Conversation
The AI Software Preventing Million-Dollar Failures | Shapol M., Entangl (YC S24)
Transcript
Actually, normally, ⁓ I always wonder the personality part, the person behind it. But today, to me, this topic is really sexy. Infrastructure topics are, for me, exciting because this is hardcore engineering issues where they are popping up. And therefore, I'm going to try to channel this as much as to the product, the team and the company you're building. And then we take it from there, if you feel good with that.
Awesome. How about that we start with the origin story where the reusable rockets triggered some questions and frustration in your mind and then you end up, my gosh, somebody needs to solve this thing from a super huge vision to narrowing down, but they're keeping the big big picture in mind as well.
Yeah. Um, I didn't expect to be doing software or data centers. I'll honest with you. Um, before this, I was aerospace engineer founded this reusable rock program back in England and, um, had lots of fun there, uh, launching rockets. And I thought I'd be doing that forever. Um, and during the time really, uh, you know, I was like, can we create some sort of software to to find issues in our designs before we get to launch manufacturing. Because if you can find those issues ⁓ before manufacturing, you save a ton of money ⁓ preventing manufacturing issues. ⁓ And then if you find issues before launch, well, that means ⁓ you have a successful launch. ⁓ it was at that time where we had all the Boeing planes falling out of the sky. And, um, uh, you know, we had aerospace companies reaching out. at Embraer, uh, Boeing and a few others where we was, uh, were interested. And we were like, we'll probably make a company out of this. And, uh, we did. And that's when we applied to, uh, YC we got in and then we moved to the States. And, uh, you know, we go through the sales process with these aerospace companies and they like it. And then the final stage is the security and they're like, okay, show us that you're US citizens. was like, well, we're not US citizens. And at that point, we were like, like, this is not good. What do we do? But luckily, it was at the same time, we had, we kept having data center companies reaching out to us, like, hey, you know, this seems really interesting. Can we try this out? And then? And then ⁓ we're like, sure, let's let's see, you know, at first, we didn't really, we didn't really entertain it.
I mean, look, data centers are exciting. What's happening today is, ⁓ you know, it's incredible where all these companies are building the infrastructure to get to AGI and, and super intelligence. ⁓ It's just, it's just incredible. I I go to some of these flagship projects, where they're building these insane, insane projects. And I'm like, wow, this is, you know, they're building
the smartest thing that has ever existed here, right here. ⁓ So in that sense, it's very, very exciting. And in fact, the build out for AI infrastructure today as a proportion of US GDP is bigger than the Manhattan Project and Apollo programs. So it definitely feels like a very, very ⁓ historic moment. And we play a part in that, a small part in that, but it's very exciting. That said, know, rock is always fun. So. ⁓ I go to rock launches every now and then, critical infrastructure and AI infrastructure is the present and the future.
Yeah, yeah. Actually, it's, I mean, even myself having hard time how to break this down into where to start conversation, because if you take a look at it, what you highlight is a systematic problem. Actually, it's a simple engineering design problem, if I understood it correctly. And then it's kind of applicable to neighbors as well, like depending on the sort of industries you're targeting. And yet you... niche down to data centers, which is already complex enough. Like, don't get me wrong, it's not like very, very easy. Perhaps we can start thinking on when you did this focus, let's double down on data centers. But this is an industry at the same time. We are right now joining the club on the peak time and then where everyone is trying to understand what's going on, how they can improve them, how can they also replace restructure or modernize because the data centers from which state you tackle depending on whether they when they are building or whether they already exist and then you try to get into the game perhaps and you can try to understand us what exactly is the thing you're helping them with. But in a way, your differentiation is so good. Within 12 months, you not only hook them, they advocate for you and for your product. When people change their jobs, they say, hey, I need to have an entangle here. This is a remarkable success. And we are talking about B2B, and we are talking about such highly, how to say, like, right, and safe places that it's really like, congratulations, first of all, on this. But then you can try to have as first, what is this differentiation, your secret sauce that you manage to get into the heart of their operating systems and then you try to, you start putting your roots there and then start growing together with them.
Yeah, well, it wouldn't be a secret source if it was a secret. ⁓ But it's the what was all the product and how we help these these data centers and we work with a good proportion of the US data center market today. And the ultimate problem that we're solving is efficiency and reliability. So data centers, whenever they're down, they cause mass havoc. So there's two very big ones, one with AWS and the other one with Azure that caused mass, mass havoc across the world where you had government agencies not being able to operate. You had many companies not afraid. You had people not being able to use their beds with eight sleep, for example. So that's essentially the problem we're solving. It's reliability for these data centers and whenever they go.
It is a great product. mean, there's so many things that depend on this invisible infrastructure that nobody even thinks about. But whenever they go down, then all of a sudden it comes to ⁓ everyone's vision. And that's the beauty of it. Like, it just should work in the background all the time and so forth. But about half the time when these data centers go down, It's literally as simple as someone on site turning off the wrong switch. And that's what we try and prevent. We try and direct these engineers to do the right things on the site. And a lot of this happens because in a data center, you, you know, you have a fairly complex design and the engineers that are working there, they don't always understand how that design works. So they may turn off a switch and they may not know what happens. if they turn that on and what the domino effects of that is. And we essentially can tell the engineers, hey, don't turn off the switch. Don't turn off this generator because if you do, well, your site goes down because we have access to the entire design of that data center, along with all the asset details and so forth and so on. it's an AI that has full understanding of your data center. And it... basically works with these engineers on site, making sure that they do stuff correctly. And, you know, when you tell any data center company, would you want to be twice as reliable in some instances, by just using our product, you know, it's an instant yes, because their number one KPI is reliability. And whenever they go down, they literally lose millions of dollars. And this happens very often, either on a small scale or on a larger scale where you may have like a region go down as well. So that's essentially what we do. We help these data centers operate and ⁓ stay reliable. ⁓ And ⁓ yeah, that's.
But actually, when I am thinking about it, so let's try to get one level deeper. So in a sense, Entangle is just coming into my day-to-day life in data centers operations. But there are multiple procedures around emergency situations, around the routines, around the way of operating. At some point, I need to find a way as frictionless as possible to bring Entangle up to speed, and I keep it to speed so that without my menu inputs or feeding, so it's going to be like shadowing me across all my decisions, all my possible scenarios. If I need to also make a decision that you say if I need to switch this or that, or if I go through a procedure where I think I can just skip this, but whereas it's proactive, it tells me, no, this is not a good idea. Then at that stage, how do you... How do you like, just onboard me, let's have a simulation. Like I am your customer. How do you onboard me? And also then how do you make sure that you are kind of blending this human intelligence with your product's intelligence as frictionless as possible and as proactive as possible? Because it's not just that data. Dashboards and then I'm going that I'm looking and it's done. No, it's like beyond that if I understood correctly
Yeah, that's correct. depending on the site, so there's really two types of site. There's legacy sites, which means it's older. It's an old site. And then you've got newer sites as well. Let's say greenfield sites, which are getting built up right now. And depending on who we onboarded, it's slightly different. But let's start with the harder one, which is a legacy site as in a site that is ⁓ older. In those cases, the design data is practically all outdated. So what we do is we send our team out and they look at the site, they update all your schematics, all your drawings. And that's also a nice byproduct to our customers to have their latest design data for that site. And that happens partly because in the data center world, you have your equipment changing constantly. You have Nvidia releasing new GPUs, so you want to get those new GPUs out to your customers, et cetera.
⁓ that's, that's step one. So we come in, we update all your design documents and we've seen some horrific design documents where you have ripped schematics, your schematics with coffee stains on. that's, that's what one part of our IEP to be able to deal with such terrible data and be able to update that. Now, once we've updated that site, we obviously can't, you we don't want to come back continuously. ⁓ what we allow the user to do is whenever they carry out work, let's say you are carrying a work to install new Nvidia GPUs, right? And as you do that, Entangle is directing you how to do that. It also updates your design documents. Hey, there's these new equipment in the data center. that happened automatically. Previously that didn't happen. So you only get your design documents once and they don't get updated. Now with our software, because it's working with you, it understands the entire history of your site, what changed, what didn't change. And you also have that, ⁓ that
Well, I'm really surprised because you're talking about a market that is not like you're the first person ever trying to take care of this. There are already big players like present there. And what surprised me when I... try to understand what they are lacking versus your differentiation. I was like, how on the earth you didn't ever tackle this? And I know that AWS as an example is also, they also have their in-house solutions that they are trying to improve in ways that they could. But at the same time, it's a little bit of surprising to see how on the earth nobody thought... sit down and then said, hey, this is very outdated way of doing things. Let's just try to make it more intelligent in a way. It's like, I have a feeling that you are very proactive with every single thing that you do and your onboarding has a little bit of consultative approach too. Like you are not really at the top of your game. Let's try to first set you up for success. And then we will also try to decrease the downtime if I understood correctly.
Yeah, know you've understood entirely correctly. So I think a lot of it, there's two things. Well, firstly, as a most data center companies, your priority right now is to build out more sites. And everybody's trying to build as much compute power as possible. So that's their, you know, that's their main focus. And we can help them in other ways, which is keeping them reliable. But also the other reason is why we've been able to tackle this, think is because we've really been able to think about the problem from first principles. And what I mean by that is as someone who's when someone is in the industry for a long time, they start to think that this is how things are always done. and, you know, if they want to improve stuff, they have a one way of thinking about how you can improve a given situation. So right now what would happen is
So if a company wants to improve their processes, what they would do is they'd add more paperwork. They'd add more steps into their process. So they'd be like, Hey, let's introduce a new document that makes our engineers sign off that they're wearing the right PPE. Um, so they add more and more documents, more and more bureaucracy, because that's, that's how they've thought about things for, I don't know how long. Whereas from us, you know, we've come in and we're like, thinking about this from completely different angle where we haven't been brainwashed in some ways about how things have been done.
Amazing. It's it. But at the same time There are also like when you approach in such big places to say hey give me a chance I'm gonna show you how better you can do then the obstacles are not only one two it's like an onion like every time you layer one one part of the onion till you go to the core obstacle right like where you anchor yourself in the company did you ever get those hard pushbacks like most of the times where it was the hardest moments came when you try to phasing to the company.
Um, I mean, there's always so many challenges throughout, uh, the process. So all the way from making first contact with a customer to providing continuous support, there's always going to be stuff that comes up, uh, that is challenging. Um, and a lot of the time, you know, when we started out where nobody knows you, it's always very hard to cold start. Um, and even getting like responses from people, you know, you got to. these big companies and you're like, hey, we can help you and so forth. They're not always going to listen. And what we would do, for example, is someone didn't apply back to our email, we'd them cake until they responded. Right. I've got a few emails in my mailbox of people that say, hey, stop, stop sending me cake. I'll take it. I'll take a meeting. Stop sending me cake. So ⁓
It's better that it continues to like, annoy people over email and it makes them laugh that they keep getting sent. Or, you know, I would set up a donut stand outside someone's office. So if I knew there was this particular customer that we can definitely help, what I would do is I'd go outside their office, I set up a donut stand between the hours of 8am and 10am. That's when typically people will come into the office. you know, as they come in, I'm giving out donuts, I'm going to leaflets, I'm giving them demos. And, ⁓ know, as they go in, have this, ⁓ almost like, ⁓ you know, I'm talking to the office. People are like, did you see this guy giving out donuts? He's like, he's crazy. ⁓ and then, ⁓ if, if, know, the main target is always the executives that I want to grab their attention. And, you know, if I didn't cash them on their way in, I would find their phone number. I send them a photo of me outside with the donuts. I'm like, Hey, I'm outside giving out donuts. I'm going to tell your employees, but I haven't seen you. And then they'd come out, give me a tour. ⁓
I hate you for your tactics but also it's very genuine like hey you just need to give me one chance because I know I can help you let's just give me one chance and also you're very you go with an intelligence you just don't blindly go and randomly give donuts but you have some targets actually at the top of your mind
Yeah, there's a few targets always on my mind. Whenever they finally come out and they say, yeah, we won this, it's always very satisfying. I've been tracing it for so long. So the first contact is hard, but we just get over it and ⁓ we try and find ways around it. But it's not just the first contact that's hard, it's every single stage that's hard. It's... You make first contact and you try and sell to them and you're trying to go through security and prove to them that you're safe because as a, you know, as a company, we have access to everything about the data center. Like there's actually ⁓ very few people that have as much understanding with data center as we do given that we're a third party and they have to give us access to everything. And so that's a challenge. So security is very important for us. And then after that, you want to go and onboard them and you have all sorts of different
I know they also have this. I always have a question whenever a new product is presented, right? And then what emotions does it evoke? Like when I take a look at it, when I start working with it, like, because in the end of today, we are quite emotional creatures. And then in your product, probably that simplicity and the way that the quick wins that when you set up already, when you already start. Hey, look, I'm already showing you a different way of handling things. Probably these are the, how we say, helping you earn their trust. If I'm not so off with my assumptions.
Yeah, earning their trust is, is very important. And that takes time a lot of the time, you know, with these, these companies, it's not something that they can, you know, allow us to do in a, over one meeting, it's a really continuous process where we try and prove that, ⁓ yes, everything is, is good. And we meet their standards and exceed their standards in most cases. So meeting them is one thing, but exceeding them another thing. ⁓ But yeah, it just takes time in those cases where you have to win them over. I see a few questions in the chat as well.
Yes, we are going to get to them. Don't worry. Actually, also, I was wondering how did you balance your approach around top down, bottom up? Because in the end of the day, people who are using the software are your real advocates and then they really need to leverage that. But at the same time, it needs to be visible. It needs to be valuable in the eyes of the people who are not working with them day to day. Even if they have an understanding or they don't even understanding in the details, but I doubt so how did you kind of like Pull them together into
⁓ so yeah, I mean, mean, the, the, they're all very important stakeholders. It's just that they have different. Decisions that they're there that they're involved in. and a lot of the time, the, the top down approach works great when people move from one company to another company and they're like, Hey, ⁓ I've, you know, I really need this thing because when I had this in my previous company, I was able to, you know, do so much more in, in my work. And that helps a lot because you have, they spread the word. And then you reach out to the executive, hey, there's this guy that wants to use your software. He's used it previously at this other big company. Do want to try it out? And that builds a lot of trust with them, given that, okay, they have someone internally that has used it, really wants it. And then as well as that, we work with all the other guys as well.
I, I would even say that two months, figures probably outdated. do, ⁓ right, right now. I mean, it's, it's, ⁓ I want to, ⁓ one of the biggest data center projects in the U S we are like doing probably like at least 80 % of the work. And that's the, the, the flagship one where we're working with one of the, ⁓ leading AI companies, you may or not have voted you, and that's,
What I find fascinating as well, you not only have them to reach their local maximum, but you know all the other players somehow, because you're in the sector and you see how their competitors are functioning, and then you kind of offer them a solution on a globally optimized way of doing things. Probably that would be one of the key aspects of the value that you bring to the table.
⁓ so this, I mean, we have a great team and each one of them has a, ⁓ has been recruited in different way. And the first engineer I met, reached out to him. He'd, ⁓ he'd won some programming competition in the UK. And I was like, yeah, I want this guy in our team. And I actually reached out to him. And he took like a week or two to was really disappointed. was like, he's not probably interested. ⁓ how do I get this guy? And then, ⁓ you he, he joined and it was great. ⁓ and he, he was team member number one and then team number two was
I have sent cake. I don't think I've actually sent cakes to maybe maybe I Maybe I send him cake. I have I have sent him NVIDIA GPUs. So yeah. So the second the second guy we recruited was ⁓ so he was in the rocket program that I started but not at the same time as I did. So I had I had moved on to entangle and then the person that had succeeded me
He's a great friend of mine. Like, who's the smartest engineer you have? And he was, oh, there's this guy. And I asked two people, two people, was like, Hey, who do you recommend? And they both said the same person. And I just take them. was like, all right, you're coming with us. So very straightforward. It like one text. I was like, you're coming. And it was like, yep, I'm in.
that was it. So with him, I didn't even do any interviews. I didn't do any pilots because He was referred to two people that I trust a lot. And when they say this guy's good, I'll take their word for it, especially given that they succeeded me. There was a few others that joined us from there on. But what I, you we have a Navy nuclear engineer in our team right now and he's So if anyone knows any other Navy SEALs, reach out to me. We're recruiting Navy SEALs.
Yeah, they know their stuff. If they have something to do, they make sure everything gets done. And the difference between good and great, I tell this to my team all the time, that people, when they come to the end of the day, they have their to-do list and they have stuff remaining on the to-do list. They're like, okay, let's say it's the end of the day, I'm gonna come back tomorrow and continue from my to-do Whereas great people are like, no, no, it's not the end of the day until I finish everything on my to-do list.
Yeah, one thing I was gonna say about the team before I move on. One thing that's I think pretty unique about the Italian culture is that we've got a no firing culture. So when people hear this, sometimes they're like, whoa, what? You don't fire people? I see so many founders, so many founders on LinkedIn and Twitter brag about how many people they've sacked.
It seems like they really like that. And to me, when I look at the best, for example, investors, they never give up on their companies that they've invested in, right? They always like it through thick and thin. They're with them no matter what. Think about Founders Fund or White Combinator, for example, And, you know, terrible investors, for example, you know, they'll be with you at the high points, but as soon as you do bad, they'll forget about you and they're like, ⁓ this guy's whatever. In the same way for us, it's like, you if we accept someone, we're gonna, you know, keep this guy no matter what. And we would rather torture them into greatness than give up on them. And that's a very, very important thing about the culture. You know, we have,
people looking out for each other as opposed to, you know, assigning blame because now you've got a very risk free environment where, know, if something goes wrong, people will take accountability, learn from it because there's no firing up and the only thing that you can do is improve. And that's a very important thing. But at the same time, it means getting into the company is very hard because if we accept someone, we really want to make sure that this person meets our caliber because we know that this decision is practically irreversible. And that's a very ⁓ unique thing about the company because I want everybody to feel like they can take risks, do stuff, make mistakes, take accountability and move on from it.
I mean, it's similar to investors. Like, for example, know, founders fund says they will never ever vote against the founder on the board. Right. So, you you have lots of investors on when they take board seats, they fire founders and then that practically never ever works out. Right. In the same way, you know, when founders fund first said, we're not going to fire founders. Everybody was like, wow, this is crazy. You know, you need to have like accountability and to have all this. But actually it has the opposite effect. It just means that, you know, people are going to work harder. They're going to be more motivated, they're not going to be scared, they're going be willing to take risks. And take it more importantly, take accountability for mistakes. If something goes wrong, they're not afraid of say, Oh, actually, I a mistake. Because if you want to improve, actually need to take accountability for those mistakes. And as a team, I think that's very important for us, you know, if someone gets something wrong, that's fine, as long as they, they improve and we torture each other into greatness.
Actually, that is a very, very smart way of approaching it because you rather invest all your time and energy to make sure you let the right people in and be part of the team. It's like, actually, it's also very rare that in the army that you get fired. Like, you got into the various roles, unless you do ethical wrongs, if I am not right. Yeah.
Yeah, there's two instances where I do say I will fire. And one of them is if someone has lied or like misled us. And the second one is if someone plays politics, we have a strict no politics culture in the company. And by that I mean, you know, things like favoritism, things like socializing ideas before a decision is
No one has private conversations. You can see anyone's conversations. ⁓ There's no Slack DMs. Everything goes through our public channels. You can request an email. You can request anything. And that's very important. ⁓ So there's nothing, know, anyone can know anything about the company at any point, whether it's about me, whether it's how much I earn, whether that's what I do with other customers or how different team members interact with each other. All of that is visible. And that's another great thing the company.
I think by doing so, you already eliminate a couple of root causes to dysfunctional teams, right? Like sometimes even not intentionally those things happen that you don't mean in that way. then how do you say this? You kind of set mechanisms internally in the company that only empowers and enables people forward. And then you trust their own judgment so that this information is available. There is nothing. There is nothing hidden, like if you want to know something, down to my salary and your peers salary, in this way everyone also, this trust feeling goes beyond trust, I guess, and they feel committed in a very, how I say, engaged way.
Yeah, I mean, ultimately, that's how you create a high performing team. It's like, you you have that if you join, like if you like, if you're like in the military, you know, you need to have trust in your in your team members and your teammates in a similar way. Here, you know, everybody can trust each other and take each other's words for it. And there's no risk for taking risks in the company. That's that's really important.
Exactly. The biggest risk is not taking risks. And, you know, from my previous experience, when I led the rocket program, and what I saw, you we started out very small, obviously, then we got to six people, 12 people, 25, 50, 75, and all of a we were 100. And things go so fast between when you have six people to 100. At that point, we created teams, so we had people who are like overseeing, I don't know, the electronics, some people were overseeing.
the structure of the rocket. What I saw was people became a bit territorial, right? If someone was in structures, if they were in response to the structure of the rocket, they were like, they didn't want other people dealing with that. And if something went wrong, they'd be like, it's because the electronics guys haven't done that. Right? And this is why I'm very serious about having a no politics environment in the company where I'm like, you know, we are all one team. So if something is not getting done, you also have to take accountability for them and get it done. Right. don't want that territorial aspect within the company. I I'm responsible for this customer. I don't care about this other customer. I'm like, well, it doesn't matter because we're all, we're all one team and we, have to make sure we look out for each other and make sure things, things get done and, and we really torture each other into greatness.
Yeah, this reminded me of Jensen Hong's ⁓ saying that he also ⁓ aims to, let's say, build the team culture and functions around a very simple, but at the same time, quite demanding, intellectually demanding. I think the challenges are always human problems. You don't have tech problems. don't have...
code problem. I have never seen a situation where we entered to solve a problem for a manufacturing company or let's say a B2B SaaS solution and then we just couldn't write the code. Like that was never the case. It's always like the communication or different understanding of the same problem or as you say politics. Somebody wants to stick to like cling to their chair and they don't want to they feel insecure. They don't want to open it up. And I show how things are not actually working well. It's a very refreshing perspective. feel very, how say, hopeful. Because there are not so many people like you out there.
Yeah. that I really aspire to one of them is Jensen Jensen's great. Another one is Warren Buffett and Jensen for his way of leading a team. So if you look in the video, it's a very flat hierarchy. In fact, on the Nvidia committee, so if you want to get Nvidia to invest in your company, there's three people on the investment committee is the CFO is one other person and Jensen Huang. So Jensen Huang writes every single check pretty much and Nvidia himself. It's a very, very flat company. Everyone knows what's happening. And you know, that's that's something that We have similarities to as well. The other person I really like is Warren Buffett for his just understandings of business fundamentals. Today I see so many AI companies that, ⁓ excuse my language, do a lot of bullshit. Like they run on hype and ⁓ you know, the VC money gets to their head. They think because they're VC backed or they're an AI company or they're an R &D company, whatever it is, the basic fundamentals of business don't apply to them, right? There's so many companies out there that still don't understand that you've got to make more money than you spent over any time period. If you're an R &D company, you know, your time horizon is much longer. You may be looking at a 10 year time span where you're like in 10 years, in the 10 years time span, I'm going to be making more than I spent. That's rule number one. It doesn't matter whether you're software or hardware or R &D, AI, not AI, VC or not VC, right? And the second thing is the best companies have got lots of pricing power and they can you know, the customers like them so much that they're willing to pay practically anything to, to use their services. And, you know, I tell my team, know, we, you know, we, shouldn't be, ⁓ tempted by all these other AI companies today that do lots of hype marketing, lots of, lots of fake stuff. And they spend like huge amounts of money on, on stuff that. It's just pointless. And I'm like, you know, let's stay focused on what matters and the fundamentals of business. apply to us regardless of anything. ⁓ So I always, you know, I always try and be cashflow positive, even as a startup, but also always have at least two years of cash in the bank, even if we get no revenue. Those are two very important financial rules that we have in the company. And yet we are still growing incredibly fast because we that the fundamentals of business still apply to us and we don't do ⁓ bullshit hype marketing and stuff.
No, actually this, I kind of feel always hopeful when I, for example, before we met, I was looking around all the, how to say, information out there, but sort of also marketing, you guys also executed. I admire it when people fully focus on the problems faced and the people who have this, because then they have enough motivation and capabilities to go into that. But then insights don't come from... the the insights mostly come from really focusing and heads down, understand the human being who has a problem in the big company and then trying to co-design a solution together. Like this is also kind of a sign of focus at the same time for me, not that, they didn't get this marketing piece yet. No, there are so many founders. I'm such a surprise how much budgets are going into marketing activities and the time.
or without nailing down the core, they start thinking about go to market. Well, everything comes down to your differentiation and what you offer to the person as a value. If you don't focus there, then you will focus on the motions rather than the, how to say, the right steps that are going to generate you the value. You know what I mean? Not like the very intentional way of looking at the whole dynamics, but rather let's say, ⁓ social media cheering zone. Like cheer zone on social media. Yeah.
Awesome. It's been a really enlightening conversation so far. And I must say, personally, I didn't expect to take as much learning about building high performing teams from the conversation as I have. And that's a great compliment to yourself. As someone who has spent a lot of time in organizations who are very monolithic, ⁓ I can understand a lot of the pain points which you kind of called out earlier on, ⁓ particularly within, know, financial services and insurance type space. So with that being the case, there are a few questions that came through as people registered for the event. So one of those was, and I feel like you've answered it to a degree already, but you how do you sell into the data center operators and how did you overcome those security concerns that they had first off? ⁓ And then secondly, other questions that kind of preface the event were, differentiates you from the hyperscalers? And again, I know you sort of touched on that in terms of their focus is elsewhere and kind of skewed towards growth at the moment. But if you could perhaps can answer and expand on those, and then we'll go through to the questions that will come in throughout the chat.
Yeah, mean, security is always always big. ⁓ with security, we basically have very serious and rigorous process in place ⁓ with lots of controls. So we're like, audited with multiple frameworks with multiple auditors. And, ⁓ you know, we have, we have the basic stuff like encryption arrest and transit. And then we have some more ⁓ serious stuff, especially when you're dealing with like, for example, government data. And that's like a whole lot of different security that you need for them. then, yeah, essentially when it comes to security, it's just the playbook is very simple. Just make sure you have all the right controls, the right security controls in place. It takes a lot of time. takes a lot of your energy and bandwidth across the company to make sure things are compliant. But you just basically have to make sure they're there. And there's like, list of 500 or so controls that we have in place across the company with reliability internally, whether it's a security, whether it's incident response planning. So we do instant response planning at least once every quarter. By that, mean, we as a company come in and we say, if there was someone who was, I don't know, there was some ransomware attack in the company, how do we respond to that? Do we give them the money? Do we not give them the money? Et cetera. we act those stuff out as well. And then we do monthly penetration tests. So we have a third party that comes in and we have different levels of penetration tests across all of our customer platforms. We make sure that things are secure and continuously secure for our customers. ⁓ It's a lot of things, but it's just that it takes time and we prioritize that over anything else.
Absolutely. And I guess a personal question I had as well was Again, this is probably fueled by my history in larger financial services companies. And it's one of the things that sounds like you've combated very well at your own kind of organizational level, which is the politics and protectioneering that you get within silos. So when you're going into a customer, how do you overcome where maybe you've got the ear of the CISO or the CTO, but you're trying to avoid Maybe you're not trying to avoid, but how do you overcome the internal conversation around maybe they haven't been doing the job that they need to be doing in terms of the DC ops within an organization.
⁓ Yeah, I mean, whenever I deal with these companies, it's actually, there's, you know, whenever I deal with big enterprises, there's always like, very different culture to what we have internally. You can, you can almost always see the politics that play within a company, within an external company. I've had some, some horror stories with politics in other companies where we've like served them. You know, I've seen like two executives literally having like, fights right in front of me about, this is what we've been doing things wrong or not. And you can see, you know, they have, for example, terrible culture. And a lot of the time, know, when I'm dealing with that in external companies, a lot of the time it's just ego. And you've got to understand that, you know, the person that's causing the racket at that external company and then when they're fighting internally within themselves, it's just got to get overcome there. their ego problems and make sure that they're both they both understand that they're both correct. ⁓ But yeah, I mean, you have all these you have this terrible culture and these other big, big enterprises at times. And we've just got to deal with it and understand that it is how it is.
Perfect, awesome. So what I will do is I will start opening up the chat to people who have sent questions through. So first off, hoping this will go smoothly, is we'll reach out to Khalid. If you want to, you should have the ability to essentially ring in and Nika will allow you into the chat and then you can speak to Shepal and ask your questions directly. And we'll kind of work through the questions. outside of that, think from from Carly that was he's kind of seen some parallels in digital assets now in AI around a lot of the kind of noise and BS. I guess a question I would have developing off that is when you have some of the larger agreements happening in the space where there are questions around how those are being funded and sometimes looks like Creative accounting is a bad word, potentially complex in their kind financial structure. ⁓ How do you... When it can be easy to see people gaining leverage, trust, growth, financial success from putting out that information, how do you kind of combat that internally, I guess, from making sure that you're committed to the principles that you've kind of set out so far in terms of the kind of having a really clear business foundation and those good basics that you talked about throughout the
Yeah, I mean, I am not. I don't have any specific details on, guess, the bigger deals with the bigger companies that are happening. And I don't know who it'd be for me to, I guess, comment on whether or not I think it's going to happen in that case. But, you know, I tell my team always is not to be tempted with the BS that a lot of startups do where they you know, forget the main focus of the company, which is to bring in money and bring in money, um, profitably, at least at a gross profit level. Um, and you know, if you, if you want to spend more or burn more, when you know that every dollar you spend in sales and marketing converts into let's say $2 in revenue, that, that, that may be one case where it would make sense. um, I always tell them, look, as a company, we have to make more money. that we spend over a time period that could be over a year, that could be over a quarter, that could be over 10 years, but we have to remember that, you know, that's rule number one, right? Every dollar that we spend, we have to understand that there will be some return to it over some timeframe. And then obviously the other things come into play as well, where in order to win, you have to build that trust with your customers. that you don't do passive. And there's really good stories around other YC companies, for example, Coinbase, ⁓ when FTX was around and a few others were around, a lot of their investors were asking, Brian Armstrong, hey, ⁓ your competitors are growing so much faster. Look, they're like cutting corners here and there. Why don't we do it? And he was like, no, no, no, let's play the integrity game here. Let's do things properly. Let's follow the basic. you know, the basic fundamentals of business still apply to us. you know, Coinbase today is still around. And I think it's either the biggest or the second biggest YC company. ⁓ So in the long run, understanding those basic principles and having high integrity always wins over everything else. ⁓ And even if there's someone else that has some sort of advantage in the short term, we shouldn't be tempted by it just because, you know, if the fundamentals are wrong, it's wrong.
Hmm. And in my head, at least the the flat structure and lack of politics and kind of the radical candor that is bred through your organizational culture would at least kind of help that as well, because you're not having these kind of gray areas or cracks that things can fall into and people can perhaps kind of, I guess, move outside of that culture. So Again, that's just a point I'd say to, it seems like you're doing a fantastic job in terms of building and driving those high performance teams. So thank you for that answer. I will go to Tobias
First of all, pleasure to have you in the call and just want to get a bit of an understanding in terms of the scope, what you are doing. So I understood that you are basically focusing on a bit like the engineering design phase. But please correct me if it's not the correct. the correct understanding or as well as more focus on the actual operations phase. then it's basically ⁓ if there is specific trades or parts of the data center in this respect, what you are focusing on. there's obviously multiple writers, the IT itself, there's cooling, there's equipment security, all these kinds of things, certain parts you already addressed. Maybe you can say a few words around that one.
we focus all the way from the power that comes to the data center all the way to the racks. ⁓ So that includes your power systems, whether it's your main energy that's being supplied or your generators on site. In some cases, you're seeing even gas stations being created on site. We help them in those areas as well. And then you have the mechanical systems where you have your cooling and you can either have air cooled data centers or liquid cool data centers. The newer ones, that you have lots of liquid cooling that are way more complex than air-cooled systems. downtime is much more critical in those instances when you have your liquid cooling go down, it's pretty critical to the site. you take it down your data center in some cases. And then obviously the power feeds into your racks and your servers and so forth. And that requires a level of operations there as well a level of design there with your networking, with your servers, so forth and so on. And that's another area we help address in order to make sure that these sites reliably operate based on their design data.
mean, the second question was around a bit like who is actually that you are selling to. So if there is many multiple parties that are so to say involved in this. So is it like the later operator, like the one that is building? it like, because I mean, you have to obviously convince all the different parties, right, to be involved here. How does that work?
really two main types of companies that we sell to is the owners and then there's the operators. In some cases that's a single company. in a lot of the hyperscale cases, they are the owners and the operators of that site. In some cases, especially when it comes to like private equity companies think Blackstone, KKR, et cetera. They own the data centers, but they may not necessarily operate them. In those cases, we would sell to two different companies or, you know, we would get buy-in from both companies before we proceed. the sales ⁓ is slightly different in both cases. But essentially there's those two routes that we can go down.
a lot of would say persuasion needed and like I made discussion with the owner operator with the many parties that are involved then how how is it handled are you like approaching them or is it like that the that your customers basically saying we are choosing you and basically this is given you all have to work together
⁓ It's a mixture of both. We always do some outbound ourselves and meet these companies ⁓ As a company always one that you you know, if we can do that we should do it because it means more revenue but Now as we're becoming more a Player in industry. There's a lot more companies reach out to us and say and we've heard about you guys from eggs ⁓ This this company or this person and we were intrigued, we want to find out more, we roll this out to a site? ⁓ But that proportion is growing ⁓ slowly in our case.
Great, okay. So, hi, Shappal. First off, thanks for being here. ⁓ Really awesome stories to hear. So thanks for that and congrats on everything. ⁓ So my first question is just kind of on the HR company side. ⁓ You know, I took a look at your ⁓ careers page and saw a few interesting policies. So ⁓ first off, I saw something interesting that ⁓ you basically, say the Y'all Will Vet talent and come to a decision in just three to six days. I presume that's maybe from the time that you meet them in person for the weekend interview, right?
⁓ I'm pretty we're pretty quick and making decision in fact To all the people that we recruited we recruited in like less than five minutes. We had a phone call with them and I was like ⁓ That's it. We want to we want to go ahead with it In you know, the way I approach decision is that if it's not a hell yeah, it's no if it's a maybe if it's like this could be good. It's no and in the hell yeah cases very obvious that this person is a hell yeah. So to answer your question directly, when does that time begin? It's from that very first call that I have with them. So as soon as they make that call, but you know, they apply, I read the application. And in the application, I was asked for two videos to be sent through, you know, six second video showing the most impressive, impressive thing that they've built. And a six second video introducing themselves, I watched that. And if we like it, we give them a call. on their phone, takes 10 minutes. And in fact, that's how YC makes their decisions. They ask you to submit a video, you send the video along with the application. They have a 10 minute call with you. And if they like you, they accept you. There's no other things going on. And I don't see why you need more than 10 minutes. If anyone's a maybe, you can filter them out in those 10 minutes. And then if they're a hell yeah, you can very quickly proceed. And that's the kind of talent we want, guess, in the company.
mean, on non-technical hires, I always ask them, let's say we're a salesperson, it's like, okay, what was the most creative sale that you ever had? There's lots of salespeople that can use, think that sales is just emails and phone calls, but they don't really think about anything else. So I asked them about that, I asked them about their quota. They still watched that 60-second video introducing themselves, and then really make the decision from there.
I don't believe in work life banning because I think, you know, if you're going to do anything, you should enjoy it. And it should be like something that you want to do. And the culture that we really have internally, what we call it is work wherever, work whenever. But, know, I tell my team, I don't care where you work, when you work, I don't want, I don't need you to be in the office at 9am. Just get the work done. And we say that because I've seen a lot of companies where they measure activity as opposed to measuring output. I see lots of there's a big thing happening in San Francisco now where people are saying we have a nine nine six culture, which means working from nine AM to nine PM six days a week to me. That's very stupid. ⁓ because you're measuring activity, how long someone's in office. like, I don't care. Just get stuff done and exceed expectations. well, good. That's, that's the kind of people that want, and the people that we recruit in our company is people that we trust. Right? As you know, the founder of the company, I don't need to watch over people and be like, are you working or not? I should just be able to trust them that they're going to get stuff done because they're like a rocket ship. And that's what we really mean about that. About that is that I don't care how many, where you work, when you work with this 3am, when it's 2am, whether it's 9am, 2pm, it doesn't, it doesn't bother me. ⁓ and personally, I, you know, The reason why I became a founder is because I can't do a nine to five or I can't do a ⁓ work schedule. I like to get coffee at 10 a.m., go down to the coffee shop, go to a walk, call home and see how ⁓ my family is doing. But I still work at 11 p.m. I still work at 10 p.m. I still work pretty much every minute that I'm up. Essentially, I want to give that same freedom to my team where they can do whatever they want whenever they want but just get stuff done and that you know that Highlights the thing that we're after the thing that we're after is outcomes not activity I see in like especially in big enterprises people measure like how many emails they send how many meetings they had and a lot of time When I'm interacting with these big companies you can very obviously see when someone sends like, you know They schedule an email for like 7 a.m on a Saturday or something. They're not even up at 7 a.m because I can I can respond to them at 7 or 1 and be like, hey, ⁓ I've got it. Because I'm very quick with my replies most of the time. And they take like two days to respond, which is very obvious that that email was scheduled. And it creates this like fake work culture. And to me, we don't want that here. And we trust our team. Do whatever you want, whenever you want. Just get stuff done. And by the way, this doesn't mean you have to be remote. know, we still. are very big on in-person interactions. ⁓ It just means you have the freedom to just do whatever you want and make sure things get done.
It's not a chill culture. That's, that's something I want to interact with. would be specific, but it's a, it's a flexible work culture. Like, you know, as a founder, for example, myself, I'm very flexible in terms of when I work, where I work, doesn't mean I don't work hard. It just means I'm entirely flexible around when I work. And that's the same, I guess, luxury that my team has as well is that, you know, they expect it to work hard. And, you know, I tell everybody, you know, you've got to work hard and smart, but, you know, when you do it. I don't care. Well, how you do it, I care. It's just the outputs that matter here.
Well, that's cool. I think that's great. Let me see. Okay, so that sort of acts as one of my other questions. I guess the only thing, the only last question I have is I don't know how much you can talk about it, but you mentioned with me a little bit about the secret sauce and how like, I don't know what you said, know, wouldn't be secret if you shared it or something like that. But. You know, guess how do I understand, I think maintaining ⁓ operators like, I don't know, Blackstone, these types of players that maybe are not deeply technical as organizations, or at least not as technical as the hyperscalers. But somebody like Amazon or Google, you know, how do you think about maintaining them as clients going into the future? Because You know, they have armies of engineers and, ⁓ you know, they, they obviously took it upon themselves to create these massive cloud computing, ⁓ and data center platforms. ⁓ and so, you know, you mentioned making sure that people don't turn off the wrong switch, right? But, ⁓ I'm thinking, you know, there, there, there must be some, you know, very interesting technical things that you guys are doing, ⁓ in order to get and keep those clients into the future. So, Anything else that you can share on that?
There's a few things there. For them, the number one thing right now is expansion and top line and revenue and so forth. So all of that resource are going out to, how can we build more sites? ⁓ And having a partner like us, know, take care of other stuff is very useful. And we do it at the end of the day more efficiently for them because we have a product that's built. If they were to start, would spend ⁓ tens of millions of dollars on it and two years to get the product up, right? Or they can just use our product and get value out of it right away. Now, ⁓ the question you ask is, okay, but how do you maintain them? So, okay, you've won them over, but how do you maintain them? So let's say in two years time, in parallel to this, they're also developing a tool of their own internally. Why would they not switch over in two years? And there's a few reasons. Number one, We've locked them in by contracts. So that's one thing. But ⁓ as well as that, the hyperscales are really our partners as opposed to competitors. And in the industry, if you were to have a company that operates these data centers, you would want someone that's neutral. for example, you know, like, let's take Oracle. Oracle has a lot of their computing power used you know, in data center, data centers owned by Blackstone and the same data centers, you also have Microsoft right next door. Now the company that operates that site has to be neutral. You will never have a Microsoft software operating in Oracle infrastructure, or you'll never have Oracle infrastructure operating in Microsoft infrastructure. And the same way you won't have, you know, AWS serving them both. And that's, that's a very important thing. They're very, you know, they take security very seriously. And that's where we come in as a as a third party to help them out both.
Hey, finally, There was a bit of an echo, so I'll turn it off for a second. My question is, you might have been following this development about data centers and space. And I'm wondering if such a thing becomes a reality. What are the technology challenges that you foresee? And for instance, to convince a person like you who's been working on account-based data centers for a while, what are the technologies that you would want to see demonstrated you trust something like that, putting the data in space, operating on space, orchestrating large data volume transfers over space, what are the key technologies that you think would be necessary to be demonstrated before you move, for instance, one of the data centers from ground.
I got the question. So his question was around data centers in space. And what do I think the challenges are around that? So there's very few people who actually have experience with data centers in space. I'm like, what, you know, small subset of people that actually have experience with both. And I would say, firstly, I know Philip from Star Cloud. So he was in the same YC batch as me in the same group, same partner as well. And I was actually one of the people that are further. So, you know, I believe in the idea, but that's the idea is challenging and all great things are challenging to begin with. And, you know, there's lots of people that talk about cooling problems or so forth and so on. you know, to me, it's an inevitability that you are going to have data such as a space at some point in time. And, you know, you're going to need, for example, robotics on site. to be able to maintain that data center. Right now you have people turning off switches and stuff and so on, but you're need like an automated system that can do that for you. ⁓ You're gonna need creative cooling methods and you're need falling launch costs. Now, I think all of those can be done, right? You can have the cooling, you can have falling launch costs and you can have the robotics ⁓ sometime in the future. And if... If there was anyone that could do this, it'd be Philip because Philip is actually an incredible founder. So I always say this, you know, I say it's a very challenging problem, but if anyone can actually make this happen, it's Star Cloud and Philip, because I know how crazy driven he is. And that said, all the three problems that I highlighted are problems that have solutions and you can solve it. And there's lots of things, when it comes to aerospace, there's lots of things that... people have thought of as stupid at the start. There was lots of people that thought SpaceX was stupid. There's lots of people that thought supersonic planes were stupid and they were all wrong. And you see the same cycle in hardware where a hardware company comes out, everybody says this is not gonna happen for a reason. And the founders work away for a few years and then they make it happen. And all of a sudden everybody forgets that they were against the idea from day one. And they're like, yeah, of course, SpaceX is great. SpaceX has always been great, but it wasn't always like that. So I say, you right now there's lots of people that criticize the idea and I can probably say that they're wrong ⁓ and it's going to happen. You know, you're going to have data centers in space at some point and I'm rooting for Team Star Cloud. So that's what I'd say.
couldn't agree more. was ⁓ very enlightening to speak to Philip a few weeks back. yeah, ⁓ very singular in his drive, like you said. And I think you need that when you're... I know moonshot is kind of, know, sounds somewhat like, I don't mean that in sort of like the idiomatic way. It may come across in reference to what he's doing, but... What I will do is I know we're getting towards the end of time and a few people having to step out of the lobby. So I will ask for now to be brought back in and we can do some closing questions and closing remarks. And just from my side, it's been really interesting to hear you breathe. a lot of joy and excitement into a topic that when it's something I've approached in the past has felt quite dry. If I'm being entirely honest, and personally, I've learned a lot from you today, I like to think that most of the people that were able to join the call have too. And then also those that will be able to share this with moving forward and I'll pass back to Nahal. But thank you very much, Shepal.
Awesome, amazing. Because ⁓ in terms of the execution within the team and also towards your customers, you have this also genuine way of connecting with people. Therefore, I was just going to ask, what are the things, the hard lessons? Because not everything is always smooth, right? Like probably on the way there were some rainy days too. So I want to little bit understand one of those, Show us a little bit of those rainy days, not the sunny path. And what happened there? What were the really key lessons that you yourself were surprised?
⁓ Rainy days. Let me think of some. ⁓ I mean, there's definitely been... ⁓ lots of challenging moments in the company's history. I'll tell you one, for example, during YC where when we started, we were in the aerospace industry. That meant that we had to go through the processes and basically we weren't producing any results for like... so long in the, in in the batch. And it was getting increasingly frustrating that, you know, our revenue was practically zero. was very, very little for, I don't know how long it was six weeks or something or eight weeks. And, you know, every week I'd come back in and speak to our YC partner and be like, yup, we are in the same place. It was, was very, very, very, um, very frustrating. know, Tom, our YC partner is very good at, you know, keeping us focused in terms of the, the stuff that actually matches and revenue and so forth. And, ⁓ you know, for six to eight weeks, it was very, very difficult and painful. And it was like, ⁓ nothing's working. You see other people, you know, getting, getting results, especially during YC where, ⁓ think things are very hard. then, you know, we got our first customers and that was, ⁓ that, that, was exciting. And then things from that went very, very smoothly. So I'd say, you know, the, the cold start was very, very anxiety inducing, but nothing that we couldn't come over. And I think ⁓ most of the problems are like that. mean, I just like to think about things now in a very particular way. I imagine like, if I'm in a video game and I see a map and I see all these data centers on the map and I've got my team and I've got my investors and... I can almost imagine the map where I'm trying to take over data centers on the map. it's like playing Clash of Clans or Forge of Vampires, almost. And I just focus on what matters. It's like, how can I get one extra data center? And in the game, I can almost simulate my team. I'm like, this guy is on PTO this week. He's not going to be available. So he's inactive. This data center is getting angry. This data center is not responding to me. What do we do? We send them a cake.
And you know, when you think about it that way, it's basically a game and it's actually really, fun. It's really addictive when you think about it that way. know, lots of people are addicted to Clash of Clans and Forge of Empires and you you run into problems there, but I don't stress about them as much because to me it's like, ⁓ well, it's just a game. I can just get another data center. If that data center, if I can't get that data center, I'm gonna get that data center. If I can't get to that person, well, I'm gonna get to the other person. And... ⁓ Yeah, that's what I would say.
and eventually that they will come to me for that because there's sometimes, you when you go after the... I am a fan of going after the big logos at the beginning because these people are giving immediate credibility. Once you have one, then the other looks, ⁓ you work with them? I want to work with you too. So like really human psychology 101. So simple. And at the same time, they have enough resources that they can also help you to sustain yourself on the wrong way. So you don't get into such detailed negotiations around the even the way that the POC runs and all. But regarding the days that when you went into your partner's check in. on the officers and the same, or this is also the same, but at the same time, it must have given you some way, some sort of resilience at the same time, because you know, this shall pass, but I just don't know what to do right now. But then your pivot came at a moment that was right after the demo day, that when you...
How would your life be different if you were to try to pull this off in the UK? If you haven't been to YC? It's a little bit of a hypothetical question, but I'm just trying to because you have built something in the UK and now you're building something in the US with this amazing ecosystem of YC.
Yeah, I mean, the UK is a great country and I I grew up there. So I'm thankful for a lot of things that the UK But I would say when it comes to the startup scene, it is nowhere near as good as the US. In fact, like... ⁓ I think there is, know, in the, in, in generally speaking outside of the U S it's not a UK problem only. could be the rest of Europe. It could be, I don't know, Canada. Most people, when they come across that news of companies, they, they just aware of big companies and they're like, all these big companies have always been around and they'll always be the big companies and so forth. Whereas when you're in Silicon Valley, ⁓ you literally see all these billboards for startups, you see people building companies and it's like, ⁓ yeah, it is, it is possible. You have that belief, you have that culture that yes, things are possible. It's a very different culture to let's say anywhere else on the planet. And I think that's the biggest difference. Like whenever I try to like sell to European companies or British companies or any other ⁓ geographic region, you know, they see you as a startup and they're like, we buy from startups? you know, is it gonna work? Whereas in the US, you can literally speak to the CEO of the biggest company on the planet. ⁓ And they'll take you seriously. Like in our case, it Andy Jassy from, from Amazon, but he was like a seriously, and that this would, this would never happen in any other part of part of the world. Unless you know, the U S and that's, that's something that the U S does very well. It's like, you know, the, startup culture is second to none. And you know, the UK and the rest of the world can definitely improve, but it's, ⁓ it's, ⁓ it's a different mindset.
Mm. But also regarding your, you encountered with him, but also there's a fact that YC kinda helps you manufacture your luck because at the same time that makes you visible in the right audience for the right people. And also there is some sort of the default trust default. His team is capable. Let's just try to see what they are doing. Perhaps. Do you want to deal with, Have thoughts, go back, remind back and then see your conversation. How was it? Also for the first, for you standing, I worked for Amazon previously and then the culture in Amazon is also quite unique in a sense that innovation internally, people can come up with their own startup and then you just then launch it as a product name and then you put it out. It's a very unique and encouraging way. Like you need to have really good reasons to say no, if you don't want to.
Yeah, no, Amazon is a really good company. ⁓ to my team, I say there's really three great companies out there that are big today. It's Apple, American Express, and AWS. And ⁓ the thing I like most about AWS is the democratic side of things. You know, the fact that anybody can, ⁓ you know, let's say create AI products within Amazon and use it. That's a very important thing to drive innovation. And You can really see when you interact with a ⁓ person from Amazon that they work so differently to anyone else. And the principles that Amazon and Jeff Bezos laid out with Amazon are so key to their success. And some people love it, some people don't do very well on Amazon because it's just not a fit for them. But ⁓ the team are, when it comes to tech and data centers, there's no one that does it better than them.
Well, the first thing I tell my team is let's let's take it one step at a time so focused on today ⁓ There's there's lots of things that can that can happen we have to execute well today in order to be able to do stuff tomorrow, but The thing that the division which we very rarely talk about publicly and internally actually is that ⁓ We essentially want to run the world's critical infrastructure, right? That's not just data centers. That's the electric grid. That's nuclear plants. That's semiconductor manufacturing
That is quite a bold vision at the same time, but also if you take a look into the as an outsider when I try to understand, it's all transferable skill sets and solutions that you apply, right? Like once you figure out a domain, then you can also move to the other domain because in the end you always tackle the engineering design problems. It's a very overly simplified way.
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, you know, for example, the data sense that we deal with today and a lot of data sense that we deal with, you know, they have like a power plant right next door that they're also building or a nuclear plant or solar plant. And, know, we serve them as well. And to us, you know, you can expand that into main areas of instruction. But right now, you know, we say, you know, we're focused on the thing at hand today. We have to do well today in order to be able to even dream about tomorrow. ⁓ So we're pragmatic in that sense. Let's do well today and then tomorrow we'll think about what's next.
Awesome. right. So, ⁓ Şapal, we have something. ⁓ We have a question for you from our previous guest. And I'm gonna, I just will read it to you and let's see what your answer would be. I think you can guess who was that person. It's coming from Brandon Severin.
Brandon is great friend of mine. honestly, don't think I will say this. I don't think I would have been able to do what I've done without Brandon. There's been lots of hard times in the company, which, you know, I know you asked me about hard times, but there's been really hard times in the company that honestly, I would not have been able to do without Brandon. I've had, you we go on a walk with coffee in hand and Brandon is amazing.
Mm. Yeah, we're the mesmerized all of us, I guess. He's a superhuman being at the same time. So smart and humble and reflective. Amazing. Very happy for you. You have such a great close friend. So Brandon's question is the following. When does it hurt the most? And what keeps you going? Come on, coming back to the rainy days again, huh?
is ⁓ When does ⁓ it hurt? It hurts the most when there's things that you can't, there's times where you're like, there's this thing is going on and I, know, at first it may seem like. It's not in our control. And then I go back to this, you know, the thing that Paul Graham says about Sam Altman. a very famous essay about that program where it's like top five founders. And in that list, he's got the founder of Sony, I believe is some Japanese founder that inspired Steve Jobs. Number two was Steve Jobs. Number three was Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Number four was Paul Bukai, the founder of Gmail. And number five was Sam Altman. And at the time he had written this, Salman was like 19 years old or something like super young. He was some nobody. So when I met, you know, when I met Paul Graham, I was like, I really want to ask him this question. And I asked this around YC every time I met, whenever I meet a partner, I'd be like, why has he put Salman with that? What did he see in Salman when he was 19 years old to put him in the same ranks as Steve Jobs and Larry Page and all these other guys? And I was never able to get a satisfactory answer until I met program himself, I was like, you got to tell me this. What is it? And he was like, well, he told me a few stories about some moment, but the thing that really stood out was that if you put some moment on an island by himself, and he's with a group of and that's actually in his essay as well. And he's with, you know, with cannibals on that island, come back in five years, he'll be king. And That really gives me that. It's like, you know, if Salmone could survive that, then why can I not do it? So I think that's something that keeps me going. like, hey, how can I get this done? Even if it's not in my control, even if I'm stranded on island and I'm surrounded by cannibals, how do I still come out of this? And yeah, I just... ⁓ you know keep keep going and I also the second thing is I also keep going thanks to great friends that I have through YC and Brandon is one of that ⁓ keeps me going.
This was such a beautiful conversation and having spoken with both of you I could see that how the, let's say, brotherhood is kind of connected. But another, Şapul, it was a pure joy and pleasure having you here today. I had so much fun and I also learned a lot from you. It was a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time and for being here.
Keep listening
Recent conversations
Off-Grid AI Data Centers Powered By Second-Life Tesla Batteries. Built in 200 Days. | Casey Spencer
Moon Hotel Trojan Horse: 1st Bricks of a Type III Kardashev Civilization | Skyler Chan, GRU Space
