[MUSIC]
All right. With me today is Ed Ge.
Ed is a space entrepreneur who builds AI
space computers that
are radiation hardened
and recently launched his
first satellite to space in August.
I met Ed back in 2020 when we were both
students early in the startup journey
and competing against each other at a
pitch competition for some money.
At the time, Ed was working on his first
startup, Stradodyne, which was launching
high altitude balloons to collect aerial
imagery for farmers to be more efficient,
but then pivoted into launching
surveillance balloons in
conflict zones for government
agencies before eventually selling the
company. It has been crazy
following Ed's journey these
last four years since we met. It's an
absolute pleasure having you
on as one of the first guests
of the new podcast. One of the most
unique things about Ed's
journey is that, Ed, you went
straight from university to building
advanced hard tech and launching
satellites with none of that
traditionally thought to be required work
experience. How did you manage to do it?
You wake up and you start
doing shit. I'm not kidding, right?
There's a quote out there that says you
can just do things and you really can.
If you go into this when work experience
is great, the way I see it
is this. When you go into
space tech, when you go into these deep
tech industries from space
techs or you go into them
from these labs or academia, you get this
tutorial that lets you
figure out how things are
done in the industry, figure out how the
way things should be done
in a relatively low-stakes,
low-risk environment. It's not saying you
have to go through that
tutorial. You can just skip it
and jump straight to the end game. It's
really recommended that
you go through that tutorial.
I was a bit too stupid to go through that
tutorial. I decided to
start doing things and
I just jumped straight to the end. When
people tend to be
founders, they tend to go after the
low-hanging fruit for the first couple of
starts. People tend to go up
to be sass, event planning,
consumer social, something that resonates
with them, something with
customers that they understand,
something that they already have
experience with. I decided I
want to send shit into space
and that's what I did. To be honest, that
meant I had to deal with
way more pains in the ass than
I would have had I gone the software
route. That also meant had it not been
for a few lucky breaks
along the way. I would have been fucked.
I'm not kidding. When you go
into these really high-stakes,
highly technical industries where you are
an outsider and everyone
knows each other and it's
very capital intense. You can't bootstrap
your way in or even
bootstrap an MVP. You're competing
against a ton of 30-year-old engineers or
40-year-old engineers who've
been VPs of engineering like
SpaceX, who have staff engineer
experience from NASA. It really is super
difficult to break into
that field. Honest to God, it's not
something I would recommend. When I look
back on it, I'm like,
there was so much shit that could have
gone wrong. I am amazed at
this point. I even managed to get
this far. Why wouldn't you recommend it?
Well, first of all, it's capital intense.
You are not going to build a space
company without venture financing or
prior exit. That's off the
table. We're talking millions of dollars
just to get you an MVP.
Second of all, the sales cycles
are super, super long. We're talking
months between even the customer agreeing
to buy your stuff and
months before they pay you. It's not like
B2B SaaS where the customer
is like, "All right, we want to
use your shit and they just pay you
within a week." That's if you have a
completed MVP and that takes
millions of dollars in the first place.
The other big issue that I
see is that a lot of hard tech,
a lot of deep tech industries tend to be
in this dead zone where it's
too capital intensive to be
venture backable, but you also can't
really build it without
venture backing. It's kind of like a
lose-lose situation. That's a big reason
why American manufacturing
has fallen so far behind.
There's a big reason why hard tech and
deep tech startups are
really difficult to get financing
for. It's a big reason why everyone keeps
going after the same B2B
SaaS companies or the same
Web3 or crypto companies or FinTech
companies and so on because VCs
understand it. They understand
the ROI. They understand how the
timelines, they understand the returns.
In space, it's kind of
hard to justify that, "Hey, it's hard to
guarantee to someone that has no
experience in it saying,
"Hey, we're going to be a venture
scalable outcome. We're going
to be able to hit that 100-bit
bucks in ARR within the next five years."
When you talk about it,
when we went out to fundraise,
even with traction, VCs are always like,
"Well, we love you
guys. Business makes sense,
but we have zero understanding of the
broader market." We pass.
That's a message that we got
over and over and over. When you talk to
my friends who are also
building in hard tech,
building in space, building in defense,
that's a message that
they're getting over and over and
over and over too. It's not just from the
VC side. From what we've
seen, defense tech VCs,
deep tech VCs are super capital
constrained as well. They don't really
have... You don't really
see these big multi-stages. Up until
recently, these big
multi-stages didn't really lean into
defense, didn't really lean into hard
tech or deep tech. That's also because
it's hard when you talk
to LPs, and they're like, "Well, raise
the software fund." That's easy because
LPs understand software.
LPs use software. Everyone uses software.
We've seen software like
eat the world and become
trillion dollar, power trillion dollar
economies. Space and
deep tech and defense,
well, that's much more difficult to
justify raising a fund on.
When you're outside of that
narrow mandate, it's really hard to get
VC to justify to their LPs
that they can lead around
like 20 millions of dollars of funding
into you. It's hard to raise for. The
second issue is that
the feedback timelines are very long. The
iteration timelines are very long.
Imagine you're building software. A lot
of founders build
software. You can, let's say,
push an iteration of the software out
today. If something breaks
or something doesn't work,
you can fix the ditch, fix a bug, and
push out a new iteration like tomorrow.
Nothing is wrong with that. In space,
well, you push out an
iteration today. Something's broken.
It's going to be like six months and
hundreds of thousands of dollars or
millions even before
you can push out the next iteration.
Everything has to be done right because
the iteration cycles
are so slow and because resource
constraints of every single cycle of
iteration are so high.
This means everything has to be checked,
double checked, and triple
checked over and over and
over again before you even push anything
into production or you
send something to orbit.
The other, go ahead. I was just going to
say build fast and break
things is a little different.
The stakes are a little different in your
space, but what's the other thing?
Well, you can build fast and break
things. That's what
SpaceX did, right? SpaceX,
look at the Falcon 1, the first launch of
the vehicle. That
thing flew, what was it,
like a dozen times and it was only
successful twice. On its
first launch attempt, Elon Musk
was out of money. If that launch had
failed, SpaceX would have
gone bankrupt and we never
would have gotten what we had today. It
succeeded at the most
critical time for SpaceX. Now we have
SpaceX as a Falcon 9, as a Starship, as a
Falcon Heavy. It's sending people into
space on a recurring,
regular basis. But it's the early days
that are super hard. In the early days,
even a small failure can
kill an entire company.
You recommend people not to
do it, not to start there?
I recommend, I'll say this, if you want
to be a founder for the
sake of being a founder,
go into software. If you are debating
between two fields, either
FinTech or SpaceTech, go with
FinTech. Only go into SpaceTech if you
are 100% confident that
there is no other field,
no other market that you would rather be
building in. Because
otherwise, you will hate your life.
I would be honest, Space, in terms of ROI
of effort to financial ROI,
space is by far one of the
worst industries to be in. You look at
the amount of effort needed to build a
satellite company like
planet or black sky or maxar. And then
you look at the performance
on the public markets. It is
bad. You look at the amount of effort
needed to build a manned
space plane like Virgin
Lactic. And you look at its performance
on its back. That means
being delisted at the moment.
There are very few space stocks that have
done well on the public
markets. And that is something
I don't really see that changing over at
least over the next five
years. And honestly, if you
look at the amount of dilution that space
companies take, if you ever
have a gone pitch book and look
at that, you look at the amount of
capital that is raised for
every single mission attempt or
every single launch, it is absolutely
enormous. So space as of now
is reserved for visionaries,
but perhaps one day could become a more
profitable endeavor. As
space companies build the
infrastructure for the next generation of
entrepreneurs, what do you think of that?
I think any company that's building in
space today is making a
bet that the space industry
is going to be huge. Because I'm going to
be honest, the space
market, as it is today,
I don't really think it can support a
venture scalable outcome.
I do believe that the space
market continues on its same trajectory
of growth. It can support
these venture scalable outcomes.
And that the space economy can eat the
world in the same way that
the software economy did.
But I think that we are essentially
making a bet that we aren't too early.
Because if you look at
the space startups that came out in like
the 2010s and the 2000s,
they came too early. And all of
them either got acquired or died. And
once it did survive, went out,
it's like spacked, right? And
all of the spacks just got the absolute
shit kicked out of them once
they hit the public markets.
Gotcha. Yeah. Okay. So they're getting
their butt kicked. Why do you think VCs
invest in space startups if they can't
get that venture outcome?
I think VCs invest in space startups
because they're betting on
the space market game bid.
We ultimately are betting that, hey, as
launch prices come down,
the number of satellites going
up to space goes up. And you see it,
right? Because last year
we launched, what was it,
like 2,600 satellites. In 2014, we only
launched 248 satellites. And
this launch rate is only going
up and launch prices are coming down,
particularly with new potential
competitors to Falcon 9,
like New Glenn and Neutron, as well as
new competitors in
reusable rocket launch options
from China and other nations around the
world. And I think this is
a trend that's only going to
increase that new more and more reality
will go up. And I also do
believe that as humanity becomes
more reliant on space-based
infrastructure, like for example,
Starlink, it's going to become far
more apparent that space is going to
become a very, very big
economy and that we cannot live
without the space economy today. But this
is only going to become more
and more apparent. That's a
year's go on. What do you think is going
to be the next leap in
space infrastructure?
Well, Starlink already is that next leap.
We look at how many
people use Starlink nowadays.
Right. Of course, do you use Starlink? I
do not. All right. Well,
do you know anyone that uses
Starlink? I do. Yeah. And they all got in
like the past year or so,
right? Yeah. Yeah. Like,
it's my point, right? Like Starlink, when
it first came out, like not that many
people started using
it. People started using it more and more
and people were like,
"Wow, this is like way better
than fucking AT&T." Or like some shit.
Yeah. Like I don't like AT&T. I don't
like these big telecom
companies that have Monopoly. So
everyone's slowly moving on to Starlink.
Like United, right? United
Airlines, they're buying starting
terminals. They aren't using like
T-Mobile. They aren't using AT&T
or Sprint or like these other traditional
telecoms. So moving on to the
new player in space. And as we
move forward, I think that really is
going to be a trend we see.
Like SpaceX and these big space
companies, they're going to start
vertically integrating and
start like trying to go after
the end customer themselves. Right. So in
the past, you look at
SpaceX, they would like make
money from telecom indirectly by like
launching a satellite for a telecom
customer, be it like AT&T,
T-Mobile or Iridium. But now SpaceX is
like, "Well, why not just go
directly to that end customer
and then sell telecom services, internet
services to that end
customer?" And I think this is going
to be more of a trend going up in the
space industry as
company, because I feel like any
successful company is at the end of the
day, a consumer company,
right? They're selling their
dream. They're selling their vision.
They're selling to the
consumer. And by selling starting
terminals, SpaceX is effectively turning
themselves into the consumer electronics
company. And as these
space companies go directly to our
vertical integrating, they
also directly become consumer
company or start selling to these earth
space customers that
previously it wouldn't be able to
access. Yeah, just a few days ago, I saw
that Cutler Airlines, they
initially got it in their
planes. And I think Elon had a call with
some folks while they were in flight,
which I think is pretty
incredible. Starlink really has been a
leap, but what do you think
the next leap is going to be?
We can't yet see. Starlink feels like the
obvious current leap,
after payload cost reduction,
perhaps as the previous link. What do you
think is the next one just
over the horizon that most
of us laymen, most of us normal people
who aren't in the industry
can't yet see? So look at two
trends. One trend is defaulting launch
prices. And the second trend is
increasing reliance of
the terrestrial economy on space based
infrastructure. And
that's like more and more.
Then if you look at that, then the
logical confusion is going
to be the next leap is going
to be an on orbit surfacing, right? Space
tugs, fuel, fuel, vehicles,
for orbital transfer vehicles that can
move stuff between the moon
and earth and like geosynchronous
orbit, low orbit, and so on. And we
already are starting to see massive
movements in that direction.
For example, the Space Force has awarded
recently like several large
contracts to starfish space
for like the orbital tug, as well as like
end of life services
and solid maintenance.
And we've also seen more movement in this
space, for example, from
companies that truly nominate
or orbit fab doing in orbit refueling.
And this makes sense,
right? Because the more we,
as launch prices go down, the cost of
deploying in orbit
infrastructure also goes down. And the
more in orbit infrastructure goes up, but
as more in orbit
infrastructure goes up, this leads to
massive demand for maintaining that
infrastructure, making sure it can be
deorbited at the end of its
lifetime, making sure it can be pushed
around this destination to maintain or
fixed if anything goes
wrong. And as this orbital infrastructure
expands, you kind of
create a flywheel effect as it
creates a demand for like satellite
maintenance, tugs, fuel depots, and so
on. And as these go up,
then you can support more in orbit
infrastructure, even more cheap, extended
lifetimes, which leads
to even more orbital infrastructure going
up from like these
companies. And which leads to even
greater demand for satellite maintenance.
And I really do think that
this is going to be the next
big thing in the space industry. But
that's all like hinged on increased
terrestrial reliance on
space infrastructure, correct? That is
correct. So ultimately, if you look at
it, we are making a bet
on the bet here. Got it. What increases
in that space
infrastructure you see on the terrestrial
side over the horizon, Starlink is an
obvious one, connectivity.
What you do at A-Thro is also
like clearly some additional value for
us. What other kinds of
domains do you think might open
or like we need on earth things in space?
That's a good
question. So I really do think
remotes... So there's going to be two big
markets, three actually,
that really rely on space-based
infrastructure. The first one is going to
be remote sensing, right?
So like using space data
to for everything from wildfire detection
to mapping climate change,
mapping carbon emissions,
as well as ISR use cases like spy
satellites, spotting Chinese
warships in the Taiwan strikes.
The second one, of course, is telecom
with these new 5G
constellations as well as Starlink and
these IoT constellations going up into
space offering space
connectivity between different
assets on the ground, different equipment
or terminals or
antennas and ground stations on
the ground to their orbital shallots to
transport data from two
different points on earth faster
than ever before. And the third one, of
course, is with GPS. So
we've seen new alternative GPS
solutions come out, right? For example,
you have the Zona space
launched like GPS, like into low
earth orbit with the idea that since it
will be much closer to the
earth, much closer to the
customer, you'll be able to get much far
more precise navigation,
far more precise targeting
and direct pathfinding for stuff like
autonomous vehicles or
traveling through remote areas or
offering alternative GPS solutions to the
Department of Defense.
How interesting. And you're in like what
if there was a
building could like directly
plug into almost all those use cases,
right? Well, anything that relies on
doing data in space we
can work with, right? The big thing is so
we've taken a different
my thesis around space data
is this, right? It's the most difficult
thing. It's one of the
most difficult tasks in space
right now is moving data from the space
layer down to the earth later. Ground
stations are limited.
Bandwidth is in short supply. The FCC and
IQ are very strict on when
you can access these ground
stations, what your allocation is, what
the data rate is. And this makes it
difficult to run and
manage these satellite missions that are
generating massive amounts of data on
board the spacecraft.
So the less you have to move data from
the space layer to the earth
layer, the more it can compute
in space and the less you have to stay in
contact with the ground
station, the better it is.
Could there be a paradigm shift in the
foreseeable future that eliminates that
bandwidth constraint between orbit and
the in earth to where
space compute is less needed?
So there are alternative solutions and
we've noted three of
them. One of them is optical
downlink. Second one is K-band, higher
frequency downlink. And the
third one is the potential
proliferation of ground stations. The
first one, optical downlink.
There's one main problem with
it, right? So optical downlink isn't
really doable without
clear weather, without a clear
line of sight to the ground. If you have
cloud cover, you're fucked,
you can't really send data
down from the satellite. Or if you aren't
directly on top of the
ground station itself, you can't
move a laser through the atmosphere at an
angle. Rain fade,
atmospheric fading will essentially
jumble the data and you get a very, very
poor data rate. The second
one, of course, is K-band,
which experiences much of the same
issues. K-band also suffer from rain
fading, atmospheric effects,
and other things have vastly reduced the
effectiveness of the data rate if you're
transmitting from an angle and also
require a massive amount
of ground stations to be
deployed in the field. So you always will
have downlink sites. So
to say that, because the,
I don't describe it like the cone, right?
Imagine satellite
communications as a cone,
right? You have a cone. And the K-band
and optical band cone, the traditional
satellite bands, S-band
and X-band have a very wide cone because
the satellites can
communicate either from a greater
angle, have steps down site without being
that social ground
station. But the higher frequency
bands, because they suffer so much from
atmospheric interference,
have a much more neural cone,
which limits the line of sight that you
have and increases the need
for much more proliferated
ground stations. But this runs into a
separate problem. The FCC and ITU are
very strict on where
you can build, where you can deploy
ground stations, as well as
where, like how data is moved
between earth and space. Because when
data is moved from a
satellite, like down to your ground,
that interferes with mirror time traffic,
that interferes with
airborne traffic, that interferes
with like essentially things as simple as
a radio on a ground, or even like wifi
and stuff like that.
So this means that the most popular
satellite bands for
communication are S-band and X-band.
And put that perspective, there is only
one commercial S and
X-band downlink station in all
of North America. There is none within
the continent of the
United States. There's only
S-band uplink within the United States,
but that, these S-band
uplink licenses have been granted,
were granted decades ago. And the FCC is
not brand new as band uplink licenses.
From what we've seen, handling licensing,
handling real estate for these
complications, for these
new ground stations, is by far a much
more greater obstacle than any
manufacturing or technical
challenge. And this is something that
can't really be overcome with new
technology or something that
can really be overcome in the traditional
sense, because you're
dealing with local governments,
you're dealing with regulations, you're
dealing with these agencies. Frankly,
very antiquated and huge pains in the
assets to deal with. We dealt with the
ITU, right? We dealt
with the ITU, we dealt with the FCC for
our first satellite. The FCC
at least was understandable.
I hate the ITU. Every space company will
say we hate the ITU,
and for very good reason.
And it's just a pain in the ass to deal
with all these
regulations. And not just that,
it's if you look at these new ground
stations, the main challenge
for it, like if you look at
these different optical things, right?
Optical things and K-band, K-band
transmitters and these
high frequency transmitters require far
more power on the satellite. So you
aren't really doable on
small satellite buses and oftentimes
require customers to
change entire configuration,
change entire design of the satellite to
accommodate these
larger, far more powerful
transmitters. Same scheme of laser names.
Laser names require pointing
accuracy of 0.00005 degrees.
But that perspective, the average
satellite in orbit only has a pointing
accuracy of 0.1 degrees.
So asking the customer to essentially
change entire configuration of the
satellite to accommodate
either a far more powerful control system
to hit that four order of
magnitude increase in the
pointing accuracy or to fit it with a
much more powerful, much
more larger transmitter.
Oftentimes it's infeasible and customers
don't want to do that when they can.
So this is the problem that you guys step
in to solve. You guys are
doing the computation in
space and sending the results back down
to earth fundamentally,
like for my grandmother to
understand if she's watching this, right?
Absolutely. We do the
computation in space.
We can process the data in space,
compress the data, and
then by sending the processing
and processing out of packets, it's much
easier to route it to other
satellites using the software
to find radio or send it down to the
ground without incurring
the same bandwidth cost or
the same latency cost or the same data
storage cost as you would
with just moving massive
packets of data around the orbit. With
the Starlink constellation, a
constellation, could you
beam it to a Starlink satellite? I don't
know if that's something that is
supported or exists.
How widespread those things are? Could
that be an alternative
without getting too, too deep
in the technical so that our viewers can
understand? Is that a possibility?
Theoretically, yes. So Starlink is
selling their lasers as part
of the plug and phaser program.
However, there are several issues with
that. Starlink lasers,
very big, very bulky, very
expensive, still deals with the same
issues of pointing
accuracy. You need to have that very
high, very precise and fine level of
control to be able to send
data to a Starlink satellite.
Issue number two is it's a closed
ecosystem. If you buy a Starlink laser,
you can only communicate
to other Starlink satellites. You can't
communicate to space for a satellite. You
can't communicate to
Kuiper's satellite. You can't communicate
to one web satellite. All
of these optical digital
constellations have their own community
in protocols, their
own standards, their own
bandwidths, and so on. The Space Force is
pushing to own standards
for in-space communication
between satellites. But obviously, big
in-net megaconservations
don't really give a shit about
it. They're just going with their own
standards. This fragmentation of
bandwidths and communication
protocols and standards makes it
difficult to essentially
customers to buy one laser and
communicate with other constellations or
justify essentially
locking the entire communication
infrastructure into one company's
ecosystem. I can also note that of the
plug-in laser program,
we have only known of one company that
has bought Starlink
lasers. That is VAS. VAS is
building a space station that relies on
the Dragon's life support
system. They already are
in the Space
at Eagle system. Planet Labs is not going
to put Starlink laser
onto their satellites.
Maxar isn't going to put Starlink laser
onto their satellites. Of the
customers that we've thought
to, all of our customers, none of them
have any interest in
buying Starlink phasers and
communicating with the rest of the
Starlink. Got it. I think,
Aethro, you guys are the first
company to put AI computing
into space. Is that right?
We are not the first. There are other
companies in the past have
used far less powerful chips,
like the NVIDIA TX2 or TETRK1, and have
deployed them
successfully in orbit. For example,
AI-TEX Venus computer deployed with the
TX2. We also know of
companies like ExoSpace have
flown TX2s in space before. However, we
are the first, I
believe, to use an NVIDIA Orin
GPU, which is 20 times more powerful than
preceding computer
generations, as well as,
I believe, the first chip to be based off
the 8-nanometer process
to be deployed in orbit.
What does that mean for our laymen back
home? What does that
allow you to do functionally?
Got it. It enables us to essentially run
multiple computer
processes on board the computer.
It enables us to run multiple AI and
machine learning
processes on board the computer
simultaneously. In the past, you have a
TX2 in orbit. As far as
processing power, it's only
able to do orbital inference using the
computer vision model that
has onboard. With the Orin,
since it's far more upgraded, processing
and computational power,
what it means is that you
can create software containers to run
multiple different
processes at once. You can have one
software container on the satellite,
let's say, an imaging
satellite. As the images have
the collection images, you can have one
software container
essentially doing inference on the
images that's collecting. You can have
one software container
simultaneously retraining
its onboard computer vision model off of
the new images that's
collecting. As it's collecting more
images, a satellite can adapt to change
situations, hone any onboard model that
has, and the fact that
it adapted to changing situations on the
ground. You have a third
one that is compressing all of
the processed results and then
communicating that to another satellite
in orbit or, let's say,
a partner really constellations
potentially like Amazon
Kuiper and so on. This ability to
handle multiple computational tasks
simultaneously really cuts back on the
time that you need to
process and deliver data and get results
from orbit. It also
really makes it possible to
make space missions truly autonomous,
make them truly adaptive in
a way that really hasn't ever
been done before. Okay, so with the
satellite you guys launched, the Deimos
satellite, I believe it
was in August of this year, what's it
doing up there? What's it
up to? Is it watching us?
I wish I could say it. So Deimos is a
prototype satellite. So it has one of our
computers on board, very small computer,
like fits in my hand. Oh nice, you have a
prop there, right? All right. And what's
it doing? Essentially,
it's a very basic test.
The point of Deimos was to prove to our
customers that yes, we can
fly hardware in space. Our
computer works in space, you can
communicate with our computer
in space, you can deliver OTA
software updates to the computer when
it's in orbit. And not just
that, the computer can run
basic ML inference workloads in space
with minimal effects on
radiation, minimal issues from
like thermal cycling, as well as that it
could run on a very, very
power constrained budget,
on a very small satellite. Because if it
can work on a very tiny
cube, like Deimos, then it can
most definitely work on larger satellite
buses, be it like a
larger micro sat or like an
S-perclass small sat or a space station
and so on. So it really is
just this proof of concept.
Some customers say, hey, we are a
legitimate space company,
we can send stuff into space.
There's a quote out there. Have you ever
heard, no one ever got
fired for buying IBM?
Oh yeah, for hiring deep
blue, right? Or big blue?
For hiring deep blue, yeah, right. And in
space, there is like a
similar adage that goes like,
no one ever got fired for buying a flight
heritage product, right? So no one ever
got fired for buying
the technology, buying a product that's
been proven to work in
space before. Deimos proves
that product can work in space, our
hardware and our software can work in
space. And by doing so,
we eliminate a lot of the barriers that
customers have to buy a product or
working with Aethro,
because they're like wealthy Aethro guys
have proven that they can
send stuff to build products,
send it to that product space and have
the product work. And
when we buy this product,
it's inherently de-risked in our mind.
But if you buy, let's say
a product that hasn't been
proven in space, that hasn't been flown
in space before, that hasn't
been flown on salad before,
you essentially are gambling your entire
job on having that
technology work. If that's not really
something that people in the space
industry want to do, you
don't want to be gambling a
multi-million dollar satellite on
something that has
never been flown before.
Understandable. So this was like proof of
confidence to get that flight heritage to
then get like assurance, like to show
your potential customers,
hey, we can do this thing.
Yeah. All right. What's the next item I
can have? What's it going to do?
Yeah. It's going to be a far more
powerful version of Deimos. We're calling
it Phobos. We named it
after the two moons of Mars. It's
actually a much twice as big as Deimos.
And so the name matches
in size as well. So the NetScii Lite,
it's going to be testing out
our ability to perform far more
intense AI workloads in space, as well as
in-space training and the
ability for it to potentially
receive packets of data from Deimos and
communicate the
packets of data to the ground
to essentially confirm our ability to
perform in-space best
that we're getting both
inter-satellite
communication using our compute modules.
How interesting. Okay. I did not realize
you guys, the
satellites you'd be launching
would be communicating with each other.
Well, that's one,
that's the stretch goal,
right? The primary goal is to essentially
approve our ability
to accomplish way more
ambitious AI workloads in space using a
much more powerful
satellite, a much more powerful
form factor, and a newly updated board
revision that takes into
account the lessons that we
learned from Deimos and the lessons that
we learned from shipping
our computers to our first
initial couple of customers. And this
next satellite, this is
for a customer or also proof
of concept? Proof of concept is a flying
customer software
payload on it. Interesting.
Well, best of luck. I can't wait to hear
about it. When do you
think it's going to launch?
The target in May. Okay. May, most likely
it will be pushed
into June. You never know
space sets and transport or launches.
They tend to fall a
month or two behind schedule.
Are there any big hurdles or noteworthy
constraints for computing in space like
energy or heat dissipation? Yeah, both
massive. So energy is a
massive hurdle. If you talk about
the smaller microsap buses or
nano-satellite buses on
these bigger buses, let's say,
as per class, most energy isn't that big
of a hurdle. These big as
per class buses also tend to
have the ability to dissipate heat from
like, if a computer is
going to be this small, right?
These big satellite buses are going to
have more than enough capacity to
dissipate heat away from
them or like power them up if they're
only running like two or
three of them. Energy and heat
dissipation space really comes into issue
when you're working with
these small satellite form
factors or if you're talking about the
point, like a ton of them on a single
satellite, let's say,
a data center or cluster computing
configuration. For that, there are
several different ways to
manage it. For example, we have heat
sinks on our computer. Like if you look
at the copper piece,
it's just a massive copper heat sink. We
have thermal straps,
which essentially can connect
to an entire side panel of the satellite
turned down to a radiator or
connect to a radiator itself.
Some shots we see also have thermal
control buses, which is pretty much like
a skeleton within the
satellite that like dissipates heat
across the entire satellite bus and
spreads it out. And we
also see like more complex ways to pull
computers that we haven't
explored yet. For example, we saw
one concept of cooling the internal
satellite that used like to
cycle water back and forth.
Or like, what's water? It's some type of
fluid. It's just like with
a back and forth to cool the
satellite. And yes, that works, but it's
a pain in the ass to do.
And also vastly increases the
number of failure points that you would
have. And in terms of, I
mean, Ray, you have to understand
so it's space. Yes, it is cold in space.
But the problem is when
you're on the sun facing side,
it's very hot, hot enough to boil water.
And when it's very cold,
yes, it is cold, but it's
basically the vacuum. There really isn't
anything to dissipate that heat away
beyond just radiation.
So managing thermals is particularly
difficult. Why space? Why did you get
into this? Like what
happened in your life that made you the
most obsessed person I know about space?
Dude, I fucking love space. I want to do
shit that no human has
done before. I want to do
shit that no human has done before. I
want to see shit that no
human has ever seen before.
And to be honest, when you talk about
space, with the building in space, that
is the industry to be
in if you want to do these two things.
Like I see the energy
around. When I was a kid, I always
imagined that if had it been the 1500s or
the 1400s, I would have
been on one of the ships
set selling to the new world selling to
the Americas, because I
always want to I've always
wanted to explore new frontiers at sea,
do things that have haven't been done
before. Right. And like
turn the universe in of mysteries into
something that is known,
something I know that is tangible,
something that I can record or study. And
space really is that final
frontier where there's still
so much so much unanswered mysteries
about the physical universe in
space. And really, it's going
to be something that will be exploring
for the next like millions
of years potentially. Right.
Because if you look at the scope, the
sheer scope of the universe,
think about all the things that
could be out there. And you just really,
really are like, well, I want
to see them all. I want to see
them all. I want to know them, know about
all of them. And I want
to study them and see these
phenomena up close with my with my own
eyes. And not just that I I'm
personally of the opinion that
if humanity, I'm not the opinion of two
things. One is that if
humanity wants to become
immortal, space is the only way to go.
Right. I think that we are
reaching the introduction point
in our civilization, where if we don't
become a space from
civilization within the next century,
we never will. We just never will because
we will no longer have
the resources, we will no
longer have the economic might, we will
no longer have the ability
to focus our ambitions on off
the world exploration, we don't do it
now. So we have to do it.
There is no option, there is no
cavalry coming to save us. We have to do
it now. We have to do it
today. And we have to push on it
as much as possible. The second thing is,
I'm of the opinion of a
question. Do you if no human
is alive to study the works of Aristotle,
of Plato, of Confucius and
the straight philosophers,
if no human is alive to enjoy these
massive cultural legacies
that we have accumulated,
and the stories that we've left behind,
will any of humanity's works
or any of humanity's culture
ever have mattered? That's a
philosophical question. Even if we're
immortal, still doesn't matter.
What does it mean to have meaning and
matter? This is quite a can
of worms you opened here, Ed.
I mean, I'm with you. I want us to
diversify our investment, like just not
just have like a single
planet and that tremendously increases
our odds of immortality, but at the same
time, like everything
in the scope of infinity must end, right?
Well, theoretically, yes. But
theoretically, I also am,
I don't like these odds. And I think
like, sometimes you just
know the odds, you're like,
fuck it, let's do it, right? Like, like,
if you're a, you're a founder, so you
sympathize with this,
right? We're both founders, we empathize
with it. And I'm like, yeah,
we know the odds of success,
but we don't give a shit, we're just
gonna be doing it. And I
personally, I'm of the opinion
that the thing that provides meaning to
human life is the creation of a human
story, the creation of
a human, a species wide legacy that you
binds and unites all of
humanity. These stories, these
cultural works, these great figures of
history, all of them have
meaning, even from the small,
like even the lives of the lowest, lowest
peasant from the medieval
era to a random office worker
today has meaning because that peasant
probably created through like, if you
look at it, probably
has like a butterfly effect where he has
a massive effect on
geopolitical events today,
right? Because all of our actions are
interconnected, all of our actions have
cause and effect on each other. And like,
honestly, and I think that
so long as there's some human
out there in the universe, some human,
some fragment or some
ember or spark of humanity,
somewhere in the universe, does not be on
earth. Everything that
humanity has done, up to that
point, will have had meaning, and all of
humanity lives on through
them. But if humanity is
extinguished, then nothing that we did
ever has had value,
nothing we did ever has met,
nothing did ever matters. And is our goal
to keep that spark that
kind of fragment of human
consciousness and sentience and form
alive as long as possible,
even if it means expanding
humanity off world, even if it means
sending humans, like spreading humanity
across billions of worlds
or trillions of galaxies, we have to do
it. I'm with you. I want it
to happen. And I absolutely
hope that we can, the human species can
survive for infinity and
beyond for as long as can be,
just like building a company, building a
lasting company, all
companies eventually die, trying to
prolong our species. Perhaps we can agree
to disagree on this one. I
don't want to be pessimistic,
but I would love for us to be on tens of
thousands, millions, billions of
different worlds and survive
for billions or trillions of years. But
this too shall pass, right?
Everything does have an ending
when the grand scope of infinity, perhaps
we can agree. I think the
ending of humanity would look
less like a traditional extinction. And
we're around millions of
worlds. There is nothing that
can really drive humanity extinct. There
is no cosmic event.
Humanity would have been so greatly
dispersed that nothing can harm us down.
Nothing can exterminate us.
I think what will eventually
happen is humanity evolves along
different paths. And in 10 million years
or billions of years,
we'll have tons and tons of descendant
species, but it will be
completely unrecognizable to
modern day humans. But I think
maintaining that so long as our
continuous line continues,
and we still have these descendants
species spread across
millions of worlds, humanity still
lives on through them. They're still
descendants in a way. They're still
connected to the main
line of humanity. And as long as they
exist, humanity also
exists, even if they aren't
demonstratively human anymore. Right.
That was my next question.
You hear that, we're thinking in
the same place there. What do you think
about life outside of
Earth, aside from humans today?
Like where do you think it exists?
Without a question, without
a doubt. It's a mathematical
certainty. I think it's probably even
more likely that life exists
in the solar system, right? You
look at the icy moons of Europa, you look
at the oceanic moons of
Jupiter and Saturn, you look at
Titan. We have found organic compounds in
the atmosphere and
methane that's a Titan. And we
know like the oceans of Europa are warm
at the very core of it because
gravitational effects on the
rock core of Europa actually generates
heat. And it's shielded from the
radiation of Jupiter by
mouths of ice as well as mouths of
underwater ocean. We also know that
liquid water exists elsewhere
in the solar system. And we have found
liquid water on, I believe,
Mars, as well as other moons
in the outer solar system. And I also do
believe that these oceanic
moons are actually the most
likely outcome of life-bearing worlds,
right? Look at how many terrestrial
life-bearing planets
worlds are in the solar system today.
One. But if you include the
moons in it, the oceanic moons,
then that count vastly increases to what,
like three or four maybe?
And I think the life that as
we know it, life on these oceanic moons
is probably far more likely outside of
the solar system too
because these moons and these oceanic icy
worlds are going to be
far more common in like a
temperate terrestrial planet like
Earth's. And we essentially by this over,
I think we are a bit
over indexing on trying to find the most
Earth-like planet possible
when life can exist on so many
in so many other different forms on so
many other different planets. I will,
however, note that I
think industrial space-faring species
like us is a rarity. It's
an anomaly in the universe.
I think that we are, it's not unlikely
that we are amongst
the first generation of
space-faring civilizations, potentially
space-faring civilizations out there.
And the main reason is intelligence isn't
really something that
evolves, that evolution evolves
for, right? Evolution seducts for
short-term benefits
focused around reproduction, not
long-term benefit. Like there is nothing
in evolution that says
intelligence is inherently
a trait that supports reproduction,
right? Intelligence does
help us survive against
predators, it helps us hunt, it helps us
gather food, but there is nothing about
building like an urban civilization that
like really makes it...
Okay, there's nothing about like having
an urban civilization which reproductions
easier. If anything,
having urban civilization like fucking
dating after kings makes our
reproductions harder.
I'm just saying it, right? So there's
nothing like... And there's also
other aspects like we have hands, our
hands create tools or we
can use these tools to farm,
we can use these tools to build cities,
we can use tools to build construction.
Animals like dolphins can be as smart as
humans. They don't have hands though,
they can't, they will never find fire,
they will never farm, they
will never build structures on
the water. And this kind of means that
even if dolphins are as
smart as humans, they never will
have the ability to develop a truly
industrial and space-faring
civilization, they will never
be able to advance down like the tech
tree of civilization. And
this is also something that we
are like... So if intelligence isn't
really something that
life naturally evolves to,
and hands also isn't something that life
naturally evolves to, then
it can be seen that yeah,
humanity is a fluke. We weren't really
supposed to exist and yet we
do. And that really is what
I think is most beautiful aspect of it
all. What do you think
about this? If we don't really
know what the beginning of time was,
there could have been an
infinite amount of time before
Earth's existence. Isn't it inevitable
that there have been an
infinite amount of species that are
more intelligent than us that already
existed, do exist and will exist? With
the unknown limitations
of space, how far it goes, and the
unknown of how far time went
back and time goes forward?
Well, we have an idea of how long the
universe has been around.
Based on like traveling, but there's like
an unperceivable universe,
right? Unperceivable space past our realm
of detection, right?
That's true, but that also... If we go
into that, we're going to talk about
quantum physics and that.
I'm afraid that's a field I'm not really
qualified to answer.
Sure, sure.
I can also point out that the elements
required to build
industrial civilization like uranium,
plutonium, like these elements, right?
They have only come
into existence through the
successive generations of stars being
born, stars compressing, crushing
materials within the core,
and stars dying. Yes, it is possible that
the second or third
generation of stars had the ability
to produce these life-bearing worlds, but
these life-bearing worlds in the far, far
early universe wouldn't have necessarily
had access to these heavy
elements required to build
large-scale civilization. So I don't
think... I think it is
possible that we are...
Like our sun is still early, right? The
universe right now is... We
haven't even gotten to 1% of
the universe's lifespan, I don't think.
And like 99% of the universe's
life-sharing is still ahead of us.
So it is not unlikely that we are amongst
the first, if not like the
first five or so generations
of stars that are capable of producing
life with the ability
to go to other worlds,
with the ability to develop advanced
technologies, and with the
ability to industrialize.
Do you see time travel and space travel
as integrally interconnected?
Well, they already are. They were at the
theory of relativity. I
mean, if the moon had like speed,
right? Like time moves much more fast for
you versus like time
for someone, an external
observer. So we can travel to the future,
but can we travel through
the past? And I have no idea
how we would ever travel through the
past. That opens up a whole can of words,
a bunch of questions.
Like you have something different
temporal paradoxes. And
my personal theory is,
hypothesis always has been that if you
travel to the past, you
just create a new alternate
universe and that just kind of handwaves
away all of the paradox theories.
We've already noticed like a difference
in like the movement of
time between like astronauts
in the space station and earth, like very
minuscule, of course.
Very minuscule.
As we move forward, right?
Yeah. And as humanity like starts going
into stutter, right,
and like over the next few
centuries, I start saying it's lower than
like starships, out
to like Alpha Centauri,
out to like Barnard star or like Sirius,
we moving at, let's say
50% light speed or like 70%
light speed, that's when we come very,
very apparent. And
like we're gonna, I mean,
it's gonna be strange really, like seeing
astronauts coming back from a star from a
mission that took like 30 years and
you're still with the same
age that they were as they left.
And but that's just,
that's just relativity.
Do you think in order to explore like the
rest of the known universe
that we will need to be able to
exceed the speed of light? Or do you
think that will be a fundamental
limitation and we have to
like freeze ourselves
or do something else?
So if you can reach 99% light speed, or
these massive velocities,
you actually don't need to
freeze yourself. Now getting back is
another issue. But if you go, but the
theory of relativity,
let's say you're going to 99% speed of
light, right? One day for
you is one year on earth.
Well, that means you can essentially hit
Alpha Centauri in four
days from your perspective.
You can cross, you can hit a star system
that's 300 light years away
in just 300 days and you just
move like 99.9999 or like just keep
generating. You can essentially cross a
Milky Way in a month,
potentially, just by like, and yes, from
the perspective of Earth,
it took you 100,000 years
to cross the Milky Way. But from your
perspective, since you're moving so close
to the speed of light,
only took you a month. And if you're fine
with it being a one way
trip, since I'm assuming you
probably don't want to come back to Earth
after like 200,000 years, you can
probably like spread
humanity out very, very, very far. What
about like, answering my
question for like the further
bounds of our universe, like that are
much further out? Like, what do you think
about that? Like, how
do you think space travel may evolve for
those where you're
traveling for a decade plus at the
speed of 99% the speed of light, like
you're still not able to
reach everything, right?
Like what are you correct solutions may
look like, like as we become a space
faring civilization,
and this becomes like a real thing. Well,
if you're trying to so the
universe is expanding faster
than the speed. To be honest, if I have
no idea what will compel a
man to attempt to reach the
part of the universe that you cannot even
travel to at light to be.
Because at that point, you're
dude, there's like so much other stuff.
So much closer. I have no
idea how that would even be
possible. Sure. To be honest, like I've
not like unless you're
doing some like, fuckery,
but I don't think we do that fuckery like
wormholes or some shit.
Right? Yeah, I know. I have no
idea. I'm not physicist. I'm not
physicist. I have no
idea how that's possible.
Right. Coming a little more back down to
earth, pun intended. What
do you think the next like,
the next 50 to 100 years are going to
look like? And like what
we're doing in space? Like,
what do you think like the next few, like
milestones like our
generations moon landing equivalent,
and maybe like our children's generation
moon landing equivalent?
What do you think those two
next tremendous leaps might look like?
Not in terms of technology,
but perhaps in like milestones
that are realizable and understandable to
all layman's on earth in
space? Yeah, exactly. In
space, though. Yeah. So our art set. So
when we landed on the
moon, that was a very clear,
clear cut, like achievement, right? Like,
commande has touched
down on the moon, we can,
we've walked on the surface, everyone can
see the moon. And like,
that was deemed as very
futuristic. We were in part of the space
race. We want to be
director reds. Nowadays,
perhaps the first man landing on Mars.
The big thing is, I don't
really know when the first
Mars thing will happen. NASA says, this
would do in 2040. I've looked at that,
like, if you look at
NASA's Mars architecture, though, the
same thing, the one that
does 16, so less rockets, which
everyone knows is not going to happen.
NASA has pushed back the day
for Mars landing, like that,
by decade, by decade, by decade, they
said it would download Mars.
And then I remember a project
constellation said it would download Mars
by like sometime in the
late 2020s. Obviously, I never
happened. That's not going to happen when
the project
constellation got canned. They said
sometime in the 2030s. Now, obviously
that's going to happen. And now it's
saying sometime in the,
in the 2040s. So a Mars landing is always
20 years away. But
there also is the aspect of
greater Jupiter competition from nations
like China, right? China's
wild card, China, the Chinese
space agency. Yes, they do have a bad
habit of dropping rockets on
top of the world villagers.
However, they have a very good habit of
sticking to timelines to
give them credit for that.
Yeah, well, I mean, like, when you're,
when you're building
things for communist regime,
failure could mean so much more for you
and your family than
failure in capitalism, right?
I imagine, I imagine, I imagine they are
quite, quite expedient and motivated.
I would also argue they are motivated by
a factor of national pride.
They want to show that their
technology is superior to that, the
technology in particular superior to that
of the United States.
And there is no better way to demonstrate
that than beating the US
back to the moon and beating
the US to Mars. And to be honest, like,
if it was not for Elon Musk,
and SpaceX, I would bet all my
money that China would that the first man
back on the moon would be speaking
Chinese and at the first
man and the language spoken by the Mars
would be fucking Mandarin.
Well, I guess, thank God we have Elon.
What do you think like the role of
governments should be in
the space business? Like, do you think
that like, you know, government, like
especially like the US,
like our government has proved its
incompetence and it's time
to really hand over the reins,
like an invest like taxpayer money into
more of these private companies? What's
your stance on that?
What do you think? To guide, but not to
be involved. So that's the biggest
success that NASA has had
in the past decade, or one in the food
aspect has been the
commercial food program, right?
Getting the space, getting spaces to fly
the manned dragon
capsules up to the international
space station for crew rotations, as well
as performing more
private missions like the
Polaris program with Jared Isaacman.
NASA's performance in the
manned aspect otherwise has
been essential. Look at the space launch
system. That thing was
supposed to cost, I believe,
500 million per launch back when it was
first announced is now, I
believe, somewhere in the
range of two to three billion per launch.
I think it might be in the
range of four billion now.
NASA's, it costs, NASA's launch power for
the Artemis
spacecraft was supposed to cost
30 million. Beto still hasn't finished
building that thing. I
don't think it cut metal on it.
And that thing has now ballooned to two
billion. The Artemis heat
shield has a tendency to fall
apart during reentry on the lunar
trajectory. NASA still hasn't fixed that
at all. They've been
kicking a can down the road. The Gateway
program has proven to be a
boondoggle. I don't even know
what the hell they're planning to do with
that. They're just reusing
old ISS modules for that.
And to be honest, I have no idea what the
plan is with Gateway. The
human landing system, sort of
multiple different competitors. Now we've
pretty much, it's just
Starship that's making any progress
on human that's actually, I think NASA's
invested less money in the
lander to get down on the moon
and like go back to lunar orbit and like
go back to Earth. Then they
have in the fucking launch
tower for the space launch system, which
is a giant hunk of battle.
That should not be the case.
And there also is the other issue of like
internal NASA politics have
hamstrung at most of their
robotic and scientific missions. Do you
read, have you heard of
Casey Hanver? I have not. So he
writes it out about like different
internal NASA politics on his
blog. One of the most notable
aspects is so NASA, to push through the
James Webb space telescope,
NASA crippled all of their
other space telescope programs. And now
you have space telescopes that are
supposed to launch in
the 2040s and 2050s. And by that point,
so far away from today, that the multiple
just never happened.
Right. The technology
will be irrelevant by then.
The guys will be irrelevant by then. NASA
JPL has a vision on building up by
culture. As a result,
JPL moves a bit slow. JPL also has been
unable to essentially offer
competitive wages like the best
of the aerospace engineers in the past.
We've gone to NASA, we're now going to
SpaceX, we're going to
space startups, we're going to different
private companies. They
don't want to work NASA anymore.
Right. Like NASA no longer is getting
like the A crop of space
graduates or like people into a
new ratchet in space. They're all going
to SpaceX. And this
is like the no agency,
no organization has seen a greater fall
from grace over the past
decade than NASA has because
everyone has seen how badly the space
launch system has been
managed. Everyone has seen
how discombobulated NASA's plan for going
back to the moon is.
Everyone has kind of realized
the Emperor has to close. NASA has no
real plan to get to Mars.
Right. China arguably is farther
along on the smart span than NASA is. And
everyone has kind of seen
like the Boeing Starliner
program. Boeing got twice as much money
as SpaceX did. Twice as
much money. And they still,
they've flown what, three missions now
and still have been unable
to demonstrate a safe return
without problems on any single mission.
Oh my gosh. The recent
problems were so embarrassing.
Yeah. Yeah. If, if and when you meet the
next president one-on-one,
what would you try to convince them of if
you have an hour like in the
space domain or in general,
like what, how would you use your time?
Either you hand the reins of American
space exploration over to
private companies and you
have NASA act as more of a research
organization as and regulatory
organization similar in the vein
to the FAA or FCC. And so if him didn't
take the lead, unless you
do that and you have the US
focused on developing a privatized
self-distaining space economy versus like
doing flat and footprint
with like sinking billions of dollars
into cost plus flat and footprint
missions like the space
launch system, China is going to have the
moon. China's going to have
the moon. China's going to
have the solar system. China's going to
have solar system. And when
China takes the moon, we're
taught China is going to have the lead
over the United States for
centuries to come because we're
talking about the whole world of
resources there, right? A whole world of
resources, a whole launch
pad that China can use, a whole foothold
that China can use to
expand outwards into the solar
system. So either we beat China to the
moon or we at least try to
attain equal footing with China
on the lunar surface or China will or the
first man that the first
starships will all be flown by
astronauts that speak Mandarin. And like
I'm not, I'm being honest here, right?
Like the only shining
aspect of the US private, of the US space
economy has been the
American private space industry.
NASA has been more, if anything, has been
fucking up constantly
over the past decade. And now
everyone sees it. The big primes like
Boeing have been fucking up constantly
over the past decade.
Now everyone sees it. And now everyone's
found realize that hey, if
like we let these traditional
organizations, these traditional big
companies and these traditional
government agencies take the
lead when it comes to space exploration,
the US is never going to go anywhere.
So I know you'd mentioned before that
you're going to be on
your deathbed and mumbling
about space and space is going to be what
you do the rest of
your life till you die.
What would the best version of your lived
life look like in terms
of space contributions?
Like on your deathbed, what do you want
to say you did for humanity in space?
I want to say I had a part in enabling
humanity not to just go in the planetary,
but enabling humanity to go with the
standard. So when I remember, so I
remember back when I was a
teenager, I wrote a study from the
Brisbane of Planetary Society about the
two main technologies
needed for humanity. I think it was with
a project that was right. A study about
building, designing,
and launching a slower than light
Starship to a nearby star system or not star system.
Six light years away. And that study
outlined two major areas of
development that humanity would
have to do in order to achieve that goal
of sending a Starship
to another star system.
One of them was by the propulsion
technology, like nuclear
fusion, nuclear propulsion,
but a research in that area. I am not a
physicist. I dropped out of school. I
can't help with that.
But second one is within reach. That
second one was by the
autonomy, by the data processing
better, like AI capabilities on board the
spacecraft that are
light hours, light days,
or like years away from Earth, but it
can't send all the data back
to Earth and have to adapt and
make decisions for the mission on the
spot, on the fly. And that
is the tech. That's where
it motivates me to build Atherrow. The
ability to building AI
hardware, to go into space.
We have to tell them how to do it. So you
can't really, yeah,
better downlink, even if it
does exist. That's not going to solve the
issue of spacecraft
being in the solar system or
spacecraft being light years away from
Earth and needing to send
it. No matter how good the
downlink is, these spacecraft will not
have access to that downlink. And that
spacecraft will need
their own data processing capabilities.
They will need their own AI
capabilities. So they will need
their own ability to learn from changing
mission data and adapt to changing
circumstances without
needing someone on Earth to send a
command back and forth. Because when
they're talking about
moving at such speeds or moving at such
distances, it's just
straight up impossible.
Yeah. And even if it was possible, that
reliability will never be
the same as edge compute,
making decisions on board, right? Yeah,
you need these
spacecraft to be what you think
for themselves. We're talking about
sending spacecraft to
the outer solar system or
spacecraft to the inner center of space
or the star systems.
There is no substitute for
edge computing. There is no substitute to
having that competition
power, having that data
processing on board and having the
ability for these spacecraft
to think and act by themselves.
So how would you, if I asked you what the
purpose of your life
is, what would you say?
Sure, it's related to space, but perhaps
there is a more abstract
version. What does it look like?
Why do you exist?
That's a good question. I don't think
anyone can really answer that.
Well, personally, I just want to push
humanity to the edge as far
as possible. I want to push
humanity to new frontiers as far as
possible. And I want to see the first
pictures of another star
up close, not like from a telescope, like
up close, like a picture
of our own sun, or the first
picture of another planet in another
solar system before I die.
Right. And I don't want to do it
through a big telescope. I want to do it
because there's a Starship
there that's taking pictures
and sending pictures back. And given that
these worlds tend to be
light years away, that means I
don't have much time, which means I have
to build on space today.
That sounds like a good enough reason to
me. And do you think there
was another way to accomplish
your purpose outside of becoming a
founder? What made you become a founder?
How did you know that
was the point of higher leverage? What
was the calculation you did
in school? How did you decide
on this path for those out there who want
to do tremendous impact
for humanity and in space?
Like why did you choose the founder path
when there are other ways
to create change and impact?
I didn't choose a founder path. I just
fell into it. And now I'm gonna be
honest. So when I first,
I went to school on the Noah Rakeesh's
scholarship. So when
virtual school hit, I hated
virtual school. So I dropped out. I
wanted to build stuff in my own hands.
And I got the founder bug.
And when you get the founder bug, it's
hard to break out because you
have that level of autonomy,
that level of agency and
self-determination that you will never
get a big company or much less
in the military. And you get addicted to
that. And you kind of
realize, I don't want to do anything
else except be a founder. So personally,
I don't know. It's not a good
answer. I never wanted to be
a founder. I just stumbled into it. And I
was just too stupid to back
out of it. It's like when the
dog bites onto something, the dog is
like, no, that's kind of
me, man. And you're one of the
smartest people I know. It sounds like
you just fell in love
with the agency and leverage.
Yeah, you kind of do. And to be honest,
if I could go back and
do it all over again,
I probably would have spent some time at
SpaceX and figured out
the ropes a bit more.
Like, have that low stage environment,
that tutorial environment
where I could figure things
out, get more experience in the industry.
And then I would have
jumped into being a founder.
So like jumping straight to being a
founder directly. And that
would have saved me so much
more pain and so much more suffering than
this route that I took directly.
Did dropping out of university ever bite
you in the ass building?
Absolutely. I can't get a normal job.
I've earned my boats.
Oh, you burned your boat. You can't get a
normal job. And I'm sure
you could get a normal job,
but like has like for a throw, like has
it held you back? Has it
like made it difficult to get
government like conversations or
contracts? Like, does it matter at all?
Not particularly. There is one aspect I
have to mention. So when
you work with NASA and you're
working with these big, more traditional
agencies like the
National Science Foundation,
if you're applying for a grant, it will
want to see PI or
principle like the main research
on the grant have a PhD or being a
project founder PhD, you can
just hire someone to do that.
You don't have to be the PI yourself.
Right. And it does bite you a
little bit. When we're going
out and raising venture funding from
these more traditional things
like on the East Coast or in
Europe or, but in Silicon Valley or on
the West Coast, like
everyone's used to seeing the found
like some dropout kids in the industry. I
think being a dropout
wouldn't have hurt me as much.
But I do think that not really, I think
what would help more is
being able to get that
experience from a larger organization
like SpaceX, right? Or
another like space company before I
jumped into being a space founder. And
that honestly is that was
a great save you a lot of
pain because you get that space work in a
big organization, you
know how things are done,
you know, just potentially scale your own
company as it gets big. And
that's just that you also have
that net initial network of contacts you
can call upon for new hires or
fundraising or like,
when you need help with something that I
don't really have when you
just jump straight into being
a founder. So what advice would you give
young founders who are wanting to explore
the space frontier, wanting to get in on
the action and like help
answer the call to make
humanity interplanetary and interstellar.
What would you tell them?
Why do you want to jump in
on the action? No, I know it's I know
it's plenty of suffering.
And I've known you for a while.
I know it's hard. I know it's hard. My
advice would be to be
honest. Come on. If you have if you
if you had time, if you've spent time in
the space industry before understand,
take understand this,
this is going to be one of the most
capital intensive industries
that you've ever worked in.
There's going to be one of those
industries you've ever worked in. And
working with these big
government customers like AFRL and NASA
and all, they're going to
make you want to kill like,
like rip your hair out in frustration,
right? Because that's
something how they work. They've
done it. They've done it this way for
decades, and they will not
change it for you. However,
I would argue that working in space is
one of the most rewarding industries
because, like I said,
you're doing something that no human has
ever done before.
Humanity really never has had an
equivalent to the space industry before,
other than the exploration and discovery
era of the new world.
And when you work in space, you really
are one of these few pioneers that's like
buying chartering the ship and like
setting sail to like the West Indies or
and like trying to map
you know uncharted territory that hasn't
has never been done before.
You're not like the founder of
a GPT rapper startup with like plenty
other companies doing the
same thing. You're doing
something that is completely unique,
right? That's completely unique with
technology and code and
like stuff. Everything you do is utterly
novel, and that's something
you really have to understand.
And that also has pros and cons. The pros
are, well, it's fascinating.
It's easy to get new hires,
easy to get people inspired to join on
the mission, right?
There always will be a ton of
people that will want to join any deep
tech or space companies,
because they want to work with
you on the mission. You can also pay them
less, so to speak,
right? Hey, like I'm saying,
if you want to get someone to optimize an
ad delivery algorithm,
you better bribe them into
doing it. But if you want to get someone
to join you on the crusade to expand
humanity or the world
and do inspiring stuff that no one has
ever done before, you don't
necessarily have to bribe them.
They intrinsically want to do it in spin.
And right, like the
salaries at SpaceX will never be
as high as the salaries at Meta. People
still want to work at SpaceX because
SpaceX inspires people
and people want to look at that rocket
flying, the star ship flying, and say,
yeah, I had a part of
that. I helped build that. I helped make
that thing fly, and I
helped make humanity into a
multiplanetary species. And that same
thing goes in for the space
industry. You will have an easier
time hiring, but you will not have an
easier time fundraising. When
fundraising, most VCs are
straight up not going to understand the
industry that they're working
in. They will not understand
space. And since it gets so many pictures
every single day, they will
not going to put in the time
to understand space. When you find a VC
that's willing to put in
the time to really study space
or studying the market, treasure that
relationship. That VC is absolutely
serious about investing.
And when it's back, like even if you have
a lot of traction, expect
a ton of those that don't
make any sense whatsoever. And most of
these notes are just going to be because
the VC is like, yeah,
I don't want to spend time learning about
entirely alien market that
has a very long return time
line, a very long CapEx expenditures. And
the other big thing is
launching a run this ad. It's
always going to be way more difficult
than anyone ever anticipates. Take the
cost, the operational
cost of any side of the mission, double
that, and that's probably
closer to the true budget.
And that's like the cap. It's not just
capital. It's just insane,
not just from the like running
and scheduling like paint around, super
by, but also from the
regulatory side, right? Because you
don't have to deal with SSE licensing,
have to do with ITU
licensing, have to deal with license,
never in the middle ground station, have
to deal with
accounting, grants and passes,
handling like yearly license renewals.
And it's just a huge thing. Yes.
You guys launched your last satellite,
your first satellite from
your studio apartment, right?
We're operating there from a studio
apartment and the basement.
Oh boy. There you go. So, you know, they
can do it. Any other advice? Like,
any other advice you'd give somebody like
who's like 20 years old,
dropping out of school to
start like their own space company and
like, it's already certain they want to
do it. We don't need
to scare them away. Like, well, anything
else you'd tell them to
increase their odds of success,
perhaps something tactical.
I mean, it's hard to say. I personally
don't know any much good
advice to give them. I mean,
if I could go back, I'd do it a bit
differently, right? I
will say this, startups die,
startups tend to die not because you run
out of money, but because
they tend to run out more
route. Right. Space is one of those
industries where shit is like, you will
probably, more space
companies that probably run out more
routes are extremely
important. Make sure you don't burn out.
Yeah. I mean, beyond that, I mean, I
already know like it's really, you fuck
around and you find out
and you find out space is a very hard
industry and you just like have to just
keep dealing with it.
Just keep getting back up. I mean, I
don't know what else to say.
Yeah. The founder journey is just getting
punched in the face and getting back up.
Although I imagine the punches are a
little harder and the
cost to get back up is also a
little harder. How do you make the
founder grind sustainable for yourself?
Like how do you keep
waking up in the mornings, getting
punched in the face and then
waking up with a smile again
to do it all again the next day? Like
what, how do you refill your
cup? How do you stay with it?
I don't necessarily do it because I enjoy
it. I do it because I
think I'm right. I think
that space confused won't be important. I
think AI hardware in space
won't be important. I think
that I don't think there are other
legitimate players in our
space. I really understand the
implications that this has for humanity,
humanity as a whole, right?
Being able to do that process
and being able to make space business
autonomous within like in the
far reaches of the solar system
or beyond. So I do it because I don't see
any other choice. And when you're a
founder, you don't do it
because you enjoy it. You do it because
that's your responsibility.
And you have to understand
like this, it's not, it's discipline.
It's discipline. That's the most
important trait of any
founder, right? You don't, you never do
something because you enjoy
it. You do it because you have
to, because there's people counting on
you and there is no one
else, the buck stopped at you.
There's no one else to pick up the stack.
And ultimately you either
have that internal discipline
to like wake up and just do it. And that
is like, you can hate it,
but you still have to do it.
And you don't have the discipline to do
that or you don't. And if
you don't want to do something
to do that, then quite frankly, you
shouldn't be a founder, right? Right. But
how do you keep going?
Like, how do you make sure like even you
have to do like certain
things outside of work,
like exercise, for example, or more
sustainable work habits or, you know,
having a time that you
like make sure to close the computer at
the end of the day to, you know, make
time for yourself or
your significant other. Like are there,
are there things that you
employ to make this a multi,
this potentially multi-decade endeavor or
lifelong endeavor,
something you can sustain
even with the excesses of the founder
workload? I mean, of course
you make time for yourself to
work out, right? You spend time with your
friends, you spend
time with people who are
close and important to you. And like you
spend time, you
decompress, take some time meditate,
decompress at the end of every day. But
like that's just everyone has
to do that, right? Like even
investment banker New York has to do
that. Even an off, even a software
engineer at Apple has to do
that. Anyone that has a high stress, high
long hour role has to do
that. There's nothing unique
about doing that as a founder versus
doing that as like investment
banker or a software engineer.
But it just has a founder to stakes or
much higher. And I think
at some points, a founder,
some parts of the mind breaks and you
just the risk of like, no
longer make the risk of war
calculation the same way that some normal
person does. And you're
just like, fuck, we just keep
doing it. Right. And like the way I, the
joke I always like to make
is the line between being
a founder and being a chronic gambling
addict is very thing, probably
non-existent. Like as a
founder, you just kind of are a chronic
gambling addict. And the,
and this means you just don't
process risk the same way that other
people do. And you're just
like, you know what, like we have
no path. We just keep doing it. And this,
you need to, you need to
kind of have that broken in you
to be a founder. And the more risky, the
more dangerous, more
high stakes industry is,
the more you kind of need that, that like
kind of, yeah, like fuck it.
I'm not, I don't care about
the risks, risks, you know, I'm just
going to go ahead and do it
because I'm just going to win.
And I don't think about it. I know
exactly what you're talking
about. Like, if you're trying to
be rational and make being a founder make
sense on paper, it never does. It
probably something else.
Probably, probably just
buy a lottery ticket instead.
Yeah. Being a founder is never a rational
choice. You're talking
about like, for a lot of people,
you're talking about like leaving a
comfortable life track where
you could be making six figures
easily, have seven figure net worth by
the time you're 30, retire early by the
time you're like 40,
to do something where you eat less or
potentially unemployable for years, or
essentially depending
on the whims and wishes of external
people who don't really have
that stake in you the same way
that like your employer would. And just
like constantly just get
beaten up over and over and
over and essentially have the buck stop
with you because there is
no, like, if you're a software
engineer, a big company and something
breaks, right? You can just
come back, coming back in on
Monday and fix it and everything's going
to be fine. The buck doesn't
stop with you. The boss has
it handled. Some other team has it
handled. The support team has
it handled. If you're a founder
and something breaks, you have to fix it
right now. There's no
support team. There is no manager.
There is no engineer that can call on. It
is up to you. Yeah. That's
the grind. That's what we all
signed up for. I imagine it's a little
more intensive. The thing
that breaks is flying in
space. I imagine the stake is a little
higher than the typical SaaS startup.
We still have software tools and stuff
like that. I mean, every company relies
on software very much
heavily nowadays. And for everything that
gets sent into space,
we're talking with like
thousands of hours of work behind every
last little article.
What's the time that made
you closest to giving up?
I know you'd never give up, Ed. That's
why I said closest. You're unstoppable.
In space, it's going to be fundraising,
right? Because you're
talking about tons and tons and
tons of notes from VCs. I don't believe
in industry. I don't
believe in efficient,
who don't understand the industry and
don't care enough about
the industry. Quite frankly,
to learn about it. Morale always seems to
alone doing fundraising.
Because not only are you
getting punched in the face, you're
talking to people that you
respect and having these people
say, "Yeah, we don't believe in it. We
don't believe in your
vision. We don't believe in
the business. We aren't going to give you
any money." And at the
same time, to look at the
own runway, dwindling down constantly,
week by week, month by month, you're
like, "Oh, shit. Well,
maybe this isn't going to work out. Maybe
it's time to look at something else or
pivot or something."
So fundraising, honestly, is a game of
chicken, right? Looking at
VCs, and we're still looking
at you and the first person to blink, it
just gets fucked. That's
the way I see it. The other
time, I mean, to be honest, everything is
solvable, giving enough runway,
and enough like calend, everything is
solvable. But fundraising is one thing,
is one existential thing for every Deep
Tech company that
can't really get away from.
And it's one thing that will make every
Deep Tech founder
absolutely hate their lives. Because
they're talking to people that don't
understand you, don't understand the
industry, don't understand
the passion for it, and don't really care
in particular about what
you're building outside
of the whatever external markers or
prestige or status symbols that they
might have. And this is
something that, I mean, we've talked to
any Deep Tech founder and
asked him, "What's your least
favorite part of the job?" Everyone's
going to say fundraising. And to be
honest, if you enjoy
fundraising, if fundraising... I'm a
contributor, and I think fundraising is
the hardest. I think
fundraising is the easiest part of
showing the business. You are
probably just going to waste
all your money in this time. We've seen
so many stories of
overfunded startups during the
zerp era that just raised a ton of money,
never had any customers die.
And I think the attitude of,
"Hey, fundraising should be the easiest
part of doing the startup." That's
fucking... That's false.
That should not be the easiest part. The
easiest part should be studying to
customers because you
understand what the customers want. The
easiest part should be getting the
customers to agree to
use your product. If that is not the
easiest part of what you're doing, you
either are not building
something that customers property want,
or not building to the needs of the
industry, or you are
just wasting everyone's money in time.
That's a very interesting take, Ed. I
haven't thought about
it that way. I haven't really given it
too, too much thought. I like rank
ordering the hardest
versus easiest. I'm a little too busy
getting punched in the
face on the regular. Maybe one
day I'll stack rank them. I think which
punches are at least the most. Yeah, but
that's an interesting
take. Ed, when it comes to the kind of
impact you want to have in your lifetime,
you must be trying to build a lasting
company. How do you go
about building a lasting company
as a missionary that's different,
fundamentally different than a
mercenary trying to solve the
same problem? Then again, maybe a
mercenary would never
enter such a difficult space,
but how are you building a lasting
company? How are you doing that?
That's a bit of an early question to ask,
considering that we
are only less than two
years into the German beta world.
Building the
foundation, though, aren't you?
Are we going to come back to that
question on another
time when we have you back?
Give me a year, and I'll give you a
better answer. For now,
you never know if a company's
lasting. In my opinion, one can never
call a company lasting or
like race gets started on
making a company lasting until they raise
the first growth round,
right? Maybe a series A,
series B, or so on. The reason being, if
it were that early and
you had someone found
like full product market fit and still
are like still in the
filling out stages of the market,
like figuring out like revenue, figuring
out go-to-market
pipelines and all that solidified,
it's hard for me to determine that, hey,
we want to make this company
lasting. Everyone says, hey,
I want to build a Dashing company. And
sometimes it happens. Sometimes it
doesn't. Look at Salesforce.
Like when Mark Benioff decided to build
Salesforce, it's like what,
a CRM for sales businesses,
right? Like the gathering, organizing
that. He probably imagined it to be a
gimmick. He probably
didn't imagine Salesforce to be a Dashing
generational company
that tightened the industry
that it is today. Look at space. When
look out at space companies that were
trying to build like
launch vehicles or salad buses and stuff
like that, they probably
thought like, Hey, we want,
this is hard. This is hard tech. This is
deep research that we're
doing here. We're going to
make this a generational Dashing company.
And look at how many of
them are still left today.
There are still left operations today.
And you'll see like most of
them don't exist anymore. So
building a Dashing company, I don't
really think matters
what industry you're in.
I really do think this happens to be
right time, right place, lots of luck,
and not fucking up the
early stages when you get to Series A,
Series B, as well as not running out
morale. Morale is the
biggest, most important thing. The
biggest thing we've seen, I personally
see from companies that
get acquired already or don't really like
skip become like a Dashing
type of industry is it's so
easy to give up. When you get offered,
let's say $100 million or $200 million
personal to you as a
founder, as part of like a billion dollar
exit, it's kind of hard to
say, yeah, I'm going to keep
getting punched in the face all the time.
I'm not going to take this
$100 million, $200 million,
this generational wealth that can change
the lives of you, everyone,
not just you, but everyone
around you and your family. And not just
that, like when your family
knows about, they're going
to be pressuring you to take that $100
million because they're
going to be like that. Like you
already have taken such a huge risk. Why
keep pushing your luck,
right? And a lot of founders
just kind of succumb to that because when
you start a company, when you're in the
20s, by the time you
get the offer, you're probably in the
30s. You probably have a
wife, you probably have kids,
you probably have a family, you probably
have mouths to feed. And
you're like, yeah, I'd rather
just take this hundred mil, I'd rather be
with my family and I'd
rather focus on it. And right now,
like it's easy to say that, hey, I want
to make my company last
game because there is no other
mouths depending on you. There is no one
else depending on you in
the same way that people will
be depending on you. When your company is
a serious E company, when it
comes about IPO, when you're
about when you're being offered like
hundreds of millions of dollars of
liquidity or billions of
dollars in liquidity. A lot of founders
at that time, they blink and
they say, yeah, I want to go
back, I want to focus on my family, I
want to focus on my new
ventures, I've gotten burnt out,
I've gotten sick of this company. So it's
hard to say. But the
ones that are truly lasting,
the ones that are truly iconic tend to be
the ones that retain
their founder CEOs who look at
that billion dollar payday or that
hundred dollar pay day and are like,
yeah, well, I don't care
about that. I care more about the
company. I care more about pushing this
forward. And one can say
all they want about like, hey, I want to
make this company last
game. But one can never truly
answer that question until they are put
into that position. That's my take on it.
Yeah, yeah. And until until you have the
term sheet on the table.
Not until you have the terms on the
table, it's not until like
you you have that offer in front
of you and you're in your 30s and your
kids are going to private
school and your wife's nagging
you about like the family vacation or the
family home. And like you
can't work like nine nights,
like you can't be working like $100 a
week anymore. And at that
point, when you look at it,
it's much easier to say, well, I think
it's time for me to call
quits or I think it's time for me
to move on to something else. Take my
chips off the table and do something
else. Take my chips off
the table. Or by that point, you already
have like external
stakeholders, right? You have the board
pushing on you. You you lose that time
and you lose that agency as
you bring on more and more and
more investors. And the company probably
has more from something
that's different from your original
vision or strong past just yourself. And
for a lot of founders, like I don't want
to be a professional
project manager anymore. I want to do
something new. I want to
start something new and get back
that agency back. And it's very easy to
just dip at that point.
Series B onwards, I hear that there
are options to take some money off some
chips off the table while still like
continuing to run with
it. Take a few mil off the table,
especially like towards the later rounds.
So there in theory is a
way to take some cash out for yourself
and like continue doubling
down. Now, when it comes to
the grind, like that's not going to go
away. Like it's going to stay like the
top priority in your
life for as long as you're running it.
And so for that reason, I
could see many founders, I've seen
many founders leave even when like it
wasn't about money,
just when it comes to like,
I mean, the big thing is, it's easy to
say it's like, it's easy to
say today, right? But it's
always different when the offers on the
table. And you would look
at millions of dollars in the
face. I mean, it's everyone will everyone
will say, I'm not going
to take that the secondary,
I'm going to make my company a
generational company. And
everyone, and usually people will
blink when that offer is given to them.
Yeah, it's hard not to.
I've seen that happen. It's
understandable. But you know, not for
everybody. Could you add,
could you tell us the story of
Stradidine and all the pivots that you
guys went through that like, I think
young founders really
could really get some value learning
about the story of Stradidine.
Got it. Absolutely. So Stradidine, we
started I started it with the idea of
how old were you when you started? 20,
20. I was during virtual
school during COVID. I hated
virtual school. Didn't see a point in it
dropped out. I started to
do Stradidine figured I might
as well tap into my passion for rocketry
and space tech and try to do start of
where we would try to
launch rockets into orbit from the
stratosphere, right? In the
stratosphere, we're talking about
much thinner atmosphere, much less air
resistance. Theoretically, you can
replace the first stage of
a launch vehicle with it. Turns out two
problems. The main obstacle
to get into orbit is delta V,
not not altitude. Delta V is kind of hard
to get when you're talking
about limiting yourself to a
small launch vehicle that has to be able
to be hoisted up by a
balloon. Problem number two is
that the launch market is actually very
small. There's a ton of
startups around that time. I
remember like Leo aerospace being one
that we're pursuing this idea
as well of launching rockets
from balloons. All of them I think have
failed at this point because
space tech has emerged as a
clear winner. And turns out cost is a
giant issue when you're talking about
like sending such small
payloads into orbit on such a small form
factor. So I remember
taking it and eventually we got
told by our investors, hey, you guys
should really find. I remember taking
that and we tried to find
investors and I remember a code emailing
around a thousand or so investors who
raised the first half
mill. Wow. Yeah. And that was fucking,
that was a horrible
experience. I don't recommend it unless
you have to. But. The experience is
admirable and like that may be what it
takes to like the aspiring
hard tech, space tech, deep tech founders
out there like listening.
Like you may have to email
1000 people to raise 500k. And like that
may be what I could do
today. I don't think I could do
today. That's all I'm saying. I don't
think I could do today. If you had to,
you would. If I had to, I would.
I mean, if I had to, I would. But I'm
saying that right now. Like if I'm
looking at it back on it,
I'm like, I don't know why I didn't quit.
I have no idea why I didn't quit. But.
That's just what it takes. And I think
that's important not to
gloss over. Like for the aspiring
founders listening to this, like for the
people that, for the
founders that may have otherwise
stopped after their 30th, 50th, 100th,
no. Like it may genuinely take 300 like
cold emails, cold calls,
chasing down an investor. Like before you
get your very first yes.
And like that is like the
grit and spirit of determination that it
just takes. I just want to
make sure that we highlight that.
I mean, the thing was I went about in the
most knuckle headed way
possible. I didn't learn
anything about the venture market. I just
found out there's something
called a VC that would give
you money to build stuff. And I figured,
you know what? If I email
enough of these VCs, eventually
one of them is going to take pity on us
and give us money. And that's what I did.
Right? Like if you're from Stanford, if
you're from like a school
with a strong CS program or
from the coast, you probably will have a
much better understanding how VCs
operate. You probably
will have connections of VCs. You
probably will have a network of work
reductions. Use that. Don't
don't do the code. Don't do a thousand
cold emails that in
retrospect wasted a ton of my time.
Particularly as all the cold emails that
you get a response on cold
emails, you have to make them
personalized. So we're talking like hours
of research, just doing
nothing but sending cold
emails every single day. Because it's
been that time building.
Don't do that. There's a lot of
resources out nowadays, like for example,
like 15, 17 different like
grants as well as the summer
building program. You have like different
dorm room fund, rough
draft ventures, all of these
different funds are invested in the two
founders. Go through them
first, build a network first.
Don't just charge straight into it. Take
some time to understand
the market. Take some time to
understand ecosystem. Take some time to
understand why, what makes
VCs tick? Why, what makes them
say yes, as well as the same for the
customers. What makes your customers
tick? What makes them
say yes? What, what's the main pain
point? And what is something you can
promise them that you
know that they absolutely will say yes to
in a short period of time.
But it is okay to feel like
knucklehead, you know, at the very start,
like it's a part of it is
like knowing that it'll you'll
make it happen either way, right? Well,
the analogy I can give
is most people, let's say
trunk into a building, most people, and
you can't find a door, most
people will walk around the
building and find the entrance and then
walk into that way. I decided to wrap my
head against a brick
wall and throw the brick wall broke and
then walked in. Yeah,
that sounds like you had
persistent and stubborn. And just if you
could just focus that in
the areas that have the most
leverage, you know, that's ideal, but
like that hard headedness,
like it's still required,
ideally, like oriented in the most useful
high leverage pursuits,
right? Yeah. So how, how, like,
how did the stratodine like go? How did
what were the pivots? Like,
what was how did you find the
problem to solve? Like, and maybe share
like the rules that you
broke, like, you know, breaking
rules and asking for forgiveness, you
know, with the first balloons with
cameras on them, like you
can you share that story? I love I love
hearing this story. And I
know that our listeners would
love to love to hear it as well. Oh, man,
that was, that was such a
long time ago. It's hard to
remember. Come on, you're not that old. I
feel like it feels like
a long time. It was like,
what, three years ago, but four years ago
around now at this point.
But it's so much has happened
since then. That's kind of hard to
recall. Yeah. So with stratodine, well, I
remember we were selling,
so when we pivoted away from doing the
launch option from these
balloons, you pivoted using all
balloons as mobile surveillance
platforms, security platforms,
as well as like your real time
with the data connection. I remember
going out to customers
pretending to be a big company in
sales mode. Right. And we were like
saying, Oh, right. Do you
want to buy do you want to place
in order from us? And I remember we
didn't actually know how much it was
doing for cost. We were I
was just like, kind of like estimating it
turns out we were
actually selling shit at a loss.
Probably a bad idea. But don't do this.
Don't do this. Don't
pretend to be a big company and
sell product that doesn't exist. But we
were getting a ton of
non-binding LOIs done with these
big allied militaries and these big
organizations. And in retrospect, that
was what enabled that
really did help us a lot with fundraising
towards the end of
stratodine. And that also did help us
get off the ground. Though these
contracts, these LOIs will come back to
haunt us because the margins
on them were non-existing. And they
essentially would have
required us to raise a large round
of retrofront even to just be able to
fulfill just the first
phase of them. Don't do that.
Yeah, probably don't do that. Well, take
away. I'll like noted. But
what about what about the
like helping farmers, man? Like you were
doing that for a while.
Like don't skip over that.
That's like, Oh, yeah. I mean, we started
to understand the
agriculture. But agriculture turns
out you have to find it's not just about
finding fixing the problem for the
customer. It's about
finding the right customer to find a
customer that's open to
adopting new technology that has
deep pockets that can make decisions
relatively fast. And it's
relatively easy to build and to
break forward. They can buy a
standardized product that they're
offering and without the
great deal of customization or
integration work. For agriculture was not
one of what's not the
state of customer agriculture has deals
with low margins. So they
have low budgets. They don't
really understand how new technology
works. And so essentially doing like
imaging for farmers will
require a great deal of customization,
great deal of integration
work, as well as a great deal of
manual labor from arm. Right. So we ended
up pivoting into like
working with defense customers,
because yes, they, the sales cycles still
are difficult, but they
at least understand new
technology, they understand what you
want. They understand how things are.
Right. With working with
startups, like farmers will understand
what startup is. Farmers
don't like to work with startups.
Farmers know about Bayer and Monsanto and
John Deere. Farmers don't
know about some bump starts,
like bumbling around the Midwest. And so
you don't trust you.
Defense, they will. Right. Defense
is usually working with startups. You're
usually working with like a
bit of a chain key solution,
and particularly in the SBIR phase. And
that's why we pivoted into
working with these big defense
customers. And they do have much deeper
pockets. So it's not just
about solving the right problem.
Solving the right problem for the right
people. Some customer segments just
aren't worth it. And
that's something that I see a lot of
mistake. I see a lot of founders making,
right? When they jump
into an industry, like particularly like
an ad tech, where as one commonly
mentioned example, ad
tech, very low margins, very low budgets,
very strict purchasing
guidelines, very long timelines,
tons of integration work, tons of custom
working per customer. So
oftentimes founders jump into
it and they're like, "Well, we have
something the customer wants, but it's
not the right customer."
So it's better usually to find a
different type of idea or a different
pivot to something else.
How do you know it's time to pivot? Like
if there's a startup
founder watching this that has
been like banging their head against the
wall for the longest, like how do they
know? Because so much
of the startup journey is getting punched
in the face. How do you
know if you should pivot
or continue getting punched in the face
with the current thing you're trying?
That's up to the founder's intuition. But
ultimately, if you're
getting punched in the face,
it's you have to look at the way you're
getting punched in the
face. You're constantly
punching the face the same way from
customers. And it's not
something you can fix, right? It's
related to the customer itself, right?
Maybe customers telling
you the budget are too low,
or maybe customers keep saying that,
"We'd love to buy
this," but in 12 months.
Or you're trying to find that the number
of customers you
expected would want the solution
isn't as great as you originally
estimated. Then it might probably be time
to pivot and find a new
industry or a new customer set. It can
be, yeah. Ed, who do you
think are the main competitors
in the space race today? China and
America, and potentially
India. But ESA, the European Space
Agency, has encountered a lot of issues
on the regulatory
side, right? ESA has a very
burgeoning ecosystem, a small startup. I
would argue it's easier to
work with the European Space
Agency. As a European company, it's
probably easier to work
with a European Space Agency
than it is in America as an American
company trying to work with NASA.
However, the European
Space Agency is burdened by, one, a
massive need for continuous committee
support on every major
project because you need the individual
natural space agencies,
individual legislators, and
individual committees and governments of
every single country
involved in the project to agree
on every single bill change you want to
make. And two, the
constant jockeying of different
political interests within Europe, as
well as the European, I would
argue that almost a European
culture. European culture usually isn't
as ambitious as American culture. It's
not to take on Europe,
right? I can understand why people are
attracted to Europe, or like
why people want to support the
European model to the United States. In
Europe, it is very easy to be middle
class. Europe actually
pushes everyone into the middle class.
For the rich, it pushes them into the
middle class to higher
taxation. And for the poor, it pushes you
into the middle task by
offering you free social services,
free healthcare, free university, and
making it very
difficult for you to get fired.
And this is very different from the
American system. The
American system, I would argue,
high stakes, high reward. In America, if
you fail, you can actually
sink down very, very low.
But, and have essentially no safety net
down there to support you. But in
America, you can also,
if you're capable, and you're ambitious
enough, and you have
agency, you can ascend to the
uppermost tiers of society. You can be
one of the richest people in America
without needing to be
born there. And that's one thing that's
worth noting in Europe. If
you look at, for example,
your richest families in Germany or
Italy, actually, no, if you look at the
richest families in Italy,
in the 1500s, and you look at the richest
families in Italy today,
you'll see a ton of the same names
showing up over and over and over again.
And if you look, but in
America, the Vanderbilt,
the Carnegie's, the Rockefeller's, they
were not the richest
families in America today.
There's a constantly cycling in and
shuffling out of the old and new guard.
And this essentially
means American innovation stays strong
because you have to be constantly
innovating, you have to be
taking risks, you have to constantly
moving forward in order to stay at the
top of the rat in Europe.
It's very easy, if you're at the top, to
just kind of entrench
yourself at the top and stay there,
and sort of kick the ladder down for any
one that's trying to
break their way into the top,
and essentially the top, through a
massive amount of regulations and
taxation in the name of
ensuring egalitarian, equal society. And
that's where I think Europe
may fall short. That's why
I think the most ambitious, talented
people in Europe are all
moving to the US. You don't want
to stay in Europe, they want to come to
the US because they want
to take the shot at being
top dog. In Europe, you are the born of
the top dog, or you just
don't become it, right? You can
stay middle class, you can never come for
life, but you want them to
be the richest man in Europe.
And also European culture doesn't reward
ambition. It isn't
something that is generally prided.
I know Europe has many different
countries and many different cultures,
but generally speaking,
America prides itself on being ambitious
and pushing the envelope
in a way that nowhere else
does. Really the most ambitious in the
world are coming to America,
and they're usually coming to
America's tier one cities like New York
or Amman or San Francisco
where you're at, and they're
creating a tremendous concentration
that's creating all these
positive feedback loops,
just having such a high density of the
most ambitious people. And it calls it.
I would argue it's not just a lack of...
Europe doesn't
necessarily punish you for having
ambition. However, it also doesn't
gracefully allow you to
fail. In America, I would argue,
the greatest factor that makes America so
successful is that
failure? Is it necessarily...
Yes, you can see for a lower failure, but
if you fail and you get up
again, you won't have that
same level of stigma around you. In
Europe, if you fail, you have that
stigma, right? You have that
stigma of being a failed entrepreneur. In
America, look at how many
founders there are in America
who's first venture, the second venture
has failed, and they
were still able to raise
money for the third venture. The third
venture succeeded, or the
fourth venture succeeded.
In Europe, you won't have that. You won't
have that in Europe,
right? You fail, and you get one
shot, and you're fucked. And in Europe,
it's not just that. Ambition, yes, it
isn't necessarily...
I think ambition, people who tend to be
ambitious usually tend to have their own
agency. They usually
tend to break the rules. They usually
tend to not like to fit
within a certain expectation that
society and regulation are supposed upon
them. And in Europe, the
greater amount of regulations
and create this situation where the most
ambitious people just sort of
chafe under these regulations,
chafe in that environment, and just do
not want to stay there. Do
not want to stay in that risk
averse environment. Do not want to stay
in an environment with the
constant being regulated,
constantly forced to perform actions for
the sake of compliance that
don't really understand it,
don't really agree with. And in that
case, it makes more sense
for them to come to America.
Yeah. I think your parents came here as
immigrants as well, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, we're both first generation. My
family from Ukraine, and I
believe your family from China,
is that right?
China, yeah.
Yeah. And so this is truly a rich land of
opportunity. And the
key difference that I
think for our listeners outside of the US
to understand is that
America guarantees equality
of opportunity, but not necessarily a
quality of outcome, the way a lot of
other Western countries
perhaps do. And that is very different.
Everybody has a chance to make it here,
but it's in your own hands. We really
reward individualism and
agency, and you got to go out
there and just grab it, right?
How do you... You mentioned the Italian
family names who you see
as still being wealthy and
powerful, the same ones from the 1500s
like the Medici's, et
cetera. You and I have a shared,
a deep appreciation for history. How
would you say history helps
you to be better at being a
founder? Like can you see it in your day
or like a particular instance?
I would argue being a founder is very
similar in the vein of being
a feudal monarch in Europe.
Oh, yeah.
I'm not kidding. You look at the kings of
Europe, they
oftentimes will not be... They
were not other credit. They had to
balance the interests of many
stakeholders, be it the
nobility, that to rely on the nobility to
raise armies, to raise
taxes, to raise funds, that to
rely on the peasantry to work the deal,
to provide tax revenue, that
to rely on the clergy to bless
the rains, to provide approval, and they
also have to rely on the papacy. Being a
founder is very much
in the same vein. Yes, even if you are a
CEO, yes, you are top
dog in the company, but you
show up to stakeholders, show up to
employees that you have to
make happen. You have VCs that
you make happy. You have to be able to
garner the stolen
support. You have to be able to
garner support from within. You have to
be able to manage the
finances of the kingdom,
the company, so to speak, and ultimately,
you're dealing with a lot.
Yes, you are top dog. Yes,
even if you are top dog, you still are
not really top dog. You still
answer to a massive myriad of
people. Even if you aren't supposed to be
independent, you aren't
really that independent
in the grand scheme of things. That makes
sense. Yeah, it does. That is an
interesting comparison.
That is not what I was expecting. A
little bit out of left field. What's a
favorite book you might
recommend? Everyone recommends this. Read
Three-Body Problem, read
the whole series. If you
understand Chinese, read the Chinese
translation, read the English
translation. If you can't
understand Chinese, if you can't read or
write Chinese, which
I'm guessing most of you
will not, do read it. I highly recommend
it. What about for the
founder journey specifically?
I never read any books about the founder
journey in particular, and
I never will. I've learned
every single verse. I've actually never
listened to podcasts about
the founder journey. You just
take it. You just take it as it is.
Reading about something in theory is
always different from
doing executing in practice. I prefer to
look at everything from an
open mind and execute and
learn from first principles rather than
having an idea already set up and going
in with preconceptions.
That's so interesting. Do you read any
books that help you with
succeeding in business at all
or self-help? Anything like that? No,
actually not. That's so
rare. I don't know if I've ever
met a founder who has never read a book
to try and help them
succeed. Well, you're doing--
You don't overthink it. You don't
overthink it. You just do. Just don't
think about too much. Just do.
Sure. How do you sharpen your mind?
Traditionally, most founders turn to
books. It may be books just
outside of the work domain or founder
domain, but how do you keep yourself
sharp outside of work?
How do you grow yourself? You select
random topics that are
interesting, and you get ready
to do these topics. You focus on side
projects. For example,
right now, I'm a store in the
Russian kamikaze drone. One of the FPV
boomerang drones that the
Russians have in Ukraine. They
captured Ron. I bought off eBay. Now I'm
restoring it inside my
apartment. Did you find it was side
projects? You were just storing a
kamikaze drone from the battlefield?
Yeah. That's crazy. That's
insane. What compelled you to do this?
Why not? So are you going to
use it? It's a kamikaze drone,
no, but if it flies super fast, why not?
Yeah. Okay. Do you have
any plans for this kamikaze
drone you're restoring? I can probably
fly it around an FPV
drone. FPV racing sounds kind of
fun. Might as well gain to it using the
Russian model. But yeah,
you just... It's really just
a side project. Side projects, pursuing
the passions, and
finding multiple areas to get
really deep into and just learning as
much as possible about these subjects.
This kamikaze drone, I'm going to be
thinking about it for a little while.
That's so interesting.
That's so different. How else do you go
yourself outside of side
projects? Is there anything else
you do to make sure you're constantly
being the best version of yourself to
keep your own growth
curve ahead of that of the business so
that you don't stunt your dream?
Personally, I don't understand the
whole... Everyone has their own
preconceptions around
personal growth. I believe the best way
you grow personally is to
throw yourself into as many
unconventional situations, with as little
context as possible, and to
constantly force your mind to
be adapting to new situations, adapting
to new projects where you
essentially have to learn
everything from scratch. That's the way
you grow. You don't grow by reading the
ton of self-help books.
You don't grow by doing a bunch of cold
plunges at 4am in the
morning. You grow by doing. You grow
by learning and forcing yourself to
constantly be adapting
and constantly be shifting
contexts, shifting environments, and
stuff like that. People
might disagree with me. They will
disagree with me for good reason. I
understand it. But I do
think that a lot of people are
over-indexing on the meta of self-help,
on the meta of productivity,
on the meta of self-growth,
and not really doing anything with their
hands or doing anything
tangible to really make that
happen. Interesting. One of my favorite
things talking to you, Ed,
is how willing you are to be
a contrarian. How divergent you are from
common lines of thought
within both societies.
The founder community, you have no shame.
You'll say, "That's how it
is." Just how you think it to
be. That's wonderful. I think that's
definitely been instrumental for your
success when you say
being able to think outside the box and
be willing to be a contrarian.
Well, if you're a contrarian, you won't
get different outcomes.
If you aren't a contrarian, you won't get
different outcomes.
The typical outcome as a
founder is your failure. That's all I can
really say about it.
The typical outcome
for a founder is what?
Failure. If you're a welcome of a
founder's failure, if you saw
a business expected to fail,
then for it to succeed, but expected to
fail. If you're not doing anything
different for anyone
else, why would you
expect a different outcome?
Saying that, with that in mind, do you
believe in manifestation?
I believe that manifestation, you
manifest things by taking actions to make
it happen. You don't
manifest things by writing stuff down in
a notebook and then doing
nothing. That's all I can really
say about it. I know people say, "Yeah, I
manifested a million bucks." What the
fuck are you doing to
get a million bucks? They're like, "Well,
I'm just manifesting." I'm like, "Well,
good luck with that."
Yeah, absolutely. Manifestation is
execution with extra mindfulness. That's
all I can really say.
Like, execution with intent.
Manifestation is execution with intent.
To call it anything else
is no, it's manifestation is not writing
stuff down in the book and
praying that happens. It's
doing the actions to get to that spot,
constantly, day in, day
out, what's discipline.
Even if you get punched in
the face, you still keep going.
I'd also add that it's like a certainty
in your destiny. I am
going to do this thing
and visualizing all the steps and then
taking the steps, but that
certainty that this really
can happen to you. You as that
20-year-old can really imagine you one
day sending satellites
to space. You have to know that that is
your future. That is
your destiny. I think that's
one of the most powerful parts of
manifestation. But if you don't visualize
the steps and take the
steps, then it's just a dream that you
once had that you never
realized. The way I see destiny
is this. Imagine being at a mountain
valley and destiny is the
other side of that valley,
the mountains in the distance, but
between the two mountains,
it's a massive dense forest.
It is your job to go through that forest
onto that other mountain
and climb up it. However,
if you're never climbing and going
through that forest, you're never going
to meet your destiny
and that's just a waste of time. One of
the things that upsets
me the most is meeting
individuals who know what their calling
is, who aren't exerting
agency on their lives.
It makes me very emotional seeing that
and it frustrates me
tremendously, especially if
it's somebody that I care
about. Do you feel the same?
Well, I can say that
having high agency is pursuing an
ambitious project or
ambitious goal isn't for everyone.
I understand people who want to play a
safe path in life. Being
a founder means you're an
anomaly. If everyone was a founder,
society wouldn't run. We
need people to go the safe
path because it's people that go the safe
path that really makes
sure society runs. Founders
change the outcome and the dynamics of
society, but ultimately the
backbone of society is not us.
The backbone of society is the
people who play the safe path.
I was just going to say, I don't mean
specifically to the
founder journey. Somebody that
knows they want to be a musician, but
they're just too afraid to
start, or somebody that knows
they want to be an engineer, but they
don't think they're smart
enough. I mean that not just
specific to the founder journey. In
general, that's something
that I see all the time. It's
a problem I don't know how to solve. If I
could solve that problem,
I would feel tremendously
fulfilled. Do you have any
thoughts on that specifically?
I see it, but ultimately it's you either
do it or you don't. I mean to be honest,
sometimes I get people asking me, "Should
I be a founder? Should I
take a job?" or something like
that. I'm like, "Well, here are the pros,
here are the cons." But
making decisions in life is one
of the few luxuries that we have and the
four and three freedoms that
we have. It's not my job to
take that away from you. It's up to you
to execute it and to do it. I can give
you information, but I
can't make you do it. Of course, of
course. Understandably so.
Is there anything that you
use to make yourself better at doing
these ambitious things?
From a lot of founders,
I hear manifestation. Is there any other
key tools or principles or
values that you hold dear that
has enabled you to get
as far as you have so far?
Well, one always has a set of core values
that they remain
deeply integral to. Never
change your core selves, never change
your core values. But
beyond that, I think you're just
really overthinking it. There really
isn't a point of getting
the newest note taking that.
Or getting the newest note taking app or
setting a new schedule for
yourself or doing all these
productivity hacks. You either do it or
you don't. At the end of
the day, you just do it.
There's not really a secret hack that
makes things easier. You can
have all the tools you need. You
can have all of the mindful practices or
thought processes that you
need, but if you don't do it,
the outcome is still the same.
I think that is a good takeaway from
your... To understand Ed
and understand Ed's success,
Ed just does the thing. That's the TLDR,
right? Just go do the thing
and stop talking about it.
Stop thinking about it. Just go execute.
Some people say, "I
don't want to talk about it,
but if I talk about it, then it makes me
the small way to do it."
But that's a bloody problem.
Do the thing. Just do the thing that you
said you do. That solves the
problem. If you don't do the
thing that you said you do, well, that's
not anyone's fault. That
didn't happen. You just
didn't do the thing. Just didn't do the
thing. Ed, before we wrap
up, anything else you'd like
to share with aspiring young founders or
folks looking to work in
space or anybody just at home,
a layman, just enjoying watching any
message, party
message you'd like to share?
Do just do the thing, man. If you want to
do something, just do it right now.
There are no prerequisites in life to
doing anything. Almost no
prerequisites in life to
doing anything. The prereqs are there to
make it less painful to do
something. But if you can
tolerate any amount of pain, then
anything is within reach,
really. And if you just jump out
and start doing the thing, there's not
really anything that can stop you.
All right, Ed, it has been an absolute
pleasure having you on.
Thank you so much for taking the
time to join us. Absolutely. Thank you.