Episode 4: Quick Hits - on applying positivity, whiteboards and plasma-producing rail guns with Amit Singh

Sean spends a few minutes reflecting on resilience with Amit Singh.

CEO of startup fusion company, NearStar Fusion, Amit talks about childhood through fatherhood, learning the ropes through leading a cutting-edge energy company.

He brings a pragmatic view to approaching difficult times, yet manages to do so with an underlying optimism and kindness towards others in a kind and generous way.  

Shared Ground is produced by Sean Knierim and Allan Marks.  Thanks to Cory Grabow, Kara Poltor, Corey Walles (from The Recording Studio) for your support in launching this effort.

For more stories of resilience & rebuilding, kindness & generosity:  visit shared-ground.com and subscribe to Sean's substack.  We invite you to share your own stories of resilience at the Shared Ground website - whether in response to the January fires in LA or other situations.

Follow us at seanknierim.substack.com, Instagram, or wherever you listen to podcasts (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc).

Transcript

Meet Amit Singh, Fusion Energy CEO

Amit Singh 0:02

My name is Amit Singh. I'm a DC resident. I've lived here for 15 years, but I grew up in southern Virginia.

Sean Knierim 0:09

Amit, what are you doing now for work?

Amit Singh 0:11

I am the CEO of New Star Fusion, which is a fusion energy startup based in Chantilly.

Sean Knierim 0:16

Rail guns creating fusion energy.

Amit Singh 0:18

Rail gun. We're trying to create a fusion machine gun using rail gun technology that was originally developed for the Star Wars program back in the 80s.

Sean Knierim 0:27

There's a lot of really cool fusion technologies. This is one of the neat ones.

Amit Singh 0:31

Thank you.

Sean Knierim 0:32

So, as you know, we've been having conversations with people about resilience. So a question for you how do you stay hopeful about the future in nutty times? You're fighting hard right now for the forces of good, but you see tough stuff. How do you stay hopeful?

Amit Singh 0:48

I mean I think for me, at least in my personal story, is that life has always gotten better. I mean, I've seen terrible things. You know my family's from india and when I've traveled there when I was a kid, I saw extreme poverty and and uh, things that could really change your perspective on how things are. And for me it's like I've seen through my life how things have gotten better. Now that doesn't mean that they're not obstacles along the way, but I have found that if you address them with positivity, that you're more likely not to just overcome them but to succeed and do much better than just trying to survive them.

Sean Knierim 1:27

We laugh that there are no straight lines, if we ever build a side porch ourself, there won't be a single straight line on that thing. Can you think of any people activities like what do you do to take care of yourself, to work towards resiliency?

Amit Singh 1:43

Well, I always I don't try to react quickly, I try to think about what is driving the other person or other organization for what they're trying to do. Most likely it's somewhat reasonable.

Sean Knierim 2:02

Or at least reasonable from their perspective.

Amit Singh 2:03

From their perspective right, and so if you can get creative and get to a win-win solution, then I'm not a believer of there's a small, of a set size pie. I think the pie can grow and so when you think about the other side and what motivates them, and you can see how that, how you can come up with something that works for both of you. I think that just makes it a much more sustainable and likely solution for what you want to achieve.

Sean Knierim 2:32

So, Amit, a lot of times I feel like it's not just two sides, there's a multiplicity of sides to deal with. Right, how does the same approach apply when you've got like five sides and a few sides you can't even perceive?

The Anti-Fragile Concept

Amit Singh 2:49

I'm a big fan of using whiteboards and uh, and so when they are multiple sides, I I like to write them up and and the answer won't come to you immediately and you know, and there are different techniques. You can use things like reverse brainstorming and and things like that, where you start putting up ideas and sticky notes and then you start resorting them and it takes time. But I do think that maybe you won't get all five sides, but you may get four of them or three of them, but there's always a better solution.

Sean Knierim 3:21

You have an engineer's mind

Amit Singh 3:22

yes, well, non-practicing engineer's mind

Sean Knierim 3:25

Non-practicing but still a pretty good mind. When we were talking about resilience over lunch, you came up with a different concept that you thought was relevant and maybe in some cases more useful. You talked about anti-fragile. What do you mean by that?

Amit Singh 3:40

So anti-fragile is a concept where a system becomes stronger when you stress it. So the most common example is your immune system. So immune systems that are constantly challenged become stronger at fighting disease and whatnot. But that can be applied to all kinds of things accounting systems. Netflix has something called Chaos Monkey, where they intentionally shut off random servers, so their engineering team has to be able to build systems that not only survive that but succeed during random outages.

Sean Knierim 4:11

So bring that into a community. So if we're thinking about humans that are dealing with hard stuff, how does that in your mind? How does that work when we're working with human beings?

Choosing Kindness Over Reaction

Amit Singh 4:19

Well, I think it goes to you know, as humans we have reptilian brains and mammalian brains and you know, when you're in a situation where it's a fight or flight kind of situation, we're using our reptilian brain and that's the easiest, fastest thing to do, but by using your mammalian brain, and you know, maybe you've been offended somehow or you've been attacked, but instead of responding in kind, you can kind of go above and show, be an example for how things should be done. I think maybe he puts the other side in a defensive position, like oh, that's not the response I was expecting, and now I look really bad because I've been the aggressor and the connotation in that situation is I look like the bad person and I don't want to be the bad person because I don't think of that way.

Sean Knierim 5:13

There's also a really embedded generosity in what you're talking about, of taking a moment and thinking about where the other person's coming from, assuming that that person's coming from somewhere. That's a there is a kindness in that.

Amit Singh 5:24

I like that yeah, and I think you you have to. It's hard to do, it takes practice, you don't have to.

Sean Knierim 5:32

This is a choice. You're talking about.

Growing Through Adversity

Amit Singh 5:33

I agree you don't have to, but I think if you want to do it you have to practice it. You can't. It's not going to happen the first time. A lot of times, I think. When I was younger, I grew up in southern Virginia, where I was, all kinds of things were said to me and I had the choice of then to be offended or to say that's not my problem, that's your problem and I'm going to succeed, despite what you think. Right on, and I think over the years where I grew up, that garnered a lot of respect and people who maybe in my younger years had been an adversary of some sort became allies later.

Sean Knierim 6:10

Right on, and now you're going to go bring that to your kid, as they're playing sport this afternoon. So thank you so much for taking a few minutes to talk. Thank you for taking time. I'm really glad to meet you.