S3

Sitdown interview with Blake Scholl 3 days after filming Boom Supersonic's 3rd flight test.

Interview with the @ridevalo team where we go in depth on hydrofoiling, reimagining mass transport logistics, and being a great team member at a deep tech startup.

While filming with Neo in my apartment I sat down with VP of AI @ericjang11 to learn about 1X's approach to robot intelligence and his his curiosity around immortality. 0:00 Intro 1:27 1X Overview 2:12 Eric's Origin 5:15 Why humanoids? 11:30 Supercomputers & deep learning 12:45 World models 14:21 Neuromorphic computing 14:40 Immortality 20:15 Robotics at Google 21:35 Skepticism of humanoids 27: 00 Joining 1X 31:20 Benefits of LLMs 33:50 Training models 35:30 Tele-op to autonomous  43:30 Data quality vs. quantity 47:00 How to train your robot 50:50 Data sponge 53:30 The 1X team 54:45 Safety 57:45 A lab in the cloud 59:26 Bio advancements 1:03:54 How does your brain work 1:06:14 Conway’s law 1:08:45 Eric’s favorite sci-fi 1:10:50 Life philosophy

After filming our S3 with 1X (https://youtu.be/2ccPTpDq05A) I sat down with Founder &CEO Bernt Bornich to go deeper on 1X's truly ambitious manufacturing plans. If you'd like to support our work, and look like a million bucks, you can buy our first ever S3 Episode Tee here for 7 days only: https://saturdaystartupstories.myshopify.com/products/s3-episode-53-tee-1x-technologies 0:00 Intro 1:16 Why humanoids? 5:40 AI transfer of knowledge 8:40 Power of scale 9:50 Heritage of Eve 11:50 Tendron drives 18:35 Letting robots experiment 22:00 Designing for safety 25:07 Intelligence diversity 27:45 Moravec’s paradox 32:50 Difficulty of reasoning 35:40 Training models & data 40:40 Humanoid ecosystem 42:50 You can’t retrofit cost 46:30 10x every year 56:30 Hire for who you are 57:50 Be nice 1:00:00 Trust your intuition 1:05:50 2040 1:07:50 Bernt’s favorite Sci-Fi 1:09:09 Individualism 1:12:00 Life philosophy

Astranis just announced a new round of funding, led by A16z, to build more satellites! I sat down with John Gedmark, CEO of Astranis, to talk about how they'll use this $200M of capital and the future of building in America and space 🇺🇸🛰️🛰️ 0:00 I used to work here 1:02 Mission of Astranis 3:54 GEO? (Sci-fi) 8:43 Childhood to college 14:30 Silicon Valley for space? 19:14 Founding Commercial Spaceflight Federation 22:07 Why GEO is hard 24:42 Meeting Ryan, CTO 28:18 COVID story 32:40 Early days 35:53 How to raise $750M 47:08 Astranis + US Government 51:15 Manufacturing learnings 53:40 US vs China 58:16 War in space 1:01:18 Astranis longterm vision 1:03:58 Why? 1:05:28 Current life philosophy 1:06:20 1 year of S3

Interview with CEO and cofounder of Arbor Energy, Brad Hartwig for Episode 51 of S³ From training to be an astronaut, leading him to founding Arbor — how we'll soon build faster than regulatory can keep up with and how we can fix it.

I sat down for an extended interview with cofounders @4TristanS @bennbuilds to talk in depth about @reflectorbital — If you're building for new space, in high school/college, or trying to figure out what to build, you should watch this!

From working at Google, Microsoft, early at SpaceX and Relativity, Ed Mehr has always been forward-thinking about the future of manufacturing. Now, he's building it at Machina Labs — I sat down with him to learn more after filming Episode 49 of S³.

From launching SpaceX's 1st rockets, to realizing the need for mobile-nuclear reactors, and founding Radiant — here's my interview with CEO and Cofounder of Radiant, Doug Bernauer for Episode 38 of S³

Interview with Laura Demming & Hunter Davis for Episode 47 of S³ featuring Cradle 0:00 What is Cradle? 2:18 Laura & Hunter’s backgrounds 9:39 Timeline to reversible cry 13:04 Next milestone 15:33 Sci-fi inpsiration 18:35 3 Body Problem 21:10 More builders 24:38 How do you think? 29:39 Getting people into bio 31:25 Where in the future would you go? 32:55 Current life philosophy

0:00 What is Fuse? 1:16 Background (pre-potato guns) 3:22 Founding at 19, why? 4:13 Why fusion? 5:47 Energy transportability 6:43 Potato guns 8:38 Main Fuse facilities 11:01 Intense Fuse culture 12:27 Why? 14:01 Fixing bureaucracy 15:28 How do you think 16:45 Learnings 20:06 US vs China in fusion 21:52 Deep tech issues 23:30 The S³ problem 26:52 Current life philosophy 

0:00 Intro 0:43 Notes on the wall 2:50 What is Daylight 6:12 Duality 7:58 Why? 12:17 Biggest learnings 15:18 What to do in life 19:00 Kink?  23:52 Hardest technical challenge 26:20  31:00 Should we inspire people? 35:11 Current life philosophy

Interview with CEO & Cofounder of Forward Adrian Aoun for Episode 44 of S³ 0:00 What & why is the CarePod? 3:21 A career in AI 6:01 Future of AI 7:47 The Google Problem 12:42 Larry Page’s right hand man 15:08 First principles thinking 17:16 Founder learnings 19:57 I wanted to start a police force 22:35 The future of society & AI 25:39 Inspiring people 29:34 How do you think? 31:28 Current life philosophy

Interview with CEO & Cofounder of Hermeus AJ Piplica for Episode 42 of S³. 0:00 What is Hermeus 0:57 Why go fast? 5:09 Founding inspiration 10:16 Planning something big 15:50 First 6 months 18:44 Pain of building 21:45 Mental models for speed 24:41 Why haven’t we done this yet? 28:25 Keeping high speed travel 32:15 What to build 34:58 Current life philosophy 

Interview with roboticist, fine fashion maker, 3D-weaving inventor, CTO & Cofounder of unspun Kevin Martin for Episode 42 of S³ 0:00 Oops, it’s dark now 0:32 What is unspun? 3:08 My dad crashed an F-16 4:08 K-pop, robots 6:52 Meeting cofounders 9:13 Inventing 3D weaving 11:08 Catching up to China 12:26 Founder learnings 16:22 How do you think? 18:15 Inspiring Gen-Z, maybe?  23:22 Future of robotics 26:33 How do we distribute automation wealth? 28:31 Current life philosophy

Interview with quantum maxer, e/acc founder, thermodynamic pioneer, CEO & Cofounder of Extropic Guillaume Verdon for Episode 41 of S³ 0:00 What’s behind you? 1:29 What is Extropic? 4:08 Young Gill 7:12 Why Extropic? 11:25 Secret quantum lab experience 13:05 How does Extropic work? 16:20 Hardest technical challenge 17:50 Quantum & silicon strapping 20:56 Why decentralize AI 24:00 Doomerism 25:48 E/acc vitality 28:13 Regulatory capture 30:32 Founder learnings 31:36 How do you think? 33:23 What does deep tech get wrong? 35:53 How do we inspire people? 37:22 Current life philosophy

Interview with founding member of Oculus, hardware-pioneer, and CEO of Framework, Nirav Patel. 0:00 Breaking into Framework HQ 1:11 Experience at Apple 2:05 Becoming employee 0001 at Oculus 3:20 What worked for Oculus?  4:30 Founding Framework 6:32 GTM for Framework & Linus 9:48 Advice for hardware 12:22 Nirav on AI Hardware 15:36 Raising little, huge impact 17:00 Hardest technical challenge 18:33 Emerging research/tech 19:06 How do you think? 20:26 Master plan 22:01 Consumer Hardware mistakes 23:12 Why Consumer Hardware? 23:48 Helpful founder resources 25:17 Branding for Framework 27:08 Framework manufacturing story 24:45 Fundraising is hard 35:45 Judging Consumer Hardware 36:47 Current Life Philosophy 

Interview with carbon-carbon printer, artificial solar sun schemer, space robotics guru, and future-space pirate Cole Nielsen-Cole, CTO of Orbital Composites. 0:00 Founding inspiration 4:53 Similarity between drones & satellites 6:20 Why Carbon Fiber is hard 9:42 Heat treatment for rocket nozzles 14:38 Cole’s artificial sun 16:59 List everything you’re doing 21:28 What first inspired you?  24:44 More projects 27:58 Orbital & Artemis mission 30:39 Why care about Mars? 35:10 How do you focus?  36:14 Hardest challenge 38:17 What does deep tech get wrong? 40:26 The inspiration problem 42:56 How do you think? 46:55 Why build hard things?

Interview with Loyal CEO and Founder Celine Halioua for Episode 37 of S³. 0:00 Dogs! 1:05 Celine’s founding inspiration 5:37 Research vs. spinning out 7:20 Celine’s superpower 8:20 Hardest technical challenge 10:14 Can bio revolutionize? 15:32 Stories from raising 18:56 Bio vs Hardtech vs Software 21:38 How do you think? 24:14 Founder learnings 26:38 Solo vs Cofounding 27:23 What deep tech gets wrong 32:01 Current life philosophy

0:00 Casey’s background 6:52 Casey’s Mars map 8:08 Terraform inspiration 15:04 Vision quest 17:32 Hardest technical challenge 19:35 How do you think? 24:48 Exciting future tech/research 31:11 Uncommon question 35:03 Inspiring the world 38:26 Current life philosophy

0:00 Founding inspiration 2:46 Retro design vision 5:40 Decentralized manufacturing 10:26 Highlights building 12:30 How to design a beautiful car 17:20 Different customer demand 24:29 Supply chain 27:20 Updates for Olympian 30:44 What deep tech gets wrong 33:00 Hardest engineering problem 36:15 Our own “Gigapress” 37:42 Uncommon question 40:40 Current life philosophy

0:00 Intro 0:42 Zane loves sensors 1:38 Zane’s experience with US Military 3:45 Improving the military industrial complex 5:19 I want an F-35 7:43 Founding inspiration 9:09 Hardest technical challenge 14:22 Future tech 17:40 Uncommon question (Funny VC dig) 20:30 What does deep tech get wrong? 23:28 Best Call of Duty games 24:25 How to know what to work on? 27:30 How do you think? 29:05 Current life philosophy

0:00 Verdie! 1:05 Their approach 2:55 Your business model 4:17 Founding inspiration 5:22 Origin of the idea 7:13 Nag’s first company 8:59 Why didn’t you quit? 10:22 AGI & Singularity 12:02 The S³ mission 13:11 Cutting edge research 14:08 Hardest technical challenge 15:30 Fundamental AI shifts 16:43 What deep gets wrong 18:00 How do you think? 18:47 Uncommon question 20:20 Physical based AI 22:04 Biggest learning 25:38 Current life philosophy

Interview with CEO and Cofounder Chris Power of Hadrian for Episode 32 of S³ Apologies for how bad my audio is and Chris's camera angle in this episode, it was my 2nd time filming the S³ podcast which resulted in some ~learnigng experiences~ 2:40 Why full-stack? 5:30 Hadrian tech stack 8:30 Software approach 11:10 Software importance 14:24 A general manufacturing solution 16:41 Exciting research & tech 17:38 Deep tech pitfalls 19:00 Biggest learning 20:41 Uncommon question 22:36 Culture 23:34 Building for automation 24:10 Next big step 26:58 How do you think? 28:54 Life philosophy 33:33 Inspiring builders

Podcast with Aleh Kandrashou of Cuby for Episode 31 of S³ 0:00 We filmed remotely! 0:29 Before founding: physics 3:43 Tech behind Cuby 4:43 Emerging tech 6:06 Hardest challenge 7:05 Mistakes building hard tech 7:53 Uncommon questions 8:38 How do you think? 10:05 Next for Cuby 11:38 How to change the world 12:25 What is your life philosophy?

Interview with Augustus Doricko, CEO & Founder of Rainmaker for their feature on episode 30 of S³:    • We Can Control The Weather | Rainmaker  0:00 Based & burnt thumb 2:03 Before founding Rainmaker 8:17 Hardest problem with Rainmaker 10:03 Future tech & research 13:16 Founder learnings 14:58 What does hard tech get wrong? 16:22 Chemtrails 17:35 How do you think? 19:27 Culture war 23:38 the Bible 25:44 What is your life philosophy?

Interview with Sam D'Amico, CEO & Founder of Impulse for their feature on episode 28 of S³: https://youtu.be/YdawGen0QPc 0:00 Fresh from CES 2024 1:20 Building solar cars 3:49 What is the Impulse master plan? 6:13 From Oculus VR to founding 8:02 Pizza? 12:25 Deciding what to build 13:52 Most interesting engineering problem 15:35 Upcoming battery breakthroughs 16:57 Supply chain!!! 18:48 Advice for manufacturing partners 19:36 Founder learnings 20:26 What do most hardware startups get wrong? 22:46 How do you think? 25:03 Current life philosophy

Interview with Anton Troynikov, CTO & Cofounder of Chroma for their feature on Episode 27 of S³ 0:00 Anton and AI & robotics2:51 Discrete vs Vector Data 4:13 Evolving humanity's data reasoning 6:39 Approach to building Chroma 8:48 How is Chroma different? 10:30 What should you build with AI? 19:10 Upcoming AI breakthroughs 23:52 How do you think? 25:57 Uncommon Chroma insights 29:00 Current life philosophy