PodCrash with Matt Ebert
PodCrash with Matt Ebert
Robinhood Co-Founder Baiju Bhatt on Building Big Ideas That Sound Crazy
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I'm Matt Evert. I turned one collision repair shop into a multi-billion dollar business called Crash Champions. Now I'm sitting down with people who have also built great things so you can build something of your own.
SPEAKER_00Hey Matt, thanks for having me on the uh the podcast today. Yeah, excited to be here.
SPEAKER_03What do we got going on?
SPEAKER_00Well, every industry has a gate gatekeeper, as you know. And uh today's guest actually broke through an entire industry to allow anyone to invest in the stock market. Uh today's guest is Bajou Bot. Uh he's the co-founder of the app Robinhood, which basically changed how an entire generation thinks about investing. I mean, you think about uh my kids today, so my kids are what, 18, 19 years old, and they're already utilizing uh the Robinhood app to invest. I mean, when you were that age, were you investing?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, wasn't it knowing where to look or anything about it?
SPEAKER_00But it's good, right? It gives them experience in a stock market, gets them to lose, you know, tens of dollars here and there. But um, okay, so jumping back on this, so today um Bajiu is the CEO of a new company called uh Aetherflux. Yes. So if uh things weren't hard enough here on Earth, he's actually taking it to space. So what they're trying to do is build satellites that beam solar energy down from space back here in Earth, I guess, in a more efficient manner. It's really no big deal.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, Bhaiju is the example of thinking big, right? So uh I always talk about thinking thinking bigger is great. And now he's thinking about going outside of Earth in orbit. So uh definitely space is a big thing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and speaking of like outside of um like Earth, right, or or your environment, a person like Bhaju, who went from building a company in the finance realm, right, investing, and then now is moving to space, um, the space realm, if you had to build an additional company tomorrow, let's say, um, what traits do you think are the most important thing to take with you? Things that you maybe didn't learn or didn't have building Crash Champions that you would definitely take into building your next uh organization?
SPEAKER_03Well, yeah, I definitely you get the experience of everything. So I had no experience, right? Starting from kind of from scratch. So can't help but think that those experience, the experience gain applied over something else is much better. Um so um and would have a little bit of capital now where before it didn't have any. So maybe that helps to go faster.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and if you had to choose from these three, and there's no silver bullet, obviously, to building a company, but if you could choose one of these three, so people um over resources over cash, which one matters the most?
SPEAKER_03Oh man, I I still go with people because I think getting good people is so important, harder to do maybe even than than finding cash. So I think um great people doing the right stuff can attract the resources and the money.
SPEAKER_00Like it. Well, I'm looking forward to your conversation with you and Bhajou. It'll be good.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's gonna be exciting. Okay, everyone. This is Podcrash. So excited to talk to you today, both about, you know, maybe we spend a few minutes on on your your your history and past, which I think is pretty well known, and then can't wait to talk about what you're up to today. Um you know, the thing for me is uh seeing something that you did not much different than me grinding it out as a as an entrepreneur, bootstrapping something only only you thought way bigger about what you were building. I got I gotta say, I was more a needs-based business, and you built something that uh the consumers could uh all take advantage of on their phone, which is pretty cool. But did you always intend to own your own business and start your own thing? Does that go all the way back to childhood too?
SPEAKER_02I don't think so. I mean, I I kind of like to make a joke that um I was probably not terribly employable um coming out of college because I was just like, I kind of like look at where my life is now and I realize that I'm like a bit of a caricature of an entrepreneur. Like I was the person that was probably not gonna be able to sit still at a job working for somebody else for too terribly long. Yep. Um worked in finance for a little less than a year after I graduated from college at at like an investment firm. And I that was just like it was cool, I enjoyed it. Um, but like I knew pretty I knew pretty early on that like if I was if I was not gonna be in academia, I was gonna be an entrepreneur. And like it's kind of interesting because looking back on it, um obviously, you know, Robin Hood was a very big idea. Um and I I talk to a lot of entrepreneurs these days or people that want to be entrepreneurs, and people are like, well, what do you think? Is this the right time? Should I try it? Should I not try it? And like my message is pretty much always the same, which is like literally, if you're talking, if you're thinking about this, like stop talking to me, leave, and go get started right now. Because it will never, ever, ever be easier than it is right now. Like, just if you if you think you want to do it, just try. Like, there's no right or wrong answer to this stuff. And if you overthink it, um you know it that that's like that's not really what being an entrepreneur is about, you know. It's like it's about gumption and just like going for it and not being right always and kind of iterating through it.
SPEAKER_03So yeah, I thought it would be good to ask you about that because um there were some there were some not so great successes ahead of Robin Hood. Um right, like you it wasn't just Robin Hood out of the gate.
SPEAKER_02No, no, no, it wasn't. There were there were a couple of ideas before that that frankly were like smaller ideas in the grand scheme of things and kind of didn't didn't have the same sort of like breadth to them as Robin Hood did. Because yeah, like when I when I when I was starting out doing Robin Hood with my co-founder, um we were we're we were very young. Like I was in my you know early mid-20s, and it's kind of interesting because like I think as a lot of people, if they want to be entrepreneurs, they end up kind of finding an idea and like wanting to do a thing. But the dividing line between like where where is the product and kind of like where's the sort of service that you're providing, I think is kind of an interesting one because the thing about Robinhood was like we we kind of had like a full idea. It's like if we can make this work and we can make that work and we can make that work, and all these pieces come together, then this like idea is gonna come to life. Whereas I think a lot of people, when they start out as entrepreneurs, it's it's a little bit of like consulting, basically. It's like you have somebody that wants some version of what you're doing, and you spend a lot of time kind of making that version of it. Where when you when you have a really clear idea of what the product is, is when you kind of like take the full agency for what the thing that you're building is. Yeah. Um but yeah, the the first the first couple of years were a bunch of failures, and and frankly, even getting started with Robin Hood, like we heard no from like countless investors, and people just didn't believe that that was gonna be a thing.
SPEAKER_03So that takes a special kind of belief in yourself to hear no that many times and keep going.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think the best entrepreneurs are the people that really make it. It's interesting. There's like um how to say it, like you you have to have like it almost an irrational belief in yourself and an irrational belief in your ability to do whatever the heck it is you're trying to do. Because generally speaking, if you look at the set of circumstances when you're trying out to do something new, like the odds are like not, you know, if you looked at it very dispassionately, you're like, yeah, you're probably not gonna succeed at this. But the people that push through just like do exactly that. They're like, it doesn't matter if the odds don't look good right now. I'm gonna put like one foot in front of the other, I'm gonna iterate, and I'm gonna keep working until I can make the thing happen.
SPEAKER_03Did your friends and family did you have their support or were they doubters too?
SPEAKER_02Oh, I I had I had the support of my friends and friends and family. I think my I I joke around, like my dad has kind of always been like, you know, Beiju, you need to go and like, you know, get a PhD, you need to go finish your education. And there was definitely that backdrop when I was getting started as an entrepreneur. It's like, ah, you know, when are you gonna go back and get get your PhD? When are you gonna go back and finish your education? And besides that, I mean, my parents were pretty supportive. Um, and obviously my girlfriend then, wife now, um, has also been kind of the wind at my back through through a lot of it, right? Having the people around you that it's probably worth saying, right? As like you like I I speak today as like somebody that's like created valuable companies before, has like done this before. And but there's a journey to getting there, right? And like nobody the self-doubt is like definitely there along the way. And just like the simple things that your friends and family do, where it's like, oh, you know, I knew you were gonna be able to figure this out. Like, I kind of knew you were gonna be able to figure this out. And you're like, wow, you you believed it being that way, like that's awesome. Because you don't when you're in it, you're not always thinking about like, you know, you're kind of like living in your head in the process. Um having that sort of like like support from a place in love is like is very cool.
SPEAKER_03What I'm curious about is um for me, I you know, I wanted to own my own business, and and it started, you know, with really just the goal first of just making a living, being able to pay the bills. And the scale ideas came later. Were you intentional in I want to do something really big as you were trying your first couple ideas and Robinhood? Were you thinking big out of the gate as opposed to again for me, it was just let me try to make a paycheck, which took a long, long time, by the way. And then came the idea of scaling it.
SPEAKER_02I think there's a progression that kind of comes as an entrepreneur. Um, like step one is as as you start out as an entrepreneur, you just like you wanna you wanna control your own destiny, right? Like you want to, there's like the I think the first year or two where like there's just like a real excitement that comes from being like, I'm doing it, I'm an entrepreneur, like I'm making it happen. And then you kind of get to the point where exactly, right? Like you were able to pay for your own living and you have like a small team or whatever. But I think for me at that point, the the next step kind of unlocked, which was it's not just enough to be an entrepreneur. I want to do something that's really successful, right? I want to do something that like creates something really valuable that um, you know, is more than just like, you know, like a lifestyle business. So this is kind of for me the way I thought about it. And then I feel like the next step after that is like not only do I want to be an entrepreneur and kind of like pave my own path, not only do I want to be successful, but I want to do something that has this like very bold vision for how the thing I'm doing is gonna leave a mark on the world, and ideally like a positive mark on the world. Um, and I think for me that version was like I want to build something that millions of people use and that millions of people find useful. That's kind of the way it progressed for me.
SPEAKER_03Um did you have people that you looked up to that kind of help? I I think maybe the difference in the time frame for me too. So I I grew up in a a real small town in Illinois and kind of graduated it from a high school without computers. So uh a little bit of how big things can get because of technology wasn't on my radar in my teens because that it just was didn't exist. You had the chance maybe to see others doing things through technology that had global reach, actually. Did that help you? Did you see others like Steve Jobs and those uh type of people that maybe motivated you?
SPEAKER_02Very much. I mean, I really, really looked up to Steve Jobs. Okay. Um if there is an entrepreneur that was very much my idol, it was Steve. Um, and it's because he made these things that millions of people found useful and frankly created products that inspired this like level of curiosity and sort of like creativity of people. Because I remember the first time I used a Mac, I remember very distinctly what that experience was like. Because I remember I turned the thing on and I was like, this thing is really quiet. Like, wow, like how do they make the like I remember like feeling it's like this thing is super sturdy, it's really quiet. And I turned it on, and I remember like going through the screens and being like, man, all the icons are really nicely designed. And I remember finding myself like going and like scrolling through all the little menus and being like, wow, this is really this is like really well considered. And just kind of realizing that like this this thing that felt like it was in like a final state of design almost was the byproduct of people having thought it through and being like, and then obviously this was like mid-2000s, I think I was when I got my first Mac. And then obviously, like the creation of the iPhone, the iPad, and just being like, oh my god, people made this. Like a person conceived this idea and like brought it into reality. And I think actually kind of makes me come back to uh a question that I kind of feel like kind of answered a couple of minutes ago, which is like, what is the difference between a big idea and a small idea? And like what, you know, because people oftentimes are like, well, that was a really big idea that you created. And I wouldn't necessarily say that's how I I thought about it. The way I kind of thought about it was in order for this idea that I had to like happen, it had all of these constituent pieces, each of which was really hard. And I think it sort of like necessarily makes you think it's like, well, you know, if I want to build a consumer product in financial services that millions of people use and that eventually has this like broad mission of democratizing finance for all, like connecting a new generation of people to view the stock market as something that's useful and for them and that they can make a part of their lives. Then you kind of think about it and you're like, that's not something you're doing in a year. You know what I mean? Like that ain't that ain't happening quickly. And no matter how hard you want to try to do it quickly, it's because there's all these like constituent pieces that have to happen. And when you kind of put all these things together, you realize that the idea was like so multifaceted that it it kind of was going to take nearly a decade to kind of breathe into reality. And from a certain point of view, it's like, well, that's a really big idea. And I would say from a more like humble point of view, it's like, man, that's a really complicated idea that like, you know, 10 things have to break correctly over the course of a decade for the thing to happen, right? When it works out, you look back and you're like, wow, that was you know such a big idea. But when you look at it and you're in the middle of it, you're like, you know, this is like almost unrealistically ambitious, right? And you kind of hear very rational, smart people be like, Well, how the heck are you ever gonna pull that off?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And you kind of realize that like the really bold, ambitious ideas, when you look at them at the early stages, look borderline irrational. It's like, what makes you think you could, you know, have all these things break right over the course of a decade? And you're like, well, that's the only way my idea makes sense. So like I have to think about it over the course of a decade.
SPEAKER_03Love it. Um, do you think there's a lot of misconceptions? I feel like your success story and others like it, which are awesome. I feel like sometimes people misconceive how hard it was, especially as like what because once it takes off, it does go pretty quick. Um so would you or maybe it wasn't hard. I don't know. I I didn't live it with you, but I feel like people will see it and say I could do that. And I kind of feel like lightning strikes every now and then, and there's probably way harder work that went into it than than than we can see.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, first things first, it was really fucking hard. It was not easy.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Um I not to discourage people, but I I just feel like there's always work behind it. Like it, I don't know that anything that becomes great was easy. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I think there's a pretty interesting thought here uh that that I kind of like ruminate over. And again, like we haven't gotten to this yet, but I'm back at it, you know, like I'm an entrepreneur again, like pushing a really big idea up the hill where you know it's like, how the heck are you ever going to make this work? And you know, realizing again, in order for this idea to work, which is a new company I'm I'm building, which called Aetherflux, we'll talk about that in a minute. You know, again, everything has to break right for the course of a course of a decade. But I kind of have this like this kind of view on entrepreneurship, which is that like the difference between working on something really hard versus working on something that feels easy, um, or I guess to be more precise, where like you can wrap your head around it early on in the conception of the idea. Okay, these aren't that different, actually, because whether you're trying to, you know, build gigantic orbital data centers that you'll need to sort of like put pieces together over the course of a decade to do, or you're building, you know, a mom and pop shop, or you're building an enterprise, you know, technology platform or whatever, right? These things are all hard. And oftentimes, if you're working on something that you can kind of wrap your head around, where it's like, we're building this idea, which works over here, but for this other market over here, the reality is, is like somebody might have thought about that already, right? Like, and so what where the idea seems like more tractable or easier to do, you kind of quickly realize that like other people saw it, and as a result, the idea is easier to understand, but the competition is going to be way harder. Whereas if you think of something that not a lot of people are working on that's kind of far afield, the idea might be pretty hard to wrap your head around. But if you actually pull it off, like other parts of it might be a little bit easier, or they might also just be really hard. And so the upshot of this that I kind of think about is like easy ideas versus hard ideas, there's like a baseline level of hard that everything has. Okay. And I feel like a consequence of that line of thinking is you might as well dream big. And this is like one of my mantras in life is like if you dream small, guess what? Get ready to live small, right? Um if you dream big, you have a chance of like making something big happen. So you might as well dream big because whether it's an easy idea, quote unquote, or a hard idea, quote unquote, they're all got a certain level of hard to them. And you know, this is kind of like the related related thoughts here, are right? Like, there's nobody on this planet that is going to believe in you more than you believe in yourself. And if you think other people should believe in you more than you believe in yourself, it's just wrong. Like, that's not how the world works, right? So you gotta like, you gotta bet on your own ideas, your own ability to do stuff, your conviction and stuff. And you might as well dream big because at least then you have a chance of hitting it big. Like, I've never in my life encountered somebody who dreamed small and they were like, holy shit, this turned out to be, you know, look at how successful I am right now. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_03Like, you gotta I'm smiling because I feel like I'm talking to myself because I I spend all day, every day getting people to think bigger. And if you, you know, if you if you shoot for the stars, you might hit the moon, but you sure can't hit the stars by only aiming at the moon. It just doesn't work that way. Like that's bingo. Yep, bingo.
SPEAKER_02Part of my language, naysayers are a dime of fucking dozen. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. For every one person that's in the arena and like getting it done, there's gonna be a chorus of people that will opine on it, but won't lift a finger to make something big happen themselves. I guess like a byproduct of that is like if you're if you're dreaming big or you're trying to make something big happen. Um it's it's it's way easier to be a critic than the person doing the thing.
SPEAKER_03For sure. The way to not get criticized is don't do anything. Like if you're trying to do something, somebody's gonna criticize you. You're dead right. So a little bit on the whole you pitched Robin Hood dozens and dozens of times to before you got to a yes. Maybe what changed in the pitch, do you think, from the beginning to the end, to where you finally got a yes? Because I look at things where I'm trying to get people's buy-in or get you know, go to my board and try to get them to say yes or get investors to invest. And if I get a no, I basically have and I didn't used to be this way, but now I I look in the mirror and I say, Well, I didn't sell it good enough because it's a great idea. They said no, so I gotta look at what I did from my sales pitch point of view. Like I just look at it like they're not getting it like I get it, so I didn't sell it well enough. I gotta go to work on that. Did your pitch evolve? Is that why it finally got a yes?
SPEAKER_02Uh yeah, I it it did, and I think there's like there's the there's a broader thought here, which is actually at the early stages of of an idea or a company, like if you're putting something together, pitching and talking to investors is actually good insight, right? It's it's it's putting your idea in a place that's not very comfortable, where people are gonna be like, no, that's dumb. I don't believe in it. I don't believe in this, I don't believe in that, I don't believe in the way that you're pitching it, I don't believe in you. You know, like maybe I think the idea is great, but I think you're an incompetent fool. That's not gonna accomplish it. I think I've received all versions of this, by the way.
SPEAKER_03Sounds like they made it personal sometimes.
SPEAKER_02I mean, look, when I was starting Robinhood, people would would look at me and and my co-founder and be like, you don't know how to build consumer products, you've never done before. Never, I don't see any track record at like major tech company on your resumes. Also, you're you're a couple of math and physics kids. Um, also, the idea doesn't make any sense. And you're like, ugh. So you go through that and and you realize that, like, one, you can iterate on on the way that you're pitching as you do it. But also at the early stages of a company, and this is kind of how I think about entrepreneurs when I meet them, when I when I back them, is fundamentally until you've got traction with your business when you're getting started, it's way more about the entrepreneur, right? And whether when you're talking to investors, like a lot of the times investors are like looking to see if you've got that dog in you, you know. Because whether the idea is right or not, like it's great if your idea is right on the first pass, but it's, you know, it generally, if it doesn't evolve, you're not doing anything. Right. So, like whatever, whatever you you think you're doing at like the seed stage or the series A stage is probably gonna change. And that's a good thing because that means you're being attentive to like what the market's telling you. So it's not as much about the specific, exact plan necessarily, but it's also about like who are you as an entrepreneur and why are you going to be the successful one at doing it, right? Like, why do you have that dog in you? And this kind of connects with the the point I made earlier, right? It's like when you're when you're trying to start something new as an entrepreneur, um, it's not about the idea being perfect. It's about trying. And it's about iterating through the parts of it you don't understand and trying to get to failure pretty quickly. And then when you get to failure, being like, okay, well, at least I took the core idea that I had in the beginning, and I saw it through from start to finish. And when I got to, you know, to finish, I was like, okay, well, that clearly wasn't the right thing. But now I definitely like I have that insight. Like, I got it. The reason it didn't work wasn't any of the things that I thought might not be the reason in the beginning, but it was that little insight that I figured out at the very end. And like, I'm gonna do it again, I'm gonna get it right this time.
SPEAKER_03Does that make sense? It does. Uh it resonates very, very, very well with me. I I know just from my experience that they're investing in the jockey just as much as the idea. Like I couldn't, I couldn't imagine bringing some idea that's like ridiculous and having them want to invest just because the the jockey's great, but they very much the entrepreneur, the jockey matters and and whether or not they believe in him for sure. So same experience. I like this. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I I've never referred to myself as the jockey. I like that.
SPEAKER_03Um that's good, yeah. That's good. And you know, moving on to a Aetherflux a little bit, uh, which I want to do, but I imagine now that you've kind of got the the street cred of hey, I I've done it before, it's probably a little easier than than unproven the first time. Still pretty hard. Now, um did you take some time off or did you have this idea um pre kind of stepping out of the day-to-day at Robin Hood, and or did you take some time and then the idea came to you?
SPEAKER_01I think I might have taken like a day.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so you had it already.
SPEAKER_02Well, I I I had the the motivation to do this like over a decade ago. Like the the the motivation to want to do a space company, like actually, believe it or not, three dates starting Robin Hood.
SPEAKER_03Really? Okay, so tell me about that.
SPEAKER_02Well, first things first, like I grew up around the space industry. Um my family, my dad moved to the US with my mom. My mom was pregnant when she got on the plane because he wanted to pursue a PhD in physics in America. Okay. And my mom didn't speak a lick of English, didn't really want to come, um, gets on the plane, and she's pregnant with me, and you know, spent my childhood, you know, being the most loving, dedicated mom in the whole world. Uh and you know, growing up, my dad had some health problems along the way, which we could probably have a whole podcast talking about like how those childhood experiences turn you into who you are, and like the sort of moment in in your life where you get agency or you realize that you have agency, like it's you know, you you you sort of have like the coming of age, you go from being a child to being an adult. I digress during that childhood phase, like after uh my dad uh stopped out of his PhD program, he was a research scientist working at NASA Langley. Okay. So he was like doing space stuff my whole childhood. Um, and then I go on to study physics and math at Stanford. At some point along the way, I remember getting this book, The Case for Mars. Have you heard of this before?
SPEAKER_03I have not. Um, so physics, physics to me is like the study of how the universe works. That's as much as I know about physics. And I don't even know if that's a good definition or not. But that's how I think when I hear physics, I think that's the study of how everything in the universe works and comes together. Like that's about all I know.
SPEAKER_02I think that's pretty spot on.
SPEAKER_03Okay. I mean now, yeah, the it is now asking me how the universe works, that'd be a whole nother question that I couldn't answer. But um, so the book though that you mentioned, I I haven't heard of that book, but is it really well known? And I should know it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, well, I don't know if you should know it. Um that book was, it's super interesting. Um I'll go off on a little bit of a tangent about this. It's basically it's written by um one of, if I remember correctly, it's written by one of the scientists that worked with um with Papa Bush. Okay. Um, on his 100-day plan, like a plan to go to Mars. And the book was written after he kind of did that and kind of realized that like the traditional approach to doing space explorations, this is you know, probably from like the 90s era, um, was was pretty flawed. It was not an engineering approach. It was kind of like a government approach where like you just make these arbitrarily big budget projects, and you're like, well, you know, the path to go to to Mars is like step one, build Battlestar Galactica, you know, step two, build moon base. Step three, like fly Battlestar Galactica from the moon base to Mars, and you're like, how much is all this greatness gonna cost? Like, you know, exactly one gazillion dollars. Right, right. And you're like, that's you know, it's that kind of thinking that um that that that resulted in the space race of the 1960s, and then frankly, from my perspective, a few decades of like malaise that followed it, where you know, it kind of felt like the space race was won and our generation lost. But if you wanted to rekindle the sort of like engineering first approach to to space, you would try to do things cheap and you would try to do things with like reusable pieces.
SPEAKER_03Um quite frankly, right? That's what SpaceX is doing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I think um I think that that book had an influence on like the the early days of SpaceX, if I remember correctly. I don't want to speak too much for them, but I read that book and I was like, man, if if I ever get a chance to work on space, like you know, I really wanna if I don't do that at some point in my life, I'm gonna really regret it.
SPEAKER_03Kind of like childhood influence of what you saw, but because your dad worked in it, and then um books you read. So it was kind of a dream out there to be involved in it somehow at some point. That's that's really cool. And then actually then able to come back to it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I wanted to do it while I still had um like being an entrepreneur is physically and mentally pretty pretty grueling. And I knew that if I was gonna do it again, I wanted to do it while I was still relatively young, and I still had like frankly the mental and physical fitness to like go through that journey again.
SPEAKER_03You definitely need the energy because to me, this is like another, a whole nother level of big beyond beyond Robin Robinhood. So like every time I think I'm starting to think big, then I get to read about or talk to somebody like you. And now you're talking about putting infrastructure in the sky, um, not just going and visiting for a moment in time and coming back, but actually taking infrastructure from the earth, putting it in the sky. So maybe for those that don't know listening, and and for those who haven't studied physics, what is Aetherflux up to? What are you trying to do?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. I realize that's totally been glossed over. Uh yeah, so company I I started, um started working on it about full full-time about two years ago, is called Aetherflux. And the mission of the company is to build a power grid space, is to build an energy company, a native energy company in space. Um, and so two questions like why and what does that mean? Um and kind of like what you know, what what are we working on? What's kind of happening next? Why is a couple of different reasons. The first one is kind of the observation. I think even before this sort of like AI energy crunch had really come into focus, was my sense was that we were entering a period of time where energy and energy infrastructure and energy access was going to become like one of like the nexus points of commerce and society. Okay. And similar to the 1970s, where the idea of building space solar power, which is kind of the first idea that we started out with, is actually an old NASA and Department of Energy idea from the 1970s, which is to build a big power plant space, collect power there, and then beam the power down to the ground so that you can use it for civilization. That's actually the genesis of what Aetherflux is, is to build space solar power. Um, so we started out, I started the company out with the goal of doing this and to take a very different approach to it. And the different approach is one where instead of building one monolithic power plant space to build a constellation of smaller satellites that collected power in space and use this method of power transmission of infrared lasers, which is a whole nother topic we could go into at some point, but basically to be able to project down power to small portable receivers on the ground. So rather than having one gigantic power plant with one gigantic receiver on the ground, have a bunch of satellites working together, collecting power, and then projecting down these small spots of power that are at first, you know, give or take about 10 meters in diameter. Okay. And then eventually the goal is to make them smaller.
SPEAKER_03So I'm asking this out of super curiosity, and it might sound insulting because it's just out of ignorance on my part. Why do you need to beam solar power? Like, why can't you just grab the solar power from the earth? So what what do you there's there's gotta be something different about it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02The benefit of collecting solar power in space versus collecting it on Earth is actually a good bridge to where we're you know the idea is is kind of taking shape going forward. Okay. So started at the company with the idea of doing this, and the reason for this is because if you if you collect more power in space and you use the lasers to concentrate the energy, that you can have higher power density on the ground.
SPEAKER_03So you basically need a smaller spot on the ground to get power rather than acres and acres of um solar panels.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So imagine imagine being, you know, in the military context, right, like for deploy-based or like a you know, a contested environment. The alternative would be a small portable receiver for power, ideally, either in addition to or in place of things like running diesel generators. That's one application. Another one is going to be like space to atmosphere power. So things that want to stay in the sky sort of in perpetuity, you can just charge them up from satellites in space. And that's on the power transmission side. On the power collection side, the thesis behind this is that low Earth orbit is actually a very unique environment for creating electrical power. Okay. And the reason for that is in low Earth orbit, you can use largely cheapo consumer grade electronics, meaning you don't have to make every single resistor a special space resistor, every transistor a special space transistor. And you can fly relatively low-cost power solar panels in space to generate power, except when those solar panels are in orbit. And in particular, um, this thing called dawn-dusk sun-synchronous orbit, the solar panels are oriented in such a way where they're illuminated by the sun nearly continuously. So if the camera here is the sun at this, my my fist is the earth, you can kind of imagine them in this orbit, where they're going sort of above the north pole, below the south pole, but kind of always or nearly always facing the sun, and the earth is kind of like rotating like this underneath it. So you're kind of always going over the parts of the earth where either the sun is rising or the sun is setting. And when you do that, you can take solar panels that, if you were to bolt them to the ground, they're gonna have peak power production at like lunchtime, and then kind of fall off and like not generate power at nighttime. You can have these panels generating power nearly continuously around the clock. And when you realize that you can generate effectively base load power from solar, if you just put the panels in orbit, it kind of unlocks the power of solar power production. Um, because at least my view coming into this is that I kind of view solar power as like um somewhat flawed as it exists today, right? Like it's very intermittent. Yes. And it has it has a lot of limitations because if it was you know truly like a like a great alternative to to you know hydrocarbons, we would see it much more ubiquitous. Um but you actually can address one of the major shortcomings by by solving for you know power production where you're not eclipsing behind the earth. And this is the interesting bit, um, is you can actually connect the dots from there to saying, hey, does that mean we can use solar power to power other stuff? And where's all the power going to right now? It's data center, right? And this is the light bulb that went off um for me like about a year ago, was that actually um rather than you know solely focusing on beaming power to places where there's no power grid, we could actually instead put the chips, the the AI you know, GPUs directly on the satellites in space and use the power that you're generating from the sun there, and actually use things like lasers or RF antennas to transmit data back and forth. That's kind of where Aetherflux as a company is going, is we're focusing much more now on building a power grid in space to power artificial intelligence.
SPEAKER_03Super cool. So, like this is an this is an idea that's like really easy to to sell from a con is the hard sell about it, can you pull it off? So you you mentioned it's still hard to raise money um uh from investors. Is is the hard thing is can he really pull this off? Is that's what's hard, is that what's hard about this one?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think that's I think that's a big part of it. It's gonna take a lot of capital to do. It's frankly, the approach that we're taking, pardon me, is one where we want to have we want to focus primarily on solving engineering and economics challenges. We're not trying to like make scientific breakthroughs, you know, like publishing scientific papers, if it happens, would be nice. Um, but like we're not trying to make a version of this where we have to like have a breakthrough in the way that something works. Like we kind of have to take things that have either been sort of demonstrated in other capacities or similar things have been done and basically package it together and do it on on big scale.
SPEAKER_03Now it's interesting because you commented about the kind of 10 years to to get there, but you're not looking to do this in 10 years from what I've from what I've researched. You your goals are way faster than 10 years.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, they are. Um, yeah, so we're we're actually planning on putting our first two satellites in space. Um, the first one is going to do the space to earth power beaming, which I'm very excited about. I think this is like an incredibly novel application for space and kind of unlocks, I think, some really interesting possibilities of how we think about space as a utility for humanity going forward. And then we're also aiming to have uh our first sort of GPUs and sort of mini data center in space. Uh both of those we're targeting later on this year and uh next year. Again, these are space timelines, so you know they sometimes move around a little bit. But yeah, I mean, we're trying to do this as quickly as we can because my experience as an entrepreneur is you have to try to get to things, you have to try to get to your failures as quickly as possible and iterate through them, as opposed to waiting for perfect and like pontificating about what the idea is for years and years and years where you could just do it and like see what didn't work and do it again and fix it and do it again and fix it and get to the place where it's a real thing.
SPEAKER_03So, how many satellites can hang around up up there? And how do you get like your turf of where your satellite gets to like maybe these are things that we don't have time to talk about, but that's where my head goes. Like, who decides who Gets to put a satellite where and how and how do you claim that that territory? And then I guess it's a few questions. How many can hang out there anyway without it being a problem? There's like I I Googled it real quick. There's like 10 to 15,000 up there right now, right? So I don't like you're gonna put another thousand up there, maybe, or like I don't I don't know how many can hang out up there, but you you get the sense of my questions.
SPEAKER_02Totally. Yeah, I think there's a couple of things here. The first one is is space, in my opinion, is going to become industrialized within our lifetime. Okay. Like, in my opinion, this is like we're at the doorsteps of like a bigger revolution that's happening where there's more and more human infrastructure built in space because there's way more ways to get to space. There's way more rocket companies, there's way more sort of like launch programs. So that's kind of the first thing is that humanity is going to occupy space and we're going to build um really awesome infrastructure up there. That being said, space is huge, right? And I think that you already with 10,000, 15,000, however many satellites are up right now, like there are sophisticated ways of disambiguating where different satellites are and tracking sort of all the different things that are in space from satellites to space junk. And so I think maintaining and managing that is gonna be um it's gonna be a part of humans industrializing and really building space.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_02And on the on the question of like how much stuff can you really put up there, I think you're gonna I think in our lifetime we're going to see a jaw-dropping amount of stuff in space. And I think that when we look back at like 10,000 satellites in space, I think we'll see multiples of that in the years to come. Like way, way, way more than this.
SPEAKER_03And they can happen without them running into each other. And and if they do, does it cause any kind of bad chain reaction?
SPEAKER_02I mean, that possibility is certainly there, but all I mean, being aware of of the sort of like things that are in space and like maintaining sort of, you know, there's there's rules around how you handle sort of re-entering of satellites after they sort of pass their end of lifetime and the sort of regulatory frameworks. Like these are these are there already. They're obviously will need to mature and evolve as more and more stuff gets built in space, but I fundamentally think that there's enough utility and sort of like importance of space that those are problems that can be worked through.
SPEAKER_03Make sense? Yeah, I I wasn't meaning them to sound it's more curiosity, and I wonder how this works, and I wonder who the government of space is gonna be. And it it's I don't view them as insurmountable problems. I view them as details that my mind just starts wondering. I wonder how this all comes together. Um but what an ambitious goal and how awesome.
SPEAKER_02It's also um it's cool because like space is kind of a it's the next frontier, right? It's like um there's definitely some analogies here to like, you know, sort of like the the exploration of North America and like the sort of like, you know, dare I say even cowboy mentality of like exploring the great unknown and like settling this next frontier for humanity. There's a whole tangent I could go on there about the importance of the unexplored territory and its important to the its importance to the human psyche, both individually and collectively. I think if we live in a world where our civilization feels like the entirety of like where we can exist has been explored, I don't want to live in that reality. You know, I want to live in a reality where there's you know, the human psyche is like full of ideas of how we can expand. And I'm not sure that I'll live to see it, but maybe one of my boys will. But like there will come a day when humanity exists on other planets in the solar system, and you know, hopefully even beyond that someday.
SPEAKER_03When you're thinking about your company right now, um what is to keep you up at night, or maybe there isn't any, but is it is it getting the engineering answers to what you're trying to do? Is that the phase you're in? Or do you are you getting these eureka moments where you're getting super excited and super close?
SPEAKER_02It's much more pedestrian, unfortunately. I think a lot of as is the case with any company, right? I I sometimes joke around with um with with our team where I'm like, all right, so I you know started this company, and somehow I ended up with like the spreadsheets and emails job at this company.
SPEAKER_01Like, what the fuck?
SPEAKER_02Um so there's there's a lot of that involved. I mean, I frankly I spend a lot of my time um recruiting people and like building the engineering team and like making sure that we're focused on bringing in the best and brightest talent. Obviously, very proud of our team. There's they're actually right on the other side of this wall right here.
SPEAKER_03Um that must be like a short list of the geniuses that you need. Like it can't be like uh throw it on uh throw it on LinkedIn and get a thousand applicants. It's gotta be a pretty short list of people you go after, and they're probably not necessarily looking for jobs.
SPEAKER_02I gotta tell you, there's a there's a lot of really smart people in the aerospace industry. Like this industry is full of brilliant people. Um and there's a lot of people, I mean, space is way more in the cultural zeitgeist than it was 15, 20 years ago. The number of people that have worked on stuff that has actually gone to space way bigger than it was 15 to 20 years ago. That makes sense. So yeah. It's pretty cool. It's cool. It's like it's fun being at the doorsteps of what feels like is gonna be a big industrial change.
SPEAKER_03Does AI I mean, this isn't what we're talking about today, but just kind of someone with the you know, the way you're thinking about things, I just gotta ask, does AI scare you at all? Or it's probably excites you, but does it scare you as much as is as as it excites you, or or you think we'll we'll be able to control it?
SPEAKER_02A little bit of both.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_02A little bit of both, to be totally honest. I kind of go back and forth on this, and um there there's I I would say on the whole, it excites me much more so than it scares me. Um because I think that there's a version of looking at AI through the lens of uh oh, it's gonna like put everybody out of work. Um I personally don't buy into that viewpoint because I think that it's a tool where you know like if I wanna like you know write something down on a piece of paper and and have it look nice, like I'm gonna type it on my computer and the printer is gonna print it out for me, right? I'm not gonna sit there with a stencil and like you know do that. I'm not gonna sit there with a typewriter and do it. So I fundamentally think that it's gonna be a tool for human progress. And I think it's gonna take a lot of like mundane work and require people to do more creative, sort of like higher-level thinking. And and you see this already in, for example, software, right? Software for the longest time, one of the things that I personally never loved writing software that much because I found it was very syntactical. Like it was about how you formatted the code and like you know, like making it, you know, it was like it was very like for for every unit of thinking, there was like also like three to four units of like how do you format it correctly, and how do you like represent the idea with the right sort of like language, in this case, uh code, where like people don't write software anymore, you know. The majority of the majority of the software engineers I know today use AI to write the code for them. And that doesn't mean you can do this without understanding like the principles of of computer science, but like you're not gonna be sitting in front of like you know, a black screen typing in like lines of code. You're gonna be giving the computer prompts on like what you want it to do. And I think that that's gonna be at least for the foreseeable future, like how we interact with AI, where it's gonna be an enabler for people doing work, but there's still gonna need to be people that like tell the thing what to do and like make the most of what it does. Like, I I have a hard time seeing I have a hard time seeing entrepreneurs going anywhere, and I think it's gonna it's gonna change the way that we work. That being said, I think it inevitably is gonna have an impact on the job market. Like, yeah, I don't I don't think that's a particularly hot take, but is gonna make so that nobody works anymore? Like, I don't think so.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's what some are saying though. So this curious. I I I don't I don't see a society where we don't work. I uh I mean life needs a purpose, I feel, and like hobbies and entertainment only I I mean I haven't had a chance to enjoy life like that, but I know it from going on vacation after a few days I'm I'm anxious to get back and get back to work. Now maybe I'm wired weird, but I I can't believe like waking up every day just to consume and be entertained is is a life worth living. It doesn't excite me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I totally agree with that.
SPEAKER_03Do you miss Robin Hood? I mean, I'm I'm still on the board of directors, so it's not like you're completely unplugged.
SPEAKER_02No, no, no. Um, yeah, I mean look, it's it's the thing that that that uh you know I created with my co-founder. It's I I love it.
SPEAKER_03Now another that's why I wondered if you missed it being in the day-to-day grind, especially as the founder.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's uh it's it's different, you know. I it's different for different stages of life. Like I I enjoy a new challenge too, right? I do love building consumer products, I do love parts of it, and I think about it very, you know, like the journey of creating it was profound, and the journey of creating a new thing is like you know, it's a cool challenge, and it's like it's it's strong motivation to like want to do something that's very meaningful second time.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I get it. Do you um do you post a lot on social media? How can uh our listeners uh stay in touch with you, follow you?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you can check me out on Twitter and on Instagram. Yeah, I post sometimes. Probably should post a little bit more, but I'm also pretty heads down these days building shit.
SPEAKER_03So understood. Yeah. Thank you so much for the time. Um, you know, we close this podcast with a question. We're all about championing people. So I always ask the guest, given the opportunity to uh speak about them, who would you champion right now and why?
SPEAKER_02Man, you know what I would do? I would champion the team that's working on this with me. These people are working their butts off, and they're like, you know, they're like pursuing a really novel application for space. There's a bunch of people at this office that are like working into the wee hours of the night day in, day out. So yeah, shout out to our team. They're working their butts off.
SPEAKER_03I bet they are. Thanks so much, Beijing. This is awesome. Appreciate you taking the time. My pleasure, man. Talk soon. I hope you enjoyed this conversation. If you want more podcast in your life, which of course you do, make sure to like, follow, and subscribe to us on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. Catch you next time.