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Transcript of our conversation with Ryan Westerdahl:
[00:00.1]
What we're doing at Turion now is there's kind of two parts. There's a, is really a fully integrated infrastructure which consists of the hardware component, our droid satellites, we call our satellites droids, and then a software, component which is Starfire, the Starfire platform.
[00:19.3]
So Starfire, you can use that to task our existing fleet. We have two satellites in orbit already, both operational. And basically right now what those satellites are doing is call it, on the commercial side.
[00:34.4]
We can help companies resolve anomalies if they can't communicate with their satellite. We can image it when we fly by at, you know, 35,000 miles an hour and not just a dot in, in the frame of a picture, but like a resolved image. And that is interesting because now if you can't communicate yourself with your satellite, you.
[00:54.0]
Is it because the antenna didn't deploy? Is it because your solar panels didn't deploy? Did you get hit by something else? That's something that you know, we're doing right now or on the national security side, call it intelligence with discretion.
[01:11.7]
Hey everyone. Welcome to Founders in Arms with me, Immad Akhund , co founder and CEO of Mercury. And I'm Raj Suri, co founder of Lima and Tribe. And today we're welcoming Ryan Westerdahl, founder and CEO of Turion Space. Why don't you tell us a little bit about what Turion does. So Turion designs, builds, operates satellites.
[01:31.9]
We are building resilient space infrastructure and really like broadly proliferating critical infrastructure in space. Starting with critical infrastructure in space for space. So the mission focus area that I would say, you know, is anything in this area we are focused on is space domain awareness, space to space activities for national security purposes, space sustainability, things like orbital debris and building a business around this, is our stepping stone to our longer term plans around asteroid mining one day.
[02:13.1]
So at this point we have actually refined the timeline for when we think that's going to occur and it should be a fun journey over the next 10 to 15 years. As for mining anyone?
[02:28.3]
I actually invested in Ryan in 2021. So I just pulled up my notes. So every time I invest, especially with zoom, you make notes. So I just pulled up the notes, but nothing about asteroid mining in my notes. Was that always in the back of your mind or is that was, you know, when we were in yc, I remember one of the things they did was like everyone in the batch had to do like a.
[02:53.5]
I don't know, 15 second, 30 second pitch. And your goal was to like stand out. And I remember we're like, there's this asteroid Psyche 16 that's worth, you know, $400 quintillion dollars or something in precious metals. And but we kind of we, we, we backed up a little bit from there just because we wanted to focus more on what are we building now.
[03:17.3]
And at the time it was more focused on orbital debris removal. Orbital debris removal is a critical problem to solve. But even in the YC days, there are now multiple steps between now and actually doing those missions.
[03:33.3]
Now we're actually not, we've been charging for it on a what we call an uncooperative RSO resident Space Object Capture, demonstration mission, which effectively is a orbital debris removal demo.
[03:50.2]
Uncooperative meaning that it's uncontrolled and capture, meaning you're not docking with it, you're actually capturing it with an unprepared surface. So we've been doing quite a bit of work with space force NASA as like leading up to that.
[04:09.8]
In fact, three different contracts are all kind of precursor contracts to that demo mission. So the demo mission we expect to do probably in the back half of 20, 27, 2027 to Q1, 2028 is when it would launch. So really looking forward to that.
[04:26.9]
But the reality is with orbital debris removal and why we, you know, why we kind of focused on that as a stepping stone to asteroid mining is it kind of, it gets you good at the fundamentals. You know, you need to get good at remote sensing, you need to get good at moving things around in space.
[04:44.6]
You need to get good at autonomous and complex satellite operations. Most importantly too is the stepping stone approach for something like asteroid mining. To truly send back, you know, a lot of you have to refine or in situ.
[05:02.5]
So basically where these asteroids are oftentimes these asteroids are most of the time they're pretty far away. There are a, you know, about 15% of what are called near Earth Asteroids take less energy, therefore propellant and propulsion to go to and from and back to Earth than, than the surface of the Moon.
[05:23.7]
But it's still very, it's, it's a long process and it's to do it at the right scale and refine that amount of material, you know, it takes massive infrastructure. So it's going to take a lot of money, a lot of time. And besides building the technical foundation with a mission like Orbital Debris removal.
[05:41.3]
We need to build a financial foundation and build a company that's robust enough to actually afford to go and do something where you're not going to get a, you know, your first billion return on investment, you know, for potentially several years with orbital debris removal.
[05:57.8]
That's not, that's also the problem with that is that's not an existing market. You know, we think NASA is likely to be the entity to first like fund some of those missions. But what we found is that you know, with the cap, the remote sensing capabilities you can build, the rendezvous capabilities you can build, and even the capture of an uncooperative space object with those capabilities.
[06:22.9]
There is significant, interest in those capabilities from a national security perspective. And with the establishment of Space Force like four or five years ago, it's already more well funded than NASA.
[06:38.8]
And in my opinion it's actually relatively. The average government entity is actually fairly well run because, because it's somewhat new, in terms of like their speed. We've actually, like, I actually don't have, can't say much about like what they should do to speed things up because I think they're actually doing quite a bit.
[07:00.3]
These timelines are still kind of insane, Ryan. Right? Like you started this in 2021. You're saying 27 is, is when you when you kind of do this test, for the uncontrolled, attachment thing. How do you keep motivated with such long timelines?
[07:18.1]
And is it all about kind of intermediate steps? I mean, we should even back up, right? Sure. The official Turion journey began in 2021, but the real journey, at least for me, began in 2002.
[07:33.9]
I remember the exact moment because it was the day after Christmas. And I remember it was the same year SpaceX, was founded. And I'm sitting there. I don't know if you guys remember. You probably do. The fmcd, player combo devices like those were like the hot thing back in the day.
[07:53.5]
Got that for Christmas the day before. So that's how I remember. And an NPR segment came on about the first planets discovered around other stars. And I'm like, life mission cemented. Build the ships that go there. Reality check. We got to go around our solar system first.
[08:09.0]
So Mars is the closest planet. You know, it's less terrible compared to Venus. So who's talking about doing that? Some crazy guy who just sold PayPal. So, Interim Life Mission get to SpaceX. And so pretty much from like when I was like 11, it was like what do I do to get a job at SpaceX?
[08:27.5]
So I explored a lot of options. You know, eventually got to University of Washington, studied aerospace engineering there. That's where I met my co founder, Tyler Pierce actually in that program. I grew up, you know, raised by a single mother with no money, so I didn't have any, I needed to get a job, an actual job.
[08:47.3]
So I couldn't really take, I didn't really have the luxury to just like go straight to grad school and study fusion. So yeah, my thinking from when I was like 11 was, was ended up working out and I got a job at SpaceX where I stayed the next about nine years.
[09:05.4]
And it was an awesome place. You know my, my boss there, Kevin Wu, shout out K. Wu, you know, solved some of he, it was awesome person. Really learned a lot about leadership working for him. I just give him a shout out because he's the CTO of relativity now.
[09:24.9]
So fun kind of full circle there. And now we're talking about launching on some of their missions in the future. Basically. There's a lot of things that I did there. A lot of like worked across a lot of different teams really the simplest way to summarize, you know, when things blew up, it was like we were the guys you called to like piece data together to figure out why it blew up, how to prevent it from happening again.
[09:48.0]
So it was very cross departmental, and it required learning at a, it required a fast rate of learning of new information just because, you know, we had to go work with a bunch of other groups, understand exactly like how their system fit into whatever the issue was.
[10:07.8]
And that's honestly the most valuable takeaway from SpaceX that I got is understanding broadly but also to a sufficient level of depth to make decisions. So many different types of technology, you know. So when you, when you were 11 and you were like hey, I need to, I need to get into space, I need to get to planets and other solar systems, did you think you'd start a company to try to achieve that objective or you thought you'd work at SpaceX or some other.
[10:36.2]
So, you know, I didn't really know when I was, when I was that young. I think the signs were there. Like, you know, at first I was worried about paying even for college. And I basically.
[10:51.5]
So I had an idea after taking some high school physics to build a wind turbine, put it on a roof, connected it to Our, the electric mobile box on our house. And then basically was like, all right, I'm going to, now I'm going to expand this. This is like senior year in high school. I'm going to expand this and sell it to everyone in the neighborhood, go beyond.
[11:09.2]
Turns out it's a terrible, terrible idea from an energy density perspective. Like it needs to be higher up. If there are trees, you're just screwed. But but that journey actually is what got me a scholarship to University of Washington. So I knew I needed to get to SpaceX.
[11:26.6]
I didn't know enough about starting companies and wasn't exposed to any of that kind of stuff. Growing up outside of like, you know, learning about some of the greats and just being like a pretty hardcore reader. So by the time I got to SpaceX, you know, I remember the first, like the first day I'm getting lunch and my, my boss asked me, so are you gonna, you know, kind of a weird question from your boss on the first day, but I guess we were just tight like that, you know.
[11:56.4]
How long are you gonna stay here? Five years. And you know, best your equity, that bounce, you're gonna stay here for a few years, you're gonna. Are you a lifer? I'm like, I'm either a lifer or I'm gonna start something in five years. And I didn't know what at the time, but I thought it might be possible.
[12:12.0]
So, you know, one thing I haven't mentioned publicly, but I don't know, I don't think they'll, I don't think they'll be upset about this, you know, now that I've been away from SpaceX for five years. But while I was there I even started a company. You know, one of my other passions is energy. So I wanted to just build large solar farms out in the desert.
[12:32.0]
So I started buying and selling vacant 20 acre lots in like a few of the desert zip codes in LA county. Got really good at it. Had like a team of like six virtual assistants doing all the paperwork. And then I'd hold onto the ones next to power lines and then basically sell the rest.
[12:50.3]
So I got good at sales from this, but ultimately you know, from, from doing that for a while and also in parallel like it didn't tell a soul about this at SpaceX either. I got a master online master's degree in Civil Engineering, Energy infrastructure.
[13:07.6]
I realized like this isn't hardcore engineering, it's commercial real estate. You Know, and so I liquid, you know, I sold all the, my land holdings and pretty much the day I closed that company start, got my founders together and started Turion Space.
[13:24.0]
So and you know, with Turion, it was like what I realized with doing that was it has to be hardcore engineering and it has to be space if it's going to be, if it's going to be enough to get me to walk away from SpaceX.
[13:39.5]
Because SpaceX, like it really was the dream job. You know, it is an engineer's engineer job. You know, you work with the most hardcore engineers, you're working on the most interesting and difficult problems. And I get the sense, you know, you guys probably do as well, that basically all of Elon's companies are like that.
[14:01.4]
So that's really kind of the culture we're trying to build. Where we are building at Turion as well is really an engineering driven organization. Which I think is. Why are you seeing so many exciting companies come out of like spin out of ex SpaceXers just because they like they're running with that mindset regardless of what they're doing, they're building engineering driven organizations.
[14:21.7]
And the thing engineers hate more than anything is like being told what to do by someone who's not an engineer. You know, I'm actually very curious about this, like what this engineering culture means and you know what, you know, it sounds like you really enjoy your time at SpaceX, working with Elon.
[14:38.2]
I've heard a lot of horror stories too. You know, what's the difference between some of the horror stories coming out of people working with Elon versus and Elon's companies versus some of the people like you who love the job, would probably stay there forever if you could.
[14:55.3]
What do you think? Do you think other people are just not hardcore enough? Yeah, they're not hardcore enough. Honestly, SpaceX, it was like the sickest place to work, but hardcore. I mean, yeah, I, I, my wife gets upset at me sometimes now when I'm traveling, and I'm like, you realize I would be traveling way more if I was still at SpaceX.
[15:18.2]
They like forced me to go out to Boca Chica for like three months. So I'm like, this is actually counterintuitively, better, in many ways. But yeah, you know, I think some people may get unlucky and they may get a, like if you have, if you get a terrible manager, and they just, you know, and you're a new engineer like that could really stint your growth.
[15:41.5]
And But the ones that, like, for me, you know, any sort of conflicts on, that I had on that I really just cared about the mission so much. Like, getting to Mars ultimately is, just such an exciting mission that, like, it.
[15:59.5]
That always kept me going. And Yeah, I mean, there's like the horror stories you'll hear, I think, some of them valid, I have plenty. But like, ultimately, if you stay at SpaceX, if you're at SpaceX more than three years, at least, then you've at least survived one cycle of like a local maxima and a local minima in terms of like, you know, challenges that you faced.
[16:27.2]
So after being there nine years, you know, the thick skin you get from going through probably five, six of those cycles is like starting a company like Turion. And even, you know, some of the low points we've had, have not been enough to deter us from charging forward.
[16:45.1]
And I don't think they ever will at this point. So, yeah, not hardcore enough. There's your answer. Sorry for the rant, Raj. When you think about like, engineering culture and like, I guess one thing you said is report to engineers, which I get.
[17:01.2]
Is there other elements of the culture that you have tried to preserve at Turion? Is there a specific practice that you do that you think is very unique to SpaceX that you've tried to copy? That's a good question. There's not a ton that we've tried to just copy and paste, but I think, keeping the organization as flat as possible is something that we are, You know, what does that mean?
[17:28.8]
Often people say that. Does it mean like one manager has 20 ICs or something? Like, what is a flat organization? Yeah, yeah. So like removing layers of management so that between me and the base engineers, we're as close as possible. We're about 120 people right now, and at most, you know, there's three layers really.
[17:51.1]
You know, your, your, your ICs, your engineering leads, department leads, and then the exec level. So the way I tell, like my execs, if you're an exec and anyone VP or up is considered an exec, then the way you should be thinking is like, you may have a specific focus area, but you should be operating like, you, like everyone directly reports to you and no one directly reports to you, so effectively.
[18:21.0]
Meaning that like, it doesn't matter if, so. And so actually these departments actually report to you if there is a problem in the company. Between those parts of the org and other parts of the org like there should, there are no barriers for you to address whatever that problem is.
[18:37.3]
So when you say everyone reports to you, it's not just under your. In the whole company, everyone reports to that VP. Not necessarily. @ least that's the main thing at the department lead level. So the department lead slash like director level, we have about you know, 12, 12 of those and we're going to keep expanding those.
[18:53.4]
And the goal of like department leads is to rip out parts of their org and establish new departments. You know, so we're probably going to do that again. Like the next update there is going to be you know, elevating someone from a from a department lead to a VP level and then we'll split their org into three different departments and all the VPs report to you.
[19:17.8]
Yeah, yeah. So between myself and Richmond for my coo. So I think you know the culture at Turian is unique because one of our early like significant investors, he runs a, Ford Deployed Venture Capital.
[19:36.2]
Great firm for all you like pre seed, seed stage hard tech companies out there, with a focus on national security. He was the first for deployed engineer at Palantir. So he connected us you know with a guy named Rich. His firm is called Forward Deployed Venture Capital.
[19:53.9]
Yeah, for deployed venture Capital. Awesome. That's a great name. Yeah. So you know Rich, what he brings to the culture is a lot of interesting elements from Palantir as well.
[20:08.9]
So like it's an interesting mesh between. Because Palantir, they did some, they had a really interesting culture. If you don't know too much about about that, like you know, maybe get Mark on the phone next time or one of the OG Palantir, like you know, one of the first handful of Palantir guys.
[20:25.8]
And they'll tell you how unique it is. So, so yeah, we have a relatively flat organization with a lot of departments. And the other thing is like being very engineering decision making, driven and giving department leads the ability to really operate the company.
[20:46.9]
The way I see it is there should never be a department lead that comes to me or Rich or anyone else with any other executive with a problem, with another org, they should be working across the different department leads in order to solve those problems.
[21:04.3]
Really I see the department leads as like the, they're the ones really operating the company. So yeah. And I think that is starting to really sink in. We've been very systematic in establishing that framework. And like the, when it comes to performance reviews, if you're director level, like it doesn't matter how well your team did or your department did, all you're graded on is the company.
[21:26.4]
The same things I grade myself on and the other execs, the company's bottom line relative to what the target goals we set out in the beginning of the year. So so you are incentivized to also you know operate without boundaries across the company.
[21:43.3]
So so yeah, I think it's you know, like I said engine like a lot of people that have come from other companies that weren't engineering led decision making companies like that is one of the things that they really appreciate and, and keeps them here, you know, is the fact that like you know my co founders and I are like working with folks on the ground floor on like on random problems like at any given moment.
[22:12.7]
One of the things about SpaceX, you know, one question I get a lot though about why, why did you leave SpaceX? You know, depending on the day like I could have 20 different answers, all valid, you know, and none of them related to like it was too hard, you know.
[22:30.6]
But I think what I realized is like building a Mars, colony, that it's an important mission but it's really just a thing to do. What you really need to do to accelerate mankind's galactic destiny and go to the other stars, right?
[22:50.5]
If that's the ultimate objective is like building a Mars colony is just a thing to do. You need an economic forcing function to justify its existence in the first place. If you're going out and advancing space technology, you need something that is like a financial reason, something that is making you so much money that it justifies continuously advancing and accelerating space technology forward.
[23:15.5]
And our bet on that is platinum group metal and precious metal asteroids, or those materials in asteroids. They're abundant in asteroids on many you know they're more abundant than all of you know, worldwide reserves.
[23:33.2]
In fact NASA released a paper on a metallic asteroid in 2021, where they got some measurements off of it that's know estimated to be 11 $.7 trillion in platinum group metals, more than all worldwide reserves.
[23:48.8]
So of course that would affect market commodity prices of those materials. But it gives you a sense that like the value out there is very real. And the argument also that a lot of people bring up that's super, that's very valid is well if you, if you go Mine more platinum group metals.
[24:06.6]
Right now worldwide annually is about 400 tons, refined PGMs, annually. If you go and start bringing back a million, a thousand tons, you know, a year and market prices just crash significantly, then is, isn't that going to destroy your business?
[24:26.0]
Not necessarily. I think actually the better, the better framework to look at it is that's the objective is to get market prices to come down. You're still, if you're the one leading that effort, you're still going to be making a killing. But look at aluminum back in before, you know, like aluminum refining had, in processing had some breakthroughs.
[24:46.4]
It was like the kings and queens of Western Europe were wearing aluminum jewelry because it was so rare, you know. And now it has changed the face of you know, all of aerospace and really just industrial society generally. One thing I was going to say about the talent issue, for the culture stuff is I noticed there was a big difference between people working in hardware, like hardware engineers, and people who are working in software.
[25:16.4]
There's a big cultural shift just in the market of talent. I feel like software engineers in general feel more entitled because of the huge amount of jobs that are out there for software and hardware. Engineers are way more hungry and way more motivated because there are much fewer opportunities for hardware and mechanical and robotics.
[25:36.3]
A lot of people want to study those things. A lot of people care about those things. People like Ryan who are inspired by space. But the amount of jobs that were out there for those people up until recently was almost nothing. You have to go work at some plant basically at GE and who wants to do that?
[25:51.9]
That's such a significantly worse opportunity than working at Durian. So I noticed that like the pool of people that you were able to attract A was higher caliber than software and less entitled and B, less entitled. So you know, they were so motivated. Do you notice that Ryan?
[26:07.0]
Is that something that you've seen? Oh, most definitely. If you're, you know the people that come to work here, they are, they're working here because again it's, it's like we're. That's another similar thing I would say about our culture is being very mission driven out like decades, you know.
[26:23.8]
The way, the way I honestly see it is like if we the end, like what is the end game? It's galactic destiny achieved, you know, and not just multi planetary but multi stellar, you know. And that's going to take a long time, right?
[26:41.3]
This ain't a short game and Even with, with asteroid mining like that's at least you know it's going to take 15 years before we're really making a dent in the company's bottom line for that, actually sending material back. So but the way I see it is, look, Charlie Munger, he was like 99 and still at the helm.
[27:01.5]
And these days like you know, you got Brian Johnson, you know, telling us how to live forever. So I'm like, all right, I could probably keep it going. Achieve your galactic destiny when you're 200 years old. Yeah, I was like, you know, all right, I don't know, I'm not maybe quite as optimistic on some of the like lifetime lengths as them, but optimistically like, or like, you know, call it baseline like 150 should be achievable.
[27:29.6]
So you know, that gives me another 120 years. So we got time. One thing I'm always impressed by is the ability for hard tech companies with like these really long timelines to just raise money along the way.
[27:44.7]
So I was just looking at my notes for when I invested in you guys and one thing you had, which I thought was impressive was you had a 246 million dollar LOI signed. So tell me a little bit about like how important those kind of like, you know, when you're pitching this like dream, especially when you're early on, how important is like those kind of commercial like terms?
[28:06.4]
Yeah, I mean how do you even get an LOI when you're pitching them something that's like five, six years away? In our past raising money wasn't the, it didn't come naturally or very easy for us. I think it's that's, that's definitely changing and mainly because like, like I'll be honest on Lois, I didn't actually see them as that tangible either.
[28:31.0]
The only thing I see as tangible is, is contracts and revenue. And in you know last year we, you know, closed a series A of 15 million and it's also exceeded 10 million in revenue. I don't know if that's a trackable ratio, but we're going to exceed that this year by similar ratio from the amount of capital we've raised this year.
[28:54.1]
So like, I think at this point that was a useful thing to do in, in order to get like that first chunk of capital raised so that we could really get going. But I don't, I don't see it as that tangible but I Mean for different companies it's also different.
[29:17.8]
That's just also was the mindset I've really always operated under. So like one of the ways we lucked out is Space Force. Right after we graduated YC Space Force put out their first like early stage company program called Orbital prime, which is a small business innovative research SBIR program where Department of Air Force actually awards contracts for the exact things we're talking about doing.
[29:44.2]
So that came out in the fall after summer 2021 and we walked away from that with four contracts and those have now spun into multi double digit million dollar contracts with the Space Force. So it is important really early on. But I think after that first chunk of capital I think, I think the numbers matter the most.
[30:05.5]
Yeah, revenue is obviously better but if you're CS or pre seat stage company, it's hard to have revenue in these kind of hard tech things. I think it's impressive because it showed that often you get people that are very into the science and engineering of it but can't do the business side of it.
[30:24.3]
And I think it showed that hey, this person could hustle and get some stuff done. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, like, like for example, I guess like if you're a fusion company you have to figure out something to show demand and interest.
[30:41.2]
Right? So, so yeah there, there are definitely scenarios where, where it does make sense. But fundamentally we, when we started Turian, we started it not because we're seeing other companies, like I won't name names but other space companies raising a billion dollars at the time, like oh, we should start a space company.
[31:02.6]
Then it was really like out of spite of seeing that like you don't need a billion dollars like raising a billion dollars and you're not doing the thing yet. Like that just seemed seemed crazy to me. Like we should probably go, we can raise $10 million and we could actually do something real.
[31:21.7]
And so starting not at asteroid mining and not even necessarily debris removal, but starting even lower behind that. That's really kind of how we got things going. What we're doing at Turion now is there's kind of two parts.
[31:40.8]
There's really a fully integrated infrastructure which consists of the hardware component, our droid satellites, which we call our satellites droids, and then a software component which is Starfire, the Starfire platform.
[31:56.1]
So Starfire, you can use that to task our existing fleet. We have two satellites in orbit already, both operational. And basically right now what those satellites are doing is Call it, on the commercial side, we can help companies resolve anomalies if they can't communicate with their satellite.
[32:15.6]
We can image it when we fly by at you know, 35,000 miles an hour. And not just a dot in in the frame of a picture, but like a resolved image. And that is interesting because now if you can't communicate yourself with your satellite, is it because the antenna didn't deploy?
[32:33.2]
Is it because your solar panels didn't deploy? Did you get hit by something else? That's something that you know, we're doing right now or on the national security side, call it intelligence with discretion. We need to wrap in a second. Raj, do you have any final questions?
[32:48.6]
I just have one question for you, Immad, actually, which was like, you've done a lot of cool space investing. What has been your thesis, on the space over time and are you still doing a lot of space investing?
[33:06.1]
I did a bunch around I guess 2018, 2022 time period I've seen less recently. So I think a lot of interesting and excitement there and a lot of these ideas were filled. I kind of think of it as like there's kind of three buckets when you're doing a space investment.
[33:25.0]
Number one, like you know, does this person know what they're talking about? Right. Like obviously with ryan, with the SpaceX experience, I, mean some of the best people are from SpaceX, but you know, there's also Blue Origin and now like newer companies, Relativity have enough like maturity that there's some talent coming out of them.
[33:42.5]
So yeah, do they know what they're talking about? That's step one. Number two, like how interesting is the idea and how potentially commercial is it and how quickly you can do that. And I've done some things that are probably just going to take a really long time.
[33:57.8]
But I have a company who's doing H3 mining on the moon, which I'm like, okay, I don't know what the intermediate steps for that are, but that company still is still doing well. You know, you know actually one thing I like about Turing is there was like obvious like step like it was already a commercial thing.
[34:15.7]
I think things where you can launch something within a few years and it can be commercial straight away. Like we did this interview with Albedo and they're doing like imaging, you know, imaging is already a huge commercial opportunity. So that's number two. And then yeah, number three is like, you know, like honestly how Good is the pitch, right?
[34:32.3]
Because like weird thing about space companies is they need to be really good at selling it. Like selling to customers, selling to the government, selling to investors. There's a, and often these are engineering type people like Ryan that don't have this business sense. So you kind of need enough business sense that you can actually get to the end there.
[34:52.4]
But these spaces are also huge. A software company to get to 10 million in revenue like Ryan's doing last year, that takes a lot of software. But if you can crack some stuff and get unlocked government spending or some commercial use cases, there's a lot of money here, that people are spending.
[35:13.3]
And obviously lastly there's this kind of long term trend where SpaceX has made it cheap enough to get to space, which is like well, I wish, probably shouldn't talk smack on it. I would say more than making it low cost, what they have done is they have made it reliable, easily accessible.
[35:33.1]
I could go on their website with a credit card and buy a launch. You know one of the things too that I think is has ended up being an interesting part of our culture is it's just like sci fi. Like that. Sci fi is our culture. If people ask me about it, you know, and I've read a ton, I read a ton of sci fi and I ask everyone at the last interview stage what their favorite sci fi is.
[35:56.6]
So if it's not a good sci fi and they respond with it, you know, well, what's your, what's your, what's your top non obvious sci fi book recommendation? Maybe we can end on that. It's hard to, for me to pick a single one but like here's one that I think is is a really fast read.
[36:14.5]
You pick it up and is, is not one most people have heard of. When you tell, when people say Isaac Asimov, it's almost always foundation. If people have read a lot of Asimov, it might be like the robot series. But Asimov's best without a doubt is the book End of Eternity.
[36:31.4]
So go out there and read End of Eternity. Besides that though, I would say the book Hyperion is honestly one of the greatest of all time. Yeah, Hyperion's great. Have you read this is not a sci fi book. But have you read Case for Space?
[36:47.6]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Case for Space is such a fun book actually also partly got me into investing in it. It lays out a bunch of things you can do in space from like obvious to like crazy. But I mean it's not a. It's. It's not a fiction book, but it's almost fiction in the, like.
[37:04.4]
It tries to think of, like, the most extreme things you could do in space. It's a really fun book. Yeah, I know, I know. Delian was on your guys podcast too, and like, to be honest, the two. The two things that could be the economic forcing functions that really allow us to continue expanding outward, I think is like the.
[37:22.3]
The. The Varda angle, you know, like, build, like, making things that cost a lot of money on Earth, or are impossible to manufacture on Earth, like pharmaceuticals or Zblan fiber or whatever. You know, those. I. That I think is another really interesting angle that, that some folks are.
[37:41.5]
Are. Are exploring. Yeah, Varda just raised another 200 million, I believe. Just. I just saw a tweet earlier. All right, we're going to wrap. Really, really good to have you on the pod, Ryan. All right, guys, glad we can finally make this work. Thanks, Ryan. Thanks, everyone, for listening.
[37:57.2]
Please leave us a review on whatever channel you're listening on. Makes a big difference to the algorithm and to the success of the show. And see you all next week.
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