Latest / Core Memory / The Boy Wonder Of India’s New Tech Scene - EP 95 Naman Pushp

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The Boy Wonder Of India’s New Tech Scene - EP 95 Naman Pushp · Core Memory

0:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's nuts to sort of be like, I'm 18,
0:02
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to design aircraft better than anyone has done before.
0:05
SPEAKER_01: Our goal is really to make aerial transports that are cheaper, faster,
0:10
SPEAKER_01: and more versatile than 80% of the entire logistics market and 90%
0:15
SPEAKER_01: of the human transportation market.
0:17
SPEAKER_01: Still built that aircraft, it got like a quarter second of airtime.
0:21
SPEAKER_01: To quote Toy Story, we were not flying, we were falling with style.
0:24
SPEAKER_01: So at 16, I ended up moving out.
0:26
SPEAKER_01: A lot of people asked like, oh, how did you convince them to like let you move out?
0:29
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, it was their idea.
0:31
SPEAKER_01: What we've managed to do is we're lifting five kilos of payload with a three kilo aircraft.
0:35
SPEAKER_01: That's when, you know, it sort of hits that like, oh shit, you know,
0:39
SPEAKER_01: this is an actual company now.
0:40
SPEAKER_01: I also don't think that peak democracy is necessarily the best way to run a country.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: This week's guest is part of a revolution.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: His name is Naman Pushp.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: He is the founder and CEO of a startup called Airbound.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: They are based in India and they are trying to make the world's lightest,
1:00
SPEAKER_00: most efficient aircraft for A moment for delivering goods,
1:06
SPEAKER_00: basically deliveries like you might see Amazon and DoorDash and Zipline trying
1:12
SPEAKER_00: to do today. And then he thinks he can build a whole new class of aircraft
1:17
SPEAKER_00: for carrying people one day in the future.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: I say he's part of a revolution because Naaman is one of these kids.
1:24
SPEAKER_00: I just got back from a trip to India where there are a ton of 18, 19, 20,
1:30
SPEAKER_00: 21-year-olds building a new class, a new, far more...
1:37
SPEAKER_00: Ambitious class of startups in India than we've seen before. They're doing hardware.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: They're doing very difficult technology.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: They're not trying to do internet startups or mobile apps or software and services.
1:49
SPEAKER_00: They're really getting into it.
1:52
SPEAKER_00: Naman is one of the leading examples.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: Airbound has raised millions of dollars.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: They've already built one generation of aircraft in a second, the first.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: It's so light that I could pick it up with a couple of fingers.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: The larger second generation,
2:06
SPEAKER_00: I could hold the whole thing in my hand and it's able to deliver about 10 pounds
2:11
SPEAKER_00: of goods through the air.
2:13
SPEAKER_00: And we saw them fly.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: It was pretty amazing.
2:16
SPEAKER_00: They're very quiet.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: They can hover.
2:19
SPEAKER_00: They kind of take off vertically and then fly like a plane.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: They can hover.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: Super impressed by the factory that I saw this dude.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: Strikes me as quite possibly the real, real deal.
2:31
SPEAKER_00: It had, um, early Peter Beck from Rocket Lab vibes for me, at least.
2:36
SPEAKER_00: And so there's a lot of people now like Naman that want to stay in India,
2:43
SPEAKER_00: build their startups, raise money and try to do things differently
2:48
SPEAKER_00: and dramatically use, use some of India's limitations,
2:51
SPEAKER_00: things like traffic as the impetus to, uh, To invent around them,
2:56
SPEAKER_00: get up in the air and move things around.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: All these kids are super into carbon fiber.
3:00
SPEAKER_00: We're going to have tons of podcast episodes coming with some of these entrepreneurs.
3:05
SPEAKER_00: We are going to have videos on our main video YouTube channel.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: We will have one on Airbound shortly, which you should check out.
3:13
SPEAKER_00: Please, as always, like, subscribe, leave a review, tell people about the show.
3:18
SPEAKER_00: It would be an immense help.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: I think you're going to love it.
3:21
SPEAKER_00: This chat, he's thoughtful, he's brimming with confidence and enthusiasm,
3:27
SPEAKER_00: and he has ideas about how ambitious India can be in the future.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: I am Ashlee Vance.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: This is Core Memory.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: Here we go.
3:37
[music]
3:51
SPEAKER_00: This is very exciting for me.
3:53
SPEAKER_00: Well, I do this podcast from Playground,
3:56
SPEAKER_00: which is where we first met like seven or eight months ago, I think.
4:02
SPEAKER_01: I think close to a year ago, yeah.
4:03
SPEAKER_00: Something like that.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: And you immediately struck me as a super bright, interesting person.
4:10
SPEAKER_00: And then just, I don't know when this podcast will air, but two weeks ago,
4:15
SPEAKER_00: basically, I went to visit you and Airbound in India, in Bangalore.
4:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah. And, uh, and so we got to, people will have video that comes out.
4:26
SPEAKER_00: People will get to see the aircraft flying both generations and,
4:30
SPEAKER_00: and a bit more on the factory and how these all get built and, and, um, so it'll be,
4:35
SPEAKER_00: it'll be a cool episode. That was, it was a amazing day.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: I, People won't get to see it on this podcast, but they will see it in the videos.
4:42
SPEAKER_00: We had aircraft everywhere.
4:44
SPEAKER_00: I think we put up like 26 if I remember. 28, I think. Oh, yeah.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: So 26, I think, first gen and two of the second gen.
4:51
SPEAKER_00: I was surrounded and it was glorious.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: And they were super quiet.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: I got to... Pick them up.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: They are indeed super light.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: And it was awesome.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: I was just interviewing somebody else, Shruti, who works at Emergent Ventures,
5:12
SPEAKER_00: who funded you guys.
5:13
SPEAKER_00: And I was giving her the report card from the field.
5:18
SPEAKER_00: I was really impressed by what you guys had done.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: Your factory...
5:23
SPEAKER_00: I've been to so many aerospace, or I've just been to so many factories,
5:28
SPEAKER_00: and there is like a, there's a certain aesthetic, I guess,
5:33
SPEAKER_00: that I notice sometimes just with people who take stuff seriously.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: It was all, it was like super well organized. It was clean.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: You could tell people were taking their jobs seriously.
5:45
SPEAKER_00: You know, it reminded me a little bit of like Rocket Lab and Peter Beck
5:48
SPEAKER_00: who takes these things very seriously.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I was impressed.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: Let's get into your background a bit because it's fascinating. Or you know what?
6:01
SPEAKER_00: So I just gave my two cents on describing it around.
6:07
SPEAKER_00: But do you want to describe it first just so people have a feel
6:10
SPEAKER_00: for the way you're thinking about the company and then we'll go back maybe
6:13
SPEAKER_00: to how it got started?
6:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
6:16
SPEAKER_01: So I mean I think around what we're doing has evolved a lot over time.
6:23
SPEAKER_01: But I think by way, today we deeply believe in this idea of what I would call
6:28
SPEAKER_01: a universal transport.
6:30
SPEAKER_01: And it's a fact that anything that we use for movement is generally evaluated
6:36
SPEAKER_01: on sort of three axes.
6:38
SPEAKER_01: Your cost, speed, and versatility, right? Cost and speed are obvious.
6:43
SPEAKER_01: Versatility is sort of how easily can I get from point A to point B without needing
6:47
SPEAKER_01: to use any other transport?
6:49
SPEAKER_01: So, for instance, trains, not very versatile.
6:52
SPEAKER_01: And the other is, you know, how much payload do I need for this to make sense, right?
6:56
SPEAKER_01: Trucks and buses, not very versatile.
6:58
SPEAKER_01: Cars and scooters, very versatile.
7:00
SPEAKER_01: And...
7:02
SPEAKER_01: We believe that if you want to displace a form of transport, if you are cheaper,
7:08
SPEAKER_01: faster, and more versatile, you are pretty much guaranteed to win in that market.
7:16
SPEAKER_01: So our goal is really to make aerial transports
7:21
SPEAKER_01: that are cheaper, faster,
7:23
SPEAKER_01: and more versatile than 80% of the entire logistics market and 90%
7:29
SPEAKER_01: of the human transportation market.
7:31
SPEAKER_00: And so it's this massive goal and you talk about it so confidently.
7:37
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
7:38
SPEAKER_00: You know, so.
7:40
SPEAKER_00: You guys have made this huge bet on carbon fiber.
7:43
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's really one place where you start.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: And when we were talking in India, I mean, correct me if I'm mischaracterizing this,
7:52
SPEAKER_00: but it's sort of, obviously we use carbon fiber in aircraft today.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: There's rockets made of carbon fiber.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: In Boeing or Airbus, as I understand it,
8:05
SPEAKER_00: they've been Replacing bits and pieces of their aircraft over time
8:11
SPEAKER_00: with carbon fiber. It's very light.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: It's very strong, but obviously didn't go in to making the plane with carbon fiber in mind.
8:19
SPEAKER_00: This is like something that's come on over time.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: And when I was talking to you, it just seemed like you seem to be saying,
8:28
SPEAKER_00: If you knew about carbon fiber from the very beginning and you were going to go all
8:31
SPEAKER_00: in, you would design your aircraft differently.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: And we're starting from that thesis and that first principles approach.
8:40
SPEAKER_00: You're looking at me like, maybe I'm getting this wrong.
8:43
SPEAKER_00: But so that was a bit of my impression of talking to you is –
8:50
SPEAKER_00: People, even though carbon fiber has been around for a long time,
8:53
SPEAKER_00: it has a reputation of being expensive.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: It was a little bit harder to make for a while.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: And you felt like we'd reached a point with it
9:02
SPEAKER_00: where if you really took it seriously, you would do things differently.
9:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Yeah.
9:08
SPEAKER_01: So I was right.
9:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're definitely right.
9:12
SPEAKER_01: I think I've also just found some ways to make this a bit more intuitive and easy to understand.
9:19
SPEAKER_01: I think one of the things that people often don't realize,
9:23
SPEAKER_01: but is actually really obvious once you start thinking about it,
9:26
SPEAKER_01: is that the way we design anything in this world is a function
9:32
SPEAKER_01: of Our manufacturing limitations, right?
9:35
SPEAKER_01: If you look at the mic that you have, the sort of, you know,
9:38
SPEAKER_01: metallic mesh that you have there,
9:39
SPEAKER_01: you wouldn't see a mesh like that made out of any other material
9:42
SPEAKER_01: because it is uniquely easy to manufacture a shape like that out of metal.
9:47
SPEAKER_01: And the best engineers, whether they do this consciously or subconsciously,
9:50
SPEAKER_01: they're always designing with the production limitations of a material in mind.
9:56
SPEAKER_01: Now the problem when you move across material classes is if you are designing based
10:00
SPEAKER_01: on metal intuition and you are designing for carbon fiber,
10:04
SPEAKER_01: then you are somewhat limited to the overlap of parts that can be made out of metal
10:09
SPEAKER_01: and can be made out of carbon fiber.
10:12
SPEAKER_01: And we feel like that overlap is, like there's not a lot of great stuff in that overlap, right?
10:18
SPEAKER_01: Similar to how there's not a lot of great stuff that can be made in the same way out
10:22
SPEAKER_01: of wood and metal.
10:24
SPEAKER_01: And we realized that actually the best parts you can make out
10:27
SPEAKER_01: of carbon fiber would be impossible to manufacture if you try to make them out
10:31
SPEAKER_01: of metal. So it's a lot of both breaking
10:34
SPEAKER_01: the intuitions we have around how we make things around metal and also just
10:39
SPEAKER_01: about actually pushing the frontier and building new manufacturing processes
10:43
SPEAKER_01: for designs that we've known for a long time are impossible to make out
10:47
SPEAKER_01: of the old era of materials but suddenly become possible with the new era
10:51
SPEAKER_01: of materials.
10:52
SPEAKER_00: And you, and I think one way also to explain this, maybe for people, well,
10:56
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, this is totally fair,
10:57
SPEAKER_00: but my sense was you don't love it if people call your vehicles drones.
11:02
SPEAKER_00: You prefer aircraft.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: And that's because, and I want to describe it to people who haven't seen them.
11:07
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're not like you're, they're not a drone.
11:10
SPEAKER_00: Like most people think of a drone like a DJI.
11:13
SPEAKER_00: It's not this quadcopter thing with four propellers.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: You guys have two.
11:17
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it looks more like an aircraft.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: It looks, um, God, how did this shape is kind of unique.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: It's hard to, it's hard to describe.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's, it's sort of got this curved fatter middle bit than with the wings
11:30
SPEAKER_00: on the, on the side and, and then just two propellers.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: And obviously there's a spot for the batteries and the flight controller and some
11:38
SPEAKER_00: of the avionics, but I mean, it was, it's, it's quite simplified.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: I, the, the first generation, I mean, how light it was so light.
11:45
SPEAKER_01: It was, um, Yeah, like, I mean, the aircraft shell itself is around, what, like 300, 400 grams?
11:52
SPEAKER_00: 300, 400 grams, and that one can fly two pounds of?
11:57
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: Two pounds?
11:58
SPEAKER_01: Yes, one kilo, 2.2 pounds.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and then the bigger one, what was the wingspan on it?
12:03
SPEAKER_01: Bigger one was 2.4 meter wingspan. Okay.
12:06
SPEAKER_01: And it can carry about five kilos, so 11 pounds.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: And how much does that one weigh, the frame?
12:12
SPEAKER_01: So the structure itself weighs about 700 grams.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: And so they take off vertically, vertical takeoff and landing,
12:22
SPEAKER_00: and then the propellers kind of shift to then let you fly in a way
12:28
SPEAKER_00: that would look very similar to a plane or kind of a bigger drone
12:32
SPEAKER_00: and just super quiet.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: I mean, like, They were up there flying with all these birds,
12:40
SPEAKER_00: and it was sort of hard to tell which one was which, to be honest.
12:43
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it had just like a little hum to it.
12:46
SPEAKER_00: And then they, as you know, I got super hung up on...
12:50
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they can hover like a helicopter just with the two propellers, and I was...
12:56
SPEAKER_00: I mean, so they're kind of gimballed, and I was...
12:59
SPEAKER_00: I was sort of shocked.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's not a violent movement.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: It was like very fine grained controls to do the hovering.
13:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah. I mean, it just comes down to, you know,
13:10
SPEAKER_01: the same way you have three axes of movement, you have three axes of rotation,
13:14
SPEAKER_01: pitch, roll, and yaw.
13:16
SPEAKER_01: And if you can control your aircraft in all of these rotational axes,
13:21
SPEAKER_01: then you can achieve great control.
13:24
SPEAKER_01: So that's really it.
13:25
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter whether you use one propeller, two propeller, five propellers to do it.
13:30
SPEAKER_01: It just matters how finely can you control this and how quickly can you respond to,
13:34
SPEAKER_01: you know, any disturbance.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: And so in these early days with the one kilo,
13:39
SPEAKER_00: two pounds of capacity flying things like
13:43
SPEAKER_00: medical goods,
13:47
SPEAKER_00: remind me how long they can fly and what distance?
13:52
SPEAKER_00: Maybe do both the first and the second gen.
13:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so the first gen can do about, you know, 30 kilometers of distance.
14:01
SPEAKER_01: And that's, I mean, flies at 60 km, so roughly around like 30,
14:06
SPEAKER_01: slightly longer than 30 minutes of flight time.
14:09
SPEAKER_01: The version 2 can do up to 800 kilometers,
14:13
SPEAKER_01: and that would generally correspond to a flight time of around an hour. Okay.
14:18
SPEAKER_01: But it depends.
14:18
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you can go faster and, you know, drain that range more quickly.
14:23
SPEAKER_00: And for the moment, I mean, this is vaguely comparing to Zipline
14:28
SPEAKER_00: or what Amazon is trying to do with delivery.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: I am most familiar with Zipline by far, just because I spent a bunch of time with them.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they had pretty lightweight aircraft.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: It was made of sort of like a styrofoam material in a lot of parts.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: They do this thing where the big drone is covering the distance
14:50
SPEAKER_00: and then they pop out this little baby drone on a tether.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: And that's what's like bringing your sandwich or your coffee down to the ground.
14:58
SPEAKER_00: And they have mechanisms on that, if I remember right,
15:01
SPEAKER_00: like kind of little propellers to try to...
15:04
SPEAKER_00: Combat the wind while it's lowering this thing down on the tether.
15:08
SPEAKER_00: Is your approach similar? I remember.
15:12
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there is a bit of a tether.
15:14
SPEAKER_01: So I think one of the main differences in our approach is
15:17
SPEAKER_01: that we realized weight alone is not the issue.
15:21
SPEAKER_01: Volume is actually a much bigger issue.
15:23
SPEAKER_01: And so you can build an aircraft with like 3 kg, 5 kg of payload capacity.
15:28
SPEAKER_01: But if you have to fit that all in a tiny space,
15:30
SPEAKER_01: you'd be hard pressed to find payloads that actually use up the full capacity.
15:35
SPEAKER_01: So what we focused on is just making like a big,
15:38
SPEAKER_01: what we call a big payload basket where you can just dump items
15:42
SPEAKER_01: in and you can put like, frankly,
15:44
SPEAKER_01: a disgusting amount of stuff inside of each aircraft. And that's the thing, right?
15:49
SPEAKER_01: Like you can put five, six orders in there.
15:51
SPEAKER_01: You can use this to restock, you know, dark stores, restaurants, small warehouses, et cetera.
15:56
SPEAKER_01: Like it's viable for a lot more than just single package delivery.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: And then in one contention, I mean, well, I guess this is just math and metrics.
16:07
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Zipline and Amazon, they're just heavier machines than what you guys make.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: I forget off the top of my head.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: I mean, do you know the comparisons?
16:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so generally sort of industry best is around for every kilogram of payload
16:22
SPEAKER_01: that you lift, you need about four to five kilograms of aircraft.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: I think Zipline's at about 5.8.
16:30
SPEAKER_01: Amazon is even higher, I think somewhere in the six to seven range.
16:33
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, vast majority of the weight is the aircraft there.
16:37
SPEAKER_01: What we've managed to do is we're lifting five kilos of payload
16:40
SPEAKER_01: with a three kilo aircraft, right?
16:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
16:43
SPEAKER_01: As compared to, you know, industry standard would be a like 25 to 30 kilogram acre.
16:49
SPEAKER_00: Right. Okay. Okay. So, okay.
16:51
SPEAKER_00: Both those companies have been at this for a very long time.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: I think beyond a decade.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
16:59
SPEAKER_00: I know Zipline takes a lot of pride in safety and some
17:06
SPEAKER_00: of this engineering they've put in,
17:07
SPEAKER_00: I think they would argue is to get the thing down on the ground without...
17:12
SPEAKER_00: Plunking someone in the head and also to withstand pretty gusty wind and weather conditions.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: I'm kind of going on a tangent to my main question, which is.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: There were very well-funded companies who have been trying to do this for a very long time.
17:30
SPEAKER_00: You're a young man, you know, starting well behind them.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: And so clearly that didn't intimidate you.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: You're just betting on this theory that you can design just
17:45
SPEAKER_00: a far more efficient vehicle than what they've done.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because I...
17:53
SPEAKER_01: I think what we have, you know, moving later is the benefit of foresight and,
17:58
SPEAKER_01: you know, the benefit of just being able to see how everything plays out.
18:02
SPEAKER_01: When a zipline or an Amazon started, drone delivery, you know,
18:06
SPEAKER_01: was really a question of if, not when.
18:10
SPEAKER_01: Today it's a question of when, not if.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: And so we get to see that, hey, things are panning out, regulations are being made,
18:16
SPEAKER_01: we can, you know, build according to those, we can see, you know,
18:19
SPEAKER_01: how the market is adapting to this.
18:22
SPEAKER_01: And so rather than having to invest our energy across multiple different fields of,
18:28
SPEAKER_01: you know, not just the aircraft, but how do you think about, you know,
18:33
SPEAKER_01: figuring out the loading, unloading when there is zero standard for it that exists?
18:37
SPEAKER_01: How do you figure out, you know, noise, the customer experience?
18:41
SPEAKER_01: How do you figure out the infrastructure, the regulations?
18:45
SPEAKER_01: You know, like you're sort of being the aircraft, the airport, And the airline,
18:50
SPEAKER_01: and that's a lot to do, right?
18:52
SPEAKER_01: You know, excellence there really means being good at a lot of things.
18:57
SPEAKER_01: Now, our belief is that as a lot of this becomes more standardized,
19:02
SPEAKER_01: we feel like there's actually minimal differentiation in doing the airport right
19:06
SPEAKER_01: or doing the airline right.
19:07
SPEAKER_01: It really comes down to the aircraft.
19:09
SPEAKER_01: And so we have the luxury to focus all of our energy on the aircraft,
19:13
SPEAKER_01: on making that as efficient as possible.
19:17
SPEAKER_01: Because at the end of the day, you know, we believe that autonomy is getting soft.
19:22
SPEAKER_01: Autonomy in the air is much, much easier.
19:24
SPEAKER_01: Easier than autonomy on the ground, right?
19:26
SPEAKER_01: The systems that like the 28 systems we put up in the air are all fully autonomous.
19:31
SPEAKER_01: We also believe that safety is the kind of thing that comes with maturity
19:36
SPEAKER_01: of development and you're already starting to see great safety with a lot
19:39
SPEAKER_01: of these platforms.
19:40
SPEAKER_01: The key thing with both of these is they're sort of binary checkboxes, right?
19:44
SPEAKER_01: If you're autonomous, great.
19:45
SPEAKER_01: If you're safe, great.
19:47
SPEAKER_01: But nobody's going to choose you over someone else
19:50
SPEAKER_01: because you are 10x more autonomous or 10x safer.
19:54
SPEAKER_01: But when it comes to efficiency, that's not the case.
19:56
SPEAKER_01: Unit economics are something that continuously matter.
20:01
SPEAKER_01: And if you are able to have a structurally lower cost than your competition,
20:07
SPEAKER_01: regardless of what their costs are, you have an edge over them,
20:11
SPEAKER_01: which is not true when you apply that to safety
20:15
SPEAKER_01: or how quiet the aircraft is
20:19
SPEAKER_01: or anything else.
20:21
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20:23
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20:25
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SPEAKER_01: Core Memory.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: I think we're fine to talk about this because we talked about it in India.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're not just hoping to do cargo.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you have a vision all the way up to transporting people one day.
21:40
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I tweeted about this and people seem to, like,
21:44
SPEAKER_00: this was the first time they'd heard it, but I guess I had already tweeted it, so.
21:48
SPEAKER_01: No, we put it up on our manifesto, but yeah, it's something that, you know,
21:53
SPEAKER_01: I understand if, you know, you didn't read the full 10-pager, which, you know,
21:57
SPEAKER_01: most people in the world have not read that.
21:59
SPEAKER_00: I should have if I was a teaser reporter.
22:01
SPEAKER_00: Perfect.
22:03
SPEAKER_01: I just mean people.
22:04
SPEAKER_01: I think the manifesto came out after your trip.
22:08
SPEAKER_01: So I will give you the benefit of the doubt.
22:12
SPEAKER_00: But so that is the goal is all transporting objects and flesh.
22:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I think that's sort of that idea of the universal transport that I began
22:22
SPEAKER_01: with, that, you know, this is, it has to work for everything, right?
22:27
SPEAKER_01: It has to work regardless of whether you're moving flesh, whether you're moving,
22:31
SPEAKER_01: like, you know, physics doesn't exactly care whether the payload you're moving has
22:36
SPEAKER_01: a soul or not.
22:38
SPEAKER_01: It's all the same at the end of the day. Yeah, sure.
22:40
SPEAKER_01: You need to add like, you know,
22:42
SPEAKER_01: windows and seats and like a little bit of HVAC to keep the humans happy inside.
22:47
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, in the grand scheme of things,
22:50
SPEAKER_01: there's not a big difference between a system that has that and one that doesn't,
22:53
SPEAKER_01: especially in aviation, right?
22:55
SPEAKER_01: It's practically the same aircrafts that move cargo and the ones that move people.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: Okay. Okay.
23:00
SPEAKER_00: So I have some, I mean, I've got some Questions, they're vaguely tough, I think,
23:05
SPEAKER_00: about the technology, but I'm going to save those just for one second.
23:09
SPEAKER_00: And I just want to go back to the origin story a little bit because you're a fascinating dude.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: So you're, I mean, if I remember right,
23:19
SPEAKER_00: you're about 16 years old when you start to put together this idea and look
23:26
SPEAKER_00: for some funding behind it.
23:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, around that age.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: So what happens? You're sitting around at 16 and you're like,
23:33
SPEAKER_00: I think I can make a better aircraft than anybody else. How does this happen? Yeah.
23:38
SPEAKER_01: I wish I started with that level of conviction.
23:43
SPEAKER_01: But no, I think I had very realistic ambitions when I started out.
23:47
SPEAKER_01: Airbound actually started off as OpenDrone.
23:50
SPEAKER_01: So it started off as a project to create an open source delivery drone design
23:57
SPEAKER_01: that anyone could use and 3D print and just make drone delivery
24:03
SPEAKER_01: in their own locality.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: Just because you wanted to do it or you were into drones?
24:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think just... I actually...
24:11
SPEAKER_01: So that's like a funny thing where I've just never been into drones.
24:16
SPEAKER_01: The first drone that I ever flew and the first drone that I ever built were both
24:21
SPEAKER_01: an airbound drone.
24:22
SPEAKER_01: And it was actually...
24:24
SPEAKER_01: Less than a year ago that I first owned a drone that was not an Airbound drone.
24:29
SPEAKER_01: So I'm definitely not the drone guy.
24:34
SPEAKER_01: But I was like, a lot of why I'm doing this sort of goes back to much, much earlier.
24:41
SPEAKER_01: I think one of my core memories from when I was a child,
24:45
SPEAKER_01: like when I was around first or second grade was...
24:50
SPEAKER_01: Yes. You know, shameless plugs.
24:55
SPEAKER_01: So this was when, this was like, I think me learning about the Fermi paradox,
25:01
SPEAKER_01: you know, where are the aliens out there?
25:04
SPEAKER_01: And I just found the concept really fascinating
25:08
SPEAKER_01: that there exists a question, right?
25:12
SPEAKER_01: And actually there exist many questions that a first or second grader is capable
25:17
SPEAKER_01: of understanding, yet no human in the world is capable of answering.
25:22
SPEAKER_01: It just opened my eyes to like there is so much out there that is not yet discovered.
25:26
SPEAKER_01: There is so much that can still be done with humanity, which, you know,
25:30
SPEAKER_01: at first when you look around, you're like, damn, we like solved everything.
25:34
SPEAKER_01: There's nothing else left.
25:37
SPEAKER_01: So that was there.
25:38
SPEAKER_01: I'd been sort of deeply obsessed with kind of the scale of humanity
25:42
SPEAKER_01: and like what it takes to, you know, answer these questions,
25:45
SPEAKER_01: do something that hasn't been done before.
25:49
SPEAKER_01: And at first it just feels impossible, right?
25:52
SPEAKER_01: Like there's 8 billion people in the world.
25:54
SPEAKER_01: Statistically, like, you know, each one of us is insignificant.
25:58
SPEAKER_01: You're insignificant. I'm insignificant.
26:01
SPEAKER_01: But somehow that is not true, right?
26:03
SPEAKER_01: Somehow there are still people that in spite of the odds move forward
26:08
SPEAKER_01: and really like measurably impact humanity as a whole.
26:14
SPEAKER_01: And I've been deeply interested in being one of those people.
26:18
SPEAKER_01: I think it comes through leverage.
26:19
SPEAKER_01: And the strongest leverage we have is technology.
26:21
SPEAKER_01: If you invent a new technology that changes the way people live,
26:26
SPEAKER_01: then you would have by proxy change.
26:29
SPEAKER_01: And so I always wanted to invent something.
26:32
SPEAKER_01: And I think why I just landed up in this space was honestly more coincidence than anything.
26:39
SPEAKER_01: I'd actually seen some videos on Zipline.
26:41
SPEAKER_01: I was deeply inspired by what they were doing.
26:43
SPEAKER_01: And I just wanted to see what I could do to contribute to this space.
26:48
SPEAKER_00: And so you're 16 and you start tinkering to try to build one.
26:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
26:55
SPEAKER_01: I sort of, so this was around COVID 2020.
26:59
SPEAKER_01: I sort of joined this, you know, hackathon project.
27:03
SPEAKER_01: There were these like online groups where people had come together to volunteer their time.
27:07
SPEAKER_01: So did a hackathon there, managed to get a $500 grant.
27:10
SPEAKER_01: And I was just like, you know, I want to build this.
27:12
SPEAKER_01: I want to see how this goes.
27:13
SPEAKER_00: And that was the Emergent Ventures credit or different?
27:16
SPEAKER_01: No, this was Emergent gives more money than $500, you know, yay for Shruti.
27:23
SPEAKER_01: So that's there. This was at 15.
27:25
SPEAKER_01: This was just like the conception of the idea. Then I realized.
27:28
SPEAKER_01: I realized that, oh God, I like messed up the design completely.
27:31
SPEAKER_01: I learned a bunch through the process, still built that aircraft.
27:34
SPEAKER_01: It got like a quarter second of airtime.
27:37
SPEAKER_01: And then I was like, okay, here's what I need to fix.
27:40
SPEAKER_01: I designed a new aircraft.
27:41
SPEAKER_01: That one is the TRT, like we still use it today.
27:45
SPEAKER_01: And I think with that design, I managed to get $8,000 grants, still not Emergent Ventures.
27:52
SPEAKER_01: You know, use that to like, I could finally afford a 3D printer,
27:55
SPEAKER_01: start working with carbon fiber instead of fiberglass.
27:57
SPEAKER_01: And so I was just building this, had these weird sims in my bedroom.
28:00
SPEAKER_01: And I think somewhat in parallel, I ended up getting, you know,
28:04
SPEAKER_01: our first investment, which was like a $25,000 investment from Trad Capital.
28:10
SPEAKER_01: And I also got a, you know, roughly like $12,000, $12,500 grant from now Emergent Ventures.
28:17
SPEAKER_00: Okay. Okay.
28:18
SPEAKER_00: And how did you hear about them?
28:21
SPEAKER_01: So this was actually through the $1,000 grant.
28:23
SPEAKER_01: So I got this from 1517.
28:25
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if they still do.
28:27
SPEAKER_01: They used to run a grant program.
28:29
SPEAKER_01: And so they just had these weekly calls with people from the community.
28:33
SPEAKER_01: And they were like, oh, you should check out Emergent Ventures.
28:36
SPEAKER_01: And so I did.
28:37
SPEAKER_01: And it didn't look very interesting because it was this weird fund.
28:41
SPEAKER_01: And then they're like, no, no, no, you're on the wrong website today.
28:45
SPEAKER_00: There are a couple, yeah.
28:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there are like VCs called Emergent Ventures.
28:49
SPEAKER_01: And I was just like, is this what they want?
28:51
SPEAKER_01: No, it's like, you know, the market.
28:53
SPEAKER_01: Now it's the first thing that comes up when you search Emergent Ventures.
28:55
SPEAKER_01: Back then it wasn't.
28:57
SPEAKER_01: So after like going to the wrong website, I finally made my way to the right one.
29:01
SPEAKER_01: I sent an application.
29:02
SPEAKER_01: I think two weeks later, I got a call from Shruti and she was like, cool,
29:06
SPEAKER_01: we will give you money.
29:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah. And you're telling your parents about all this?
29:10
SPEAKER_00: What are they making of it?
29:13
SPEAKER_01: I think they're just deeply confused.
29:16
SPEAKER_01: I think they were trying to figure out whether all of this is a scam or not.
29:21
SPEAKER_01: And I think they were just confused as to how do you scam a 16-year-old by giving him $10,000?
29:30
SPEAKER_01: Like, honestly, with the Grad Capital investment, the founder of Grad Capital,
29:33
SPEAKER_01: Abhishek, said he literally had to get on a call with my dad
29:36
SPEAKER_01: to convince him why he should let his son take money from them.
29:40
SPEAKER_01: And why, like, they are not a scam or, like, a money laundering scheme or something.
29:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah. I guess I could see that. Yeah.
29:47
SPEAKER_01: What do your parents do?
29:49
SPEAKER_01: They're both in the banking sector.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: Okay. Yeah. Oh, so they were, yeah, they're.
29:53
SPEAKER_00: Actually,
29:56
SPEAKER_01: my mom used to work in anti-money laundering.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: Do you have brothers and sisters?
30:02
SPEAKER_01: No, I'm an only child.
30:03
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you're, I mean, you were mentioning it a bit,
30:06
SPEAKER_00: but so describe your bedroom to me at peak prototyping.
30:12
SPEAKER_01: Oh, God.
30:13
SPEAKER_01: There's too much to describe.
30:14
SPEAKER_01: I should actually send you a photo of it.
30:17
SPEAKER_01: I have it on my phone.
30:18
SPEAKER_01: But it was like, because I was basically trying to run an entire workshop out
30:23
SPEAKER_01: of my bedroom, and my desk only had space for one thing at a time.
30:27
SPEAKER_01: So I would just have like a random 3D printer on the side.
30:30
SPEAKER_01: The floor would like always be filled with newspapers because I would work
30:34
SPEAKER_01: with like resin and carbon fiber a lot and my parents were like,
30:36
SPEAKER_01: you're going to destroy the floor.
30:37
SPEAKER_01: So just like replace the newspapers every day.
30:40
SPEAKER_01: I spent a decent amount of time like taping newspapers to the floor.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: Shouldn't you have some like airflow for this?
30:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, this is like what I learned later.
30:50
SPEAKER_01: I was working with these chemicals and my parents were complaining about the smell
30:55
SPEAKER_01: and I'm like, no, no, no, don't worry about it.
30:58
SPEAKER_01: It does smell weird, but it's safe.
30:59
SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, I checked the, I checked like the material safety data sheet,
31:02
SPEAKER_01: you know, I'll show it to you.
31:04
SPEAKER_01: And I just whipped out the material safety data sheet.
31:06
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh, shit, no, this is like,
31:07
SPEAKER_01: this has a toxicity rating of four on a scale of one to four.
31:12
SPEAKER_01: And it is like a class three carcinogen.
31:14
SPEAKER_01: And I was just like, okay, I should buy a restorator.
31:17
SPEAKER_01: That was also like a lot of the impetus for like, you know, hey, when I get money,
31:20
SPEAKER_01: I should probably move out.
31:22
SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't have the space.
31:24
SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't.
31:25
SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah, it's a small apartment, right?
31:27
SPEAKER_01: So I had to build out of my bedroom.
31:29
SPEAKER_01: I needed to go to a place where, you know, I could sleep and build in different rooms.
31:34
SPEAKER_01: That was like the ultimate luxury.
31:35
SPEAKER_01: So at 16, I ended up moving out, got my own place. Oh, wow.
31:40
SPEAKER_01: Just sort of had like master bedroom for this, had like a tiny half bedroom for me to sleep.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: What did your parents think of that?
31:48
SPEAKER_01: They actually suggested it.
31:49
SPEAKER_01: So actually, so...
31:51
SPEAKER_01: I was living in Mumbai at the time,
31:53
SPEAKER_01: and my plan was to move to Bangalore because I was like,
31:55
SPEAKER_01: that's where all the startup stuff is.
31:57
SPEAKER_01: And they were like, no, you are still in school.
32:00
SPEAKER_01: And it's online school.
32:01
SPEAKER_01: I can just, like, they don't know whether I'm in Bangalore or Mumbai.
32:04
SPEAKER_01: And they're like, no, nothing doing.
32:07
SPEAKER_01: You know, we know some localities nearby.
32:09
SPEAKER_01: You can get your own place, but it has to be in the city.
32:11
SPEAKER_01: So a lot of people ask, like, oh, how did you convince them to, like,
32:14
SPEAKER_01: let you move out to, you know, this other part of town?
32:17
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, it was their idea.
32:19
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you did stay in town, though.
32:22
SPEAKER_00: Okay, this is fascinating.
32:23
SPEAKER_00: And you're teaching yourself carbon fiber on YouTube.
32:29
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're learning these skills from YouTube.
32:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, YouTube is awesome.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of amazing, right?
32:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it is.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you're moving along, you're getting some money,
32:40
SPEAKER_00: and then how does this start to become a company?
32:44
SPEAKER_01: It's a good question.
32:47
SPEAKER_01: And I think like different ages of Naman would give you different answers, right?
32:51
SPEAKER_01: I think that, you know, while I was in school, while I was, you know,
32:54
SPEAKER_01: spending a bunch of my time building this out,
32:56
SPEAKER_01: I was still like juggling classes at the same time.
32:59
SPEAKER_01: It was really just like me.
33:00
SPEAKER_01: It was basically me just being, you know,
33:03
SPEAKER_01: paid by like the nice VCs of the world to learn engineering.
33:07
SPEAKER_01: And like, thank you to them.
33:09
SPEAKER_01: I will hope to make you money someday.
33:11
SPEAKER_01: But...
33:14
SPEAKER_01: That's there.
33:15
SPEAKER_01: Like, I think Airbound was really a science project while I was in school,
33:18
SPEAKER_01: which I think teenager number one would take a lot of offense to me saying that.
33:22
SPEAKER_01: But I think it's true.
33:24
SPEAKER_01: I think a lot really changed, you know, around when we got our pre-seat round.
33:29
SPEAKER_01: So this was, you know, I graduated from high school.
33:32
SPEAKER_01: I was like, look, I really want to pursue this.
33:34
SPEAKER_01: Let me just defer my admission by a year.
33:37
SPEAKER_01: You know, still have a seat at college.
33:39
SPEAKER_01: Worst case, I'm just late by a year.
33:41
SPEAKER_00: In the U.S. or India?
33:42
SPEAKER_01: In the U.S., yeah. India doesn't really do different.
33:45
SPEAKER_00: Okay. Which school?
33:46
SPEAKER_01: This was CMU. Okay.
33:48
SPEAKER_01: So that's there.
33:50
SPEAKER_01: I deferred my admission.
33:51
SPEAKER_01: And in that year, I was figuring out a bunch of things, but we ended up raising.
33:57
SPEAKER_01: You know, one and a half mil round led by Lightspeed.
34:00
SPEAKER_01: And that's when, you know, it sort of hits the like, oh shit, you know,
34:04
SPEAKER_01: this is an actual company now.
34:05
SPEAKER_01: This is not just me.
34:07
SPEAKER_01: Like, it's hard to spend a million dollars, like, you know,
34:10
SPEAKER_01: just building tech out of your bedroom.
34:12
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, it's really, that's when we started to hire people.
34:15
SPEAKER_01: That's when we started to, you know, build a real business and not just, you know,
34:21
SPEAKER_01: me creating some tech for fun.
34:22
SPEAKER_00: So there's like part of this that would fit in the Silicon Valley lore.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: Clearly been funding college dropouts for decades, you know,
34:32
SPEAKER_00: and some of them have done all right.
34:33
SPEAKER_00: Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, the list goes on.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: But, I mean, there's something wild about like an 18-year-old saying, you know,
34:43
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to design aircraft that nobody else have ever done. You know what I mean?
34:47
SPEAKER_00: Because it's a field, obviously...
34:49
SPEAKER_00: 100 years of people trying to design aircraft.
34:53
SPEAKER_00: You didn't have any of the typical credentials people might want to see.
35:02
SPEAKER_00: When I talk to you, I mean, I think anyone who talked
35:04
SPEAKER_00: to you would understand you're incredibly bright.
35:07
SPEAKER_00: So I'm sure...
35:09
SPEAKER_00: This was playing a factor in everything.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: You know you're convincing when you talk about this stuff.
35:13
SPEAKER_00: You don't come off as just like totally crazy.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, it's nuts to sort of be like, I'm 18.
35:19
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to design aircraft better than anyone has done before.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: Trust me.
35:25
SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, that seems like almost like the highest bar to talk a VC into.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's a hard question for you to answer. Maybe I should ask them.
35:35
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, why do you think they sort of bought into the pitch?
35:41
SPEAKER_01: I'll have to be like, eh, it's just me.
35:43
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, I'm just great at this.
35:47
SPEAKER_01: I floored them.
35:48
SPEAKER_01: No, I think this is just the natural evolution of, I think, VC as a whole.
35:54
SPEAKER_01: Look, I think the frank reality is
35:56
SPEAKER_01: that if I started doing this even five years earlier,
35:59
SPEAKER_01: I don't think everyone would have ever gotten off,
36:03
SPEAKER_01: just off into even being a company, off to hiring our first employee.
36:09
SPEAKER_01: I think a few different things that have come together for this.
36:12
SPEAKER_01: One is that case studies like SpaceX and Tesla, which you know very well.
36:17
SPEAKER_01: I'm familiar.
36:18
SPEAKER_01: You're familiar.
36:20
SPEAKER_01: Have, I think, proven that you can build great tech in this manner.
36:26
SPEAKER_01: Musk was also a complete outsider.
36:30
SPEAKER_01: Sure, he wasn't an 18-year-old,
36:31
SPEAKER_01: but he started these companies without having done any engineering before.
36:35
SPEAKER_01: He learned everything on the job.
36:37
SPEAKER_01: And it's that, hey, actually,
36:39
SPEAKER_01: if you're just really good at thinking from first principles and building this,
36:43
SPEAKER_01: it's a different skill set, but it's a similar skill set to just building
36:45
SPEAKER_01: a business. You just have to be exceptional at the tech.
36:50
SPEAKER_01: So I think that's one of the things that helped, you know,
36:53
SPEAKER_01: obviously young founders being successful was becoming more and more common.
36:57
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, there were just starting to be funds that were contemplating the idea
37:00
SPEAKER_01: of like, hey, maybe I'll fund a kid that's still in high school.
37:04
SPEAKER_00: And you had, you built something.
37:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'd also built something.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: Like I could see it. Yeah.
37:09
SPEAKER_00: It was flying. It was not flying. Was it not flying?
37:12
SPEAKER_01: It was not flying for a while.
37:16
SPEAKER_01: I think we got to actual flying meaningfully after the light speed round.
37:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we were...
37:23
SPEAKER_01: You know, to quote Toy Story, we were not flying, we were falling with style.
37:27
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
37:28
SPEAKER_00: And so, and you were, you finished, you said you were at online school,
37:32
SPEAKER_00: you finished high school? Yes.
37:33
SPEAKER_00: And then, then you're kind of getting this light speed check at the same time, roughly.
37:38
SPEAKER_00: And then you're, how many people are you hiring?
37:42
SPEAKER_01: I think we were slow to hire early on,
37:45
SPEAKER_01: but I think by the time we raised our seat round, we were maybe around like 15,
37:49
SPEAKER_01: 20-ish people. Holy cow. Okay.
37:51
SPEAKER_00: Wow. Wow.
37:52
SPEAKER_00: And, and the, I don't, God,
37:57
SPEAKER_00: I don't think I'm being like too egregiously stereotypical or something.
38:01
SPEAKER_00: I just feel like, I feel like, you know, in the US,
38:04
SPEAKER_00: if you come from a family where you're supposed to kind of like be on the path
38:08
SPEAKER_00: to college, there's a lot of pressure to drop out.
38:11
SPEAKER_00: Although obviously sort of become a thing in the, in the tech world.
38:15
SPEAKER_00: I just feel like all my Indian friends,
38:17
SPEAKER_00: everything I know is just that You're meant to become a lawyer or a doctor
38:22
SPEAKER_00: or an engineer. And those are kind of like all the options.
38:25
SPEAKER_00: And not going to Carnegie Mellon is definitely not
38:30
SPEAKER_00: on the recommended path.
38:33
SPEAKER_00: Is that changing?
38:34
SPEAKER_00: Or was that a really difficult conversation?
38:39
SPEAKER_01: I think, again, a mix of both.
38:42
SPEAKER_01: I do think it's starting to change.
38:43
SPEAKER_01: I do think, you know, especially like...
38:46
SPEAKER_01: I mean...
38:48
SPEAKER_01: It's obviously nowhere close to Silicon Valley,
38:50
SPEAKER_01: but India is the third or fourth largest startup ecosystem in the world.
38:54
SPEAKER_01: We have seen enough cases of really young kids go out and be hyper successful.
39:00
SPEAKER_01: And I think the government is also pushing a lot On making these stories more visible.
39:05
SPEAKER_01: So the idea of being a startup founder is becoming less and less alien.
39:09
SPEAKER_01: There are more comparisons.
39:11
SPEAKER_01: Somehow my parents had a friend that had done a startup,
39:14
SPEAKER_01: which I wouldn't have imagined happening with their parents for sure.
39:20
SPEAKER_01: And I think the other thing is a lot of this is sort of about wealth at a country scale.
39:27
SPEAKER_01: I think India is a country where, you know,
39:29
SPEAKER_01: my generation is sort of the first generation where you have at least some people
39:33
SPEAKER_01: that do come from, you know, a decent amount of wealth, right?
39:38
SPEAKER_01: Like, I think for me, the biggest luxury is that I knew...
39:41
SPEAKER_01: No matter, you know, what happened,
39:44
SPEAKER_01: I would always have food to eat and I would always have a roof over my head.
39:48
SPEAKER_01: And at the end, like, how much more do you need, right?
39:52
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's what, that's the luxury that I had that my parents ever did, right?
39:57
SPEAKER_01: Like for my dad's success meant, you know,
39:59
SPEAKER_01: always being able to put food on the table for your family.
40:02
SPEAKER_01: And he had seen a lot of people in his family run businesses.
40:05
SPEAKER_01: And to him, running a business meant that if the business doesn't do well,
40:09
SPEAKER_01: you can't, You can't eat.
40:13
SPEAKER_01: And so he wanted the opposite of that.
40:15
SPEAKER_01: He wanted that stability.
40:16
SPEAKER_01: He was never thinking about, oh, this is what I enjoy doing, etc.
40:21
SPEAKER_01: But it was because of that that my parents were able to let me have passions.
40:25
SPEAKER_01: I think one thing that was a bit unique about my childhood is...
40:30
SPEAKER_01: My parents never pushed a career path on me.
40:33
SPEAKER_01: I do think it helped that I never wanted to become an artist or something
40:36
SPEAKER_01: that doesn't make money.
40:38
SPEAKER_01: I always wanted to get into engineering and physics. I'm going to
40:42
SPEAKER_00: be an industrialist.
40:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um...
40:46
SPEAKER_01: But like one of the things that my mom told me from a really early age is just,
40:50
SPEAKER_01: you know, do whatever you want, but be the best at it, right?
40:54
SPEAKER_01: Like you can go and cut hair for all I care,
40:57
SPEAKER_01: but then you better be the best barber in the city, right?
41:00
SPEAKER_01: Like everyone should say like, I want Naman to cut my hair, right?
41:03
SPEAKER_01: Like that's what I want you to do.
41:05
SPEAKER_01: Do whatever career you want, just be excellent at it.
41:07
SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay, okay.
41:09
SPEAKER_00: So they didn't try to talk you out of it or anything.
41:11
SPEAKER_00: Did anyone try to talk you into moving to the US to build the company?
41:17
SPEAKER_01: I think in our folks early on,
41:21
SPEAKER_01: I just never saw a very compelling reason for it.
41:26
SPEAKER_01: I think, yeah, I don't know.
41:29
SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of people move to the US because it's just like, oh my God,
41:31
SPEAKER_01: there's more money here, right?
41:32
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, you have a lot of accelerator programs that just have
41:36
SPEAKER_01: A standard investment deal, but the standard deal gives you double the valuation
41:42
SPEAKER_01: if you move to the US.
41:44
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of these early stage money things where you can just be like, oh,
41:48
SPEAKER_01: just move to the US. But to me, there's no compelling reason for the business.
41:53
SPEAKER_01: I am trying to build great technology, and that great technology can be built anywhere.
41:58
SPEAKER_01: I think there is a lot of talent in India and I think I can build it here.
42:02
SPEAKER_01: And over time, I think it's gone from, you know, this ambivalence of like, you know,
42:07
SPEAKER_01: just why move to the US to like, no, actually,
42:10
SPEAKER_01: I think India is the better place to build this tech.
42:12
SPEAKER_01: I think there's a lot of unique things about India that make it a better place
42:16
SPEAKER_01: to build a company like Airbound than the US.
42:20
SPEAKER_00: Like, let's get into those.
42:23
SPEAKER_00: Because, look, we've got...
42:26
SPEAKER_00: Multi decades of this brain drain of India to the US.
42:29
SPEAKER_00: You and I were hanging out playing board games one night
42:33
SPEAKER_00: and something you guys were talking about really struck me, which was,
42:38
SPEAKER_00: and please correct me if I'm misremembering sort of how you put it,
42:41
SPEAKER_00: but that people didn't have, young people maybe didn't have like pride in India.
42:48
SPEAKER_00: And so maybe that was another reason you sort of want to go to the US and make your mark.
42:55
SPEAKER_00: And so You're talking about, oh, I think there's business reasons to stay.
43:01
SPEAKER_00: I don't know. Walk me through both sides of that.
43:02
SPEAKER_00: Was some of it emotional and wanting to build a company like this in India
43:09
SPEAKER_00: or was it just quite practical?
43:12
SPEAKER_01: I think in the early days it was mainly practical.
43:15
SPEAKER_01: I can't deny that I think there are emotional reasons now.
43:19
SPEAKER_01: I think especially when you get to a point that you realize
43:22
SPEAKER_01: that you could genuinely be one of the people that pushes your nation forward,
43:27
SPEAKER_01: that if I succeed hard enough,
43:30
SPEAKER_01: I actually become part of the reason that India is becoming better,
43:33
SPEAKER_01: then it's pretty hard to leave India and to give up on that ambition.
43:42
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I think early days, it was really purely practical, right?
43:47
SPEAKER_01: I mean, first off, just early days when you don't have a lot of money,
43:51
SPEAKER_01: it doesn't make sense to, you know, come here, you know, ramp up your burner bunch.
43:56
SPEAKER_01: But I think like, yeah.
43:58
SPEAKER_00: Can we break that down for a second?
43:59
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're saying land is cheaper, a building's cheaper, the people are cheaper,
44:04
SPEAKER_00: all of that? Yeah.
44:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like, yeah, just, I mean, cost of living is much lower, right?
44:09
SPEAKER_01: Like a dollar goes much further in India than it goes in the US.
44:12
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, as you scale up, that stops being a good reason, right?
44:15
SPEAKER_01: It just becomes that, hey, you know, we've raised like 37 mil now,
44:19
SPEAKER_01: and that is actually enough money to like run a company out of the US by like
44:24
SPEAKER_01: a decent margin.
44:27
SPEAKER_01: I think for me, there's a few different reasons.
44:30
SPEAKER_01: I think one of the biggest ones is the people, right?
44:33
SPEAKER_01: I think Indians are sort of one of the greatest talent pools that exist globally.
44:38
SPEAKER_01: I remember seeing this little diagram of like,
44:42
SPEAKER_01: What is the highest paid nationality in each state in the US?
44:46
SPEAKER_01: And I think 70% of the states were just Indians.
44:51
SPEAKER_01: Indians do really well.
44:53
SPEAKER_01: And I think pretty much all of the great businesses you see here are built on top
44:58
SPEAKER_01: of Indian talent.
44:59
SPEAKER_01: There's an obscene number of Indians in Tesla, SpaceX.
45:02
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, now they're just running multinational companies.
45:06
SPEAKER_01: So I don't think there's any question that Indian talent is not good.
45:11
SPEAKER_01: I think Indian talent is great.
45:12
SPEAKER_01: And especially if you're able to get that talent early, it works really well.
45:16
SPEAKER_01: There's also an increasing...
45:20
SPEAKER_01: Like moving out of the country is becoming less and less popular, right?
45:23
SPEAKER_01: And this has changed like dramatically, even at a timescale of like three to five years, right?
45:28
SPEAKER_01: Five years ago, when I was looking at going to college, it was just like, duh,
45:33
SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you can afford to go to the US, why would you ever stay in India, right?
45:37
SPEAKER_01: Like nobody was thinking about staying in India.
45:40
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, like in my school, about 80% of the class would go to college abroad.
45:46
SPEAKER_01: And now a decent chunk of those people are planning to come back to India
45:50
SPEAKER_01: after they're done with college and spend the rest of their lives in India.
45:54
SPEAKER_00: Is it because the US got shittier or India's nicer?
45:59
SPEAKER_00: I think it's a mix of both, right?
46:00
SPEAKER_01: Like, I think it's interesting because, you know, like, again,
46:07
SPEAKER_01: 10 years ago when you go to the US,
46:08
SPEAKER_01: it's just an objectively higher quality of life than India.
46:13
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, I Well, I don't know, like,
46:16
SPEAKER_01: I feel like today it's more just a different quality of life, right?
46:20
SPEAKER_01: The US is better in certain regards, but it's also worse in certain regards.
46:24
SPEAKER_01: And suddenly it's not as clear that, you know, India is the worst place to live.
46:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I'll run the risk of giving my three weeks
46:33
SPEAKER_00: in India survey of things.
46:38
SPEAKER_00: I would say I feel like life is probably like at least, you know, again, sorry,
46:42
SPEAKER_00: audience, this is my limited experience as a momentary traveler,
46:47
SPEAKER_00: but it feels like I feel like life is like easier day to day here,
46:53
SPEAKER_00: just like a little smoother.
46:54
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's just shit tons of traffic.
46:57
SPEAKER_00: Not that we don't have traffic, but the traffic in Bangalore and Hyderabad is bad.
47:02
SPEAKER_00: There's no joke. I mean, both cities feels like...
47:07
SPEAKER_00: My assumption is they grew so much quicker than anyone had ever planned for.
47:12
SPEAKER_00: And there was no central planning at all.
47:15
SPEAKER_00: And so it's just kind of like hanging on for dear life.
47:17
SPEAKER_00: I think India in general is that bit more like chaotic and frenetic and full of energy.
47:23
SPEAKER_00: And all of that like is actually awesome.
47:26
SPEAKER_00: And then, but also adds this like friction to just getting around doing your daily life.
47:32
SPEAKER_00: And so, I mean, it's like what, but I mean, what a...
47:38
SPEAKER_00: And I, reminds me of like when I went to Nigeria, which I, it's like in Lagos,
47:45
SPEAKER_00: which I feel like most people, it's a lot of people do not like.
47:47
SPEAKER_00: I love the energy and like the, not just like the chaos, but like just the,
47:54
SPEAKER_00: everybody's doing something and is like out, quite ambitious,
47:58
SPEAKER_00: trying to make their way in the world.
48:00
SPEAKER_00: And there's just, and then, oh man, I just love obviously like all the culture,
48:04
SPEAKER_00: the colors and the food and everything.
48:06
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, what do you like?
48:07
SPEAKER_00: When you're doing the pros and cons, what do you love about staying in India then?
48:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think, look, I think the U.S. has like a lot of obvious benefits, right?
48:18
SPEAKER_01: I think traffic is definitely better.
48:20
SPEAKER_01: The roads are a lot better in the U.S.
48:23
SPEAKER_01: The air is a lot cleaner.
48:25
SPEAKER_01: You know, there's much more nature present.
48:28
SPEAKER_01: But then there's a bunch of things like in India, If you're living in India,
48:32
SPEAKER_01: your day-to-day life becomes a lot easier.
48:34
SPEAKER_01: Most homes have house help.
48:37
SPEAKER_01: You're generally looking at getting deliveries is a lot easier.
48:42
SPEAKER_01: Food comes a lot faster.
48:44
SPEAKER_01: You're able to just get anything in 10 minutes.
48:49
SPEAKER_01: Like I had to go for a wedding and I couldn't find my kurta,
48:52
SPEAKER_01: which is like Indian version of a suit.
48:55
SPEAKER_01: I couldn't find my kurta.
48:57
SPEAKER_01: And so I just ordered one and it came in 20 minutes.
49:00
SPEAKER_01: I don't think like anyone in the US can imagine like not having a suit for a wedding
49:05
SPEAKER_01: and getting that in 20 minutes.
49:07
SPEAKER_00: It is hard to explain.
49:08
SPEAKER_00: I was like at a party and I'm like, oh, I'm not feeling my best.
49:11
SPEAKER_00: And then everyone's ordering me.
49:14
SPEAKER_00: Medicines, teas, all these, and they're just arriving.
49:17
SPEAKER_00: But as I'm trying to leave the party, they're like, no, no, it's gonna be here in two minutes.
49:21
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, it's just a total cultural thing with these delivery apps.
49:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's like one of those things where, again, I feel like whenever, look,
49:29
SPEAKER_01: you'll always be biased towards the place where you are, right?
49:32
SPEAKER_01: And I think as an American coming to India,
49:34
SPEAKER_01: you're going to notice the things that like India doesn't have that the US has.
49:39
SPEAKER_01: And generally, you never notice the flip side.
49:40
SPEAKER_01: Indians going to the US are like, oh my God, it's just so much better here.
49:43
SPEAKER_01: But what I find surprising is like, I start to notice things.
49:47
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh God, I have to like pre-plan my food because I can't just order
49:52
SPEAKER_01: when I'm hungry and expect it to show up in like 15, 20 minutes.
49:56
SPEAKER_01: I have to...
49:58
SPEAKER_01: Like, just a really random thing, right?
50:00
SPEAKER_01: Like, I generally don't shave. I trim my beard.
50:03
SPEAKER_01: I forgot to bring my trimmer, which in India is not a problem.
50:06
SPEAKER_01: Like, you'll just get one in 10 minutes.
50:07
SPEAKER_01: I, like, I just couldn't find a trimmer here that I could get ordered.
50:11
SPEAKER_01: And I was just like, I really, like, Indian deliveries have just spoiled to you.
50:15
SPEAKER_01: I just don't have any need to, like, go to a store and buy something physically.
50:20
SPEAKER_01: And so I'm just like, well, I guess I'm shaving now.
50:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
50:24
SPEAKER_00: David Nicholson, our cameraman who you met, if you remember,
50:27
SPEAKER_00: he also forgot his razor and had one delivered in like four minutes.
50:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah. So that's there, right?
50:33
SPEAKER_01: Like getting food at midnight is like a big pain over here.
50:37
SPEAKER_01: It's not a pain at all in India.
50:39
SPEAKER_01: So I think there's differences.
50:40
SPEAKER_01: Crime rates are actually like...
50:42
SPEAKER_01: Surprisingly low in India.
50:43
SPEAKER_01: Like you don't have, because just employment is much higher.
50:47
SPEAKER_01: Like you don't really have to, you know, worry about, you know,
50:51
SPEAKER_01: like the homeless or any other, like just safety is, I'd say like, honestly,
50:57
SPEAKER_01: I feel much safer walking around in India at night.
51:01
SPEAKER_00: Because this had not occurred to me and a couple people brought this up.
51:04
SPEAKER_00: I mean, is it anecdotal or are there numbers behind this that all the gig work
51:09
SPEAKER_00: in India has had this material difference on unemployment and that...
51:16
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure, I'm sure there are numbers.
51:18
SPEAKER_01: I don't know the numbers.
51:19
SPEAKER_01: I think for me, it's mostly anecdotal.
51:21
SPEAKER_01: For me, like the biggest anecdote is just, I remember when I was like, I don't know,
51:27
SPEAKER_01: 10, 12 or something.
51:28
SPEAKER_01: And like, you know, I was going around, my parents would just be like,
51:31
SPEAKER_01: Don't leave your bag in the car.
51:32
SPEAKER_01: You know, be careful when out in the street.
51:34
SPEAKER_01: Someone could just snatch your bag or anything.
51:37
SPEAKER_01: You know, like just be really careful, right?
51:39
SPEAKER_01: Like what if you get kidnapped, et cetera.
51:41
SPEAKER_01: And now what I hear is when you're in Europe and when you're in the US,
51:45
SPEAKER_01: be careful about this, right?
51:47
SPEAKER_01: Like don't leave your bag in your car.
51:48
SPEAKER_00: Like San Francisco is a fucking nightmare.
51:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Like my parents.
51:52
SPEAKER_01: And again, like this, I don't know.
51:54
SPEAKER_01: It's just, it's hard when you're brought up this way.
51:56
SPEAKER_01: This feels like such an inversion, right?
51:58
SPEAKER_01: Like my parents are just...
52:00
SPEAKER_01: Like they went to holiday in Europe and they were in Spain
52:03
SPEAKER_01: and they were just like shit scared for their belongings all the time.
52:07
SPEAKER_01: And they were like, there was this one moment when we went,
52:09
SPEAKER_01: we were checking into a five-star hotel and just left your bags, you know,
52:14
SPEAKER_01: just down next to you in the lobby. And then they were stolen. Somebody nicked them.
52:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Okay. And just like, you don't hear about things like this in India.
52:22
SPEAKER_00: Spain's like that.
52:24
SPEAKER_00: I love Spain, but it's been like that for a long time.
52:28
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so this is fascinating.
52:29
SPEAKER_00: And then you and I, we talked about this a lot when I was there.
52:32
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're not alone.
52:35
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's a whole...
52:38
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so there's a part of Bangalore called Hoscote.
52:42
SPEAKER_00: I kept describing it as like the El Segundo of India, meaning,
52:47
SPEAKER_00: I guess for people who aren't nerds, sort of like this hard tech...
52:52
SPEAKER_00: Centric place, people building aircraft, missiles, everything you could imagine,
52:59
SPEAKER_00: all in this region and setting up in these,
53:03
SPEAKER_00: like you guys in this kind of warehouse-y type environments.
53:07
SPEAKER_00: And so there is this generation, I mean, everybody I met and hung out with,
53:11
SPEAKER_00: all your friends, they all...
53:14
SPEAKER_00: Either didn't go to college, dropped out of college, or doing these startups.
53:18
SPEAKER_00: And again, I mean, we talked about this a lot, but there does seem to be a thing going on.
53:24
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is like a moment. It feels like it, right? It is.
53:28
SPEAKER_00: And so this is, it's just part of, you said you couldn't do this five years ago.
53:33
SPEAKER_00: It's part of, it's part of what?
53:37
SPEAKER_00: Like what in those five years,
53:42
SPEAKER_00: People just, what totally changed to make everybody wanna kinda take this risk now
53:49
SPEAKER_00: and stay and do things different?
53:52
SPEAKER_01: I feel like a lot of founders are going to hit me for saying this,
53:55
SPEAKER_01: but I think there's a lot of reasons, but I think it's mainly just venture capital.
54:01
SPEAKER_01: It is venture as much as founders like to shit on venture and be like, ugh, investors.
54:08
SPEAKER_01: The reality is that deep tech cannot exist without venture.
54:12
SPEAKER_01: Especially when you look at historical accounts of how businesses,
54:16
SPEAKER_01: industrialists were made in the, you know,
54:20
SPEAKER_01: Like early 1900s and all like it is it is genuinely insane that people are willing
54:25
SPEAKER_01: to throw 10s of millions of dollars at pre revenue companies to be like, yeah,
54:30
SPEAKER_01: just just fill the tech like we know you'll get money later.
54:33
SPEAKER_01: It is it is insane.
54:35
SPEAKER_01: Like this environment did not exist even until very recently.
54:39
SPEAKER_00: So, okay, we've been doing deep tech in the US for a very long time,
54:43
SPEAKER_00: although the interest in it has these boom and bust cycles.
54:46
SPEAKER_00: We're clearly in a bit of a boom.
54:48
SPEAKER_00: And so that, if I'm reading you right, that kind of carried over to India as well?
54:54
SPEAKER_01: Yes, absolutely.
54:56
SPEAKER_01: And I think, like, lots of things the government has done combined.
54:58
SPEAKER_01: But honestly, like, I don't...
55:02
SPEAKER_01: I honestly don't think that deep tech has really been a thing in the US until this boom cycle.
55:07
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, you've had cases like SpaceX, Tesla, and all,
55:10
SPEAKER_01: but I think these are all second-time founder companies.
55:14
SPEAKER_00: I guess the way I'm describing it is...
55:18
SPEAKER_00: Like we did semiconductors for decades and it was expensive and it took years to pay off.
55:23
SPEAKER_00: We did gene sequencers.
55:25
SPEAKER_00: We, you know, we have, I've lived, I've lived through these periods.
55:29
SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, what tends to happen is like the dot-com boom comes along
55:33
SPEAKER_00: and then it's like, wow.
55:34
SPEAKER_00: It's way easier to make money potentially off of a website than it is
55:39
SPEAKER_00: to like fund semiconductors.
55:41
SPEAKER_00: So people pull away, you know, and then something like, like you're saying,
55:44
SPEAKER_00: then something like Tesla comes along or SpaceX and it's like, oh, well,
55:49
SPEAKER_00: if you hit this right, it's fucking massive, you know?
55:53
SPEAKER_00: And so then it swings back and then obviously we have this kind of political, um,
55:58
SPEAKER_00: National moment of wanting to manufacture again and all that.
56:02
SPEAKER_00: But I think Um,
56:04
SPEAKER_00: I think you're we did actually used to do deep tech.
56:11
SPEAKER_00: It slightly different.
56:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but I think, again, like back then, it wasn't really like venture that funded it, right?
56:19
SPEAKER_01: Like these were large research bodies.
56:21
SPEAKER_01: These were, you know, traditional investments.
56:24
SPEAKER_01: Like you had weird structures if you wanted to get money for this, right?
56:27
SPEAKER_01: Either you get a government grant.
56:28
SPEAKER_01: Because it's like spun out of a PhD program.
56:31
SPEAKER_01: You're doing this from like a very big college that has a lot of money behind it.
56:36
SPEAKER_01: Or you're somehow able to figure out how to commercialize early.
56:39
SPEAKER_01: You get like weird debt things.
56:41
SPEAKER_01: And I've like researched a lot about like this innovation like 100 years ago.
56:45
SPEAKER_01: So like free semiconductor era.
56:47
SPEAKER_01: Like if you look at a lot of like surprisingly insightful conversations
56:54
SPEAKER_01: between inventors happened in debtor's prison.
56:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
57:00
SPEAKER_01: Because that was the only way they could get money.
57:03
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
57:04
SPEAKER_01: And because they couldn't pay it back fast enough,
57:07
SPEAKER_01: some of the greatest minds were just locked up in prison.
57:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
57:11
SPEAKER_01: Because financing structures were terrible back then.
57:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I guess, I mean, the definition of deep tech, I guess, could be very...
57:18
SPEAKER_00: I was just thinking back to, like, you know, it's like when...
57:21
SPEAKER_00: I mean, really...
57:22
SPEAKER_00: Some of the first instances of what we think of as venture capital
57:26
SPEAKER_00: of the day would be like Fairchild Semiconductor and then Arthur Rock putting money
57:30
SPEAKER_00: into Intel.
57:31
SPEAKER_00: And then you had the whole PC run with Apple and Microsoft and things like that.
57:37
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, we don't have to get...
57:40
SPEAKER_00: So this is part of what changed is that people are willing to take risk
57:45
SPEAKER_00: on an 18-year-old who has...
57:48
SPEAKER_00: Wild idea on aircraft in this moment in time.
57:51
SPEAKER_00: And so, okay, so it's, it's sort of like a big, big picture change.
57:54
SPEAKER_00: And then, and then your friends are like, we might as well do it here.
57:57
SPEAKER_00: There's structural advantages.
57:59
SPEAKER_00: I like living here and money can get here, but you guys, you seem to like done.
58:05
SPEAKER_00: Pretty well with the venture capitalists.
58:07
SPEAKER_00: I mean, almost everybody else I talked to in India,
58:12
SPEAKER_00: it was quite critical of the local VCs
58:15
SPEAKER_00: for still chasing the easier money in apps
58:19
SPEAKER_00: and AI and software and not wanting to take risks on the hard tech.
58:24
SPEAKER_00: When I was there, hung out with Aether, which is,
58:30
SPEAKER_00: On a path to make a million electric scooters over the next year.
58:35
SPEAKER_00: Has been around for almost for a decade, I think. Went to their factory.
58:40
SPEAKER_00: It was like, couldn't be more legitimate.
58:42
SPEAKER_00: There's just people making scooters everywhere. They're awesome.
58:46
SPEAKER_00: They're cheap.
58:48
SPEAKER_00: Couldn't raise money.
58:50
SPEAKER_00: Had to go public because nobody would give them money to expand as fast as they wanted.
58:55
SPEAKER_00: Like there is a local, it felt like a...
59:00
SPEAKER_00: A dislike for the local venture capital community.
59:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I think Ather's story is especially funny because I think Ather grew more
59:10
SPEAKER_01: in their first year in the public markets than they grew in their past five years
59:16
SPEAKER_01: in the private markets.
59:17
SPEAKER_00: Like people missed out.
59:18
SPEAKER_01: People really missed out on Ather.
59:20
SPEAKER_01: In fact, the funny thing is that when Ather IPO'd,
59:23
SPEAKER_01: It was a really lukewarm reaction because investors were like, yeah, sure,
59:27
SPEAKER_01: they're like a unicorn now, but it took them way too long to get there.
59:31
SPEAKER_01: And then guess what? They like forexed in less than two years.
59:35
SPEAKER_00: Right. And if somebody had given them $200 million earlier, they would have grown.
59:40
SPEAKER_00: So much faster.
59:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
59:42
SPEAKER_01: So that's there.
59:44
SPEAKER_01: I do agree.
59:45
SPEAKER_01: I think this environment is starting to change and I think the change is happening fast.
59:50
SPEAKER_01: I think the government is also throwing a lot of fuel to the fire.
59:52
SPEAKER_00: So they open these deep tech funds.
59:54
SPEAKER_01: Yes, exactly. You know, to encourage investment in deep tech.
59:58
SPEAKER_01: So I think what this means is that like this whole deep tech boom cycle
1:00:01
SPEAKER_01: that you're seeing in SF has, I think,
1:00:03
SPEAKER_01: transferred to India much faster than most other boom cycles do. Yeah.
1:00:08
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's great. The challenge is just, I mean,
1:00:10
SPEAKER_01: if you're If you think about like structurally how to build a fund,
1:00:15
SPEAKER_01: I think deep tech requires a very different thought process.
1:00:18
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, the large funds in India,
1:00:21
SPEAKER_01: the LPs behind them generally do not like that kind of risk appetite, right?
1:00:27
SPEAKER_01: Like they don't like the idea of, you know,
1:00:30
SPEAKER_01: throwing tens or hundreds of millions of dollars at a company that has
1:00:33
SPEAKER_01: a similar risk profile to a seed stage bet.
1:00:37
SPEAKER_01: Even if, you know, the eventual outcome can be many orders of magnitude higher.
1:00:41
SPEAKER_01: So I think it's because of those risk profiles that the large funds have not
1:00:46
SPEAKER_01: yet been able to make a great jump into doing like late stage bets.
1:00:51
SPEAKER_01: And you see a lot of early funds that are doing really well,
1:00:53
SPEAKER_01: but it takes time for a small fund to grow into a big fund.
1:00:57
SPEAKER_01: And so I think, you know, honestly, right now,
1:01:00
SPEAKER_01: if you're trying to raise like single digit millions, maybe up to 10 mil,
1:01:03
SPEAKER_01: India is honestly a really great environment to raise for deep tech.
1:01:07
SPEAKER_01: The problem is just that when you're looking for larger chunks of capital,
1:01:11
SPEAKER_01: the amount of parties that can give that just in out really quickly.
1:01:15
SPEAKER_00: And do you think you're committed to keeping Airbound in India as the headquarters?
1:01:22
SPEAKER_01: I am. I do.
1:01:24
SPEAKER_01: I do see India.
1:01:26
SPEAKER_01: Like I honestly, like everything else aside,
1:01:28
SPEAKER_01: I just don't see any other place making sense as the headquarters.
1:01:32
SPEAKER_01: We will naturally expand globally.
1:01:34
SPEAKER_01: We'll have offices in other locations.
1:01:36
SPEAKER_01: But I think our like center of operations, right?
1:01:39
SPEAKER_01: You know, what like, you know, Fremont is to Tesla for us will always be, you know,
1:01:45
SPEAKER_01: India, Bangalore, ideally host cortex.
1:01:48
SPEAKER_00: And then we talked about this.
1:01:50
SPEAKER_00: I mean, usually if you're in deep tech land,
1:01:52
SPEAKER_00: the easiest way to make money is to get a large defense contract.
1:01:57
SPEAKER_00: And you seem like you're pretty committed to not doing defense business.
1:02:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:02:04
SPEAKER_01: I think, again, this is really just a function of the majority of the ecosystem now
1:02:09
SPEAKER_01: because, look, if it was between survival and getting a defense contract, like,
1:02:14
SPEAKER_01: you know, getting a defense contract or dying,
1:02:17
SPEAKER_01: I'd obviously pick getting the defense contract.
1:02:20
SPEAKER_01: And I think in an earlier world, that would be the case.
1:02:22
SPEAKER_01: Like, we would need to show revenue sooner, and defense is a great way to do that.
1:02:27
SPEAKER_01: I think what's changed now is the fact that you can raise a lot more pre-revenue.
1:02:31
SPEAKER_01: The fact that like you can use this time to really build out the tech.
1:02:35
SPEAKER_01: It gives us the luxury of being focused as a company.
1:02:38
SPEAKER_01: I think your company will be far,
1:02:40
SPEAKER_01: far worse if you try to scatter your focus and because but not
1:02:43
SPEAKER_01: a core defense company.
1:02:45
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't make sense to do that just for the sake of early revenue.
1:02:49
SPEAKER_01: And because we're able to run the business without needing that early revenue,
1:02:53
SPEAKER_01: we can be fully focused on the end state that we want,
1:02:56
SPEAKER_01: on the markets that we really want to capture.
1:02:59
SPEAKER_00: Are you ideologically opposed to defense?
1:03:02
SPEAKER_00: Is that where that is sort of coming from?
1:03:05
SPEAKER_01: I think it's a very, like, complex question on, you know, ethical question on, like,
1:03:10
SPEAKER_01: whether or not I would want to do defense.
1:03:12
SPEAKER_01: I think I'm clear I don't want the technology I've built to, like, you know,
1:03:16
SPEAKER_01: accelerate, you know, sort of weaponry or any capabilities that can lead
1:03:23
SPEAKER_01: to the death of humans.
1:03:24
SPEAKER_01: Like, I...
1:03:26
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if this is a hot take or not,
1:03:27
SPEAKER_01: but I don't think the nuke was good for mankind as an invention,
1:03:31
SPEAKER_01: and I really don't want to invent something like a nuke.
1:03:37
SPEAKER_01: That being said, though, I think that doesn't necessarily mean that defense is bad.
1:03:42
SPEAKER_01: I think there's a lot that can be done, but if my ambition is to 10x, 100x a market,
1:03:50
SPEAKER_01: I don't think I want to live in a world where I make defense as a market 10x bigger
1:03:54
SPEAKER_01: than it is today.
1:03:57
SPEAKER_01: I just personally would not want to cheer for a larger defense market
1:04:00
SPEAKER_01: because that means we are in a world that is more at war.
1:04:06
SPEAKER_01: But the other, like, honestly,
1:04:07
SPEAKER_01: like other really clean sheet reason for this is that defense
1:04:10
SPEAKER_01: as a market is generally not that big, considering what we're looking at, right?
1:04:14
SPEAKER_01: If we want to solve for logistics and human movement,
1:04:18
SPEAKER_01: that combined is a close to $30 trillion TAM.
1:04:21
SPEAKER_01: And that just blows the TAM of global defense spend out of the water.
1:04:26
SPEAKER_01: And it is much easier to, like,
1:04:27
SPEAKER_01: capture this as a global market than to capture defense as a global market, right?
1:04:31
SPEAKER_01: You are effectively locked to one side, right?
1:04:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:04:37
SPEAKER_00: When I get optimistic, you know, I came back so optimistic about what I saw going on in India.
1:04:42
SPEAKER_00: And then I have many, many Indian friends and talk to them and they're like, dude,
1:04:48
SPEAKER_00: don't get your hopes up. That place is going to undermine itself.
1:04:50
SPEAKER_00: The government is too bureaucratic.
1:04:52
SPEAKER_00: There's too much corruption.
1:04:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:04:55
SPEAKER_00: It's just the infrastructure is, they're like, don't, don't, don't get your hopes up.
1:05:00
SPEAKER_00: It's not fully going to happen.
1:05:03
SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, when I was there, you know,
1:05:06
SPEAKER_00: like everybody I talked to was like reticent to sort of criticize the government
1:05:11
SPEAKER_00: and push back.
1:05:13
SPEAKER_00: Obviously they would when our cameras were not on, but not when the cameras were on.
1:05:17
SPEAKER_00: I mean, is it hard to like operate in that environment? Is that true?
1:05:22
SPEAKER_00: Is it,
1:05:25
SPEAKER_01: It is an interesting question.
1:05:28
SPEAKER_01: And I think India... India sort of plays...
1:05:34
SPEAKER_01: Because, again, I think democracy is a spectrum.
1:05:37
SPEAKER_01: And I think it is not controversial to say that India is not as democratic as the US
1:05:43
SPEAKER_01: or not as democratic as other countries.
1:05:45
SPEAKER_01: The US is also not the most democratic country in the world.
1:05:48
SPEAKER_00: We have our moments. This is probably not peak.
1:05:53
SPEAKER_01: So that's there. But I also...
1:05:56
SPEAKER_01: I also don't think that peak democracy is necessarily the best way to run a country.
1:06:03
SPEAKER_01: I think that India as a country needed very,
1:06:08
SPEAKER_01: very dramatic change and it needed that change very quickly.
1:06:12
SPEAKER_01: And I think a government that can assert its will is the most effective way to get
1:06:18
SPEAKER_01: that change done.
1:06:20
SPEAKER_01: The reality is that I don't think a highly...
1:06:25
SPEAKER_01: Maybe they could, but I just think that for a very democratic government,
1:06:31
SPEAKER_01: like a government that was just constantly listening to the people at every moment,
1:06:35
SPEAKER_01: I don't think it would have been able to provide this unified vision for the country
1:06:39
SPEAKER_01: and change the country as deeply and dramatically as it has.
1:06:43
SPEAKER_01: And I do think that the country has meaningfully changed for the better.
1:06:47
SPEAKER_01: Now, is this a good long-term pathway?
1:06:49
SPEAKER_01: That is unclear, right?
1:06:50
SPEAKER_01: And I think that is really the...
1:06:53
SPEAKER_01: The sort of threat with countries that, you know, slowly lose their democracy,
1:06:57
SPEAKER_01: because if that slips away too much,
1:06:59
SPEAKER_01: then you end up in a dictatorship and you end up with a lot of issues.
1:07:03
SPEAKER_01: I don't think India will necessarily end up there.
1:07:06
SPEAKER_01: I think there are obviously risks to, you know, the way it is run.
1:07:11
SPEAKER_01: But I also think that you can't deny, like, these two things kind of go hand in hand.
1:07:16
SPEAKER_01: You can't The reason why corruption has lowered
1:07:21
SPEAKER_01: so much from 10 years ago,
1:07:24
SPEAKER_01: the reason why bureaucracy has become so much cleaner,
1:07:28
SPEAKER_01: the reason why just ease of business has improved so much
1:07:31
SPEAKER_01: from where it was previously,
1:07:33
SPEAKER_01: that trend line being so sharp is very much thanks to the government.
1:07:38
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:07:40
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna come back to carbon fiber nerdery shortly.
1:07:43
SPEAKER_00: So just sort of one last question.
1:07:46
SPEAKER_00: I mean, play this out for me.
1:07:51
SPEAKER_00: United States, multi-decade track record of doing interesting things in technology.
1:07:56
SPEAKER_00: China, last 20, 30 years, clearly became the world's manufacturing powerhouse
1:08:03
SPEAKER_00: and then now is also pushing the edge
1:08:06
SPEAKER_00: of innovation on all sorts of France,
1:08:10
SPEAKER_00: India has a, it's got a manufacturing base.
1:08:14
SPEAKER_00: It does a lot of stuff internally, you know, has these capabilities.
1:08:18
SPEAKER_00: It has nuclear energy, has a space program, very like massive, big things.
1:08:25
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, tremendous education system and talent and all that.
1:08:29
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, if you have,
1:08:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to think of like countries of size that,
1:08:38
SPEAKER_00: Would be substantial players in the tech and manufacturing field moving forward.
1:08:43
SPEAKER_00: And all three of those really jump out at me.
1:08:45
SPEAKER_00: And I see Europe as kind of like a dying.
1:08:53
SPEAKER_00: I love Europe, but I don't think it's going to be in this discussion.
1:08:56
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, like fast forward.
1:09:01
SPEAKER_00: Whatever, however many years you want, 10, 15, 20.
1:09:06
SPEAKER_00: What's like the most optimistic case for India in this spectrum between making stuff
1:09:13
SPEAKER_00: and innovating and, you know, is it,
1:09:17
SPEAKER_00: does it have its own totally unique niche compared to China in the United States?
1:09:21
SPEAKER_00: Or it's like, it's decided, yeah,
1:09:23
SPEAKER_00: we're going to take China on in manufacturing and we're going to innovate over here
1:09:27
SPEAKER_00: or...
1:09:29
SPEAKER_01: I think India does build out.
1:09:31
SPEAKER_01: It's a very broad question.
1:09:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:09:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm just like, I don't know why you think I'm qualified
1:09:37
SPEAKER_01: to answer these questions, but I will do my best at answering them.
1:09:43
SPEAKER_01: I think India does have its own niche.
1:09:47
SPEAKER_01: I think it looks very similar to China on the surface,
1:09:49
SPEAKER_01: but I think India's superpower is like the idea of leapfrogging.
1:09:54
SPEAKER_01: I think that's a very unique Indian concept, right?
1:09:56
SPEAKER_01: Like India never had landline.
1:09:58
SPEAKER_01: We skipped straight to mobile.
1:10:00
SPEAKER_01: The interesting thing in India is that like, Most people have phones,
1:10:04
SPEAKER_01: but most people don't have Wi-Fi because it's just like 5G is so good.
1:10:09
SPEAKER_01: We have unlimited data plans.
1:10:10
SPEAKER_01: Why even have Wi-Fi in your home?
1:10:12
SPEAKER_01: Which is, again, a concept that you wouldn't really imagine here in the US,
1:10:16
SPEAKER_01: but it's really because Wi-Fi came first.
1:10:18
SPEAKER_01: If data came first, a lot of people wouldn't have Wi-Fi.
1:10:22
SPEAKER_01: So that's there. I sort of...
1:10:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and maybe I'm personifying countries too much,
1:10:27
SPEAKER_01: but I sort of see China as this really sensible country, which is like, okay,
1:10:31
SPEAKER_01: first I will do A, then I will do B, then I will do C, right?
1:10:34
SPEAKER_01: Like this idea of we will first be the low-cost manufacturing hub of the world,
1:10:39
SPEAKER_01: then we will sort of scale this to getting into higher tech manufacturing,
1:10:45
SPEAKER_01: and then we will eventually use this base of difficult technologies we're able
1:10:49
SPEAKER_01: to build and incrementally innovate on them to make them even better, right?
1:10:53
SPEAKER_01: Kind of like how...
1:10:54
SPEAKER_01: China got good at cars, then China got good at EVs,
1:10:57
SPEAKER_01: and now not only are the cheapest EVs made in China,
1:11:01
SPEAKER_01: but also the highest performance EVs are made in China.
1:11:04
SPEAKER_01: It blew my mind that the fastest car in the world is an electric Chinese car.
1:11:11
SPEAKER_01: They didn't just beat the record for the fastest electric car,
1:11:14
SPEAKER_01: they just beat the record for the fastest car.
1:11:18
SPEAKER_01: So that's insane.
1:11:19
SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day, like it is just incremental in nature.
1:11:22
SPEAKER_01: I think when China tries to do like massive leaps, it doesn't tend to work out the best.
1:11:28
SPEAKER_01: I think like the best example of this is, I mean,
1:11:31
SPEAKER_01: COMAC is generally considered to be a broad like failure of China.
1:11:35
SPEAKER_01: It's, you know, their attempt to like fight against Airbus and Boeing and build
1:11:39
SPEAKER_01: a third major aviation player.
1:11:41
SPEAKER_01: And it's just, and there's a reason why most people have not heard of COMAC.
1:11:46
SPEAKER_01: I think India is much better at this.
1:11:47
SPEAKER_01: And so I think if we're able to get our talent in order,
1:11:50
SPEAKER_01: if we're able to build a powerful ecosystem that is able to get capital into it,
1:11:54
SPEAKER_01: able to get talent into it and able to get the right founders,
1:11:57
SPEAKER_01: then I do think that India's like really uniquely positioned
1:12:01
SPEAKER_01: for these hardware moonshot opportunities, where it is tech that is just so,
1:12:08
SPEAKER_01: so meaningfully different that I don't think China's sensible approach will work.
1:12:12
SPEAKER_01: And it's also tech that just requires the sheer amount of skill and proficiency
1:12:17
SPEAKER_01: in the trades that I don't think the US has the kind of labor base
1:12:21
SPEAKER_01: to match what can be done in India.
1:12:23
SPEAKER_01: And so India gets this Kind of like, you know,
1:12:25
SPEAKER_01: I think I see US as like the innovation hub and China as the manufacturing hub.
1:12:30
SPEAKER_01: And like India can be that melding of the two,
1:12:33
SPEAKER_01: where if you need to do innovative things that are like at their core,
1:12:38
SPEAKER_01: great mass manufactured products, I think India is the right place to do that.
1:12:44
SPEAKER_01: It feels actually shockingly similar to industrialist US in the early 1900s,
1:12:50
SPEAKER_01: where you had this powerful industrial base that was powering the development
1:12:53
SPEAKER_01: of the economy, combined with these highly ambitious individuals that wanted
1:12:58
SPEAKER_01: to do crazy things and really reshape the way people live.
1:13:04
SPEAKER_01: I think those combinations exist in India, and I think in the next few decades,
1:13:08
SPEAKER_01: we can genuinely see that kind of economic boom come out of the country.
1:13:15
SPEAKER_00: That was a really nice note. That's probably where we should end.
1:13:18
SPEAKER_00: I do have carbon fiber questions.
1:13:21
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to sneak a couple in.
1:13:23
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, just since having visited you.
1:13:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah. And I'm excited.
1:13:28
SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, I say, anything I say, it's like with, it's not even devil's advocate.
1:13:35
SPEAKER_00: It's just like kind of thinking these things through a little bit because I...
1:13:41
SPEAKER_00: Definitely don't like to like squash people who are chasing a big idea
1:13:45
SPEAKER_00: and definitely not when they're young and when their company's young, you know,
1:13:49
SPEAKER_00: you've got, it's like, you guys got a long way to go.
1:13:53
SPEAKER_00: So, but, you know, it's like, Got excited.
1:13:56
SPEAKER_00: I'm telling people about Airbound and all my aerospace buddies.
1:14:00
SPEAKER_00: We talked about this and I know you've heard it before, but I mean, they're just a hundred.
1:14:04
SPEAKER_00: There's like carbon fibers too fucking expensive.
1:14:06
SPEAKER_00: You know, this is like a fruitless exercise.
1:14:10
SPEAKER_00: And I know you've heard this before, but you know,
1:14:13
SPEAKER_00: why would all these people be getting that wrong?
1:14:17
SPEAKER_01: Great question. So I think there's two different layers to this problem.
1:14:21
SPEAKER_01: It's worth thinking about carbon fiber, the raw material,
1:14:24
SPEAKER_01: which I'm not even talking about the cloth.
1:14:26
SPEAKER_01: I'm talking about the raw threads used to make carbon fiber.
1:14:31
SPEAKER_01: And then there is making a final carbon fiber part out.
1:14:35
SPEAKER_01: When you look at the cost of these threads, they are expensive, don't get me wrong,
1:14:39
SPEAKER_01: but they are about 10 times more expensive per kilo than steel.
1:14:44
SPEAKER_01: Which like steel is really, really cheap, right?
1:14:47
SPEAKER_01: And I think for the scale of carbon fiber, A,
1:14:48
SPEAKER_01: you can make an argument that when this ramps up to steel level scale,
1:14:53
SPEAKER_01: this will get to similar cost to steel.
1:14:55
SPEAKER_01: And the other thing is because of the aggressive weight advantage you can get with carbon fiber.
1:14:59
SPEAKER_01: I think you can actually outcompete steel on cost even today with select parts
1:15:04
SPEAKER_01: because you are just putting less stuff in it, right?
1:15:07
SPEAKER_01: Something that would need 10 kilos of steel we can make with one kilo
1:15:10
SPEAKER_01: of carbon fiber and that is much cheaper than 10 kilos of steel.
1:15:16
SPEAKER_01: But that's not actually where most of the cost lies.
1:15:18
SPEAKER_01: When people say that carbon fiber is expensive,
1:15:20
SPEAKER_01: they actually say that making a carbon fiber part is expensive because it needs
1:15:25
SPEAKER_01: a lot of human labor in the process.
1:15:28
SPEAKER_01: It's got its own issues.
1:15:33
SPEAKER_01: My view on this is that carbon fiber is genuinely hard to manufacture with.
1:15:39
SPEAKER_01: But I genuinely believe that steel is even harder to manufacture with. Right?
1:15:46
SPEAKER_01: Because it's worth just thinking, like, what have we actually done with metals?
1:15:52
SPEAKER_01: And it's genuinely insane, right?
1:15:55
SPEAKER_01: Like, between Like, tell me, which one seems more reasonable and easy to manufacture, right?
1:16:00
SPEAKER_01: Taking this material,
1:16:03
SPEAKER_01: liquefying it to over 3000 degrees Celsius, injecting it,
1:16:09
SPEAKER_01: and also making sure that, you know,
1:16:11
SPEAKER_01: all of this is in an environment without any oxygen, because that fucks things up.
1:16:16
SPEAKER_01: Injecting this inside a mold, which again, without any oxygen inside,
1:16:23
SPEAKER_01: You need to also ensure you're able to evacuate all of the air from it
1:16:26
SPEAKER_01: because if there's an air bubble, it'll screw things up.
1:16:29
SPEAKER_01: You need the material to cool consistently and at a very specific rate
1:16:35
SPEAKER_01: so that it crystallizes the way you want to.
1:16:38
SPEAKER_01: It then solidifies and then you inject it from the mold
1:16:40
SPEAKER_01: and you're doing this multiple times a minute.
1:16:43
SPEAKER_01: Is that easier or is taking a cloth, putting some glue on it,
1:16:48
SPEAKER_01: Pressing it on a surface and letting it cure in an oven easier.
1:16:55
SPEAKER_01: We think manufacturing with metals is easy because we have been doing it
1:16:59
SPEAKER_01: for the past two centuries.
1:17:00
SPEAKER_01: Processes like this.
1:17:03
SPEAKER_01: Just describe casting of metals is just second nature.
1:17:08
SPEAKER_01: Nobody thinks about how difficult and complex this really is.
1:17:12
SPEAKER_01: So what we are doing is we are getting into this arduous journey of figuring out
1:17:16
SPEAKER_01: the zero to one of manufacturing with carbon fiber and recognizing
1:17:20
SPEAKER_01: that carbon fiber is its own material.
1:17:24
SPEAKER_01: If you ask a woodworker to work with metal,
1:17:26
SPEAKER_01: he will not be able to make anything for you out of metal.
1:17:30
SPEAKER_01: And I think the problem is today because carbon fiber is so new as a material,
1:17:34
SPEAKER_01: we're not asking carbon fiber engineers to work with carbon fiber.
1:17:38
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure everyone you spoke to is working with metals right now.
1:17:41
SPEAKER_01: These are engineers that were trained to design and make things out of metal.
1:17:46
SPEAKER_01: And if you show them carbon fiber, they're like, God, this is a shitty material.
1:17:49
SPEAKER_01: The same way that if you show a woodworker steel, They'll say, God, this is a shitty material.
1:17:55
SPEAKER_01: We need a completely new skill set to be built around carbon fiber.
1:17:59
SPEAKER_01: And we need to create new production techniques, a new design language around the material.
1:18:04
SPEAKER_01: And that is the only way that we can really make it manufacturable.
1:18:08
SPEAKER_01: Do I believe that we can fully automate carbon fiber to the level
1:18:12
SPEAKER_01: that we have automated metals and steel?
1:18:14
SPEAKER_01: I think we absolutely can, but it will take time.
1:18:17
SPEAKER_01: There will be new technologies that need to be developed for it.
1:18:20
SPEAKER_01: I just believe that the The pot of gold at the end
1:18:24
SPEAKER_01: of the rainbow is very well worth it.
1:18:28
SPEAKER_01: I believe in a world where, just like how you see steel
1:18:32
SPEAKER_01: and metals everywhere around you,
1:18:33
SPEAKER_01: there's not a single part of the world you can go
1:18:35
SPEAKER_01: to where you don't see metal somewhere.
1:18:39
SPEAKER_01: I believe the same thing will happen out of carbon fiber.
1:18:41
SPEAKER_01: That, you know, if we have this conversation, maybe, you know, three decades later,
1:18:46
SPEAKER_01: you'll be chatting to me on a carbon fiber mic or, you know,
1:18:50
SPEAKER_01: this boom will be made out of carbon fiber.
1:18:52
SPEAKER_01: Like, there'll be things in this room that are made out of carbon fiber.
1:18:55
SPEAKER_00: So, and do you think Airbound will play,
1:18:59
SPEAKER_00: do you think you'll be vertically integrated making those machines? Yes. Yes. Okay.
1:19:04
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:19:05
SPEAKER_01: That's real.
1:19:06
SPEAKER_01: I would say Airbound at its essence.
1:19:09
SPEAKER_01: If you strip away everything, you strip away the market, the drone, etc.
1:19:12
SPEAKER_01: We are really a carbon fiber manufacturing play.
1:19:15
SPEAKER_01: We are a company that is saying that we are better at making things out
1:19:19
SPEAKER_01: of carbon fiber than anyone else in the world.
1:19:22
SPEAKER_01: And we will maintain our position by continuing to be better than the rest
1:19:26
SPEAKER_01: of the world at making things out of carbon fiber.
1:19:29
SPEAKER_01: If we can do that, we have an insane edge that we think is best applied to,
1:19:33
SPEAKER_01: you know, movement and aircraft because they really care about Mars.
1:19:38
SPEAKER_01: But this can honestly be applied to anything, right?
1:19:41
SPEAKER_01: Like I think eventually when this becomes commoditized and it becomes common enough,
1:19:47
SPEAKER_01: you'll see like tables and chairs made out of carbon fiber the same way that someone
1:19:51
SPEAKER_01: in a pre-industrial era could never imagine a world made out of steel, right?
1:19:56
SPEAKER_01: If you spoke to a blacksmith in the 1700s, they would say that, look, dude,
1:20:01
SPEAKER_01: we've been working with steel.
1:20:03
SPEAKER_01: We've known how to use this material for 4,000 years now.
1:20:06
SPEAKER_01: This is not new.
1:20:08
SPEAKER_01: If there was some discovery to be made, we would have made it.
1:20:10
SPEAKER_01: It's just not possible to make this
1:20:13
SPEAKER_01: in a non-highly labor-intensive format.
1:20:18
SPEAKER_01: It takes an immense amount of care and effort to forge something out of steel.
1:20:23
SPEAKER_01: You need to have decades of experience to work with this material.
1:20:27
SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, you'll never see a table or a chair made out of steel.
1:20:31
SPEAKER_01: That's ridiculous. It'll always be wood that makes these things.
1:20:36
SPEAKER_00: So maybe this is the way this has to happen,
1:20:39
SPEAKER_00: but how can you be so confident about this?
1:20:43
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're still in your 20s.
1:20:48
SPEAKER_00: You've never worked in a big manufacturing operation before.
1:20:54
SPEAKER_00: You must have had someone far smarter than I am push back on this maybe
1:20:59
SPEAKER_00: while they were doing due diligence or something like that.
1:21:02
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it takes a lot of gusto to just to believe this.
1:21:06
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, also this is how things change.
1:21:08
SPEAKER_01: So I think it's just that I have.
1:21:12
SPEAKER_01: The only arguments I've received against carbon fiber are all some flavor
1:21:17
SPEAKER_01: of it hasn't worked before, and things have always been this way,
1:21:22
SPEAKER_01: and the metal processes don't work with carbon fiber.
1:21:25
SPEAKER_01: I have not yet come across a real first principles argument
1:21:30
SPEAKER_01: for here's why carbon fiber can never be made manufacturable.
1:21:34
SPEAKER_01: And until I come across a highly structured and convincing argument in that format,
1:21:41
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to keep on believing in carbon fiber.
1:21:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
1:21:45
SPEAKER_00: And this is a really difficult question.
1:21:47
SPEAKER_00: It's sort of shitty.
1:21:49
SPEAKER_00: It's like intuition I have.
1:21:53
SPEAKER_00: It's just, you know, every time I'm with like a rocket company,
1:21:58
SPEAKER_00: it's like you build the first rocket and then...
1:22:02
SPEAKER_00: First of all, it's crazy hard to manufacture that one.
1:22:05
SPEAKER_00: And then when you get bigger,
1:22:07
SPEAKER_00: a whole new world of hurt opens up and companies go under and crumble
1:22:12
SPEAKER_00: and they can't do it.
1:22:14
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, when I was looking at where you guys are, again,
1:22:17
SPEAKER_00: I was just so impressed that that.
1:22:20
SPEAKER_00: Especially with the first generation, you were able to manufacture,
1:22:24
SPEAKER_00: it was like what, like four or five a week or, I mean, I forget the numbers.
1:22:29
SPEAKER_00: More than that.
1:22:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like about two a day.
1:22:31
SPEAKER_00: Two a day.
1:22:32
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so clearly, you know, you had people building away, they were flying great.
1:22:37
SPEAKER_00: The second one, it looks like you guys have a lot of testing still to do on,
1:22:44
SPEAKER_00: like how long, I don't even know how long you'd been flying it
1:22:47
SPEAKER_00: by the time I'd gotten there.
1:22:50
SPEAKER_01: Like I think a week.
1:22:51
SPEAKER_00: A week, okay.
1:22:53
SPEAKER_01: Like a really, really short period. Fair enough.
1:22:56
SPEAKER_00: So you've got to work it out.
1:22:57
SPEAKER_00: So my general takeaway was like super fucking impressed.
1:23:00
SPEAKER_00: And then I was just playing through in my head.
1:23:02
SPEAKER_00: I'm just like, oh.
1:23:04
SPEAKER_00: There's going to be problems because there always are as you get bigger and everything.
1:23:08
SPEAKER_00: And then, and then again, this is like,
1:23:10
SPEAKER_00: this is based on nothing other than I'm just like, man,
1:23:14
SPEAKER_00: I wonder if the thesis starts to break down as you, you know,
1:23:18
SPEAKER_00: like it's working great now, but as shit gets more serious and bigger, I just, yeah,
1:23:22
SPEAKER_00: I wonder if it breaks down again.
1:23:24
SPEAKER_00: I have no math or anything to back this up, but.
1:23:28
SPEAKER_01: I think it may, it may not.
1:23:29
SPEAKER_01: I think manufacturing is really, really difficult.
1:23:34
SPEAKER_01: I think we're not ones to underestimate it.
1:23:37
SPEAKER_01: I do think, though, historically,
1:23:39
SPEAKER_01: the reason why manufacturing and scaling is really hard for companies is
1:23:43
SPEAKER_01: because people underestimate that challenge.
1:23:45
SPEAKER_01: They think that, hey, I've made one, how difficult could making 10 be?
1:23:49
SPEAKER_01: And I think part of our edge is the fact that we know that, again, at our core,
1:23:54
SPEAKER_01: we are a manufacturing company.
1:23:55
SPEAKER_01: There's nothing else to it.
1:23:58
SPEAKER_01: Everything else is just layers of design
1:24:02
SPEAKER_01: and market and other shell and fluff built
1:24:05
SPEAKER_01: on top of a production company.
1:24:08
SPEAKER_01: All we are is a manufacturer that has found a pretty good design to use and monetize.
1:24:15
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, my deep belief is that at the core of it,
1:24:18
SPEAKER_01: manufacturing is just you take a certain amount of stuff.
1:24:25
SPEAKER_01: And you have to pay for the cost of producing that stuff,
1:24:28
SPEAKER_01: and you have to pay for the cost of bringing that stuff together
1:24:31
SPEAKER_01: into the thing you're trying to make.
1:24:33
SPEAKER_01: And I just feel like, to me, it just feels obvious that structurally,
1:24:38
SPEAKER_01: if you need less stuff to do the same thing,
1:24:41
SPEAKER_01: if you can do the same thing with 10x less stuff,
1:24:44
SPEAKER_01: That stuff might be more expensive early on, but eventually you can figure out cost,
1:24:48
SPEAKER_01: you can figure out supply chain.
1:24:49
SPEAKER_01: All of these to me feel like temporary problems.
1:24:51
SPEAKER_01: And when I say temporary, it might be like a 20 year long temporary problem.
1:24:55
SPEAKER_01: But the end state will always favor the product that needs less stuff.
1:24:59
SPEAKER_01: And carbon fiber fundamentally needs less stuff to do the same things that metal can.
1:25:05
SPEAKER_01: You can, with great design, achieve the same strength that you would with steel
1:25:10
SPEAKER_01: while using 10x less mass in carbon fiber.
1:25:14
SPEAKER_01: And so what that means is that as long
1:25:16
SPEAKER_01: as per kg our production costs can eventually get to within 10x of steel, which...
1:25:21
SPEAKER_01: We're already pretty close without having scaled up this industry at all.
1:25:26
SPEAKER_01: Then it will be a more manufacturable and scalable material.
1:25:30
SPEAKER_00: Okay. Okay.
1:25:33
SPEAKER_00: I'll stop torturing you.
1:25:34
SPEAKER_00: I remember meeting you for the first time you came
1:25:37
SPEAKER_00: in with just this like boundless energy and...
1:25:42
SPEAKER_00: I don't even think you had any idea.
1:25:44
SPEAKER_00: I think somebody had just sort of told us to meet.
1:25:46
SPEAKER_00: I think Junior's walking through aircraft design with me and folding this napkin.
1:25:52
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, kind of take it, but I didn't really know what to make of you.
1:25:56
SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, just going to see what you guys had built really.
1:26:01
SPEAKER_00: I don't say this often.
1:26:02
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you just, you like stand out, you know, and it was impressive.
1:26:06
SPEAKER_00: And, and just,
1:26:10
SPEAKER_00: I do not, I'm nowhere near enough of an engineer at all to sort
1:26:15
SPEAKER_00: of like approach some of this the right way.
1:26:20
SPEAKER_00: But I have been to like a lot of these facilities with people trying
1:26:23
SPEAKER_00: to do stuff like this and everything you guys are doing looks like super spot on.
1:26:28
SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, I just wish you so much luck, man.
1:26:30
SPEAKER_00: It's been really fun getting to like hang out with you a bit.
1:26:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah. And I'm excited to see what the future holds.
1:26:37
SPEAKER_00: I am too. I can't wait to see what you guys next.
1:26:39
SPEAKER_00: So you've like set the bar pretty high next week because now I think I want to make
1:26:43
SPEAKER_00: an annual pilgrimage to India.
1:26:45
SPEAKER_01: Oh, that would be great.
1:26:46
SPEAKER_00: So you're going to have to like up.
1:26:47
SPEAKER_00: We're going to have to do more.
1:26:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think we can do more.
1:26:52
SPEAKER_01: I'm not worried about that.
1:26:54
SPEAKER_00: All right, you have to let me know when we should come out next year so we can kind
1:26:59
SPEAKER_00: of time it for maximum visual stunningness. And thank you.
1:27:05
SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for spending time with us and coming by again.
1:27:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, awesome.
1:27:10
SPEAKER_00: The Core Memory Podcast is hosted by me, Ashlee Vance, and or Kylie Robison,
1:27:16
SPEAKER_00: or both of us together.
1:27:17
SPEAKER_00: It is produced by me and David Nicholson.
1:27:21
SPEAKER_00: Our theme song is by James Mercer and John Sortland,
1:27:25
SPEAKER_00: and the show is edited always by the John Sortland.
1:27:31
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much to Brext for all your support,
1:27:34
SPEAKER_00: and thank you most of all to everybody for listening or watching. We love you.
1:27:39
SPEAKER_00: Please leave us a like, a review, a subscribe, all those tremendous things.
1:27:45
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, and we'll see you again.
1:27:47
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