Conversation · 12
Why Pure Software Is Uninvestable: The SpaceX & YC Way to Build Hardware | Jamie Gull DD #12
Transcript
Jamie, it's a pleasure to have you today. Thank you so much for giving us your time.
this morning, I bumped into Albert Einstein's quote that he was saying something along the line. The life has a better meaning if there's truth, beauty and goodness in it. Maybe you're familiar with this quote, it will be meaningless if you don't have the fellowship of the like-minded people, it literally fit the picture of you in my head because you managed to have this fellowship in your life since day one. and then kind of build the ecosystems and then you also always in the places with real builders, real critical thinkers and around some meaningful missions. Let's hit the ARR MRR but rather let's build something that is meaningful and that's gonna change our lives. Would that be a good accurate picture of you in my head?
No, I d I actually specifically don't do that. I guess as I get a little bit older, maybe a little bit more so. I've got a child now, so my thought process is a little bit different, but I came out of a internship at Boeing when I was in college and specifically did not want to have a five or ten year plan because I thought that was a bad idea and would lock me into something that wasn't what I wanted. But the common thread from childhood for me is like I grew up in an aviation family. my grandfather
was a pilot, so I've got pictures of me in like a little airplane. so I didn't want to be a pilot, but it kind of instilled that in me. I wanted to be an engineer. and so when I went to college at Stanford, it w I knew I wanted to be an engineer, and the question is what kind? and decided to start with aerospace and never left. So I know a lot of folks want to explore different majors. within months I knew it was the right thing for me. and just wanted to get going. You know, all the intro courses on that are hard on math and
in, kind of thrown in the deep end. Like to for me, school growing up was like frankly, like super easy. it was boring. I was not pushed at all. I was in a public school in the mountains in Colorado. So like there was not, and and back then there was a lot fewer, you know, advanced programs available or
and then everybody's got these kind of big ambitions and dreams. So that was the environment that that kind of switched it for me. and kind of have been in I've been in those environments ever since. Like incredibly high performance environments that are ambitious. and I think that's amazing. and it it fosters a lot of a lot of other things. So we can get into that like post post SpaceX
Yeah, totally right. I mean at the time the two top aerospace programs in the country were MIT and Stanford and they were kind of alter would alternate every other year. for me, like MIT if I hadn't gotten into Stanford, I would have definitely gone to MIT. I'm a I'm a West Coast guy. Like I the the vibe for me at Stanford was way better
But I actually for the conversation, I just want to get to know you as a human being first before going into all the achievements that you witnessed, you built as a part of the team. then towards the end, we are gonna have two founders today who are gonna have a conversation with you. They are also building their own startup and I've been in conversation with them for like... not almost a year,
If that is fine with you, then I will continue in this flow. I don't have a definitive script, but I have questions in my head and I will take the conversation wherever it goes. But awesome. And actually, once you graduated, then you kind of joined a very small team and took full responsibility on end to end. Not a, me get into this training program or let me get into this big, big machine, one of those big aerospace companies and then see things inside and then find something other. That's most of the times that the thinking, but then I think the urge was already clear back then when you picked. you made that move. What was the most exciting part there? What made you say, my gosh, yes, let's go.
Yeah, it was it was very clear to me where I wanted to be. I did that internship at Boeing was they offered a job for me to come back after I fidget finished my my master's degree and I declined. And some folks thought I was crazy. but I after being there for three months, I was terrified that I was gonna be bored out of my mind. It was incredibly slow. Like they had me
most advanced in the world and or at least was at that time. And that was amazing. But my assignment was, you know, I came in and did some data analysis, like code work, cleaned up a a system there and it was it was just kind of clear that like They they have some very amazing engineers there in the top end, but I think on average it was just like not it wasn't fast paced, people weren't ambitious. it was kind of just like punching the clock. And
it wasn't for me in the the place I knew I wanted to be, and it actually took me a while to get this job. Like I did not have a job coming out of college for more than six months because I was being picky, much to my parents' chagrin. just put you through the expensive
and not design a latch for five years that goes on, you know, in a baggage latch, for example, or something like that on a big airliner. and so yeah, it took me a while to get that job, but I got immediately thrown in the deep end. Like my first six ish months there. I was working on Strato launch, which is the largest aircraft in the world. and I they put me in charge of designing the structure of the tails. This was like a you know, a third of the airframe. it
I got to go see the first flight by happenstance when my co-friend and I were flying up to Mojave from LA to go to a fly in and and a friend suggested that we actually get there a lot earlier than it started. It wouldn't tell me why, but I had I had an idea. so yeah, we got to see the first flight. That was I don't remember the exact year, but it was about ten years after I'd first worked on it. which was amazing to see a fly. But that was, you know, that was on paper. So it was exciting. But I knew, you know, no matter what, if that program hit some hiccups, but even if it had gone as fast as possible, it would have been, you know, five years. It was so big. It's the the biggest wingspan aircraft ever flown by a large margin. And but the next program I was on, it's called Firebird Publicly, was a optionally manned 5,000 pound aircraft, like 60 foot wingspan. So not huge, not tiny. and that after my experience in the prior program, I was in charge of the the booms and the tails as a multi multi-tail aircraft. and also all the control surfaces. So here I am like twenty-four years old, and they're like, We're flying in nine months. Like okay. So never never designed or built anything
that you know had not had done anything real, like outside of college. projects. And so yeah, you get thrown in the deep end and that was a tiny team. There were three or four of us to start as engineers. I think it peaked at maybe ten. as soon like once we got into the systems and avionics and stuff like that. They added some other folks in, but like and we did it. Like we designed it and flew it super fast. So it was like very rewarding to be very young. And have that responsibility, like which was, you know, lit the fire under me for the while.
Yeah, and it was the right place, right? Like I was not the only person coming straight out of college working on this. Like I think on that team, three of us, it was our first job. It was so you know, it was immediate. Like it was it was not just me. It was just it's the ethos of that company is like find young talent, give them a ton of responsibility and some mentorship. our our boss on that aircraft originally was only about five years older than me. And, you know, he had gone through the same thing where he was in charge of part of an aircraft early on. They flew it and then they bumped him up and like he's five years in and he's in charge of of the design of a whole airplane. so it's very much that ethos and this exact same ethos as SpaceX. So
it you know, it was a little bit sad for me outside of work. Like it was just like I didn't have anything to do except for you know, go down to the airport and I had a little airplane so I could go fly it, which was super fun, but like I didn't have a social life. I was single.
so it was it was honestly that was what drove me out of there. the job was great and the only other place I wanted to be was at SpaceX. knowing what is what was going on there. And so yeah, I got got that job about two and a half years after I started it scaled and and and left. but it was really the only place I would I would have stayed there if I hadn't gotten that job until something else similar came along.
that's completely different now. I think if I was coming out of college or if I decided tomorrow that I wanted to be go back to being an engineer, the options are insane now. Like there are, you know, twenty companies within a 20 minute drive of me down in LA that I would strongly consider going to work with. so that's completely
And also launching your own company gets way easier, like in comparison to 20 years ago, 15 years ago, then we will get back to, we will come to that too. But then I'm kind of curious about then, you know, your work experience, the initial ones especially, are kind of setting the bar for the next one. And then you said that actually the bar was pretty close when you moved to SpaceX and then the culture.
It was very interesting to me because scaled was so scrappy. Very little process. And when I went, it was very much like the engineers like are responsible, which is the actual term they use at SpaceX. But you know, we did I did composite layup drawings by hand on like a piece of paper sometimes for the shop. Like, you know, I had my little spreadsheet with my analysis and some basic FEA finite element analysis, but You know, there wasn't much process. I would do it by myself. I would show it to the lead. He'd be like, Great, take it out to the shop, hand it to him. They would build it. They'd come
back and say, Hey, this looks wrong, like here, or this is really hard to do for us. I'd get out a red pen and like do it this way instead. And then like initial it. this was like a stark contrast to Boeing, where it took me weeks to change a number. It was an irrelevant number. when I went to SpaceX, it was notorious in the industry for also being scrappy and being very little process.
but in comparison to scaled, it was a huge jump up in that regard because it was a much bigger team. and you have to have more process there. More drawing checks and stuff, but the ethos was the same. It was just at a different scale. And I still, I literally still redlined drawings at SpaceX out on the shop floor.
you can do it that way, like you can go do it. You don't have to go like ask a bunch of permissions. and it only works in an environment with where the bar for the employees is really, really high. Because if you give that much responsibility and lack of process to somebody who's not that high, it fails. Like it falls apart rapidly.
so you know, a lot of people ask and talk about like how do you translate that. culture to other places. And it's like, well, you have to start with a really high bar. That's like a fundamental piece to it, which is very, very hard to do. Like it's it's very, very hard to build a team that's that good. if you can get close, you can do a lot of a lot of the things they did as far as being like that level of responsibility and how it works.
Sure. I'll try to give you a little bit of idea of the process and kind of how it differs from other places. I was talking about this the other day with a friend. so most large aerospace programs, like having not worked on one, I'm kind of like talking on a turn here, but my understanding of it is you start with like really high level design and you do what what's called an interface control document for all these different pieces. And so what it is is like This piece has to take this load and this much temperature and this much pressure. And here's how it interfaces. That's why it's called the interface control document to this other system. And that at that point, that interface is essentially fixed, often permanently, or maybe like can be changed a little bit. And then you go do your design to fit within that box defined by all these documents. SpaceX does not do that. It's like Here's your piece, go make it work. And so, what do you first have to do? You have to create all those constraints and loads and interfaces
How does this best work for both of us? and that's pretty unique. and you create what what was called at the time design criteria around. And everybody owned their own. nobody else owned it. And then you'd have to play this kind of back and forth when things didn't work out right with other teams. and what you get from that is you're eliminating dumb requirements. Like Elon talks about this all the time, like eliminate requirements. and you shouldn't have these fixed requirements because if once you do that, you're just designing it to fit in there, you're not really optimizing performance from a system level. So if I need my part to take twenty percent low less load, to make it much, much lighter and better, I can go to the other person be like, Hey, can we like move this? does it hurt you that much? And they'll be like, No, that doesn't hurt me. All right, let's do that. so you end up like kind of organically getting a higher level optimization of the system. Even beyond when somebody does the high level optimization, which they still do. Like you still have a early design team that
will kind of design the rocket at a very high level. but then within the subsystems, you get to, you know, take performance where you can, or if you can't, if you're like, you know what, like if we do this, it's gonna double the weight of my part. This is a bad idea.
so that's like pretty unique. And that that goes back to the responsible engineer culture because You are responsible to go do that. again, like that doesn't work in a lot of places because they're people what they most people like to hear is go do this within this box and come back. And then they go do that and they come back, they're
done. Right. Like it's too much work to go do all this other stuff. and then they throw it over the fence and then it's somebody else's responsibility to go get it built. Like SpaceX doesn't do that either. Like that's what I'm talking about. I'm out on the shop floor. Like it's still my responsibility. I'm working with a build engineer who's kind of bird dogging it, but it's your responsibility to go out there and make sure it gets built and get and you test it yourself. and until it's on the rocket, like ready for launch, like it's your
responsibility. If a if a vendor calls you and says, I can't meet your schedule, you get on a plane and you go out there and you say, No, like here's how we're gonna meet. schedule and I'm gonna like sometimes you would have to go sit there, like I didn't have to do this, but this happened. And essentially babysit the vendor through the process so that you can get your parts done correctly and on time. Like that is unheard of. The engineer does not do that anywhere else. or at least at least now they now they do it other places. People like they're taking that
But also they have the... But also, I think, I haven't worked for SpaceX, but I interact with a few folks and what I understand and also from what I read, there is this... empowerment for the people too. So if they want to go and get it done, up to certain budget even, they don't need to figure out like, you I need to now submit this, get this approval, get that. Like it's very much like an outcome. you want like, no, will you do this? If it is a bottleneck, then tackle it, whatever it takes, just go and tackle it, kinda. Is that?
go do it. Right. Like, you know, and if you're ordering like at times I was ordering like hundreds of thousands of dollars or a million dollars worth of composite stuff, like that maybe took two approvals. had I have to go all the way to the V the VP, which was only one one extra level above me at that time. and like I know other companies, I'm not gonna name them here, but there are other aerospace companies where I know that you have for three hundred dollars, you have to go get four approvals.
And so like what what does that do? Like just it doesn't empower you and then also it slows you down, right? Like, you know, people that's gonna take you a couple of days probably to go get everybody to like check their email and give you an approval and you just lost a couple of days over three hundred bucks, like
And then also everything cascading to the production too, because it's not like a software I can freeze that part of the module and then you can go ahead with the lunch and then do the whole thing. Actually to get back to the whole thing, can you take us back to the times that you were manually tying GoPros to the floating
There is this fine line between, you know, this fast iterating, but at the same time, you don't want to get drawn into the data collection simulation. And then you also want to break it down small enough that you can iterate fast. In hardware, especially, it's much more challenging than software, obviously.
Yeah. This that it is a great story. It was like so I did the the aft thermal shield on the bottom of the rocket, which enabled the re-entry and landing. So it was the first one. Very exciting project for me because nobody had done it before. and w the we had some unlike most thermal shields which are like very fixed, I wanted it to be incredibly strong. ours had to blow off in the case of an engine Because it needed the they needed to depressurize the engine bay. Cause if you don't, it cascades into other engine bays. So if you lose an engine, and this is like a another another SpaceX philosophy, is like it's okay to lose an engine. back in F9 days, I believe it was you could lose two or something and still complete the mission. Starship now can le lose like, I don't know, three, four, or five.
I want to say booster is like 30-ish engines, 27 maybe. Yeah, so like that's not usually done or wasn't that common. And so we had some really weird requirements about having to like let it exp blow out, which makes it really hard to make it strong for re-entry. And we were having trouble on re-entry with the panels coming off. and then the engine bay would be exposed and you know, we had a few rockets blow that way on re-entry, which was okay because of his experiment at that point.
Yeah, we did a couple of those too. but we what we had was like some some data like through the proper flight system, which was temperatures and a few pressures and things like that. But that wasn't enough to really understand why they were blowing off. And so yeah, we we didn't have the bandwidth, literally the bandwidth to like put an a full flight camera system Like if you watch the launches, you'll see like the ru the camera on the outside. There's a couple other cameras in in different places. they didn't they didn't have the bandwidth to install one of those or multiple of them that we needed. So yeah, we went and bought GoPros. And the first one we like us it's a it's not as bad as it sounds like. Essentially, though, like zip tied them in to the inside of inside of the they had to be secure enough so they wouldn't come off during a scent and like mess with the engines. So like it was more than zip ties, but and we tested it like on the ground. Like we vibed it and you know ripped on it really hard to make sure that wouldn't happen. But yeah, it was like so we put I don't remember eight or something of them inside all these different panels. And the next couple flights we did that and when it would they s we started getting better and better, like getting them g rockets down more. with some gentler re-entries. And then when it would hit the water, because we weren't even attempting like a water landing on that point, like the panel, like things would blow up and the panels would pop off. And then the recovery boat would come out there. And like we'd get a couple of those GoPros back and then go look at the footage and we could see like, look, it's like gapping over here in a weird mode that we hadn't anticipated. For example. and we were able to like fix it based on that. so that was like yeah, very good example of like extreme scrappiness. and and especially when the re-entry was still an experiment and nice to have, what what mattered was a scent, right? Like you have to deliver for the customer. and nobody expected re-entry and landing to work for a long time, except for us. so we were able to take additional risks. on that project specifically because of that. It was like if it doesn't work, it's okay.
Yeah, I only had that a couple of times and one was for the thermal shield and it was actually a pretty relaxed meeting and there were a couple of reasons. One is like things were going well for for both the company but also for that project and it was lower risk, as as I just mentioned. you know, he dove into some like good questions, we had answers, and that was that, like essentially. so I didn't I never really directly experienced the wrath of Elon, which is quite famous. I would say like the one place you don't want to be is either the long pole in the schedule or the system that's not working that's critical. Like he does a good
he does a very good job, and I know other CEOs that do a good job of this where and he's famous for this at Tesla, like two, where I believe when I forget which w version it was, but the production wasn't working well and he like you know slept on the floor for a couple of weeks or something. but it's like here's
here's the bottleneck, whether it's schedule or something's not working, and like he inserts himself into that process and it's basically like we're we're gonna fix this right now. and I'm not leaving until it's fixed. so it's very effective and then when things are not driving schedule or Are working is basically hands off. Like completely. Like he leaves it to the managers to take care of it. So I think
I read in his biography that, the Tesla production, that there was a moment that the long things were being automated and then he literally took the red spray and started going and asked who is the responsible engineer for this workshop. Like tell me, we need... And I put an accent if it needs to get out. It was kind of like... This is the type of, guess, the first time I would like to work with And I was lucky enough to work with folks like that, that they just come down when something is blocking you. it's because these are the people, if you try to communicate this through two, three floors, then you already lose the gist of it, the most important parts who built the people who built might know better than actually communicators in between. Yeah. Then maybe Jamie, you also had your own startup and two deep tech startups. And then I'm looking back at all the highlights, lowlights and experiences that you collected. Then what made you to build your current font? Like I can, see,
I still don't consider you for as an investor. Don't get me wrong. I kind of consider you more like somebody who can really help you. Doesn't mean he's going to come and do your engineering work, but rather like he's going to give you what you need to strategy, right? Questions and check on top. Like, well, like how about I, what would I ask more?
Yeah. Yeah. yeah, that was part of it. So it was like a a variety of things. I was pretty sure I wanted to go do my own thing at some point. I started Angel Investing while I was still at SpaceX and my first check was Boom Supersonic. And a fun story there is that Blake, the CEO, came out of an ac he got acquired by Groupon. So he was not an aerospace engineer. he decides
he's gonna build a supersonic airliner and builds a little model. And then he's like, I should probably talk to some experts and started hitting up people he knew. Who should I talk to? And one of his colleagues was like, Well, I played hockey with this guy at Stanford, who's at SpaceX, you should talk to him. So was the first I was the first person in aerospace that Blake talked to, and he flew his airplane from the Bay Area down to LA. We met at Hawthorne airport and We walked through his idea and his kind of basic question was like, Is this dumb? Is really what it came down to. And for me, the answer at that time, like, very much an engineer, my answer was like, no, this is not dumb. Like it's it's been done, right? We had the Concord.
All these other tools are better. that makes it easier. Like, you've got composites, you've got better engines, you've got better design tools. And if you think you can close the economics case, which was the hard part with Concord, with choosing the right size airframe and and use case and then all these advancements, then yeah, I think it's smart. I think it's really hard, right? Like having watched some aircraft programs that were supposed to be commercialized take drag
out forever and then and then die. but yeah, that was kind of my answer. And then you tried to recruit me, but I was, you know Duck at SpaceX and and Happy helped him hire one of his first engineers and we've been friends ever since. Like he's an advisor, he was an advisor to my prior company and an advisor of my fund. but that was that that watching that get built from the very early days, this was in twenty fourteen when I met
was very, you know, helpful for me to watch that and we were in touch and see it get built. and then the other thing is like I had a bunch of friends from Stanford who were founders of like companies that everybody listening would probably know. and so they were very different world. It was all like social media or software and stuff like that. But you know watching that happen on the entrepreneurial side and like getting the wheels
was inspiring. And so Yeah, I mean I I left in twenty sixteen after about six years and was a co-founder of a space deployables company in Denver. it's still operating. I did that for three years. the reason I left that is I was still in LA. My wife was getting her doctorate and it became kind of untenable for both me and the team to be in LA. Like it was
it just wasn't a good fit. It was a ended up we thought it would work out and it just it wasn't smart. Like and it kind of ran know, strongly counter to my experience at SpaceX, where I was walking out to the fr the shop floor to like redline a drawing. I'm like, I'm doing engineering work in LA and then it's you know getting built somewhere else. It just it wasn't smart. so I after a few years, started another company with a friend from SpaceX. he was originally actually my intern at SpaceX and then we're calling And we started an electric aircraft company and went through Y Combinator in in twenty twenty. and then yeah, built that up to a twenty person team and we got a bunch of contracts with the Air Force and then got acquired in twenty twenty three. So we had a an an exit from that company.
so that was yeah, all those things kind of led me to where I am now. which was like the angel investing, building the companies and doing some advisory work too, which is like kind of what we were just talking about. So I was advised like once my company was like grown had grown a little bit, I was advising like at the earliest stages.
which I really enjoyed. Like I actually really found that I really liked talking to other teams about their ideas and like how to how to like strategy and how to go get government money and So that was like afterwards, it was kind of either start another company or or go do this. And I just didn't have that founder journey in me again. It was it's really hard. So
At the same time, everything you have done was like your kind of play you enjoy so much and intellectually it must be super satisfying to talk to every other day someone trying to build something that no one has thought about it and also you are not a typical investor you pick problems that are kind of hard problems to handle. And maybe it's a part of your thesis that I under, as far as I understand, you don't even want to tackle with those typical software for hardware. This is not even deep tech. Like it needs to be tangible physical hardware that meets the core of the product. then that you kind of your thesis is around this, right? That if I understand correctly.
Yeah, exactly. Like I I invest in hardware. and it's aerospace, defense, energy, robotics, industrials. It's it's but it is I d yeah, I don't do software for hardware. There's plenty of software for hardware startups out there and I think they have, you know, a good shot and it's valuable stuff. there were a lot of internal tools at SpaceX that nobody else had that were very powerful and they're all software tools. So there's
examples of like enab enabling a team. significantly through that software. But it's it's not where my expertise lies. And I I also have a little bit of a thesis that like those companies are tough to build at scale and be durable. but the software is a hardware yeah.
Actually, that's one of the myths about deep tech. And maybe you can share your opinion on this too. And especially nowadays, people still think it requires heavy capital and the risk is very much higher and cycles are very longer. Then perhaps I know you're very opinionated on this and I would like to hear those myths that you will challenge.
Yeah. Like all those things are true to an extent. You know, hardware it is harder. It's called hardware. and it takes more capital up front to get like early product. and it usually takes a little bit longer. But what we've really seen is that software and like the the the days of easy software are kind of gone. Well AI notwithstanding, which is its own like beast. but a lot of companies like the B2B SaaS stuff, which has been like the most popular investment theme in Silicon Valley for for quite a while prior to recent history. over time it's like it gets more competitive. And yeah, you can have a tiny team and create a product and get out there, and then it's you know. In theory, it's like zero marginal cost to replicate it, right? But that's
get a competitor coming up. And so how do you beat a competitor? Like you can out-execute them, but really what that means more more recently is like you fire the capital cannon again. You know, you go raise another $100 million. Now you have this war chest to go capture customers and and keep them and build out more features. and so like there's been some interesting charts or graphs that have come out where people are comparing some some hardware versus software outcomes. And the the path to get there might be different, but the end result on valuation, dilution, and capital required is approximately the same, like within, you know, obviously some errors. But so when you get a big success in hardware, like it's more durable because it's harder to replicate. And when people start buying hardware, like you know how software is sticky, but like hardware is a lot stickier. You design your system around it. and it's The other thing that's interesting is like once you're making more sales, like there's different types of capital available that are that are helpful, which is asset backed lending or loans, or you know, venture debt that helps you scale that part without taking a ton of dilution. So you might need a lot of capital, but it's a different flavor of capital. and what matters for investor, right, is like is do I get diluted out too much, even though the value goes up. So yeah, a lot of these like and like SpaceX is the canonical example. You know,
but like, you know, maybe you don't need a two trillion dollar outcome, but I think there's gonna be a bunch more of these. 10 plus billion dollar outcomes in the hardware world. and you know, people are seeing that. And the the capital stack itself is filled out, the talent flywheel has is fully engaged,
basically due to SpaceX, in my opinion. and so there's all these like confluence of factors, and then the other part is that the innovation has been poured into the software world for the last 25 years or something. And hardware has essentially become stagnant and like we're behind whether you want to look at it geopolitically or and like compare it to China. But even if you don't compare it to China, like we can't get power, we can't interconnect stuff.
you know, there's all these things that we're like and we we can't build at scale much anymore. And so what that means is like we need all that stuff for a good economy. And so the opportunity there is insane because it's been neglected for twenty five years. And so like it's like, you know, things go in cycles and it's in in my opinion now, it's like it's the hardware cycle. so we can catch up. The opportunity's huge and it'll be these like big durable winners coming up in the next decade or two.
I think also another reason is, okay, it branches into so many different paths now in my head one of the other reasons for hard-bayer manufacturing is insanely difficult, right? Like people who have never worked on the shop floor would probably underestimate how difficult it can get. And at the same time, this comes down to the total cost. you go into the manufacturing, whatever you want to produce with a hardware, it needs to give you the promise of the more we produce, it's going to get cheaper, like the rights law. Like, right? Like the more we double down on the production, then there is a proportion that's going to always decrease the cost for us. But at the same time, that's but there's the lowest you can get, the raw material and the IP on it, right? And then did you also run the calculations more like that when you sit down with the hardware founders? You had a very nice name for that, techno economics. So how do you evaluate that? Like, you say, okay guys, so if you break it down, take out the IP part, this is your pure raw cost material. that if you produce big enough batches, are they asymptotically gonna reach to the level that is gonna be equal to raw? Then, okay, it's good to go. Would that be like a big level thinking? And then how do you break it down?
Massively. Yeah. So what I what I like to see is my my technoeconomics work now or close. Because I if I'm gonna go sell something, I have to either match or be another option in some way. and telling a customer that like Don't worry about it. You buy it now in five years or ten years, it'll be way cheaper. It's not gonna work. They're not gonna be like, great, come back
in five or ten years and we'll buy it. So you have to be able to close a a business case now to a certain extent. And there is you you can say, look, for the first X number of like units or years, this is essentially gonna be venture funded. And you're it's gonna be at a loss. per product, that's not great, but it's, you know, doable if you can if you can show that curve being steep enough within reason. Like,
we're building like a system to clear fog over solar farms. yeah, it was a great speech by the way, like about like Blake Shaw and like the SpaceX stuff. It was like really nice. I think as an investor and like all that experience in hardware, when you meet founders, what what do you look for? what are the biggest signals that what they work on might work or that company is actually that can like it can actually become big?
Yeah. I well so like hardware in specifically is interesting in this regard. There's a lot of similarities to the software world. but traction is different in hardware, like because of the inherent time in required. So what I like to look for is in their past, have they done something impressive and they have they done something fast? and then A big part of it is like one of my founders and I were talking about this yesterday. His term for it, not mine, but do they have that dog in Because like
and you like get told no or this is dumb like over and over. can you do that with investors? Like the reality is with an investor, I mean you guys are gonna be in a very unique position at demo day that is you know. Maybe this advice is like not helpful in that regard because you're by definition gonna have a ton of investors looking at you that are high quality and you already have a high quality signal, but like if you're not at YC or you're raising follow-on rounds, like being able to pound on a a ton of investors' doors. this guy just closed a a very large seed round for how early they are and he talked to four hundred investors. he's that's got your dog in you,
to customers and it and it translates to the fact that like your hardware is gonna break, it's not gonna work, and keep and so like that's that's actually like just purely an art to figure that out. it's really hard to do. and then the other thing, like hiring is actually an incredible signal in hardware because right now the talent It like SpaceX exploded the talent market, but it's so limited because there's so many good startups out there doing so much cool stuff. and like I work on this with all my portfolio companies. How do you hire? And it's the same thing. Like, if you can attract top talent early on over a mission, like that is an incredible signal because it's essentially the same thing you're doing when you want to go get a customer or an investor, right? You're pitching, you're a storyteller. I tell this to all my founders to like Your job is a storyteller now, like the CEO's job is a storyteller. You storytell to your investors, you storytell to your employees, you storytell
to customers and to the world. it's really like all you do as a CEO of a of a startup. so yeah, but if you can do that with hiring, like it's hard to get customers. You know, you guys will get probably beat over the head on trying to get LOIs, but those are like The signal around LOIs has been diluted because so many people go after them. I still think it's the right thing to do, unless you can make like an actual sale with like a hard contract, which is pretty rare and a very early stage hardware. so that's where like the hiring signal comes. And I you know, for you guys we'd probably be like post YC after you've raised money, but for the next round. or if you can like pull an amazing higher now, I think people would look on that favorably for sure.
yeah, and it's just like depending on what you're building, technical aptitude, if you can suss that out. I don't know h how your tech works, but I've got like couple different portfolio companies and on one end of the s spectrum would be like I would never fund somebody without like five or ten years of like hardcore engineering experience to go do this.
you know I so But you need to be able to show the apt the technical aptitude, you know, from your like college, whether it's like pr projects or something else that you guys have like scrapped together before you went to YC or something like that is like a very strong signal.
like here's like the the ten versions we built over you know some number of months or something or whatever, here's what we did to make it better, and here's you know, here's where we started and here's where we ended, like that's a strong signal because that's in in most hardware startups that's important, not not necessarily everywhere.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the thing I see like with YC, it's more they push us a lot on the sales side, getting yellow eyes and like quantifying the exact dollar value of like the problem we're doing and stuff. But because I feel like that's mostly what they're experienced in with like most startups, but like with hard tech. We know the tech we're working on. We're supposed to build it. And like it's it's I feel like that
Yeah, so we inject electrical charge into water droplets. They're like suspended in air, like in fog. so we aim to inject a certain amount on average, create like a plume of charged droplets within. So that causes droplets to coalesce or combine together. And the goal there is with the same amount of water. You have fewer droplets, but they're larger in size, so so it be so the fog becomes more transparent, so it allows
We're gonna have this awesome demo and everybody's gonna love it. And it's just not true, right? Like so if you can do an impressive demo relatively easily and quickly like go do that because people you know people love hardware like it's way cooler to go look at somebody pulling you know fog out of the air for solar than
gotta have to you gotta make that case very, very clear. and then you need to go talk to them and you need to find out this is what YC's gonna say, you gotta find out how do we actually sell you? what's the process? how long will it take? To implement this, would you not knowing much about what you're building, it seems like very low risk to them. So I bet you can go get some customers that you say, we'll install this for free. And we won't hurt your solar farm. and we'll prove it to you. And then you can start paying us or something like that. Like, so the like that's you know, might maybe something to consider. Like, you might be able to get like an actual contract. I see in that way by saying you don't have to pay us for the first year or whatever. We'll f we'll fund it with venture dollars. Imagine the systems aren't crazy expensive, but I'm like again I
But also, Jamie, what would you suggest them to shorten the feedback cycles? Because also, there are some customers, they say yes, but they are not as excited as you are. They just cost you time because they don't come up with any helpful feedback either. Or there are some that are excited, but they are not fast enough. You wait too long to hear something from them. What would be good leverages that they can use? annoy them with cakes or send them constantly gifts
So like the example's out of date and it it's not but it is an issue example and it was it was boom like Blake was in YC and like how do you and this is when LOIs were like not that common, right? So there's you know take but the lesson is still the same. Like how do you get an LOI from a major airline as a like three-person startup in Y Combinator? so what he did is like he went to these airlines. And said, here's what I'm gonna build. Here's how the economics work. Here's how if you aren't one of my customers, your economics will get crushed. So like, I want you to sign up now. I'll give you some like exclusivity. and so that you're you pull ahead. And so like the the basic premise there is like most of an airliner profit comes from first and business class and economy class
just like basically break even. So if I design a supersonic airliner that's the same cost as your business class seat ticket, everybody's gonna jump on that. And all of a sudden your profit center's gone. So do you want to be the airline that like when I make this, when I eventually get this built, that's losing their profit center, or do you want to be the one that's like building out the new profit center? So that's kind of like a little bit an extreme example, but like was was it was effective. So I don't know, if you go get an LOI and like we'll do this for free for X number of time and we'll get we'll like then you have to charge us once you're making money off of it or like and we'll give you I don't know, you could offer a exclusivity. I don't know how many solar farms are out there that need your tech or anything like that. Like
Yeah, exactly. Like, this is cool. So that's why people are, you know, take LOIs with a much larger grain of salt these days. And so if you can get an actual contract that it can still be pretty light for them. Like, you know, if if these guys can install this and if it's actually working, like and then I will start paying them this. And like for them it's like a you know, a free trial that then they can turn you you turn it on and a year in or whatever it is, whatever you choose, and they're saving money. Like and they did no work. Like that seems like a pretty easy win. and it's like
But then what would you suggest for the cadence with the early customers or potential customers? Like what would be a really good schedule look like in terms of these feedback loops? And also how many customers do you think, I know it's very high level information, they can actually take as to build that together.
they're building modular solar battery that's rapidly deployable in like one day. and, you know, maybe a customer at some point, but he also spent a lot of years in the solar industry on the financial side. and so has a very deep understanding of like exactly what the financial like calculations are happening at your customers and how they'll look at this. And that's what's gonna be key. Like what's your payback? He's gonna harp on like payback period, IRR, all like that kind of stuff, which will be exactly how your customers think about it. So it's probably worth a chat with him. Like, but I have no idea, and you can ask him, like what can
But actually I've met some folks in automotive sector, they are very fine with their time. They can get all these bi-weekly calls and then you're like four months into the conversations and still nothing moves at all. And that's why like these early signals that not to lose your... not to waste your time with the wrong people because you think that actually they are gonna in the end pay you for what you're building it just turns out to be like the guy at the time in the company and he liked you and then he wanted to see what's happening but actually they were not really bought fully
That happened to me. Like I remember being like in a third or fourth meeting and I'm like, this person just wants to shoot the shit about like airplanes and stuff. Like they're like they want to talk about SpaceX. Like like they're excited about what we're building. Like there is no intention here to ever be a customer. So it does happen.
Jamie, would you do anything differently if you were to join the next patch in YC in comparison to your experience in 2020?
Yeah, probably would have listened to them more about the customer thing. Like we did a lot of we did a lot of that. We did a lot of that during Y C but like You know, we did a little demo with an a R C airplane, which was cool and I think that was useful. But like really just you know, I didn't have enough dog on me on the customer side. Like that I think that was their their advice. Like they've seen as a hardware company, like it's easy it's a little bit easy to discount their advice because they almost none of the partners have built hardware. I don't know your partner will be and like they've all changed, but a lot of them have changed. But They've seen a lot, right? They've seen anybody who's been there even a few batches has worked with like hundreds of companies, right? And then most of them have been around longer. So while like don't fully well, they might not be a hundred percent correct because you're building a different type of company, like don't discount it too much.
Cheers. Actually, Jamie, I was going to ask you one of your, like your thesis on robotics, because this is a little bit different than majority of the industry is now running after. So because due to the AI advancements and everything, robotics got a huge pace, which is amazing. But at the same time, But are we really focusing on the right things in the right way in the companies? And if you have a specific even company you would like to like take as an example, that would be really, really cool. Because I am thinking in your mind a little bit. I knew, I knew. I knew that was gonna come.
yeah, we can talk about we'll talk about Persona AI. they're a humanoid robotics company in my portfolio. And I w before them, I don't think I would have invested in humanoids. and the reason is that they're very, very hard. And there's a lot of things you can do with specialized robotics that are much more efficient and effective. Like when I look at People trying to deploy humanoids on an automotive line. I'm like, why why would you do that? You have these big robot arms that and you've got a straight line and you can pop a bunch of them, very specific tasks that they're very fast at and effective at. and then people have been able to redesign the automotive line around those robotics rather than around a human. and now you're gonna put a human form factor back in the mix that's slower and like it's more complicated and it's weaker. I I don't I don't get it. Like maybe in a long time that might make sense, but even then it's like questionable to me. but what persona's doing differently is they're doing heavy industry, dangerous jobs in places where you can't do specialized robotics or you won't be able to do specialized robotics for a lot of years. So th they're starting with heavy industry ship like major shipbuilding welding robots that have tried to solve these problems with specialized robotics and failed because they can't fit them in in the right way. They don't have an assembly line. it's a
big ship with like lots of complicated different parts and different things. It's hard to fit through like in it's big spaces. Like it just doesn't work. and they can't re hire or retain enough welders. So they're in a constant shortage. So they have more demand than they can fulfill because of this one bottleneck. And you know these are hundreds of millions of dollars per ship. What's that?
there it's that one's it's public, it's Hyundai Heavy Industries. one of the top five world shipboarders in Korea, like so yeah, they just can't hire and retain. So they have this there's like people talk about this in the startup world. They have this hair on fire problem. Like we could be making
more money, high willingness to pay. Because they're selling chips that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And they're like, if we can sell one more ship a year or whatever, you know, whatever their math is. And we can't do it any other way. Okay. If you can show up with a humanoid way that can solve that, which we're like at this point, that's should be doable. it's still really, really hard and it's uncertain. yeah, we'll pay you a lot. They're like I th I don't remember the numbers off the top of my head, but it's like, all right, we'll start with like maybe five robots and then that goes well we want a hundred but then like if that's going well we want thousands and they're gonna pay like fifty to one hundred K per year per row.
Yeah. So that's one company that persona could become a highly valued startup off of a loan. And then they'll go into mining and other things like that where it's like dangerous and you need a a burly robot and you can't do it with specialized robotics. So that to me was very attractive. and it kind of runs counter to like the automotive. Or if you're doing industrial industrial stuff. But the other thing it runs kind of counter to is doing it in the home, for example, is like a helper robot where you have like a million different possible situations that you have to deal with. And a consumer next to a very strong robot that's a little bit unpredictable. So you have like a high risk. It's very hard to to do the AI models to to encounter all those situations and know what to do all the time. And it's like,
dollar robot. Like that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. again, like like the automotive in ten or twenty years or whatever, like I would not be surprised if I eat those words because the tech gets so much better. Like it comes down the cost curve, the AI models get so much better. Consumers get comfortable with them. But it's really hard to invest in that right now because it's gonna take so long for that market to be there. Like I like to invest in something where the market is obvious and they have to go execute against it. And there's a little bit of tech risk, but it's execution risk more than like science or tech.
But at least the scope is a little bit narrower than the huge house salt works. But when it comes to this economics of it, actually, Neo Robot Home, they did something really smart. They make people pay. When I saw this, this is genius. You not only help me collect data and then train and then make a better product out of it, but on top. I also make you pay to have it in your home and then all of a sudden you have a bigger scale of like training your robots than what you would have probably.
What do think about those? That's actually a great point because when I take a look at tech companies, most of the times we are looking at the static markets. But what we want to do is something that is going to get really like I have the tech, I just need to figure out to manufacture this to a level. Then I'm going to have the Javan Paradox shift because the manufacturing will be fine and then it's going to be more efficient and then all of a sudden my PMF will take off and the cure cost will go down. But on the other hand, when I see some investors pressing funds that they don't really, let's say, appreciate the technology part. They press with the, but what is the market, what is the market, that they run analysis because their backgrounds are more around this banking or &A or financial or SaaS. And then the founder looks, well, don't you see, like if there is nothing like that, but if we kill this, there will be the market. That's who is gonna pay for it eventually.
Yeah, I think that's fair to a certain extent. Where like again, I was like, I don't really want to fund something that's gonna take ten years for those two curves to cross. because you know, it takes all that capital to get there in the dilution and whatnot. so you want something that can be profitable at least to a certain extent pretty early, and then it gets better.
Yeah, yeah. It's like I had a I have a company that is building something it was obvious market, great team. what they didn't have early on was like it was like we can do this this much cheaper and I was like well prove it to me and they went back they didn't they're like well like they kind of did what you're like sort of scrambling just like well here's how the curves will get better and I was like but like that's not first principles that's just like looking up you know, some curves that weren't directly related. So it was like, okay, so they built like a bottoms up bomb of like like an actual like CAD model and like priced everything. Turned out they were about right on with their gas at current, which was like kind of lucky. But like now it's like, okay. With these like essentially existing costs, you can undercut a legacy customer because they're just loaded. And then as you get better and better, like it just gets better. And now
And also this is I observed in... successful founders most of the times if they were kind of born to the right geographical place their life is much easier. I know sky is the limit like we have all the tech available but still in the end of today human relations the right human relationships have a huge factor in the equation then what what how would one think about this how should we like go about it like we can try to get into some nice accelerator programs like they are really helpful or you can try to change country. I know this is like a very big thing I don't expect to solve, but.
doing, you know, the the things that are big in LA, which is, you know, aerospace, defense, robotics to a certain extent, although arguably the Bay Area is better for that. If you're not here, if you're doing that, like you should be in the Bay, in my opinion. And if you're if you have a a good reason, like you have a great team and track record, but you need manufacturing and space and whatnot, or like s lots of solar or something, like okay, you can look at Austin.
and in outside of my world, it's like, you know, maybe New York City, if you're in FinTech, if you're not in one of those places, like I don't think the sky is the limit. It's like kind of a harsh reality, like You're totally right. It's a hu like my entire job is now. I tell like founders, your entire job is storytelling. My entire job is human relationships between my LPs and my founders and other things. Like, that's all it is. Like, why, how do I find deals? and then how do I get allocation? And then how do I get investors in my fund? Like, all that is is human relationships. and we kind of talked about this earlier on, but like being in the epicenter. when you see like it took me to go to Stanford, right? Like
and then to be a SpaceX, like essentially. it it like it changes your opinion on what can be done, who can do it. You know, you you stop thinking like I could never do that because you have like 20 examples within a twenty minute drive of people doing it, like your same age or whatever. so you just can't make that excuse and then when you have to hire like the talents here, like it's not in the middle of the country. So yeah, I don't I don't think like it's not it's not fair. Like
And you know, everybody's got different life circumstances. It could be family or something else, or like but if you have a specific reason around your technology, like it needs to be here, here's where my customers are, okay. But if you're like young, you don't have like weird situations, and
Actually, this is kind of like spot on example. We had Elias from YC Summer 2024 and he's building efficient chips for artificial intelligence in startup and his story is so cool because I think he spoke to so many people when he talked about that. He felt like he doesn't fit in, was born in Sweden and then he was growing up. While growing up, his dad used to take him to Bay Area. And then over there, he was kind of getting the seeds in his mind. And then whenever he was coming back, he kind of felt like, I don't confirm here anything. Like I don't really fit in. do I do? And then like, he was like, you know what? I just dropped my college. I dropped everything. And because what do I want to do? This. Okay. Do I need a PhD for this? They say I need a PhD, but I don't think I need a PhD. And then he starts looking around and finds his co-founder in London, and then they applied to YC and voila. Now, like they are building really an amazing company and really different, not hierarchical, not like different way of building the team, different way of approaching the problems. As you said, but at that age, at the same time, and you don't have any other responsibilities, why not just go and try to
and his co-founder wasn't technical either. And I was asked this the other day by an investor, like, what were you doing with that investment? And I was like, basically, like these guys have an it factor. Like they're gonna go get this done no matter what. And this is what I saw in Blake and boom. Boom, he wasn't getting it. So like what did they do?
yeah, and so what did what did this team do? Like within a month or two, they went and hired a killer CTO, third co-founder. Because I I could see that like they weren't gonna give up until they got like the top notch person on their team. so that was like, okay, this like breaks my rubric, but here's how we'll go fix it. And now they have this like Fantastic CTO. so like yeah, y and then another team. I love the guy's idea. Amazing business background that was relevant, really weak technical co-founder. It's kind of like we had like a hard combo around that. So they separated
ways. And then I worked with this founder like for like six months as he searched for a a good co-founder. And I was like basically so I and this is like I basically was like, I'm not investing until we fix this because it's too big of risk. and then he found an amazing guy out of Tesla with r relevant experience and pulled him out. I'm like, all right, let's do this. So there are exceptions. but the one of the reasons I like it is just like when you're making all the decisions or you're in a customer conversation because the CEO should be doing all the sales up front. And you if if you're not technical, like it's harder, it's much harder to have a conversation on the fly where you can adjust, hey, can I actually do this? Like, does this make sense? Like we're having this back and forth, not just like here's our product, and they're like, Cool, can it do this? And you're like, ooh, I don't know. I gotta go talk to the engineering team. You know, like so, like at those early days, like having that knowledge and you're
making the c company level decisions on a daily basis, if you don't have a good understanding of it, it's just a lot harder. And so, like the ones that aren't that technical, the best signs are like it's clear that they're learning about it so fast, that they're maybe they're not like an engineer with a decade of experience, but like have a good understanding of the technology. versus like kind of the example I just gave where you're like, I don't know, I have to go talk to the engineers. Which is like a
Remember your first company that they, I guess they, they used to have fast you learn and you deliver other than how much experience you accumulated. Cause you can even accumulate 20 years, but if it doesn't bring you the same. Like you're not able to move the needle with the 20 years experience. What do I do with the 20 years experience? But if I learn faster than that guy who had all the 20 years experience, I'm going to close the gap like before he even realizes.
it's you know, it's it's not totally true, but like the thought of like working for somebody else and like not being in c total control of my destiny and like is is kind of hard to swallow. And it just wasn't interesting. Like I a lot a lot of people, you know, Pioneer Fund is a very part-time thing. Like they have a unique model where the venture partners are, you know, involved at the end of each batch, essentially at a quite a bit, but you know, in between less so. but like a lot, I had a lot of folks be like, why don't just go join? Like with your experience, like you should be able to go join as a like not super junior person at like a really good VC fund. 'Cause they would love to have your experience on you know, helping them.
level it's It it's basically like their launch cost that they're using to do their math is like optimistic at best, if not delusional. SpaceX charges an external customer a very different price than they charge themselves internally. And it's market driven. They're the only provider at scale that can do it. So are you gonna get charged cost plus seven percent or something? No. You're getting charged whatever the market bears. So even if Starship like starts launching thousands of times per year, which
is what it requires to get anywhere near the cost people are using to estimate these, the question is like, are there gonna be enough competitors doing the same thing where like the market price comes down for an outsider? So like there's like this big underlying assumption that like in my opinion is just false, which is a huge driver. And the other thing is like doing it with a large single data center where you have enormous solar rays and enormous radiator required has not been done. And like
there are problems with dynamic modes, like how things move. Like you maneuver something and like you have this giant floppy structure, like nobody's assembled a structure that big in space before. Like you and then it just like when you add all that mass and complexity up, like it just doesn't work to be any like I think you can do it. It's economics sucks.
Earth-based data centers become unbuildable because of political or societal reasons, which we are seeing backlash, but it's just not that strong. And you can go build in Texas right now, you can go build in Middle East at scale. power is like a huge constraint, but like there's a lot of people working on that. And so it just seems like
you're making this of of a variety of assumptions that are all like tweaked to the max level. To be optimistic for you. Like, nobody can get power on the ground, nobody will let you build. launch costs are like a thousand X lower than they are now. And we can solve all these other hard problems with a massive structure. You're just like lining up these too many miracles. doesn't
mean they won't do it. Like, I'm like very honest about it. Like they have incredibly well funded now. People are excited about it. They probably have a decade to go do this. They'll probably get more money. So like Will those things change enough over that time as they burn that cash to make it viable?
Like maybe. so what but for an early stage investor like myself, like can you imagine how much dilution that's gonna be? Like, so that's for me is like a bad investment for very early stages for that reason, whether or not it even works. the people, if that works, the people are gonna make a lot of money are the ones that come in later.
There's in terms of the technological part that as you say that's gonna work. But then again, Semi analysis had a really nice piece recently two, three days ago they published why it would work and these are the reasons, but that even that they also highlight a couple of facts Like there are only certain levels where they work best. I think low orbit if I'm not mistaken. And also you are not the only one who wants to have presence there. then there's now the space industry is also taking off. There are other things popping up, like other solar panels in space, like popping up energy. How can we then fuel the infrastructure in space? I don't know if you are in the team. Yes, let's build it till we reach Mars. And then we don't care what it costs, what it takes, whether we go full on that direction. Or you're rather kind of a little more pragmatic. Okay, this is gonna be 30 years to figure out that is this is gonna make sense economically or not until then I'm not sure if I have the patience to pour into that and then see how this will
for me, like I'm a professional investor now. Like I have it's not my money, right? So like it's people if if one of my investors wants to go invest in StarCloud and they have the patience and they're cool with the dilution, they should go do it. Like that's great. But I have a variety of investors and like people expect returns within somewhat reasonable time periods. They all understand that this stuff can take longer. so I think there's, you know, people have different motivations for investing in things. and that stuff starts to make more sense for people with different patient timelines or, you know, different investor sets. a lot of a lot of founders don't really understand like what something founders should do is like really think about the motivations and reasons of like who they're trying to get as investors. like people are just like, they just give me money. Like that's their that's their only job. It's like, you know, I have bosses, like technically, they're my investors. They I I've pitched them a thesis. I'm pretty flexible because I'm a small early fund and I'm running my own show. But like a lot of funds have like, I have to hit a certain ownership target percentage. I have to get exits by a certain time. Like, what are their motivations? Or do you find an extremely wealthy individual who's like, I'll throw 10 million bucks at you? And if if I don't get it back, it's okay. And if it takes twenty years, it's okay. I just want to be part of this. That's a completely
were not really ever interested in tech and all of a sudden like we are all, tech founders please. Like literally like almost like three years ago that they always conversations where you need a business founder, you need an MBA in your founding team. And now the tides are like, what is the saying for it? The tides are changing?
There's definitely there's definitely some of that, but the other the other factor is like this sector was so underfunded for a long time. and now it's not, right? Like there's enough capital and enough firms, whether they're specialists like me or generalists who also do hard work. And the other thing about understanding motivations is like you have to deploy the capital. Like that's your job. So you get enough investors that have to deploy their capital and you're gonna get bad things funded, right? Like they have to.
But do you really have to? Because what is the meaning of deploying wrong money to wrong team? It's just waste, but I fulfill my quarterly number. In Europe, have such examples a lot, especially government-supported funds. They have literally metrics around this number of investments has to be done
within this timeline. But what is the meaning if this is not going to take off? Why am I pouring to... make the ecosystem livelier or to encourage people to go and fund but then there's kind of a wrong signal because whereas you could have put that money somewhere that would actually work better and people could leverage it.
Yeah, no, I mean like it it's essentially like a type of bubble, right? whether or not it pops or not, like I don't think the hard tech bubble will pop, like there's so much room to run. but like what happens in the in a sort of bubble, like it's a bubble compared to what it used to be, right? So like it gets floppy,
right? Like so valuations go up, bad stuff gets funded, probably see a lot of failures, they might take a long time, who knows? In my opinion, it's like good for the ecosystem because it means more like things like StarCloud are being tried. Like, don't get me wrong, like I'm stoked they're doing it. Like as an engineer
Yeah, fair enough. Like, okay, so there's other examples that maybe are like even more clearly like wrong, wrong way. But like I I think it's good because like it means things are being tried. You know, people will learn. If something fails, they go do something else. It's one of the beauties of like the capitalist system, right? Like it's not like if you fail, well, you know, it's it's it's okay. and so yeah, I think I don't think it's bad. Like it makes it more competitive for me. But on the flip side, it's like now there's all this other capital downstream to find all my companies that wasn't there before and they need that. And it's much easier now. So I th I don't think it's I think it's like it's got pluses and minuses.
Yeah, I... Everything is a trade-off in the end of today. Probably the only nuance that I would like to add is like if I meet let's I saw these examples a couple of times that's why I meet the team like there's no drive there's no it's just like a science project after school that they just want to give it a try and everyone knows this is not gonna take off and then they still like okay let's build the company let's invest because government has this then I would call them call them grants like then they are not you know, let's name them grants, let's name them, we encourage people to build, but it's a whole different topic. I'm really enjoying the conversation, I realize I'm a little bit on top of the hour with you, Jamie, thank you so much for your time. There
is one closing question every time that we have our guests, and this one is coming from Beyond Rich Labs co-founder and CTO. Pele Kallins, they were in my C's previous winter batch this year. Yeah, and so his question is, what is one regret you have from your life journey to this point? Hopefully that's not too dark, but I think it's just as if not more interesting to hear founders admit where they made mistakes instead of just talking through success.
question. Yeah, I mean, for my founder journey, like, and we didn't really get into it, but like we got an exit. It was small. it wasn't the outcome I wanted. I don't I don't like the one regret I sometimes have is not more aggressively pivoting because we had like funding and a good team and we're in an interesting sector that now is quite large. so knowing things that weren't working out the way I wanted them to. Like sometimes I look back and say, like, should we have just like wiped this clean and gone somewhere else? Like we had tech and pull from defense and stuff like that. whenever I have those thoughts though, I like actually think I'm through and I'm like, Nope, I made the right decision. So the decision was like things aren't working out the way I want them to do. And it was quite complicated. but in the end it was like, let's go get this landed somewhere so that what we've built like lives on and gets our investors like something. to do the right thing. but we the decision was not to like do anything it takes to build something big. So I I don't that's
Right? Yeah, but I can relate to what you said. Jamie, thank you so much. It was a real honor and fun to have you in honor podcast. Thank you so much for your time. And everyone knows how to reach you. We share your contact information and everything. Is there anything we didn't ask you, you wanted to say?
Thank you for the work you are doing Jamie, I appreciate it.
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