How Ed Ge Launched the Deimos Satellite With a Powerful AI Space Computer

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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.