The Daniel Mazur Podcast

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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.