Why he invests in hardware and skips software for hardware
From Why Pure Software Is Uninvestable: The SpaceX & YC Way to Build Hardware on Deeptech Decoded, with Jamie Gull.
Transcript
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
Estefan. Yeah.
instead I founded a VC fund, which is like in
Hahaha!
some ways not that different, except for it's just me. So I'm it's not a team. but it is, you know, in a sense a small start.
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
Mm-hmm.
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.
in much sense, which one software for hardware in terms of normalized distribution or reach you mean.
Yeah, yeah, like if you can g if you can get a good product that's useful, like this the sales are really hard and it's hard to scale.
Mm.
so you know, I and I've seen this a bunch. So like there are some success stories out there that are growing quite well, but it's it's hard.
