came to me, and he told me that there were all these mom and pop manufacturing shops around the United States that make many of the things used by the automotive and aerospace industries, that people, these people were gonna retire, and this was going to be a massive manufacturing crisis for the United States. Their children were not taking over the businesses, and we were gonna lose all this talent and skill. He said he was going to fix this problem by creating a company that would use software, automation, machines to pick up these skills and then modernize this whole industry and make parts even faster and better than they were done before. And then he went off and did this very thing. He started a company called Hadrian. We're interviewing Chris at the Hadrian headquarters for this episode. He is a thing. He's really part of this whole reindustrialization movement. And he's got big thoughts on what America can do, where it's heading.
And this is just a cool backdrop for this interview that I think you will enjoy. I am Ashlee Vance. This is Core Memory. Here we go.
This is cool, I don't know if you remember. I mean, I came here a couple of years ago when it was, you guys had like just acquired this building. Yeah.

**Chris Power** (1:47)
Completely empty.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:48)
Yeah, now it's quite full.
Yeah, it's amazing, man. Well, it's been a while since we caught up. Feel like we should, I also feel like I was part of this original journey. So for people who don't know, well, nobody would know this, but I think it was like, what are we, 2026 So maybe like 2019, 2020 I remember sitting with you at a lunch and you said, hey, you cover all this aerospace stuff. I've been thinking about this idea. You were kind of like, there's these mom and pop shops that serve the aerospace industry. Their kids don't want to work there. They're highly specialized. We have to find a way to transfer these skills and you're like, I'm going to go fix that.
I was like, who is this young Australian, insane kid who's going to go do this? Then now here we are.

**Chris Power** (2:51)
I think that was at the terrible bar next to Planet Labs.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:54)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

**Chris Power** (2:56)
This is pre-COVID. Yeah. Yes.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:58)
Yeah. When we were chatting, yeah, I just thought you were... I appreciated the energy and the enthusiasm, but I'm like, this kid, whatever he's trying to do is going to cost an incredible amount of money and be extremely difficult.
How old are you now?

**Chris Power** (3:17)
Just 35

**Ashlee Vance** (3:18)
35 Yeah, you were still in your 20s when you were mapping that out.

**Chris Power** (3:22)
Yeah.
This was when there was no private equity fund and no Hadrian. Then that year, that year, we raised the private equity fund and then shut it down a year later, and then it was Hadrian. So this was early days when we're all hanging out in San Francisco, trying to figure out what the shape of this was.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:40)
Yeah. Okay.

**Chris Power** (3:41)
Yeah.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:41)
Because for a minute, it was like maybe I go in and try to fix these places.

**Chris Power** (3:45)
Existing places.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:46)
Yeah. Okay.

**Chris Power** (3:47)
Yeah.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:47)
All right. Well, I want to give people a little bit of your background because it is one of these amazing things about the United States, about San Francisco, that you can show up from Australia and in a relatively short time end up running like a giant factory. I mean, did you grow up in, are you from Sydney?

**Chris Power** (4:07)
Melbourne.

**Ashlee Vance** (4:07)
Melbourne. Okay. You were in the tech field, but you were just this young guy in Australia. You were kind of aspiring to get to the US, really, right?

**Chris Power** (4:20)
Yeah, that's right. And well, for everyone else on camera, me and Ashlee know each other very well. We won't get into half of that.
No, so I was an accountant and a lawyer.

**Ashlee Vance** (4:35)
Yeah.

**Chris Power** (4:37)
Did a bunch of e-commerce in Australia, was doing product and sales at a software company in Australia. We did blue collar workforce scheduling. You got 5,000 people in a warehouse. How do you manage all of that? And then I told the board they had 12 months to replace me.
And yeah, we're in tech, but not like Silicon Valley or like I had no connections. And then at the end of that year, I moved, came over here for eight weeks in San Francisco, which is when I think we first met, moved back to Australia for two months to sort out my visa and then came back for good. And that was, I guess that was 2020, because it was about nine months before COVID. I think that's about the right time.