Joe Yaffe (Cowboy Space): From Big Law to Orbit, Part 1 of 2

Part 1 of 2. Part 2 drops later this week. Joe Yaffe had climbed as high as the ladder goes. Fifteen years at Latham & Watkins, then Skadden, managing partner of the Palo Alto office, 31 years advising founders and CEOs. By his own account, his idea of a midlife crisis was moving from one mega law firm to another. Then Baiju Bhatt stepped away from Robinhood, Joe asked what was next, and the answer was space lasers. In this episode, Joe and Michael discuss: Why switching law firms counted as a midlife crisis, and what that says about risk The three traits Joe saw in every successful founder across 31 years of client work The easy button for a lawyer, and why he calls it second grade lawyering One way doors and two way doors, with a real one from Cowboy Space Getting to an undergraduate understanding of rocket science in about a year How data centers in space actually work, explained without an engineering degree Why the second stage of the rocket becomes both the data center and the radiator Why none of it breaks the laws of physics About Joe: Joe Yaffe is COO and chief legal officer at Cowboy Space, which is building data centers that run in orbit. He spent 31 years practising law in Silicon Valley, fifteen of them at Latham & Watkins and the rest at Skadden, where he was managing partner of the Palo Alto office. He studied ancient Greek in college. Chapters 00:00 Cold open 01:11 Introduction 02:27 Thirty-one years, and a very small midlife crisis 04:03 Meeting Baiju Bhatt 05:13 "I thought I would die at my desk" 05:31 Space lasers 06:34 "If you do it, I'll come join you" 07:32 What twenty years beside founders teaches you 09:13 The eight billion people rule 11:46 Second grade lawyering 13:26 Tapping the brakes and hitting the accelerator 14:33 One way doors and two way doors 17:14 "Be careful with the rations" 18:13 Zero to rocket science in a year 19:45 "I'm the liberal arts guy in the room" 22:03 Acronyms, and blowing a fastball by you 23:27 Advice for anyone standing at the fork 26:37 The best advice he got before he jumped 29:29 How Cowboy Space works, explained for the rest of us 31:05 Asimov wrote about this in the 1940s 35:27 Turning the second stage into the data center 36:30 The radiator epiphany 37:50 Cheaper than Earth, or it's a science project 39:29 Why they're building their own rocket 43:54 Chips, cooling, and NVIDIA 45:54 "We're not breaking any laws of physics" 47:50 Four companies at once 50:37 Nuclear reactors on the moon Resources mentioned: Cowboy Space: https://cowboyspace.com I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, which collects "Reason", the 1941 short story on beaming power from orbit: https://www.amazon.com/dp/055338256X Connect with Joe: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephyaffe/ Connect with Michael: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-koenig514 Building Helm: https://helmapp.ai Subscribe to Between Two COOs: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/between-two-coos-with-michael-koenig/id1596195041 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4OQY2oizo3rWUlwhmtdpSi Newsletter: https://betweentwocoos.com