Mo Islam (@itsmoislam), co-founder of Payload Space, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways: - There is no doubt that we are in the early stages of the space economy, Mo says. - The cost to go to Mars will be paid many times over by the young engineers who will be inspired by the mission. - There are three main buckets in the space economy: space for earth (companies creating products for humans on earth via their space endeavors), space for space (companies serving other ...
Nov 10, 2022•39 min
Ari Schuler, CEO of goTenna, and Andrea Garrity, Chief Growth Officer of goTenna, join Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon join us on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways: - goTenna was founded after Hurricane Sandy when a brother and sister didn’t know if the other was safe because the cell network weren’t working. It has since grown into the company that it is today, selling to government as well as consumers. - Ari and Andrea suggest that startups refrain from complaining or dwelling on how tough th...
Nov 03, 2022•39 min
Ian Cinnamon (@iancinnamon), co-founder and CEO of Apex Space, and Max Benassi (@mxbenassi), co-founder and CTO, join Lucas Bagno on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways: - The cost per kilogram to get things into space has gone down dramatically over the last several years. - Satellites have two parts: a payload and a bus. The bus is the actual structure of the satellite and despite all the hundreds of billions of dollars invested in launch companies, basically no venture money has gone into sa...
Oct 24, 2022•32 min
Ben Van Roo (@DavidNorthStar), co-founder and CEO of Yurts AI, joins Lucas Bagno on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways: - The Small Business Innovation Research program was originally developed as a grant program to allow small companies do innovative research. The gene for cystic fibrosis was discovered from the program. - If you’re a small company and you get an SBIR contract, you should not count on getting a government contract. - It has been very difficult for software companies to get a ...
Oct 20, 2022•51 min
Christian Brose (@cdbrose), Chief Strategy Officer at Anduril and author of The Kill Chain joins Lucas Bagno on this episode. Takeaways: - The US military and its procurement system has been built for equipment that is big, heavy, and hard to replace — things like ships and aircraft carriers and tanks. - Commercial technologies can contribute to a military with equipment that is more agile, lower cost, and easier to replace. - People in the government are, in 2022, trying to figure out what the ...
Oct 06, 2022•52 min
Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT), New York Times columnist and author of The Decadent Society, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways: - Since the moon landing, we have entered a period of stagnation. Confidence and optimism have declined and culture has entered a repetitive spiral where patterns from the 60s/70s have been repeating themselves. - Government has become less effective and more gridlocked over time. - The world’s richest societies are dealing with a population prob...
Sep 29, 2022•52 min
Raj Shah, Managing Partner at Shield Capital, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways: - Raj and Shield don’t care whether a founding team has experience selling to government, because the firm can help with that. They evaluate the team, the market and the tech when they’re looking at an investment. - Ash Carter was the first sitting Secretary of Defense to come to Silicon Valley in decades when he visited to jumpstart new initiatives to encourage startups working with gove...
Sep 22, 2022•40 min
Mike Brown, former director of the Defense Innovation Unit, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways: - It can easily take 10-20 years for tech to make its way into the Department of Defense. The Defense Innovation Unit helped speed that process up dramatically. - Some of the most important technologies being used in the war in Ukraine are commercial technologies. Mike thinks that the Department of Defense should be focusing on commercial technology much more often. - Many f...
Sep 15, 2022•52 min
Alex Moore (@AustinGiraffe), investor at 8VC and board member at Palantir, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways: - Alex was one of the original team members at Palantir. He says that helping build the company helps him pattern match today to find the best founders. - Defense investing is not like normal VC investing. The usual model of investing $2M, then $10M, then $30M to give a company momentum doesn’t work when you have to deal with budget cycles, lobbyi...
Sep 01, 2022•38 min
Nathan Picarsic, co-founder of Horizon Advisory, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways: - There are 17 rare earth metals that are of immense strategic importance. They are used in a vast array of everyday products like consumer electronics, medical devices, electric vehicles, and more. - China has a strong influence in this space. They have many mines but are even more dominant downstream — they control much of the processing of these metals and the manufactu...
Aug 11, 2022•39 min
Steve Blank (@sgblank), creator of Hacking For Defense and author of 4 Steps To The Epiphany, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways: - The secret history of Silicon Valley is that it emerged from the government’s desire to develop advanced technology and weapons in universities during World War II. - Stanford became a powerhouse in microwaves and electronics post-WWII. People were encouraged to leave to start companies, which kickstarted Silicon Valley. - The...
Aug 04, 2022•52 min
AJ Piplica (@AJ_Piplica), founder and CEO of Hermeus, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways: - Every time there has been an acceleration in the speed of transportation in history, high GDP growth has followed. - A switch to hypersonic transportation would unlock $4T in growth. - In the future the key differentiator in air travel will be speed, rather than comfort. - It’s currently extremely expensive to do flight testing at hypersonic speeds — $5-10M for only a few second...
Jul 12, 2022•52 min
Peter Newell (@PeterANewell), CEO of BMNT, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways: - Peter was “handed the Ferrari of skunkworks” when he came to be in charge of the Rapid Equipping Force. It was a program that handled over a billion dollars to deploy new technologies. - He became more of an entrepreneur after his time at the REF and that led to starting BMNT. - Often times procurement in the US military is HQ-centric and product-centric and does not take into...
Jul 05, 2022•44 min
Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg), co-founder and general partner at Village Global and co-founder and co-CEO of On Deck join Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways: - Startups are the most effective organizations for solving our biggest problems. - Startups disproportionately contribute to economic growth. - Governments and startups need to work together, not against each other. - China has the GDP per capita of Mexico but they have power because of how big their pop...
Jun 29, 2022•47 min
James “Hondo” Geurts, former Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways: - What kept Hondo up at night was that there was a good idea out there that wasn’t passed on to him and thus wasn’t used on the battlefield. - A society can’t be secure without prosperity and can’t have prosperity without security. - The challenge for startups working with government is that the public is a fickle venture capitalis...
Jun 21, 2022•47 min
- The narrative that China can do no wrong and why Noah says it is out of date at this point. - The long-term headwinds that China is facing, including demographic changes, resource limitations, and real estate challenges. - Why America should raise tariffs on anything made in China where it would be strategically important for those goods to be made somewhere else. - The state of real estate in China, including the fact that China’s economy is 30% real estate (double the percentage in the US) a...
Jun 14, 2022•1 hr 21 min
Jacob Helberg (@jacobhelberg), foreign policy expert and author of The Wires of War, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon to discuss: - Why he says peace through trade was the biggest foreign policy miscalculation in US history. - How US companies have approached operating in China and why Jacob would advise them to proactively work to decouple themselves from the Chinese market. - Why Jacob would prefer that American laws change to restrict Chinese investments in US companies. - Why the Belt and ...
Jun 07, 2022•49 min
Geoff Lewis (@GeoffLewisOrg), founder at Bedrock, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon to discuss: - His thoughts on the markets and the advice he has for founders operating in a market like this one. - What is driving financial nihilism and how it has changed society. - Why he’s only investing in founders where their company is their life’s work. - Bedrock’s investments in hardware and companies making things in the physical world. - The perils of politics replacing religion as our mechanism for ...
Jun 02, 2022•45 min
Bilal Zuberi (@bznotes), partner at Lux Capital, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon to discuss: - Bilal’s investing thesis of finding companies building solutions to interesting problems that impact a lot of people. - Why he’s investing in space and defense companies. - What keeps him up at night and how his investments are working on those areas. - Why he’s optimistic about unifying America. - How to solve the problem of different people having different sets of facts. - Whether there will be a...
May 26, 2022•54 min
Laura Crabtree (@llcrabbie), founder and CEO of Epsilon3, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode to discuss: - What she accomplished during her time at SpaceX and her journey to starting Epsilon3. - Whether the biggest contribution of SpaceX to the industry will be all the amazing people leaving to start their own space companies. - How to get into the space industry if you don’t already have a background in it. - Why a company like Epsilon3 hasn’t been built before. - The importance...
May 12, 2022•48 min
Joshua Steinman (@JoshuaSteinman), founder and CEO of Galvanick, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon to discuss: - The history of cybersecurity at big industrial companies and how he is building “Splunk for industrial systems” to solve that problem. - His time at the National Security Council, what motivated him to work in government, and his work creating an “embassy in Silicon Valley.” - Why, with internet-connected devices, we’ve traded predictable downtime for unpredictable downtime. He gives...
May 03, 2022•57 min
Martin Gurri (@mgurri), author of The Revolt of the Public, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon to discuss: - The genesis of the thesis about the revolt of the public while Martin was working at the CIA analyzing communications as social media and blogging began to take off. - The challenges to authority that the free flow of information has presented and why those societies that allow for open communication have been winning. - The internet’s reactionary moment and whether there will be a “revol...
Apr 26, 2022•56 min
Chris Power (@2112Power), founder and CEO of Hadrian, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon to discuss: - Why manufacturing is key to a strong position in the world order. - The changes in the landscape that have enabled a company like Hadrian to be possible now, where it wasn’t five years ago. - What Chris would do if he was running the United States to win the new space race. - How to change the culture in the US so that more serious people can work on serious problems. - Why it’s easier than you...
Apr 19, 2022•53 min
Mike Maples (@m2jr), founding partner at Floodgate, joins Lucas Bagno (@lucasbagnocv) and Ian Cinnamon (@iancinnamon) to discuss: - Why there has been an “epidemic of fakery” in society over the last 50 years or so. Mike says that institutions are pretending to be working rather than doing actual work. - Why the right “angle of attack” for societal problems is not head-on but rather to create something completely different than changes the subject entirely. - Why he advises founders to make sure...
Apr 05, 2022•52 min
Delian Asparouhov (@zebulgar), co-founder of Varda Space Industries and principal at Founders Fund, joins Lucas Bagno (@lucasbagnocv) and Ian Cinnamon (@iancinnammon) on this episode to discuss: - Why he says that VCs have a moral obligation to fund companies that help keep America a step ahead of its adversaries. - Why space matters for him personally and why expanding the economic bounds of humankind is the best way to achieve all of humanity’s other goals. - The current state of the space eco...
Mar 29, 2022•50 min
- What needs to change inside the federal government for more contracts to go to startups. - How startups should think about working with state and local governments. - How trust has declined in public institutions over the last several decades and how companies can credibly step into that void by building in public and telling their own story. - How Starlink will change where people live and how they live their offline life. - Why, if people are laughing at you, you’re probably taking yourself ...
Mar 22, 2022•47 min
Trae Stephens (@traestephens), co-founder at Anduril and partner at Founders Fund joins Lucas Bagno (@lucasbagnocv) and Ian Cinnamon (@iancinnamon) to discuss: - What keeps him up at night when he looks at the US today. - What he would change about the US government if he could wave a magic wand. - Common mistakes made by people selling to government. - How they think about acquisitions at Anduril. - Advice for people looking to build in the defense space. - What gives him hope when he thinks ab...
Mar 15, 2022•49 min
Solarpunk is a new podcast series about space and defense from Village Global: https://www.spreaker.com/show/village-globals-solarpunk Josh Wolfe (@wolfejosh), co-founder and managing partner at Lux Capital, joins Lucas Bagno (@lucasbagnocv) and Ian Cinnamon (@IanCinnamon), investors at Village Global, to discuss: - The problems that some of the leading companies working with the US government have been trying to solve. - The threats that America faces today and how technology has been used by i...
Mar 08, 2022•40 min
