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An interview with former SpaceX Dragon engineer Boris Lipchin about cold-calling his way into a flight software internship, reading raw flight code within spitting distance of the ISS, being told he was wrong by Elon, and bringing SpaceX-style first-principles thinking to healthcare. And why only your worst day matters.
A podcast exploring the life arcs of smart, creative, driven people who helped Elon Musk and SpaceX revolutionize the space industry. How did they get there? What was it like? What world are they creating now?
Stage engine sequence initiative. Three two one.
Speaker 2:I chose the name It's Not Rocket Science for this podcast because I wanted to talk to people who left SpaceX and took their knowledge and skills to other domains. Recently, I've had a lot of great discussions with people who stayed in the space industry, but today I spoke to a friend who pivoted to a really hard problem. We have liftoff.
Speaker 1:We have liftoff.
Speaker 2:So I always like to start off with, introduce yourself and, you know, your name and what you did when you were at SpaceX.
Speaker 1:It's, my name is Boris Lipchin. And at SpaceX, I was primarily a flight software engineer working mostly on the guidance navigation control systems for Dragon and one of the other hats that I was lucky enough to wear. I was a launch operator for the first few Dragon launches as well.
Speaker 2:Very cool. And where are you coming from today? Where are you recording?
Speaker 1:I'm back to where I grew up, just outside of Boston in Needham, Massachusetts.
Speaker 2:Excellent. So we'll be able to, like, map that trajectory from wherever you started out to SpaceX and back to Boston. What what was your journey into SpaceX? Did you always wanna be an aerospace engineer, or what was the plan?
Speaker 1:It was definitely a passion. I I... My undergraduate degree was in electrical computer engineering, so I was very passionate about robotics and and computers broadly. But I actually... SpaceX did some recruiting, I think, my freshman year on campus.
Speaker 1:And from then on, I was... Or maybe something. I was very, very fascinated with the company, actually, for a few years. And and I remember I, called the front desk at SpaceX, and I I said if, if you guys have an internship program in flight software, I wanna apply to be an intern. And if you don't have an internship program in Flight Software, I wanna apply to be an intern anyways.
Speaker 1:And they told me that... Eventually, I talked to somebody, they said that they don't, but they were willing to let me apply. And I think that was one of me and... When a friend of mine, Matt, became the first, I think, two interns in in flight software back in 2008.
Speaker 2:And that was just after I joined. Where were you doing your undergraduate work?
Speaker 1:I was at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 2:What took you get into electric electric and computer engineering? That was the degree I got at University of Michigan. But what was, like... What was it that made you wanna pursue that? Were you already a a tinkerer or a builder?
Speaker 2:Or
Speaker 1:Yeah. I'd I'd always liked computers. I'd already been doing some, software engineering sort of on the side, ranging from... Ended up working at MITRE Corporation actually, for for a couple summers before right after high school, which is like a defense contractor. And the...
Speaker 1:I loved software, but I really became passionate with, like, where software meets the physical world because I thought that was always a little bit more complicated. Complicated and was a, like, a more fun Rubik's cube to solve. So I didn't wanna do just straight up software engineering, and I I am... The electrical computer kind of split the difference for me where I got to, like, be a little bit closer to the physical world, and I was very... And Carnegie Mellon is a stellar robotics and student.
Speaker 1:I was very, very, very fortunate to be able to attend, and get the degree.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's a a great program there. That interface between software and hardware is also where I started my career. And now that I look at the landscape of software engineering, it seems to me that it's possibly one of the safe niches for the moment from too much automation. I think that it's an area...
Speaker 2:I don't know. Would you agree with that? That it's an area that's not gonna be easily taken over by AI programmers?
Speaker 1:I think it's definitely a lot... I I think in general places where it's very import... Where the only day that matters is your worst day and reliability is very important. That's a place where you always want another human in the loop for a long time. And and and, yeah, anything involving hardware and and and software, I think, generally, kinda can look like that a lot.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I think there's a lot of... I think, generally, you'll be impacted by AI, but but certainly not in a way that totally sort of disenfranchises the software engineer, if you will.
Speaker 2:When they created that software internship program that you asked about, did you apply with a bunch of other people, or you said you and Matt were the first
Speaker 1:I'm not sure how many people applied. Yeah. I I suspect it was... We had a, like, a formal inter... Internship program in the following summer, but I don't...
Speaker 1:We we were the only two interns. So if there were other applicants, it it wasn't a thing. But, yeah, I kind of... I just realized that I, I've always, never really, like, yeah, cared if there was structure somewhere. Like, if that was a thing that I wanted, that I wanted it.
Speaker 1:But in in retrospect, it was also realized very quickly how much it was that I didn't know about about what I didn't know. I... There was a a story, I think, in the first week of, of me working as an intern. We had a meeting, in Flight Software, and I asked a question. And they missed him.
Speaker 1:Mike Dobrowski, who is the manager of Flight Software at the time, looked at me and and said, Boris, have you ever read the Wikipedia article for Rocket before? I said, I don't know. Maybe you haven't. He said, you should you should probably do that. I said, that's really thoughtful advice.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like that. Yeah. Thoughtful, but also straight to the point, like a typical, like, SpaceX conversation.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Exactly. So that was a... So that's kinda where... I I was passionate about the aerospace, but I didn't quite appreciate how how much it was that that that I needed to know anyway.
Speaker 2:Did they throw you right into a well defined or or at least a defined project? Perhaps intern intern projects don't... Aren't necessarily well defined, but did they give you an area of responsibility and say, go do?
Speaker 1:Yeah. They... I had a couple projects. I think one was I I worked a lot on the... On on miniaturizing some of the HITL, the hardware in the loop, stuff early on, but that was, actually almost that wasn't, like, pure software engineering work.
Speaker 1:And, I I I did a bunch of that for a few weeks, then I I did say, hey, guys. You guys, you know, I I do have, like, this whole other software engineering skill set if you ever wanted to think about taking advantage of that as well. You know, I I I wouldn't say no to a to a real project that helped me, practice software engineering, and and then they... I was lucky enough to work on Iridium transmitter along with Edwin Chew, actually. Right?
Speaker 1:He started full time at that... Around then. So he and I partnered, and that was very blue sky. Like, hey. Here's a piece of hardware.
Speaker 1:Here's a satellite constellation. Go make it work. And and that was basically the... Like, I was the the beginning and end of the sort of the requirements that they were really given. You were expected to hunt everything else down, and and that that was a sort of a great sort of sink or swim opportunity.
Speaker 2:You seem to have covered a lot of ground. You transitioned into guidance navigation and control software. And did you do that for the rockets and for Dragon or just for Dragon?
Speaker 1:Towards... I... The bulk of my full time, I definitely focused on Dragon, but but you always end up touching the Falcon Falcon nine, you know, work as well. And the... Towards the back end of my tenure, full time, I...
Speaker 1:A lot of that work was actually the upgraded Falcon nine, like, 1.1, we called it the sort of the block two Falcon nine and the... And bringing some of the changes that we had made in Dragon guidance to to the Falcon systems. So the... And and focusing obviously on landing and and all the other, like, awesome stuff that we did shortly after Dragon, as well as a bunch of crew Dragon work.
Speaker 2:So even in a short career, you covered a lot of lot of things there. What was it like to work on the GNC for Dragon knowing that it was gonna have to do a lot of difficult things, including approach the station, you know, dock and berth with the station, and then do do reentry. What was it like to get your head around all that complexity?
Speaker 1:And I felt that we we had done a tremendous job in in in the the amount of testing and rigor that that we did. I think that in in my eyes actually went be... Sort of beyond what what even NASA required us to do in terms of the complexity and the... And and the sort of comprehensiveness of the test. But but even then, obviously, there was...
Speaker 1:We found the c one mission, the the c two plus mission to space station. There were a lot of new learnings that that that we discovered that that we had to... In... As... During launch ops, we had to react very, very quickly to ultimately get get the vehicle birthed.
Speaker 1:The last ten minutes of pre birthing was a... Was definitely a very emotional time as I recall.
Speaker 2:It's certainly... What I remember is that the reason that things were allowed to go ahead to the birthing was because NASA trusted it to not do anything too bad.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No. We were very, I think, fortunate. The flight director, I think, was, made some really good calls. If if I recall, she she was, like, very spot on and and we...
Speaker 1:As I recall, there was a... Like, I I actually remember this because this is burned into my memory for the rest of my life. Was... I think it was, like, flight note bravo foxtrot 59 was a... Like, legitimately, like I say, still remember, us calling it out where we had to make changes to the, the camera, some of the optic system, right, like, very close to the capture box, and we had to send the command that we...
Speaker 1:That wasn't part of any procedure. And and we had to remember just reading through the soft... Like, reading the actual literal flight code and making sure that that that the sort of instructions within that command would do the right thing to segment the optical field of view to eliminate some of the reflections that we're seeing on the on the on the Japanese module. And and it was, yeah, it was... Like, that was being allowed to do something like that within literal spitting distance of the International Space Station.
Speaker 1:And having the trust was a core to that mission achieving the success that it did. We we certainly may not have been able to birth without NASA taking such, like, an active role and and being able to kinda allow us to do the things that we did.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And if I... And the way that you stated is kind of understated way that you articulated in a very kinda technical way. But it's... If I remember, the Dragon was holding just outside of the of the entry box to the space station proximity operations.
Speaker 2:The camera... I forget which one, whether it was the infrared camera was returning some results that were different from the differential GPS results, and somebody in your team or in that software team kind of had the rabbit stuffed into the hat where the software could be modified to overcome that problem.
Speaker 1:That's right. It was Jesse who sat next to me in in launch operations, was the the guy that wrote that system. And I remember he, yeah, he and I were were looking through that software and just making sure we got all the rotations in the various, like, coordinate frames. Right? Because there's a lot of, like, two wrongs make it right, kinda dynamic, and a lot of 108...
Speaker 1:There are two cameras that are inverted a 180 degrees relative to each other. There's a lot of... We had to make sure that all the geometry worked and that we weren't doing the exact opposite wrong thing. And, yeah, it was a... And I I recall that, when the vehicle is nine meters below station, the Draco thrusters tend to, overheat pretty quickly, because that station keeping is really hard.
Speaker 1:So I remember propulsion coming on the on NavNet and saying, like, hey, guys. Like, we're, you know, we're thirty seconds from, like, aborting some of the thrusters out. If you could please, you know, move that along, that would appreciate it. So, yeah, there was a... Not a second.
Speaker 1:I think we got that command in with literally not seconds to spare if...
Speaker 2:And if if I remember there also wasn't fueled for another go around. You could... We couldn't go back down to the holding holding area and and wait. There wasn't enough fuel to recycle that.
Speaker 1:That's right. Yeah. That would have been... We would have had to come back home the... For that mission.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And and you learn a lot from the near misses like that and you like think of all the progress that was made as a result of that success on the first on the first try, and it all hangs a little bit by a software patch. The thing about near misses is that they're not super glamorous from the outside, and yet they're so educational on the inside because you get to have the result and the headline, and you get the learning that makes the system more robust inside.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think actually one of the, like, bigger lessons I I carried from SpaceX was... I remember after every mission, we do, like, a month of data review. And even in the most, like, picture perfect parts, we would almost always learn something that we didn't understand about these incredibly complex systems we had built, that's something that we had missed, something that could have become an issue but didn't because of something else that had happened. And we were really good at extracting a lot of, like, water from that stone of of, like, learning as much as possible and then and then making it better.
Speaker 1:Even though, know, things were, like, quote unquote successful, we Mhmm. We we could we could still take lessons from that. And I think that was one of the most powerful experiences ever was like that, that one third two that followed any given mission.
Speaker 2:And it was never an allowance for the kind of... The thing that someone... Sometimes happens during debugging is that you have a one off event and you never can quite pin it down and so you move on. Or, you know, I moved some things around in the code and it went away. You really had to not do that, but rather actually find the answer to why something happened.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think that, like, the level of rejecting, like, oh, it's just network or it's just like this. I remember we... There's... We found, like, loading...
Speaker 1:Like, a floating pin that was resetting computers earlier. There's, like, so many very... Like, there was always always a really good answer that that we discovered. And that that lesson, like, not just taking, like, oh, you just had a bad day, for granted and really digging in and learning... Taking a learning away almost every single time was, like, that level of discipline and and and just depth.
Speaker 1:The thing was... Like, I remember being so impressed by by people's ability to drill that far deep and that that deep and then being able to take that up and and and use that learning to make things more reliable and better was was just incredible. It it really was. And I I
Speaker 2:think it also ties to something. I had a a glancing discussion with Robert Rose on LinkedIn the other week about single event upsets. I believe single event upsets do happen. I mean, they... We know they happen, and you can measure them.
Speaker 2:But at the same time, if you find yourself attributing your failure to cosmic rays, you really need to be very sure that that's what it was and that it wasn't something that you missed somewhere else in your system.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think that sometimes in some cultures, there is, you know, you could get into a situation where something that you don't understand that well, you can use it as an excuse to just effectively turn off your brain. And you could say, like, well, it's just this. And I can I can stop worrying about it, and I can go and do something else? And, like, something that was pretty unique about SpaceX is that was almost never the okay thing.
Speaker 1:Like, that was... Like, you you never got to just punt it on something else. Like, that... Like, if if you really checked everything, maybe sometimes you could say, like, yeah. It was, like, a single of an upset.
Speaker 1:We just hit a reset. But but the amount of rigor you had to demonstrate, was really high because everyone cared so, so deeply, that that that was that that was always, like, the most disappointing answer you could possibly give. Was just like, oh, we just... There's nothing to learn from the situation. And and so everyone really had, like, a desire to, like, dig in, which was...
Speaker 1:Like, I
Speaker 2:I personally, like, love love that part. Before we swing around to what you're... You know, what you did after SpaceX and what you're doing now, did you have any, like, particular interactions with Elon that stood out as a potential anecdote to to tell people, or were you isolated back in, you know, back being in the software zone?
Speaker 1:Though, I think... Yeah. I had a I had a number of them. I think almost every interaction with Elon is somehow memorable. That's true.
Speaker 1:But but but the... I'll I'll say I have two two... One with directly with Elon and one that that was sort of indirectly with Elon that... One was we were debating around some sort of nominal, like, situation of those with c one, Dragon, about what would happen if we rebooted the computer. And I said we would...
Speaker 1:Like, if we rebooted a flight computer, you know, the mission would be over because we'd lose state that was irrecoverable in navigation. And Elon told me that I was wrong. And I was like, what do you mean? Like, I'm... You know, I I...
Speaker 1:Theoretically, I should know more about the navigation system than almost anybody else in the company. And Elon actually presented, like, an argument as to how you could recover it that that made sense. And I remember I was like, wow. Yeah. He's like, that's fair.
Speaker 1:Like, you could do that. And I just, like... I was always very impressed by the level of depth that he could show, and, like, on the spot that that that I think pushed people, to be better. And, like, the sort of other anecdote that I'll share is I remember early on, I was sitting next to the guidance group as as the GNC group as I did, and two of the GNC engineers were, were doing something in a whiteboard. And I remember one of them throws down the marker, and he says, like, you see, I've just proven that you cannot land rockets, like, back back on the launch pad.
Speaker 1:Like, physics has shown that. And, another guy... I forget exactly who who who who the the two folks were, but the other guy goes, like, you know that's never gonna be good enough for Elon. Right? And the guy goes, you're right.
Speaker 1:He picks up the marker and keeps writing. I think that was, like, the idea that your understanding of fundamental laws of physics was was weaker than the amount of conviction that Elon may have about a particular solution. I think I think it was like a big part of why that that company ultimately ended up working out. I remember thinking, I'm like, we're probably gonna land that thing at that point. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And
Speaker 2:land it right back at the launch pad where it came from.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. So like it was... I think that that I think that was, like, a... One of the sort of...
Speaker 2:I I think that was a very common experience with Elon too is that he actually did know what was going on at SpaceX in the detail to a point where he could generally challenge the experts. And I wouldn't contend that he could have done every job, but he could certainly keep every person on their toes.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I remember we used to send them... Like, we were told to send, like, a few bullet points every single day of what everyone in Flight Software did, and we we kind of assumed he wasn't reading them. And then one of us send them something, he responded to that email in a way that made it clear not only did he read that email, but he actually had the whole chain.
Speaker 1:Like like, he had internalized every... Like, there was no way he could have asked that particular question without knowing... Reading, like... In... Reading and understanding everything that we had sent for, like, weeks and weeks prior.
Speaker 1:And we were like, after that, we're like, oh, Jesus. Like, we actually have to be sure write these really well. We didn't anticipate that he was actually reading them.
Speaker 2:Yep. That's a pretty pretty telling detail. It's also you must have been on the critical path if you had to send daily updates. That meant you're like, you're the long pole.
Speaker 1:Flights after was... It's often the problem child in in the... In a lot of launches. The... For sure.
Speaker 1:We we were, I think, often than not, the cause of delay of a lot of launches back in the day just because we... Software is a... Is not like any other engineering process in some...
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's hidden complexity. Hidden in some sense complexity. A huge number of things and easy to have a lot of almost unfinished business until it actually is finally finally done.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No. Exactly. It's like the analogy like you're birthing a baby kind of thing. It just takes the amount of time that it takes.
Speaker 2:Yep. Before c one, that's why I wasn't there, I'm sure, is because I told them how long it was gonna take to birth that baby. And it was not not the acceptable answer.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No. I've I've... We've we've each I remember we... Like, at some point, we get an email from Mary Beth where the secretary at the time where where she was like, Elon is coming on his trip to China early to speak to each of you individually while, like, Dragon is, like, month behind schedule.
Speaker 1:There was only, like, three or four of us that were working Dragon flights after the time. Oh, God.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It was, like, within six weeks of that email, I was out of there. How did you end up leaving?
Speaker 1:I... The... It it was a kind of a complex... I I I think there were two dynamics. One was SpaceX had gone from 500 people when I was an intern to north of 5,000 back in, like, 2014 or so.
Speaker 1:And and the the environment had definitely changed. We had we we had achieved some, like, repeatability. I think that the team, like, Flight Software had dozens of people in it, and and I felt a little bit like I I'm... I fit in more with smaller, like, environments where, like, the risk posture is just different, and I felt like compliance and process... But by necessity was was much more valuable to the company at the time.
Speaker 1:And I just... When I was in grad school at MIT, a friend of mine, was pursuing an idea for for a startup, and I I really... I thought that what could be more complicated than, like, Rubik's cube that involves not just software and hardware, but but just also business and and and money and people and point... Like, there's, like, a startup in some ways that I thought was the, like, the the core of, like, one of the most complex things you could you could do. And and we ended up taking that and and applying to Y Combinator and expecting not to get in and...
Speaker 1:Or get funded. We just sort of did it a little bit on a whim. And we got in. And and I realized that now this is for real, and I have to do it. And that was one of the...
Speaker 1:And and, like, I had sort of had a decision to make at that point. Like, do I continue to become... Like, I'm more of a ex like, deepen my expertise in in in aerospace, or do I really try to broaden and and and become some... Someone else entirely? And I I felt like maybe this is an opportunity for me to to do that.
Speaker 1:And I I kind of always loved learning and reinventing myself every few years, and and so I I just kind of did it at that time and and got into startups and haven't really looked back since.
Speaker 2:What was that first startup that you did through Y Combinator?
Speaker 1:That was a, company called Armada, and we were, pursuing, initially drone. It was it was a drone company at the time where drones were, very popular in in venture capital, and in in some ways, were a poster child of why we can't have nice things in in venture because I think we got funded maybe earlier than we should have been. But, we were building drone ground stations, to develop fully autonomous, like, sensing and delivery applications. We, we built an incredible system. One, our...
Speaker 1:Today, I think, would be very... Would be arguably more more valuable today than than it was back in '20, like, '15, 2016. But, ultimately, that... Well, we we could not find product market fit. We were very young, and we we learned a lot of lessons, from that.
Speaker 1:But but we built some incredible technology, with, like, basically, like, with nothing but, like, a a, like a paper clip and and some, like, off the shelf drones. And
Speaker 2:what did you do after that one?
Speaker 1:After we... So after that company, I I... It was kind of an interesting moment because I I'd never taken a moment to kind of pause and and and think about what what is it that I actually wanted to do. And I, so I'd I'd... And I realized that, actually, in part from my work at...
Speaker 1:In, like, data analysis and launch ops, I I was very curious about the nature of of data and using that data to kind of fingerprint and extract insights from over these complex systems. And I... And that was, like, one school thought. Another sort of dynamic was that I... Over time, I became convinced that...
Speaker 1:I I tried to think about what what is the next hundred years gonna look like for just the species? Like, what is gonna be different a hundred years from now? And and and one of the reasons why I came to SpaceX was I was very convicted to, like, aerospace and and and colonization was was that. And I became... I...
Speaker 1:Having sort of grown up, I I realized that maybe one of the things that's gonna be different next hundred years is health care and that the way that... And and our understanding of biology and that we... I I realized that we don't actually know how the human body really works at all. We are guessing most of the time our understanding is very, very surface. And I thought, wow.
Speaker 1:Maybe could we bring some of those, like, first principles, data driven approach, that that we had at SpaceX, and we do that, and we bring that to the human body and and just measure things more. And and could could health become more than just absence of disease? Could... Like, could we build gold standard statistical characterizations for this incredibly complex system, this most valuable thing that that exists in the planet, which is like a human life, and and and use that to define what good is versus, like, what we have today, which is sort of if, you know, the the absence of bad is really good. And and I've...
Speaker 1:And I I was, maybe foolish enough, founded a company that that was, obsessed with with, we did a lot of lab testing, and, and we we we... That company has its own story, but but that was I I decided that health care and and specifically diagnostics and biology is kind of where I was... Where I wanted to spend the next, sort of segment of my life.
Speaker 2:I've talked to a couple of other guys from SpaceX that, like, went over into health and health adjacent items. Edwin Chew did his ventilator project during COVID. Chris... Krishna Puratti also got very interested in metric driven fitness and how to, like, optimize your your fitness level and your health around that. What...
Speaker 2:With... How would you describe in a kind of a general... In general terms, things that you've discovered and what you're working on? Like, what's exciting you now in that space? And now that you've had, what, a few years to really investigate that space of of data and helpfulness.
Speaker 2:What... What's the discovery? Like, what do you got?
Speaker 1:I I think there's... I I would I would put two buckets that, like, one, there there is a... Some... Like, there's optimism and cynicism, I guess, would be the like, the Okay. The the the dynamics.
Speaker 1:I think the the start with the bad news. The the the... This this cynicism to some extent is that we... There is a lot that we don't know, but part of the, reason why we don't is, in some ways, health care is not incentivized to care, is that we, there's not a tremendous financial incentive to, move, to deliver health care to slightly healthier people. And that, for for for lots of reasons.
Speaker 1:Right? But... And and and we... Not only do we we not have an incentive, we also don't know how to do it very well. And and and we are not structurally...
Speaker 1:A hospital system is not, able to work with patients in in a way that that allows them to live healthier lives. That's just not kind of what they do. And and there's a lot of and so the inefficiency of that system sort of rely on themselves. So, for example, if you were to solve primary care overnight, half the hospital systems in The United States would go out of business because they rely on on these sort of higher acuity, these, like, the... You know, your cardiothoracic surgeries and whatever.
Speaker 1:That's the profit center. Right? So if you actually were to make preventative health care work, it would actually break health care, ironically. And so so you have to be really thoughtful about what you do and when. So so that...
Speaker 1:That's the kind of the the the the cynical part, the the the the stuff that we have to kinda contend with and and operate within the system and its constraints. The the the optimism part is that there is... There's a a lot you can you can do today that that that helps people, like, live better that, we realized that there is one is that people don't really understand their bodies at all, and so you get... There's, like, sort of more of, a diagnostic element. You could tell them, like, hey.
Speaker 1:This is what's wrong. You can pinpoint something in in in a way that, with sort of telehealth and the advent of, like, more testing and things like that, you can... These things have never been more available, and so you can just deliver care to more people faster. But the other part is we realized is that, actually, teaching is... It's it's not about just, like, diagnosing somebody.
Speaker 1:It's that, people, making that, like, an experience, getting people engaged and, like, excited to, to be better and sort of either get through gamification or other things like that is is, like, a huge part of the loop. And and many part... Like, the sort of many bottlenecks in health care aren't actually... They're not even scientific or data driven. They're almost, like, experiential.
Speaker 1:And so, like... So there's a lot of... We don't need to discover anything, like, fundamentally new to improve health care. Like, I think that's, like, obviously, like GLP ones and things like that have changed a lot of... Like, that's been very fascinating.
Speaker 1:But but you can make tremendous progress just with the tools that we have. You just have to apply them in a more interesting way. And I think that's kind of, like, the the up... Interesting. And then you kinda see that today in the industry and then of of people sort of delivering wellness and health care in in in ways that that we didn't see ten, twenty years ago.
Speaker 2:It's interesting. It seems to me then one of the things that you did was approach it from the point of view of health care rather than purely the health, you know, the mechanics of health. You're looking at the system of healthcare and how that could be improved and where the systematic bottlenecks in health care might be as opposed to necessarily just like which number is the most important number to look at or which, you know, which aspect of a person's lifestyle is the most important one to adjust. You've also looked at the the surrounding system.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We... I I actually did start, when we founded... So my, like, when I got into health care, and I I work for a company that I didn't start now. So we've we've gone through.
Speaker 1:This is, the second iteration. But when we when we founded Brio, we were looking for that magical number. Is it is it some sort of like glycemic... Like the glycolated albumin or like a one c or like what is the like the thing that we...
Speaker 2:Or v o two max is the one.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Or v... Yeah.
Speaker 1:The... And what we... One of the realizations was that that wasn't the... It wasn't that we hadn't found a number. It was that people didn't know how to use those numbers.
Speaker 1:It's sort of like the the example we would set is, like, if you're trying to find your way to the local grocery store and I give you a latitude, longitude, GPS coordinates, that doesn't help you. You need a map. You need, like, instructions that are contextualized you. I need to take a left. Need to go right.
Speaker 1:Go straight. You need some confidence that if you were to follow these instructions, you would actually get to the destination. And a lot of health care is just giving out GPS coordinates. And so we we quickly realized that, really, the the part was the map and and how do you, like, speak to to consumers in many ways. And the...
Speaker 1:So we kinda stopped looking for that magic... For a better set of GPS coordinates and sort of transitioned to how do we speak to the patient and how do we kinda meet the patient intellectually more than halfway.
Speaker 2:Did you... Like, what's the company that you're that you're working now? What... What's the product or the the process that you guys are really focusing on?
Speaker 1:So the the company is called Junction, where I'm head of product. And the the the company's goal, is... Was... And and vision vision mission is very similar to the one that to Brio when we founded, which is to... How do we decrease the cost, to prevent and manage chronic and sort of noncommunicable parental diseases by two orders of magnitude?
Speaker 1:Because if we if we don't, do that, then, like, economically, our health care system is in dire straits. Medicare won't be able to meet its... Like, that we'll run out of money essentially in 2033. Like, we won't be able to... So, like, there's, like, thing...
Speaker 1:Like, urgent financial, like, pressures on on the health care system. So the the product that that that we sell... So the the insight is that we, if you can deliver more robust, sort of diagnostic and sensing system that that allows patients that are less sick to engage with it reliably, then then you could solve... That's like a structural problem that exists in in in in many walks of health care. So we are we are in...
Speaker 1:We're infrastructure play, essentially, that allows people to deliver, health care... Deliver diagnostics at scale to their patients. So most of the longevity industry, uses us under the hood. So we are, we, today, easy numbers, we represent every three hundredth outpatient lab tests in The United States. So the...
Speaker 1:So we operate at pretty material volume. Nobody has really ever heard of us because we're we're sort of b to b. Underneath. We're an API. We we work with all the major labs.
Speaker 1:We work with many smaller labs. We also integrate with, most of the wearable devices. We can measure. We 've connected, I think, just shy of 4,000,000 patient owned consumer devices to a platform and and and and given that and allowed that information to flow to people that can, you know, deliver care and and experiences to those people. The...
Speaker 1:And the, we believe that one of the sort of common threads is across all these is that, like, is the patient experience is usually, sort of a tragically forgotten. And and and like, the the standard experience in diagnostics is your physician hands you, like, a piece of paper that's got some numbers on it, and you're like, and good luck. And then, like, you kind of disappeared, maybe you get that test done and maybe not. It turns out a lot of the time you don't. And, like, all...
Speaker 1:And then... And in fact, the the healthier you are, the less likely you are to do it. But that is also the best time. That's, like, the best lever and moment in time to actually engage. And so we create systems that allow people to build reliable experiences that that also engage the patient thoughtfully that that really make it much easier for the patient to feel like they need to go and get it done and and and feel like they have the tools and know where to go.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I think people have to be convinced that when they get the test and the test result number comes back that that's gonna result in something also. That there's a... An intervention or an adjustment or an all clear flag that they're gonna get that's gonna be meaningful to them.
Speaker 1:Yeah. The... That is certainly a common problem, and some people don't want to get the test. People don't love getting bad news, and and that's something that we wanna see change in health care because health care really is a system that tends to deliver bad news, and nobody ever celebrates good news. And you...
Speaker 1:Like, you can't, have people engage with you repeatedly without positive reinforcement. Nobody... Negative reinforcement and fear is actually an incredibly bad motivator for more than just two to three weeks, and and you need to... That's, like, one of the great sort of sins of health care is that we just scare people into doing things, and that doesn't work. And the, one of the, like, tools in our toolkit that we're excited about is you, you can't really, like, prevent things without predicting things.
Speaker 1:And if you could predict things, you could start to give people, like, a vision of a better future, not just, like, the lack of a worse one. And we we think that the idea of being able to motivate numbers and and statistics into some... Into a predictive tool, which which health care is a very kind of shady relationship, but they don't love lack of certainty and and and and, like, something that may or may not happen is something that health care is very not comfortable with. But but that's something, like like, a fundamental capability that we need to develop if we wanted to, you know, have the impact of of... That that we wanna have.
Speaker 1:So these are one of some of the things that we're, like, really excited about is can we actually start to have that predictive power?
Speaker 2:Well, that's fascinating, really interesting, and something that, you know, it applies to everybody's life. Then I'm gonna jump into my quick round of questions but I'm gonna start with a new one is like, alright. So all of us has a body, know, what's your what's your advice? What's your one one advice for the thing that pre... People should go out and do?
Speaker 1:Move your body a lot. Eat lots of salads. There's no... Everyone knows what they need to do, generally to eat healthy, And, don't listen to all the sophisticated bullshit around like take this, do that, do the simple stuff, do it well, and, that that's all you need.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I love that. Thank you. And what's your favorite science fiction?
Speaker 1:Oh, I am a... I love Isaac Asimov, the the the foundation series. I'm I'm a huge fan. The the the show does a a really good job too. I've been watching and the Robot series.
Speaker 1:I'm... And I'll say as a Arthur c Clark, think, is also very uniquely good because he's got a remarkable sense of humor that that I really appreciate. So I think those two.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think the foundation series is built into my brain. It's like I haven't revisited it in many, many years, but a number of the assumptions in foundation are just things I operate on.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, the whole idea that you could, like, actually, like, the the psycho shoot... The the branch of mathematics that that Harry Selden invents Yeah. Was about prediction in the future using complex data set. It was very likely it was, like, I...
Speaker 1:Yeah. I always thought that was awesome.
Speaker 2:And then. And pivoting a little bit. So you're a serial entrepreneur in very technical domains, and I know that there are people who really wanna do that. They see that for themselves in the future. What would you advise people who are, like, in their college years if they wanna find their way onto this track?
Speaker 1:I think one is that it's never been a better time because AI is the great equalizer of of information, information silos, so you can learn faster than you could ever learn before. And I think one of the lessons I think I've... That I had to learn time and time again is never lose your confidence in yourselves because your instincts ultimately are... Were gonna carry you through, through the sort of the the good times and the bad. So have a lot of faith in yourself beyond what what I think people will tell you because you get a lot of no's.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:It's it's very easy to get lost in in all the funk, and that's the the the worst and sort of the deadliest part for entrepreneurship. So just really keep your vision in your mind's eye. Never lose that. Have confidence and and and and just go. Like, I think that that's the believe in yourself is is the most valuable thing that I think anyone has ever told me So as an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2:So not too much impostor syndrome then?
Speaker 1:I I think that most companies... I think more companies have failed because of too little than too much, in my opinion.
Speaker 2:And it sounds to me from the things that you do, do you think we can make the world better?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I I think that there's every... That we're we're met with, like, in seemingly insurmountable climate change, you know, challenges. We're met with insurmountable, like, the political and health care financial challenges. And I I I just think the the...
Speaker 1:Like, the the experiment of, like, assuming that you can do it is is always the better frame. And that's the only frame that that can yield success. And anything else, I think, is is is just uninteresting. And so I think that we have to do... We have to pull a rabbit...
Speaker 1:A lot of rabbits out of hats to to to to solve these, like, fundamental problems so that my... I have two two girls. I have two children. And for them to grow up in a world that that that that they can, like, be safe and be happy and live long, happy lives, I think we have to do a lot of work. But but, like, that's just...
Speaker 1:That's why that's why we do what we do.
Speaker 2:Excellent. I really... This has been a fascinating conversation, and I... And, you know, it certainly will be one of the longer conversations that I put out because all of it was interesting and well articulated. So thanks for taking a chunk out of your day to to do this and to catch up with me, Boris.
Speaker 1:No. This has been so much fun. I thank you so much for the opportunity. This has this has been great.
Speaker 2:I think I'll always remember what Boris had to say about the health care system. It's optimized for taking care of very expensive, very sick people. This episode of It's Not Rocket Science was produced in part by Devin Schwartz, and you can find us at it'snotrocketscience.space.