Episode #65: More Monuments: Building 1,000 New American Monuments and a 500-Foot George Washington with Mo Mahmood
Our Host Matt Horine interviews Mohud (“Mo”) Mahmood, founder of the nonprofit More Monuments, whose mission is to build 1,000 new monuments across America honoring American history, industry, and ingenuity. Mo explains his goal of creating a new “world wonder” in the U.S. and describes the group’s first completed project, a 54-foot Spindletop oil gusher replica in the Austin/Lockhart area at Proto Town, including its materials, fabrication steps, plaques, and crowdfunding from 125 supporters. He discusses the skills needed for large-scale monuments, the shortage of top sculptors in America, and the importance of welders and metal fabrication. Mo also shares progress on a 10-foot George Washington statue made in France and plans to scale it to a 500-foot stainless-steel monument using U.S.-made robot-formed metal panels, plus the organization’s funding model (product sales, donations, grants) and where to support the project online.
Links
- More Monuments
- Mo Mahmood on LinkedIn
- Veryable Is Revitalizing U.S. Manufacturing
- Sign Up on the Veryable Platform
Timestamps
- 00:00 What Are We Building
- 01:50 Why World Wonders Matter
- 03:37 Spindletop Monument Origins
- 06:32 How It Was Fabricated
- 10:35 Skills for Monument Scale
- 14:38 George Washington Arrival
- 16:17 Colossus Plan and Robotics
- 20:13 Why Monuments Inspire
- 23:04 Funding the Mission
- 25:43 Reindustrialization and Beauty
- 28:13 Worlds Fair Revival
- 30:23 Bring Manufacturing Home
- 32:01 How to Support More Monuments
- 32:32 Closing and Subscribe
Episode Transcript
Matt Horine: [00:00:00] Welcome back to US Manufacturing Today, the podcast powered by Veryable, where we talk with the leaders, innovators, and change makers shaping the future of American industry, along with providing regular updates on the state of manufacturing, the changing policy landscape, and more.
A question we don't ask often enough in this country is what are we building? And we do, uh, talk a lot about it on this show, but not just in the factory, not just in data centers, but out in the open, in public squares, on the skyline, at the edge of the highway where people drive past every single day.
What are we building that says something about who we are, what we've accomplished, and where we intend to go? Today's guest has a very specific answer to that question. His name is Mohud, and he is the founder of More Monuments, a non-profit organization with a mission that is, by design, audacious, build 1,000 new monuments across America, monuments that honor American history, American industry, American ingenuity, and do it at a scale and quality that matches the ambition of the American spirit.
More Monuments has already completed its first project, a 54-foot replica of the [00:01:00] Spindletop oil gusher in Austin, Texas, the largest sculpture in the greater Austin area, and their next project is something that has to be seen to be believed, a 500-foot statue of George Washington planned to be the largest monument in America.
Mo, welcome to US Manufacturing Today.
Mo Mahmood: All right, thanks, Matt. I really appreciate you hosting me.
Matt Horine: Yeah, absolutely. We're excited to have you on. I do always put the disclaimer out that we are Twitter mutuals, so came across your work and what you and the team are building there and found it fascinating because it's something we don't talk about often enough, what's in our public spaces, and so wanted to talk that and manufacturing with you today.
So we'll just jump right into it. And before we get into the projects themselves, I kinda wanna start at the beginning. The name More Monuments, the tagline is Building the Next World Wonder in America. It's a pretty ambitious statement. Where did that come from, and how did this... how did all this come together for you?
Mo Mahmood: For about five years plus now, I've been thinking about, like, world wonders, large scale monuments like the pyramids, like large statues, the Statue of [00:02:00] Liberty, Colossus of Rhodes, these large marvels of humanity, like world wonders. Where did the world wonders go? It feels it's been a really long time since we've had a world wonder, and the ones we do have are expiring soon.
There's probably the International Space Station could count as one, potentially, but that's being destroyed. Some people would argue it's the internet. Some people would say maybe the Las Vegas Sphere, all these different things. It does seem like there's something about large scale infrastructure projects and art that has been lost, and, a- and especially in America.
We are the greatest country in the world, so, like, why don't we have these sorts of large inspiring structures? And so that's something I've been thinking about for quite a long time now, and so that's where Building the Next World Wonder in America comes from. 'Cause when you think about these world wonders, it's always, like, ancient civilizations like Greece, Egypt.
Why don't we have anything in the US? We are number one in the world right now. We could be doing a lot more in the physical world, and I think we need to bring back art [00:03:00] and celebration. I think that's another piece of this. Yeah.
Matt Horine: It's inspiring because I think a lot of the times we see a lot of monuments or they're these fixed moments in time, right?
You see a lot with what's built in DC, for instance. There's a big revitalization effort going on there to kinda bring those back to life and reanimate them. But building new ones and doing new things is super important and really good to talk about right around the 250th birthday of the United States.
It's a great inflection point, and you think back to all these other times monuments were made, Lincoln Memorial in the '20s, things like that. It's when are we building and what are we doing next? Pretty inspiring to actually be doing something about it. Let's talk a little bit about the first project and the one there in Austin, the Wellspring of Progress.
For listeners who haven't seen it, can you tell us a little bit about it? It's not a small thing, for sure. Something that, that memorializes something really significant.
Mo Mahmood: You have to understand the context in which it was built. So I moved from San Francisco, California, to Austin, Texas. When I moved to Austin, Texas, I started asking people, I [00:04:00] was like, "Do you have a backyard I can build a statue in?
Do you have some sort of land, anything at all? I'll build it in your front lawn. I'll build it in your backyard. I'll build it in some random plot of land you have." And in one of my first meetings, somebody said, "My friend, I, I have an entire city. I know an entire city being built." And that city ended up being Proto Town, which is a city for manufacturing outside of Austin.
So that's really interesting. And so I moved to Proto Town as its first resident back in, like, September of 2024. As soon as I got there, they started pushing me. They said, "Mo, you gotta build. You gotta execute. You gotta pour a concrete pad. I wanna see action. I don't care about your words. I wanna see concrete.
I wanna see steel." And it's like, okay. So that was my first time building anything. I had very little competence at the time. So what we ended up arriving at was doing a monument to Spindletop, which was the first oil geyser discovered in Texas back in 1901. And Spindletop's really important because it made Texas and America the number one [00:05:00] energy producer ahead of the World Wars, and it industrialized Texas, 'cause without it, it would've still been a lot of farmland.
So oil had a massive impact on Texas and also America at the time, and a lot of people, they tend to forget that these days. I call it The Great Forgetting. Forgetting has happened in manufacturing. It's happened in history. It's happened in art. We've forgotten so much from the past, and that's something I'm trying to fight, and I know that Proto Town's definitely fighting it right now.
I was the first guy to move out here. Now they have 30 people-ish, so it's grown quite a lot. Next year it might be, like, 100 people. And so we poured, like, a 10-by-10 concrete pad. We put up a 30-foot wooden tower. It was a windmill tower. We took the windmill off, built a deck at the top. And then through the center, we added some steel pipes, and at the top, we added steel tubes, and we tried to represent oil the best we could.
So it was really interesting. And all in all, it was about 54 feet tall And that's, that counts as the largest monument/sculpture in [00:06:00] the Austin, Texas area, 'cause the second-largest is 50 feet tall at the University of Texas.
Matt Horine: Yeah, no, that's... it's an incredible first run, and a really important project to memorialize, 'cause I think it captures a lot of what you're talking about there.
It's the great forgetting. People forget that how big of an oil state Texas is and was. It's... I've spent... I've spent time in Dallas, Houston, Austin, and people constantly talk about diversifying away from energy, and it's... you know, energy's kind of at the heart of it. So we're experiencing that now. So a really cool first monument.
The structure itself, it's not a sculpture in a traditional sense, but can you kinda walk us through, for the manufacturing audience, the supply chain of that? Who built it? What kind of materials were involved? And what surprised you about the production process?
Mo Mahmood: So it's, like, a 10-by-10 concrete pad with piers that go down about two to three feet on each corner.
So concrete piers that were dug just to give it stability longterm, 'cause it's kinda windy out here in Lockhart, the Lockhart, Texas area. And then we did the [00:07:00] big tower. We wanted it to look like an oil derrick. A lot of those old-school oil derricks from the 1900s, they had a deck at the top. So what we did is we took a windmill tower, took the windmill off, took the ladder off, 'cause we didn't want anyone climbing it.
We decked it out at the top with wooden, wooden planks, two-by-fours. And then we built a hole at the top, like a small hole where the pipe could run through. And the pipes we used were local oil pipes that were actually used in oil rigs, and they were, like, big steel pipes. And then when we get to the top, the pipe is about 30 feet tall.
We added a base plate to the top of the pipe. And then to the base plate, what we did is we took steel tubes. The first length was... So it's, it's an extra 24 feet. So I think the longest length was 24 feet of steel tube. The second-longest length was 18 feet of steel tube. And then the third-longest length, the third tier of the oil, was about 12 feet of steel tube.
And then what we did is we went to s- to South Austin Metals to manufacture some rings for the [00:08:00] steel tubes to be welded to. So the bottom of the steel tubes are welded to the base plate, and then the s- top of the steel tubes were welded to the actual rings we manufactured. And then after all that, we just did some finishing work.
We just painted everything sort of black and brown. And then you had your oil derrick. And then the actual monument part- And this is the part a lot of people seem to forget about, is putting up plaques and pedestals. So we were really lucky in the sense that I messaged 1,000 people on Twitter to help fund this thing, and a- about 125 people came in total.
So I was incredibly lucky. That should not have happened. We created a plaque with everyone's name on one of, one of the plaques, and then we got some butter blocks. In, in Texas, we have a excess of limestone, and a lot of contractors locally were quoting me, like, 10,000, 20,000 for a pedestal. But if you go and look at this, th- there's a term for this.
It's called a butter block. It's made for construction of large limestone houses. It's 125 bucks, and it's three feet tall, two [00:09:00] feet wide, and we just used those as our pedestals for the actual plaques that are around the monument. And so it's 125 bucks for two, and then shipping it is another 200, 'cause it's quite heavy.
And then a- all in all, I'd say the cost was, like, really reasonable for all of this. Yeah, so we were really lucky. It worked out well, and we wrapped up on December 18th of 2024, uh, right before Christmas. Yep.
Matt Horine: Wow, that's great. No, it's interesting. I'm sure there's plenty of challenges in building the first.
As a builder, somebody who's built things, there's probably plenty of moments where it's like, is this thing gonna come together? And cost is always prohibitive, and a, a lot of times, I think maybe you may know this better than me, probably a lot of the excuses that are given for not building monuments or doing things is because of the, quote-unquote, "cost."
And you go to find these types of materials and things in the supply chain that you're being resourceful about. It doesn't need just some giant commission and a 10-year planning process. You can just build things is what it sounds like.
Mo Mahmood: It's especially easy when you're doing it in a new sort of industrials town.
So that, that was the other half of it for us, 'cause I've built things all [00:10:00] over. I've done something in France, this George Washington we're gonna talk about. I've done initial spec for a sculpture in Phoenix, and it's still stalling out. We're waiting for a permit. But when you go to Texas, and especially this new residential zone that we're gonna build out in Proto Town, it's really fast.
It's easy to get approvals. You can just start moving whenever you want, so that, that's really helped us a lot. So these sort of new cities are something I wanna focus on long term, I think.
Matt Horine: Yeah. That's incredible. You, you talk about building the monument, and then it kinda gets built around it, more civil- civilizational stuff, for lack of a better phrase, the towns and things being, being built around this type of stuff.
That's excellent. I wanna pull back and talk about a little bit more on, on the- Bigger scale, what it means to build a monument and the actual making of it. What type of skills, and specifically for our manufacturing audience, what kind of skills are involved with that type of monument level work? From something that you've done now to something that it's on the agenda here in the short term.
Mo Mahmood: Sure. So every scale has its own rules. You say you wanna build a monument, but [00:11:00] a lot of monument builders focus on six feet tall, seven feet tall, eight feet tall. But if you wanna build large scale structures, it's completely different. So what I would say is if you're just starting out, please don't do it the way I did.
54 feet is quite, quite a lot, and you, you'd probably be better off doing something like 10 feet, maybe eight feet. I think that's monumental scale for a lot of people. 15 feet, that's, that's pretty good scale as well. If you wanna do something of that scale, usually a lot of people, what they do is they work alongside sculptors.
So it depends what your monument is. Is it a sculpture? So you might wanna find a sculptor to work with. If it's a, if it's a sort of a large scale structure like a building, you might wanna find an architect to work with. And then if it's, uh, if it's a really niche thing, then you might wanna find a combination of really interesting skill sets.
So for me, I'm really lucky in the sense that I've been able to find people along the way who've helped out. For Spindletop, for example, we worked with a really good general contractor. I had a buddy who advised us on terms of design for [00:12:00] the big oil section of the monument, 'cause it was really hard to represent oil because we live in a really windy area, and the last thing I wanted was strands of rebar flying in the wind.
But I think designs have to be thought through, and if you're lucky enough to find really competent people at certain skill sets, it's not as hard as you would imagine. But Am- America is really lacking in good sculptors, and part of the reason I had to go to France is because I found an American guy, but he's an American guy who moved to France 30 years ago.
I think if you-- In terms of really skilled sculptors, I'd say there's only 10 of them in the world, like really the best of the best. So I, I can't say Many are in America. I'd say maybe one or two if you're lucky. I know one off the top of my head who I really respect in New York. But apart from that, it's, it's really hard to come by in America.
We just don't have it set up anymore here. But a lot of it is in Europe, and we are allies in the West, so it's, it's something where a lot of them wanna come to America [00:13:00] anyway. There's a huge opportunity for that in this country.
Matt Horine: Yeah, absolutely. It's a combination of kind of the old world craft and then the modern structural engineering and fabrication that are required to scale those different sizes of structures that you're building, for sure.
And a lost art, to your point, a- again, for getting that type of being able to do that art at that scale. Just one more note on the American manufacturing side. Welders, fabricators, structural engineers, are you seeing a good response and potential for work from that side of the workforce and people that you'd be building on?
Mo Mahmood: Oh, yeah. I think we wanna work with more metal fabricators. I know one guy, and I've been holding onto him for dear life. He's really good. I think we need more metal fabricators, people who are willing to get up in high places and weld. Welding is gonna be a huge thing going forward for us. And also just being able to latch panels on.
Part of our structural design for George Washington at the 50-foot scale is we're gonna need to have four connection points per panel, and the panels are gonna be m- are gonna be manufactured by robots in America. And we can get into that, but [00:14:00] it's a really interesting process, 'cause once you have the panels, uh, you need to build the steel structure.
And the steel structure is, like, a really basic frame, but from that frame, you're gonna latch the panels on, four connection points each.
Matt Horine: Yeah, that's, it's interesting because there are ways in which this is n- that old world structure of creating something like this now meets this technology revolution that we've probably been through since the last time- people were building things of this size.
I know you were talking civilizational scale and pyramids, but if you think even more recent, the past 100 years, still very manual and oftentimes I don't, I sh- you've probably thought about this way more than I have, but how do people get up there? How'd they do that? That's a, it's a general, generally a good question, but great insights on that.
Let's talk a little bit about the George Washington statues. You're built one now, I believe it's here, and then we can talk about the Colossus and the main event. But wanna hear about that, that first one that I believe just arrived, if I'm following the socials correctly.
Mo Mahmood: Yes. We are incredibly lucky. It arrived this week.
The week of America 250, it finally arrived. We're incredibly lucky. It almost didn't [00:15:00] happen, but we made it happen, and it arrived yesterday afternoon. So it's at Proto Town right now in the other building. I'm in one of the big warehouses, but it's in the warehouse behind me, and we're just fixing it up.
There's a couple of minor repairs needed. Some of the plaster fell off, and we're just putting it back on, and we're gonna give it a new paint job, make it look really nice, and then on July 4th, about three days from now, we're gonna be unveiling it. The one we're gonna be unveiling is about 10 feet tall.
I made it in France alongside Paul Rhodes, who's a really great American sculptor who moved to France 30 years ago. And him and I met on Twitter of all places, just like you and I did, and he's really skilled. The sculpture is quite large. It's monumental. It's, it's George Washington stepping forward.
Behind him there's an eagle, and he's holding a cherry tree branch. So it's a real interesting design. He cannot tell a lie, so he's, he's holding cherry trees, and the eagle is taking flight. The eagle is on a cannon. So it's a really dynamic, interesting design, I think. Artistically interesting.
Matt Horine: Excellent spin on the triumphantly holding the branch of the [00:16:00] cherry tree.
He couldn't tell a lie, but take that cherry tree forward. That's excellent. Where's, where's it being unveiled?
Mo Mahmood: Yeah, we're gonna be unveiling at Proto Town. So if you're ever in Austin, please do come by.
Matt Horine: Yeah, we'll have to be sure to check that out. No, it's an exciting development. Obviously, a big step forward for, for your team.
Let's kinda go to the main event, though, and what the big, what you're aiming for next, and the Colossus of George Washington. Ambitious. I, I thi- I think I've seen online that 500 feet tall, potentially stainless steel. Would it... It'd be the largest monument in America. Can you walk me through how this kinda came to, into being and how the progress is moving along?
Mo Mahmood: So the 10-footer is here, and what we've done with that already prior to shipping it, because if it broke in shipping, that would've been awful, but it's fine. So what we did is we scanned it. We scanned it with a 3D scanner about .1 millimeter resolution, and what we're gonna do with that 3D file is we're gonna break it up into panels about five by 10 each, and then we're gonna send it to a company in California, Makino [00:17:00] Labs, who I'm sure you might have seen.
They've got a robot-forming technology where they can press on a sheet of metal from both sides, and it forms the metal, presses on the metal from both sides, and it gets formed into the 3D model you provide them. That's something we're working on now, and what's really interesting about that is it, it, the panels are made fully in America, and this was not always possible because if you think about the Statue of Liberty, the panels were pounded by hand into wooden molds by brave men, and I, I'm, I'm trying to find brave men, man, but I can't find many, and I can't find artisans anymore.
It's, it's really hard to find good artisans. I had to go across the world to find them. That's how the Statue of Liberty was made, the copper panels, it was pounded by hand, repousse method. But then if you look at sort of these modern statues, a lot of them are still made in China, like the panels are. The panels are the hardest part of a large scale statue like the Statue of Liberty because the interior of the statue is hollow.
The exterior is what matters. The Statue of Liberty is only two millimeters thick, [00:18:00] so it's, it's not even that thick. And so the big statue in India, the Statue of Unity, what they did for their panels is they had to get the molds sent to China 'cause they didn't have industrial capacity in India to cast the bronze.
Uh, so the entire panels for the biggest statue in the world were made in China 'cause they didn't have the foundry capability in India, and also it's just cheaper in China. And then so if India's having that problem, we're also gonna have that problem at the moment. So the sort of robot forming method is really interesting 'cause there's no casting needed.
You just take a material you already have, and you press it. And the India statue's about 650 feet tall on a 200-foot pedestal, something like this, and they have plans for a 1,000-footer at some point. I know that's in the cards for them. So what I want is a, a mere 500 feet. 500 feet on a 150-foot pedestal. I think stainless steel would be a great material.
It's modern. Everyone's using it now. I'm in Texas. Elon uses it on Starships. It [00:19:00] works. It's reliable. It's affordable compared to bronze and copper and all these different materials, and we could robot form it, and we could do it fully in America. No need to go to China. So that's really interesting. And so what we could do is 500 feet, 150-foot pedestal, and the robot forming stuff's also really interesting because it's really fast.
So this took two hours to make. This took two hours. Yeah. And so they can do 50-foot panels in one month, and they can do 500-foot panels in three months fully in America. So, like, the panels are the hardest part, and we finally figured it out how to fabricate them. Fabrication was always the big deal. How are you gonna do this?
Are you gonna go to China? Are you gonna make George Washington in China? No. We don't have to. We can do it here.
Matt Horine: That's incredible. No, it's a really multi-layered story. It leads to my next question, but just to comment on that 'cause I think you hit the nail on the head. If we are going to build these things and we are going to do these things, it's a little bit hollow to, to build them in China and have them shipped here as some kind of monument to American ingenuity [00:20:00] and industriousness and those types of things, and it's being imported directly.
That's, it's a little bit conflicting, but you certainly thought it through end to end, so really great news for our reindustrial crowd who's probably listening today, and a very exciting prospect of having those go up. Turning a little bit more to h- what I would call some of more like the art side of this or the inspirational side of this, we're celebrating America 250 this week as we're recording.
It invented over the, since the 250 years of that founding, we're talking about the telephone, the light bulb, aviation, internet, and put a man on the moon. Why does a physical monument matter so much for that achievement? And what... Let's take George Washington. What does a physical monument to someone like George Washington, what does it inspire that's something that a textbook maybe can't do?
Mo Mahmood: Sure. George Washington is, he's one of my heroes. I love him a lot. He's, he's the father of our country. He's a great figure for honor and duty. Without him, we would not have a republic. He is the one who proved that man can rule himself, 'cause he stepped away from power not once, but [00:21:00] twice. He's a great man, he's an honorable man, and I- I'm really inspired by him, and I really love America.
That's the entire reason I'm doing this. All of the monuments we've done so far have been really pro-America, pro-history, and I think American history is great. It's a history of self-improvement. It's, it's one where we are a culture that really supports people. We give people rights here. A lot of countries in the world, they don't have rights.
They can't say what they want. They can't be who they want. And so we can do a lot of things in this country that we can't do in other places, and that's something that we should celebrate. And I think American culture is really great, and I wanna build large scale statues to celebrate it. And so it's, it's something that we really need because we're only 250 years old, and I think Rome was, the Western Roman Empire was a- about 1,000 years old.
The Eastern Roman Empire, about 2,000 years old. We've got a long time. I think we'll be okay. But what, we don't have much at the moment, and that's the real problem. So the Statue of Liberty is the largest statue we have. It's about 151 [00:22:00] feet tall on a 154-feet pedestal, and it was made in 1886, and the year is now 2026 It's been 140 years, man.
We could do something. We could, we can do a little bit more, I think. Maybe once every 10 years. I, I'm just asking for more monuments. That's all I want.
Matt Horine: Yeah, it's a reasonable request. I think something that y- you said there was pretty inspirational, and it kinda overlays with manufacturing. The real story of George Washington was that, through the arc of his life, that he mastered himself first.
He was disciplined, he had rigor, and all those things that are those unique American qualities that now kinda translate to the republic. And you see something that stands to someone. As an example, if you're in Texas and you drive up 45, there's a Sam Houston statue. I get excited every time I see it because it's uniquely Texan.
It's obviously built, it's in a public place that reminds people of where they're at, but it does so much more than trying to read a book about Sam Houston. Fascinating guy, but it's not something that's a common [00:23:00] discussion, so it keeps history alive in a lot of ways. So really inspiring work on that.
You've had significant coverage, or fairly significant. We found each other on X, but Bloomberg, Newsweek, others have put eyes on your projects. The structure of your organization and the 501[c][3] structure, it's not a small thing to build on this scale. How does More Monuments actually fund the work, and what does the patronage model look like?
Because it's really different, but also something that's very tied to the arts.
Mo Mahmood: Sure thing. The main th- the main three things are we sell products. So recently we've been selling miniature statues of George Washington, and they're 250 bucks for the 250th, and I appreciate you buying one. Thank you so much.
You'll be getting it soon. We make all of those fully in America in Las Vegas. One of my buddies and I, we're working on that together. All of them are handmade, hand-painted if they're bronze. The white ones, they're just pure white. And so in addition to that, we also recently got an order for 100 Teddy Roosevelt statues.
There's a new Teddy Roosevelt Presidential Library. We're not making it [00:24:00] for them specifically, but there's somebody who's gonna be hosting an event there next month And I'll be posting more about that soon. Anyway, we- we're making 100 of those right now. The initial batch is about 55 upfront and 45 by the end of the year.
And so we've got about 15 of those made so far, and the event's gonna be from about early week, early August, like first week of August. So in, in addition to that, we've also got a bunch of other statues on the website for sale. We sell plaques. We sell, like, places where you can put your name on the monument.
But in addition to that, we mainly take donations. That's how we funded Spindletop, for example. That's how we funded George Washington. And going forward, we're looking to get more grants from, like, foundations and other non-profits. So getting more people involved is always really important to me. And we're also gonna be exhibiting at a booth in FreedomFest next week in Las Vegas, so that'll be really good for the manufacturing side to go check in on all that.
And, yeah, trying to get the word out there a bit more, and I travel all the time to go to conferences, to meet people, and everyone [00:25:00] agrees, it's a really brass tacks kinda thing. Everyone can say yes to big art, I think.
Matt Horine: No, that's ... it's a really great structure because I think that's the spirit of it, right?
Is that it's something for the public, not just to be educational, but also to memorialize the American spirit. So, yes. Thank you. I did place an order for one of those. I'm looking forward to getting it. Washington, I think they used to hang a picture of Washington in every school and building all the time.
Nothing wrong with that, so nice to bring him back to the public space, especially around the 250th year.
Mo Mahmood: Yeah. The average Roman household had two statues. We have zero.
Matt Horine: Yeah. Well, you need to talk. I don't know what's up with the interior design space, but they sh- you know, that should start trending pretty soon, and I think you guys will probably lead the way on it.
Makes a lot of sense. There's other great historical figures as, as well that can be put in that category. Kinde- kind of one more tie off on the reindustrialization moment. Lot of reshoring, a lot of new factories. There's a real physical dimension to the country's ambition right now. Do you think monument building fits inside that larger story really well, and how much do you think that this ties over to [00:26:00] the reindustrialization movement?
Mo Mahmood: Sure. I think a lot of people are beginning to understand, and they use the word aesthetics, and I don't really like using that word, but- If for a product, it kinda makes sense. The aesthetics of products matter, and if you're gonna build something that's gonna change the world, you might as well make it look good.
And a lot of people are trying to start to, kinda starting to understand that, even a lot of tech people. It does seem like a lot of tech people are getting into art and design and making sure things look great. But you have the National Design Studio run by Joe Gebbia in the Trump admin right now. You have sort of Elad Gil, who's the world's number one angel investor, and he just started a company about a year and a half ago called Monumental, and his goal is to build monuments as well.
And then you have Marc Andreessen tweeting about all these statues, and the a16z logo is a statue. And you've got, you've got Elon Musk making the Cybercab in a really interesting art deco style. And so I think a lot of people are [00:27:00] starting to understand if, if we're gonna do something, we wanna make it inspiring, and we wanna do it so that it looks good and our physical en- environments are also uplifted.
'Cause there's no point in building something and then you just have a really brutalist thing and, and people are really saddened by it. It makes zero sense. And I think that'll really lend a lot of support to the re-industrialized movement. A lot of people can get behind it. A lot of these people are even suggesting for data centers.
Data centers are really contested right now, so a lot of people are suggesting, "Why don't we make them look nice?" If they look nice, they'll contribute to the community somehow. And so everyone agrees we want the world to look beautiful, and I just wish more people were focused on it, and but I do think a lot of improvement's happening.
It's not been like this ever, and I've been doing this for four and a half years, and right now, over the past year, we're having a moment. This is... Things are getting better. I'm really happy about it.
Matt Horine: Yeah. No, that's an exciting prospect. I think you hit the nail on the head. You could put a lot of the data center discourse to rest just by making them an inspiring place, right?
Instead of [00:28:00] just another box off the side of the highway mentality. So something hopefully our listeners, if there's builders out there, can get that design. I did see something on, like, art deco inspired data centers is a bit ambitious, but I think I caught the same traffic you did. You're also working as, and correct me if I'm wrong, is it the World's Fair Company?
Is that something that you're involved with as well?
Mo Mahmood: Yeah, so I help out. Anytime Cam's in Austin, I help out if he's running, like, an event or a salon or anything like that. Cam has some huge news, like, really huge. I can't say it publicly, but he's got something really huge coming up, and he's in San Francisco, and he wants to bring back the World's Fair.
So for those in the audience who are not familiar with the World's Fair, the World's Fair was, like, the number one celebration of progress and technology in the world, and it started in the early 1800s, and it started in Philadelphia, I think. I might be wrong, but I think it started in Philadelphia And so every four years around the world, the entire world would come together and we would celebrate technology, progress, [00:29:00] art, and the country that was hosting it would get a huge shout-out, and you would be able to display your culture for the world.
And a lot of people gained a lot of really important lessons out of that. For example, I think that's where the Model T was unveiled. The Eiffel Tower was made for that. You had, you had the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco was made for that. Treasure Island is a man-made island in the San Francisco Bay Area, and we man-made that island for the World's Fair.
And, you know, I can't, I-- we can hardly build housing there, but we used to build, we used to build islands in San Francisco, and it was really inspiring. And so a lot of our greatest artworks in this country and a lot of the greatest days in this history, in the history of this nation were because of the World's Fair.
And the last World's Fair in America specifically was in 1984. Bit ominous, but it's, uh, it was in New Orleans. It was in New Orleans, and there's a bunch of reasons it didn't work out, but it's been over 42 years now since we've had a World's Fair. So my buddy Cam, he's working to bring it back, and I'm really inspired [00:30:00] by him.
Matt Horine: No, it's a great pairing because I think the monument story ties in really well to that. There's a lot of-- I can't really off the top of my head, but there were a lot of unveilings, like you mentioned, the Eiffel Tower, and there were plenty of other things that were unveiled at those types of venues and events, and the celebration of Western civilization.
That all ties together really well with re-industrializing and building. We'll be careful with the aesthetic word, but getting that aesthetic back in the modern age. One final question before, before we go to how f-folks listening can find out more about you. You, for manufacturing operators and operations leaders, what's the one action you'd recommend for them that you've seen out of this process of finding new steel fabricators or finding new people who supply things to you?
Are you getting good responses from them, or how do you tie this back into manufacturing?
Mo Mahmood: Bring it home. Do everything you can to bring it home. Like, for example, we use a lot of resin for miniature statues that we sell, and even a lot of the feedstocks are increasing in price due to wars and tariffs and stuff like this.[00:31:00]
I, I remember the early days of the Iran war, the prices of feedstocks went up about 200% for resin, and it was just, man, it was really difficult at the time. I had to consider major price hikes for the products we sell. So whatever you can do, please just bring it home. Every single aspect of the manufacturing process, if you can make it here, try to make it here.
If you can't, try to do a Western-aligned nation, something close by. I feel like there are some things where we excel at, and there are some products where, for example, I know Canada is the number one maker of aluminum in, in, in sort of North America. 75% of aluminum is made there. So it's not ideal, but some of the things have to be brought closer, and whatever you can do, just try to make it here and try to make it look good, and celebrate a bit more this upcoming week and going forward.
Matt Horine: Absolutely. No, great advice, and something we've been beating the drum about here for a while, is that there's plenty of things to be discouraged about. There's headwinds all the time. You don't know what the macro trends are gonna do to your individual shop floor. But whatever you can do to bring it home, do that.
[00:32:00] Really great advice. If our listeners wanted to support you in your mission, maybe get a George Washington statue for themselves, or find out more about you or how they can help in the process, I think there would be a lot of interest. Where can they go to find more about you and the organization?
Mo Mahmood: Sure thing.
Go to moremonuments.org to check out the website. And if you wanted to buy a statue specifically, they're really reasonably priced, and they're made in America. On average, we sell them for about 250 bucks, and shipping is really cheap. And so you can go to shop.moremonuments.org for that. Otherwise, just check me out on Twitter, Mo Monuments.
Matt Horine: Excellent. Mo, this has been really insightful, pretty inspiring for America 250 week here, where we're recording, so thank you for coming on and letting us learn more about what you're doing.
Mo Mahmood: Thank you so much for hosting me, Matt. I really appreciate it.
Matt Horine: To stay ahead of the curve and to help plan your strategy, please check out our website at variableapps.com and under the resources section titled Trump 2.0, where you can see the framework around upcoming policies from the administration and how they will impact you as a manufacturer.
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