Latest / Millennial Masters / Building fusion to fight cancer ⚛️ | Tom Wallace-Smith

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Building fusion to fight cancer ⚛️ | Tom Wallace-Smith · Millennial Masters

0:00
SPEAKER_03: The stakes have to be high.
0:01
You're going to try and find whatever reason or whatever
0:04
connecting thought there
0:05
SPEAKER_03: is because you'll know that the stakes are high.
0:07
SPEAKER_03: You'll know what motivates you.
0:09
It will be there,
0:10
which is why you wake up in the morning,
0:11
why you do what you do.
0:12
SPEAKER_03: But you just have to articulate it.
0:14
SPEAKER_03: If you don't articulate it, people will just say, oh, it's interesting.
0:17
SPEAKER_03: But like...
0:18
SPEAKER_03: is really important.
0:19
SPEAKER_03: So you've got to find that, find that narrative and understand it.
0:23
SPEAKER_03: And then beyond that,
0:24
SPEAKER_03: you know,
0:24
SPEAKER_03: solving that narrative,
0:25
your solution to the problem and how that changes and disrupts
0:30
the industry and the
0:32
SPEAKER_03: vision for the future.
0:33
SPEAKER_03: You have to have vision as well.
0:35
This week's millennial master is Tom Wallace Smith,
0:40
co-founder and CTO at Astral Systems.
0:44
Tom is one of the youngest deep tech founders on a mission to
0:48
disrupt cancer care
0:50
SPEAKER_01: from the inside out.
0:52
He started out in nuclear engineering for submarines and then
0:56
invented a new kind
0:57
SPEAKER_01: of fusion reactor before ever meeting his co-founder in person.
1:02
SPEAKER_01: Now,
1:03
he's using Fusion to shake up cancer care and rewrite what's
1:07
possible for medical
1:08
SPEAKER_01: isotopes.
1:10
SPEAKER_01: In this episode,
1:11
SPEAKER_01: we talk about how to scale a deep tech company and a team remotely,
1:17
what it takes to get commercial traction and revenue in a
1:20
moonshot sector,
1:22
and why protecting your time and mental health is the founder
1:26
edge no one talks
1:28
SPEAKER_01: about.
1:30
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2:17
SPEAKER_01: Tom, welcome to Millennial Masters.
2:19
SPEAKER_01: How are you today?
2:20
SPEAKER_01: Very good, thank you.
2:21
SPEAKER_01: How are you, Daniel?
2:23
SPEAKER_01: I'm great,
2:23
SPEAKER_01: thank you,
2:24
and excited to have our fusion chat because I've spent a whole
2:29
day over a month ago
2:31
at the time of recording learning about fusion and its
2:35
practical application and
2:36
SPEAKER_01: how far fusion energy is,
2:38
SPEAKER_01: but you're doing something different,
2:41
SPEAKER_01: so we're going to get into that in a moment.
2:43
SPEAKER_01: But before, I wanted to
2:47
SPEAKER_01: find out how you didn't grow up in a startup family.
2:51
SPEAKER_01: Mom was a nurse, your dad was a social worker.
2:54
And you told me before that at one point you wanted to be a
2:58
teacher or an inventor,
3:00
SPEAKER_01: which is where you got.
3:01
SPEAKER_01: So how on earth did that turn into co-founding a deep tech startup?
3:06
SPEAKER_01: What's the story behind it?
3:08
SPEAKER_03: Yeah,
3:08
I think the thing I got from my parents and from growing up in
3:11
that kind of
3:12
environment was being focused on a moral mission and definitely
3:16
being aware
3:17
SPEAKER_03: that you're sort of,
3:19
SPEAKER_03: when growing up in a Western world or in the south of England,
3:22
SPEAKER_03: in Dorset,
3:23
SPEAKER_03: as I did,
3:23
SPEAKER_03: in a suburb,
3:25
SPEAKER_03: not doing too bad,
3:26
SPEAKER_03: having a relatively stable upbringing,
3:28
SPEAKER_03: I felt very privileged.
3:30
And if you look at the sort of world context of the 7 billion
3:33
other people that are
3:34
SPEAKER_03: out there,
3:35
SPEAKER_03: I felt that that was something that I had to not waste.
3:38
SPEAKER_03: You have to do something.
3:39
SPEAKER_03: And there's a lot of suffering out there.
3:41
It's definitely worth at least trying to make a difference in
3:43
having a human impact
3:45
SPEAKER_03: with your life.
3:46
So that's sort of why throughout my life I've been drawn
3:49
towards disciplines or
3:50
SPEAKER_03: activities that have impact.
3:52
SPEAKER_03: And then it just so happened that I love physics at the same time.
3:56
SPEAKER_03: During the course of my schooling and when I was at university,
3:59
I was always drawn to physics and drawn to the sort of
4:02
spiritual slash cosmic
4:03
SPEAKER_03: aspect,
4:04
SPEAKER_03: you know,
4:04
looking at the pillars of creation with the images taken by the
4:07
Hubble telescope or
4:08
SPEAKER_03: the James Webb telescope.
4:09
SPEAKER_03: I always found that fascinating.
4:12
But then the thing that really,
4:13
really excited me was seeing physics and science in general.
4:17
The predictive capacity of it applied directly to things that
4:20
can have human impact.
4:22
SPEAKER_03: You know, I'm at an event in Berlin at the moment.
4:25
SPEAKER_03: It has a stage called the Marie Curie stage.
4:27
SPEAKER_03: Someone who I deeply,
4:28
SPEAKER_03: deeply respect,
4:29
mainly because she discovered these effects of radiation and
4:33
then immediately made
4:34
something like an X-ray machine that went straight to the front
4:37
lines and was used
4:39
SPEAKER_03: to detect fractures and have medical impact on human lives.
4:42
SPEAKER_03: So I was always drawn to that.
4:44
SPEAKER_03: Throughout university,
4:45
I was trying to get involved in international development and
4:48
get involved with
4:50
SPEAKER_03: Engineers Without Borders,
4:52
SPEAKER_03: essentially,
4:52
SPEAKER_03: and do international development work.
4:55
SPEAKER_03: And then from there, just kept getting drawn towards more moral missions.
5:01
SPEAKER_03: Again and again,
5:01
SPEAKER_03: when I've been doing work that's not necessarily fully aligned with that,
5:06
SPEAKER_03: very,
5:06
SPEAKER_03: very interesting work,
5:07
SPEAKER_03: let's say,
5:08
SPEAKER_03: for Rolls-Royce submarines.
5:11
SPEAKER_03: I learn as much as I can, but then again, I always get drawn back
5:14
SPEAKER_03: towards something that's to do with human impacts.
5:17
SPEAKER_03: That sort of is the nexus of those two things.
5:19
SPEAKER_03: And that's, I guess, why I'm in the space that I'm in at the moment.
5:22
Submarines are more war machines rather than helping the higher
5:27
mission of
5:28
SPEAKER_01: humanity,
5:28
SPEAKER_01: which was drawing you in.
5:30
SPEAKER_01: But I guess there's the strong physics foundation there.
5:34
Yeah,
5:34
so it was very interesting working and going on board a couple
5:38
of submarines.
5:39
SPEAKER_03: So HMS Victoria is an HMS Triumph up at Fass Lane.
5:42
SPEAKER_03: in Glasgow,
5:43
SPEAKER_03: and it sort of dawned on me because they're amazing machines,
5:46
SPEAKER_03: incredible engineering,
5:47
some of the best nuclear engineering and nuclear science that's
5:50
done in the modern
5:51
SPEAKER_03: world and mostly behind closed doors and not many people know about it.
5:55
The analogy I use is it's kind of like building the
5:57
International Space Station,
5:59
but it has to fight other international space stations and also
6:02
be undetectable
6:03
SPEAKER_03: and,
6:03
SPEAKER_03: you know,
6:03
SPEAKER_03: launch intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles.
6:06
SPEAKER_01: And when I was walking on board...
6:07
SPEAKER_01: And support dozens of people as well,
6:09
SPEAKER_01: life for dozens of people for long periods of time.
6:13
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
6:14
SPEAKER_03: So amazing engineering feat, amazing work.
6:17
SPEAKER_03: I remember walking on board HMS Victorious,
6:19
SPEAKER_03: which is the one that carries,
6:20
SPEAKER_03: I believe,
6:21
SPEAKER_03: around a dozen or more nuclear missiles,
6:23
SPEAKER_03: trident nuclear missiles.
6:25
SPEAKER_03: And as it was starting up,
6:26
SPEAKER_03: I could see at the front of the submarine,
6:29
the water bubbling and foaming at the front of the submarine
6:32
and steam coming off
6:33
SPEAKER_03: on either side of the front of the machine.
6:35
SPEAKER_03: You could hear it humming and wearing away.
6:37
SPEAKER_03: I just thought this thing is a beast.
6:39
SPEAKER_03: And its main purpose,
6:41
SPEAKER_03: you know,
6:41
with all of those nuclear missiles is to wipe out all human
6:45
life on an entire
6:47
SPEAKER_03: continent.
6:47
So it sort of dawned on me then that is that what I want to be
6:50
going to work every
6:50
SPEAKER_03: day,
6:51
SPEAKER_03: knowing that that's
6:53
SPEAKER_03: My little two cents for humanity is working on that.
6:56
That's when it sort of dawned on me that I need to find
6:58
something that uses this
7:00
SPEAKER_03: expertise that I've gathered in some way that has impact.
7:03
SPEAKER_03: That sort of, I guess, ideologically started me on that kind of journey.
7:08
SPEAKER_01: And is that how you ended up in Japan, where you met your co-founder?
7:12
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so that was during my PhD.
7:15
SPEAKER_03: So whilst I was at Rolls-Royce, I was trying to
7:18
SPEAKER_03: you know,
7:18
SPEAKER_03: at the age of,
7:19
SPEAKER_03: I think I was 21 at the time,
7:20
I was trying to push as much as I could for them to open up a
7:23
research reactor,
7:24
SPEAKER_03: which is the final,
7:24
SPEAKER_03: the only research reactor that exists in the UK now.
7:27
We've shut down all of the ones that were open for researchers
7:31
to use called Neptune.
7:33
SPEAKER_03: And it's in Rainsway in Derby.
7:34
SPEAKER_03: And it's used to test fuel rods for the nuclear submarines.
7:37
SPEAKER_03: And I remember pushing at the time and saying,
7:40
It would be really great if you could open this up to
7:41
researchers so we could
7:42
produce isotopes and do science with it because it's the last
7:45
one left in the UK.
7:46
SPEAKER_03: And we got as far as a business case, I believe.
7:48
SPEAKER_03: And then eventually,
7:49
SPEAKER_03: towards the end of my time there,
7:50
the only thing I managed to change at the organization was
7:53
getting them to have
7:54
SPEAKER_03: potted plants in the office.
7:55
SPEAKER_03: So that's what drew me to do a PhD.
7:58
When I was doing my PhD,
7:59
I was producing isotopes,
8:01
so making things radioactive with neutrons.
8:03
And I already knew that the neutron sources in the UK were few
8:06
and far between.
8:07
SPEAKER_03: So that's when I looked to get a fellowship.
8:09
SPEAKER_03: the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science.
8:12
I would get a fellowship in Japan to work at the Kimitori Osaka
8:15
Research Reactor,
8:16
SPEAKER_03: where I could do radiations and do research.
8:19
SPEAKER_03: So that's what drew me there.
8:21
SPEAKER_03: And whilst I was working in Japan,
8:23
SPEAKER_03: I was working on particle accelerators for very,
8:26
SPEAKER_03: very fundamental neutron capture cross-section measurements,
8:29
SPEAKER_03: very,
8:29
SPEAKER_03: very fundamental measurements,
8:31
SPEAKER_03: and then exploring production of isotopes for different commercial means.
8:34
SPEAKER_03: And that's when I was introduced to our chief scientist,
8:37
SPEAKER_03: Dr.
8:37
SPEAKER_03: Mahmoud Bakar,
8:38
SPEAKER_03: who was running a research lab.
8:40
sort of nestled in the foothills of Kyoto city called the Uji
8:44
campus this warehouse
8:46
was set up after the Fukushima disaster because they shut down
8:50
half of the reactors
8:51
in Japan so they had a bunch of nuclear physicists that had
8:53
nothing to do basically
8:55
so they needed a place where they could do nuclear physics
8:58
where they could produce
8:59
SPEAKER_03: neutrons and play around
9:01
SPEAKER_03: So they had this warehouse,
9:02
SPEAKER_03: and they made these very,
9:04
very compact research reactors called inertial electrostatic
9:07
confinement reactors.
9:08
SPEAKER_03: They've been around since the 50s and 60s.
9:10
Actually,
9:10
one of the earliest fusion reactors that actually worked and
9:13
produced neutrons.
9:14
SPEAKER_03: So they had a bunch of these small systems.
9:16
SPEAKER_03: I mean, they're sort of desktop-sized.
9:18
SPEAKER_03: You can look them up.
9:18
SPEAKER_03: They're the typical system where if you ever see every couple of years,
9:21
SPEAKER_03: they say,
9:22
SPEAKER_03: you know,
9:22
SPEAKER_03: boy,
9:22
SPEAKER_03: kid,
9:23
SPEAKER_03: genius at the age of 12 makes a fusion reactor in their garage.
9:26
SPEAKER_03: It's usually an IEC or a fuser, as people call it.
9:29
SPEAKER_03: But the ones they were doing in Japan were quite powerful.
9:32
You're talking 10,
9:33
12 kilowatts of power going in,
9:35
liquid cooling,
9:36
that sort of stuff.
9:37
SPEAKER_03: So they're doing quite serious nuclear physics with it.
9:39
And that's when I started to think about,
9:41
okay,
9:42
this is really,
9:43
really interesting.
9:44
SPEAKER_03: Why don't we have this in the UK, number one?
9:46
SPEAKER_03: I wouldn't have to come all the way to Japan to do this.
9:47
SPEAKER_03: And then number two is- Long flight.
9:50
SPEAKER_03: Long flight.
9:50
SPEAKER_03: It's a lovely place.
9:51
SPEAKER_03: I love Japan.
9:52
I'm addicted to going back whenever I can,
9:54
but we'd save on the air miles.
9:57
SPEAKER_03: And that's when I was looking at the technology and thinking,
10:00
SPEAKER_03: this is really,
10:01
SPEAKER_03: really interesting.
10:01
SPEAKER_03: But I remember asking the researchers,
10:03
SPEAKER_03: you know,
10:04
the maximum output that they reach is about 100 million
10:07
neutrons a second,
10:09
which is sort of just below what's required to be able to
10:11
produce medical isotopes,
10:12
SPEAKER_03: which is what I was sort of thinking about at the time.
10:14
So I was aware of shortages and the supply issues,
10:17
which we can get into if you like.
10:18
So that was really the spawning point of these ideas was when I
10:22
was working in Japan.
10:22
And I came across NASA research,
10:24
combined that with the reactor to increase the efficiency and
10:28
That's when I had the idea for the multi-state fusion reactor
10:31
that we're now
10:32
SPEAKER_03: commercializing at Astral.
10:35
SPEAKER_03: To finish that story and to really give credence to my co-founder,
10:37
SPEAKER_03: Talman,
10:38
SPEAKER_03: the CEO of Astral,
10:40
SPEAKER_03: extremely serendipitous moment.
10:42
SPEAKER_03: I wish I'd planned this.
10:43
SPEAKER_03: I could take credit for having founded myself,
10:46
SPEAKER_03: but just purely by coincidence,
10:49
SPEAKER_03: I had this idea for this reactor and this company.
10:53
SPEAKER_03: I thought about holding onto it because of the nature of doing a PhD.
10:57
Sometimes the universities have ownership of your ideas that
11:00
you produce during your PhD.
11:01
I had to do a bit of IP Taekwondo to make sure that I kept
11:05
ownership of the IP and
11:07
SPEAKER_03: made sure my thesis was separate to the work around fusion.
11:10
So if you read my PhD thesis,
11:12
it's all about fission,
11:13
nuclear waste,
11:14
and isotopes.
11:15
SPEAKER_03: So I made sure it was separate,
11:16
SPEAKER_03: which meant that when I went to my supervisor,
11:18
SPEAKER_03: he said,
11:19
SPEAKER_03: that's your IP,
11:20
SPEAKER_03: that's your company.
11:21
SPEAKER_03: But by the way,
11:22
SPEAKER_03: That thing that you've just innovated,
11:24
SPEAKER_03: I know the guy,
11:25
SPEAKER_03: one of the last surviving people on the planet that's commercialized the
11:27
architecture already and sold it as a neutron generator over a
11:34
dozen times globally
11:35
SPEAKER_03: to the likes of San and lots of different institutions.
11:38
SPEAKER_03: You should talk to him.
11:39
SPEAKER_03: So that's when we met.
11:41
SPEAKER_03: I think during COVID, it was a Zoom call.
11:43
SPEAKER_03: So that kind of like dates the period.
11:46
SPEAKER_03: And we got talking and he basically asked me to prove it.
11:48
SPEAKER_03: He said, okay,
11:50
SPEAKER_03: combining this lattice confinement fusion,
11:52
SPEAKER_03: NASA physics,
11:52
SPEAKER_03: with this architecture that I commercialized.
11:56
SPEAKER_03: He said, I don't want to do the same company again.
11:58
SPEAKER_03: Show me that there's actually something here.
12:00
So that's when I made a prototype in my living room at the time
12:02
because everyone
12:03
SPEAKER_03: was sort of locked down.
12:05
SPEAKER_03: You had a bit of extra time, yeah.
12:08
SPEAKER_03: Everyone had extra time.
12:09
SPEAKER_03: Everyone got into sourdough and doing up their van or whatever.
12:12
SPEAKER_03: Banana bread.
12:15
So I put the system together and shipped it to Dr.
12:19
Mahmoud Bakar in Japan.
12:20
SPEAKER_03: I think around May, June of 2021, we got the first data.
12:24
SPEAKER_03: It looked good.
12:26
SPEAKER_03: So we founded the company,
12:27
SPEAKER_03: failed the patent,
12:28
SPEAKER_03: and then we're off to the races basically from there.
12:31
So you founded the company,
12:33
so to speak,
12:33
remotely before you even met face-to-face.
12:37
SPEAKER_01: And that was in a way the magic of that period in time.
12:41
SPEAKER_03: It's true.
12:42
SPEAKER_03: With Talon,
12:44
he calls himself the original remote worker because he was
12:47
doing entrepreneurship
12:49
remotely for an older company in Central Europe from Canada
12:54
back in the late 90s,
12:55
SPEAKER_03: early 2000s.
12:57
I met him briefly,
12:58
but he was in a different role at the University of Bristol.
13:01
SPEAKER_03: We just discussed about a joint project, basically.
13:04
SPEAKER_03: After that, we only met in person after we'd found a
13:09
SPEAKER_03: How many years later?
13:10
SPEAKER_03: I think maybe it was either late 2021 or late 2022,
13:13
because obviously COVID would have been a big issue in terms of
13:17
the lockdowns.
13:19
SPEAKER_01: So it was also a big leap of faith then,
13:22
SPEAKER_01: co-founding a company with somebody you haven't physically met,
13:25
but you had the science and you clicked when you spoke remotely
13:31
from one continent
13:32
SPEAKER_01: to another.
13:33
SPEAKER_03: Yes, exactly.
13:34
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it was a big leap of faith, but we've
13:38
At the founding of the company,
13:39
we had this conversation that we always tell people.
13:42
SPEAKER_03: The talent sort of said to me, this is going to be like a marriage, okay?
13:46
SPEAKER_03: We have to trust each other.
13:48
SPEAKER_03: Anytime there's any issues,
13:49
SPEAKER_03: we just directly go to each other,
13:50
SPEAKER_03: talk to each other,
13:51
SPEAKER_03: completely open,
13:53
SPEAKER_03: completely transparent,
13:54
SPEAKER_03: and we're total 50-50 partners in everything,
13:57
SPEAKER_03: and we're equal.
13:58
SPEAKER_03: So you can change my mind, I can change your mind.
14:00
SPEAKER_03: And we've kept with that.
14:02
SPEAKER_03: So through thick and thin, it's been great.
14:05
SPEAKER_03: Even now that we've scaled to get larger,
14:08
SPEAKER_03: anytime there's a misalignment,
14:09
SPEAKER_03: because you naturally divide up,
14:12
SPEAKER_03: especially when you've got such a long distance between each other,
14:16
SPEAKER_03: you get misaligned.
14:17
SPEAKER_03: We call it alignment.
14:18
If he says something on a decision,
14:20
I'd say,
14:20
I'm not sure I agree with you.
14:22
SPEAKER_03: He's like, okay.
14:23
SPEAKER_03: explain.
14:24
SPEAKER_03: I list the bullet points and then he says, okay, 100% aligned.
14:28
SPEAKER_03: I get it.
14:28
SPEAKER_03: Let me move on.
14:30
SPEAKER_03: So we've gotten very,
14:31
very quick at realigning and readjusting if there's any sort of
14:35
stray from a sort
14:37
SPEAKER_03: of joint opinion on a particular topic.
14:39
SPEAKER_01: How often do you get to do that, the realignment?
14:43
I've spoken to other founders who have had co-founders and some
14:48
of them were
14:49
SPEAKER_01: telling me they have like a proper
14:52
sit down every three months and talk about all their aims and
14:56
see if they're still
14:57
SPEAKER_01: aligned on all the core aims that they're trying to achieve,
15:00
SPEAKER_01: whether it's the finance,
15:01
SPEAKER_01: whether it's the exit plan,
15:03
SPEAKER_01: whether it's how to change the world.
15:05
It's very important to remain aligned with your co-founder,
15:08
which is what you said as well.
15:09
SPEAKER_01: But I'm wondering, how often do you get to do that?
15:12
SPEAKER_03: I'd say at least once a month.
15:15
SPEAKER_03: If things are really, really busy, it's at least once a month.
15:17
SPEAKER_03: But now that we're traveling a lot and we're
15:19
going to events like he was with me in Berlin at this Deep Tech
15:22
Momentum event,
15:23
SPEAKER_03: and we'll be traveling again.
15:25
We'll be at an event in London in early June,
15:27
so it's becoming multiple times a month.
15:30
SPEAKER_03: When we're staying in the same Airbnb or space,
15:33
SPEAKER_03: we always have dinner together,
15:34
SPEAKER_03: and that's exactly the topic of discussion.
15:36
SPEAKER_03: That's always the time is very broad-level strategy,
15:40
SPEAKER_03: or we check in with different team members,
15:42
SPEAKER_03: and we say,
15:43
SPEAKER_03: oh,
15:43
SPEAKER_03: how is so-and-so doing?
15:44
SPEAKER_03: Oh, I had a really good conversation with so-and-so.
15:45
SPEAKER_03: They're doing really well.
15:47
SPEAKER_03: So we tend to check in with each other
15:49
SPEAKER_03: very, very often.
15:50
And it's almost the nature of living in different parts of the
15:53
world sort of means
15:55
SPEAKER_03: that every time we do have that in-person time together,
15:58
SPEAKER_03: it's very much precious.
16:00
SPEAKER_03: So you make the most of it.
16:01
SPEAKER_03: The conversation is always rich.
16:03
SPEAKER_03: It's always about top-level strategy.
16:05
SPEAKER_03: It's always very, very interesting.
16:07
And then when we're apart,
16:08
it's very much teams,
16:10
meetings,
16:10
and then one-on-one catch-ups.
16:13
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes it's all matter-of-fact going through tasks,
16:15
SPEAKER_03: and sometimes it's a bit broader if we have time.
16:18
But yeah,
16:19
making the time and space for those sorts of discussions is
16:21
essential.
16:22
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely essential.
16:23
Going back to the science part a little bit,
16:26
just to give people an idea of what Astral does.
16:29
SPEAKER_01: Everyone hears fusion and things,
16:32
SPEAKER_01: moonshot energy project,
16:34
SPEAKER_01: but you're doing something very different in this space.
16:39
SPEAKER_01: And I'm hoping you can explain it briefly,
16:43
SPEAKER_01: like you'd be pitching to a time-poor investor or at a dinner table.
16:49
SPEAKER_01: What's different about Astral?
16:50
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
16:50
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
16:51
So I'll start with the sort of top level vision and then I can
16:54
dig into the physics.
16:55
SPEAKER_03: Let's do it.
16:58
SPEAKER_03: So the main thing is the problem that we're addressing.
17:01
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
17:03
So globally,
17:05
particularly in the developed world,
17:06
nuclear medicine has been around for decades.
17:08
SPEAKER_03: It's a very effective cancer treatment, cancer therapy in particular.
17:12
SPEAKER_03: where you take a radioactive element,
17:13
SPEAKER_03: you bond it to a molecule,
17:14
SPEAKER_03: and it goes and becomes very,
17:16
SPEAKER_03: very targeted to where the cancer is or the tumor.
17:19
And it releases the radiation very locally and damages the DNA
17:22
of the tumor or the
17:23
SPEAKER_03: cancer cells and kills the cancer.
17:26
SPEAKER_03: So all very good.
17:27
SPEAKER_03: The downside is that radioactive element has a half-life,
17:30
SPEAKER_03: usually a half-life of about a week or so,
17:33
SPEAKER_03: which means that as you have to ship it internationally,
17:35
SPEAKER_03: you get lots of losses and you can't stockpile it.
17:38
SPEAKER_03: So the current state of affairs is, as of 2025,
17:41
SPEAKER_03: And to be honest, for over a decade, this has been the case.
17:45
SPEAKER_03: There's been big supply issues.
17:46
SPEAKER_03: There's been shortages.
17:47
So there's been situations where there's been no supply for
17:51
weeks because multiple
17:52
SPEAKER_03: reactors have shut down.
17:54
SPEAKER_03: which mean that people that need cancer treatment don't get it.
17:57
SPEAKER_03: They get put onto other less effective treatments or it gets delayed.
18:01
SPEAKER_01: Like chemotherapy instead of radiotherapy.
18:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sure.
18:04
SPEAKER_03: Is that the correct difference?
18:06
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
18:07
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
18:07
SPEAKER_03: So that's the current state of affairs.
18:09
SPEAKER_03: And that whole industry hasn't seen,
18:11
SPEAKER_03: particularly with therapeutics,
18:13
diagnostics has seen some innovation in the 90s with the
18:16
cyclotrons that has meant
18:17
SPEAKER_03: that you've got distributed local supply now.
18:20
SPEAKER_03: But the therapeutics,
18:21
SPEAKER_03: it hasn't seen any innovation since the 50s or 60s,
18:24
SPEAKER_03: since the invention of the fission reactor,
18:26
SPEAKER_03: really.
18:26
SPEAKER_03: And there's 250...
18:29
SPEAKER_03: around 250 power fission reactors globally.
18:32
Only five,
18:33
I'd say six of them actually produce isotopes for sale for
18:37
international export.
18:39
All of them are heavily government subsidized and all of them
18:42
are very old because
18:44
building fission reactors went out of fashion in the 80s for
18:47
obvious reasons.
18:48
SPEAKER_03: What's happening now is over the next five to 10 years,
18:51
SPEAKER_03: a lot of those reactors are shutting down.
18:53
SPEAKER_03: The problem is
18:54
SPEAKER_03: Isotope supply,
18:55
SPEAKER_03: the industry is booming,
18:56
SPEAKER_03: people are getting older,
18:57
SPEAKER_03: demographics are getting older,
18:58
SPEAKER_03: and what's happening is there's a supply shortage,
19:01
SPEAKER_03: which is actually a bottleneck in the industry.
19:05
SPEAKER_03: That's the main problem that Asheville focuses on is,
19:08
SPEAKER_03: okay,
19:09
SPEAKER_03: what else can you use to produce neutrons?
19:12
SPEAKER_03: You can use fusion.
19:13
All of the benefits that people say for fusion power over
19:16
fission is equally true
19:18
SPEAKER_03: for using fusion over fission for the production of isotopes.
19:21
SPEAKER_03: You can build systems within six to 12 months.
19:24
SPEAKER_03: You can establish a site that can produce fusion neutrons.
19:27
SPEAKER_03: It can produce radiation.
19:28
It's licensed in the same way as a cyclotron in the basement of
19:30
a hospital.
19:31
SPEAKER_03: And you can scale, particularly with our technology, very fast.
19:34
SPEAKER_03: So that's the main focus for us is our engineering challenge is producing
19:39
fusion devices that are optimized for the production of
19:41
isotopes on demand at the point of use.
19:44
And the overall aim is to increase access and decrease costs
19:48
for cancer treatment.
19:49
SPEAKER_03: A lot of places are underserved,
19:51
even places in the UK are underserved as opposed to sort of
19:58
highly mature places
19:59
like the Netherlands and Belgium and I'd say Ontario and Canada
20:03
in terms of access
20:04
SPEAKER_03: to cancer cares.
20:05
SPEAKER_03: That's really the overall vision of the company.
20:08
SPEAKER_03: and what we're aiming to address.
20:10
There's a lot of other interesting markets and applications
20:13
that a device that can
20:13
SPEAKER_03: do that can also do beyond just medical livestock production,
20:16
SPEAKER_03: which we can get into later on if you like.
20:20
But in terms of the core technology and why this is a bit of a
20:23
breakthrough in
20:24
SPEAKER_03: terms of the performance of the system,
20:27
SPEAKER_03: I'm sure you probably have heard of magnetic confinement,
20:31
SPEAKER_03: clock max and other types of interesting device.
20:33
All sorts of huge machines and that's where there's another big
20:36
difference,
20:37
right?
20:38
SPEAKER_03: Huge machines that run for seconds.
20:40
SPEAKER_03: There'll be press releases around a thousand second pulse of a device,
20:44
SPEAKER_03: let's say in China or elsewhere.
20:47
SPEAKER_03: So with what we're doing,
20:49
SPEAKER_03: the core architecture is an industrial plasma-based neutron source,
20:54
SPEAKER_03: which runs continuously for thousands of hours.
20:56
SPEAKER_03: So it's built to be operated by an engineer or a student even,
21:02
SPEAKER_03: where you have software interface,
21:03
SPEAKER_03: you plug it into a three-phase socket,
21:05
SPEAKER_03: 415 volts,
21:05
SPEAKER_03: 63 amps.
21:08
SPEAKER_03: You have a liquid cooler.
21:10
SPEAKER_03: It's about a meter and a half long, 14 centimeters diameter.
21:13
SPEAKER_03: It just looks like a rod, like a metallic rod.
21:16
Inside there's a cylindrical plasma and a lot like a
21:19
fluorescent light tube.
21:20
It produces neutrons in all directions,
21:22
just like a fluorescent light produces photons.
21:24
SPEAKER_03: in all directions.
21:25
SPEAKER_03: And that system can run continuously.
21:28
SPEAKER_03: You turn it on and you can leave it, but it stays at the same output.
21:31
SPEAKER_03: So some fusion people would call it a long pulse.
21:34
SPEAKER_03: We just say it's just continuously operational.
21:37
SPEAKER_03: So that's the basis.
21:38
SPEAKER_03: That's the fundamental architecture.
21:39
SPEAKER_03: Now, where's the innovation?
21:41
So if you'll allow me to get into the physics,
21:43
I'll try not to go too deep into it.
21:46
But the sort of top level pitch style explanation is that if
21:49
you look at the sun,
21:50
SPEAKER_03: a lovely fusion reactor in the sky,
21:53
SPEAKER_03: If you actually do a breakdown of where the fusion happens in the sun,
21:58
SPEAKER_03: you've got this core called the stellar core,
22:00
SPEAKER_03: which is the smallest 0.8% of the volume of the sun,
22:04
SPEAKER_03: which is actually only about 20 kilometers in diameter.
22:08
SPEAKER_03: It's a tiny, tiny, tiny core.
22:11
SPEAKER_03: That produces over 99% of the fusion power in the sun.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:15
huge huge concentration of where the power is around the core
22:19
less than one percent
22:20
of the fusion occurs in the outer area which is a lot less
22:23
dense that has a density
22:25
closer to a plasma and it has a an energy density closer to
22:29
like a compost heap
22:30
right not a lot of slow burner compared to the center yeah yeah
22:37
exactly so what
22:38
SPEAKER_03: what's happening in the core why is it different
22:41
SPEAKER_03: In the core, the density is about 150 grams per cc.
22:44
SPEAKER_03: So for metals, it's anywhere between 7 to 20 grams per cc.
22:50
SPEAKER_03: So it's more dense than any metal that we have on Earth.
22:53
SPEAKER_03: And not only is it dense, it also has a lot of electrons.
22:55
SPEAKER_03: I don't know whether you know about solar flares.
22:57
We see those electromagnetic fields fling out solar flares into
23:00
the solar system.
23:02
SPEAKER_03: To be able to have big electromagnetic fields,
23:04
SPEAKER_03: you need a conductive core,
23:06
SPEAKER_03: basically,
23:07
SPEAKER_03: to produce these magnetic fields.
23:09
SPEAKER_03: So in the core, you have electrons.
23:11
SPEAKER_03: So in a plasma,
23:12
the challenge and the difficulty and why the sun doesn't do a
23:15
lot of fusion in the
23:16
plasma sort of halo around the outside is because you're
23:19
dealing with ions.
23:20
SPEAKER_03: So you've got two positively charged ions, okay?
23:24
And if you've ever held two lichens of a magnet,
23:26
you try and push them together.
23:27
SPEAKER_03: Reject, yeah.
23:30
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, the closer you get, the harder it gets.
23:32
SPEAKER_03: It doesn't get easier as you get close together, it gets harder, right?
23:34
That's the big challenge and struggle with magnetic confinement
23:38
and other sort of
23:38
SPEAKER_03: similar confinement methods,
23:39
SPEAKER_03: plasma-based methods.
23:41
SPEAKER_03: However,
23:42
SPEAKER_03: when you're in the core,
23:43
SPEAKER_03: it's not just plus-plus,
23:45
SPEAKER_03: you have electrons,
23:47
SPEAKER_03: and electrons are negatively charged.
23:49
SPEAKER_03: So instead of it just being plus-plus,
23:51
SPEAKER_03: you have this negative potential or screening potential,
23:55
which then means it takes less energy for those particles to
23:58
get close together,
23:59
SPEAKER_03: which means fusion happens more readily,
24:01
SPEAKER_03: and it happens at low energies,
24:02
SPEAKER_03: and it happens at a higher efficiency,
24:03
SPEAKER_03: essentially.
24:04
SPEAKER_03: So that's what happens in the core of the Sun.
24:06
SPEAKER_03: So how is that similar to our device?
24:09
SPEAKER_03: Essentially, we're doing the sun, but inside out.
24:11
SPEAKER_03: So we have the plasma in the center, which is the classic IEC plasma.
24:16
And then around the outside,
24:17
the metal that faces the plasma is loaded with fusion fuel.
24:20
SPEAKER_03: So it's loaded with deuterium to a very, very high concentration.
24:24
And we tune the metal that's facing the plasma to have a high
24:27
screening potential.
24:28
SPEAKER_03: So we're able to increase the efficiency.
24:30
We're able to pull that efficiency lever that's not available
24:34
when you're doing
24:35
SPEAKER_03: pure plasma fusion.
24:36
SPEAKER_03: So that not only allows us a very high efficiency in terms of power in,
24:41
SPEAKER_03: neutrons out,
24:42
SPEAKER_03: but it also affords us a very high density of neutrons.
24:46
So if your medium for fusion is a plasma or a gas,
24:49
obviously it's still very dense.
24:51
The plasma is usually less dense than the air that you're
24:53
breathing right now.
24:55
SPEAKER_03: But if you're doing the fusion in a metal, in a solid metal,
24:58
the amount of neutrons that you can produce per centimeter
25:01
cubed or per centimeter
25:02
SPEAKER_03: squared is orders of magnitude higher.
25:05
So we're typically around 400 million times more dense in terms
25:09
of the fuel density
25:10
SPEAKER_03: than in a plasma.
25:12
SPEAKER_03: So this is critical for isotope production and many,
25:14
SPEAKER_03: many other industrial applications,
25:16
SPEAKER_03: but specifically isotope production,
25:18
because you want to have a small target when you're radiating
25:22
it with neutrons.
25:23
So the higher the intensity,
25:25
similar to a laser,
25:26
the watt per centimeter squared,
25:29
SPEAKER_03: or light,
25:30
SPEAKER_03: for example,
25:31
SPEAKER_03: the higher the intensity,
25:32
SPEAKER_03: the more efficient you can produce your isotopes.
25:34
That's really the critical step change difference in the
25:38
technology and what we're
25:39
SPEAKER_03: doing at Astro.
25:40
SPEAKER_03: In terms of the phenomena,
25:41
SPEAKER_03: if I can add around electron screening,
25:43
it's been around for a long time as a theory in astrophysics to
25:47
explain what's
25:48
SPEAKER_03: going on in the core of the sun,
25:50
but it was confirmed and validated experimentally by NASA and
25:55
published only in
25:55
SPEAKER_03: around 2020,
25:56
SPEAKER_03: 2021.
25:58
SPEAKER_03: If you actually look at some of the publications,
26:01
I think the second publication published by NASA and FISA-FC
26:05
was published around
26:06
SPEAKER_03: 2021.
26:07
SPEAKER_03: And then literally three months later, we felt the pattern for Astro.
26:12
So in terms of going from sort of brand new experimentally
26:16
validated theoretical
26:17
physics that's been confirmed experimentally by NASA into a
26:21
commercial product,
26:22
SPEAKER_03: we're doing it pretty rapidly.
26:24
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
26:25
So just so people understand the small scale kind of like
26:30
reactor that you've
26:31
SPEAKER_01: built,
26:31
SPEAKER_01: do you basically sell the reactors or the output of those reactors?
26:39
SPEAKER_03: Both.
26:40
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
26:40
SPEAKER_03: But for different reasons.
26:42
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
26:42
SPEAKER_03: So what we're doing is we're actually
26:46
The main business model is the sale of isotopes,
26:49
so selling the milk and not the cow.
26:52
That's just because we can build the facility,
26:54
we can build an array of systems.
26:56
SPEAKER_03: These are rods,
26:57
which means you can cluster them together and we can fit 72
27:01
systems in an array and
27:03
SPEAKER_03: you could put your arms around it because it's so compact,
27:05
SPEAKER_03: right?
27:06
SPEAKER_03: We have facilities where we're looking to deploy arrays,
27:09
SPEAKER_03: produce isotopes,
27:10
and then we can ship out the isotopes to hospitals or to drug
27:13
manufacturers,
27:14
SPEAKER_03: and then suddenly they have supply where they didn't have supply before.
27:17
SPEAKER_03: Now,
27:17
SPEAKER_03: The long-term vision of the company,
27:19
SPEAKER_03: because of the nature of the energy of the neutrons from fusion,
27:23
you can actually produce isotopes that you can't produce with a
27:25
fission reactor.
27:26
SPEAKER_03: So there's a lot of research there.
27:28
There's the potential for new isotopes that we're not using at
27:30
the moment that you
27:31
SPEAKER_03: can suddenly produce very,
27:32
SPEAKER_03: very close to the patient.
27:33
SPEAKER_03: So you can explore shorter-lived isotopes,
27:35
SPEAKER_03: which are better for patient experience and more efficient.
27:38
SPEAKER_03: You can do more clinical treatments per day.
27:41
SPEAKER_03: And in order to do that,
27:43
SPEAKER_03: as clever as we are at Astral,
27:45
SPEAKER_03: as a good team as we have,
27:46
SPEAKER_03: we haven't got the time to do all of that experimentation ourselves.
27:50
SPEAKER_03: Academics are a lot better at doing that,
27:53
especially when they have different groups of researchers
27:55
collaborating openly and
27:57
SPEAKER_03: publishing.
27:57
So what we're doing is we're looking to empower universities
28:01
and institutions that
28:03
can't afford a fission reactor or can't build one because
28:06
they're quite expensive,
28:08
SPEAKER_03: but they can get hold of an Astral reactor.
28:11
And that suddenly allows them to start doing nuclear medicine
28:14
production at a small
28:15
SPEAKER_03: scale,
28:16
SPEAKER_03: where they can practice the radiochemistry,
28:17
SPEAKER_03: the molecular bonding,
28:18
SPEAKER_03: and they can start training up people to be what I call neutron literate.
28:23
So they understand radiation,
28:24
they understand isotopes,
28:25
they understand reactions.
28:28
SPEAKER_03: And it's actually something that,
28:29
SPEAKER_03: particularly in the UK,
28:30
SPEAKER_03: and it's happening all over the world,
28:31
SPEAKER_03: because of these old research reactors being shut down,
28:34
SPEAKER_03: we're losing those skills.
28:36
SPEAKER_03: So the idea is to empower these researchers, to give them a reactor,
28:40
SPEAKER_03: they can start producing isotopes,
28:42
SPEAKER_03: they can start publishing and who knows,
28:44
maybe a new isotope will come through the works that ends up
28:47
going through the
28:47
SPEAKER_03: clinical trials and then ends up being used.
28:50
SPEAKER_03: And that's how we really see we can truly disrupt the industry long term.
28:54
SPEAKER_03: And this isn't a new approach.
28:57
SPEAKER_03: This actually happened before with diagnostics.
29:00
SPEAKER_03: So in the 90s,
29:01
SPEAKER_03: I believe it was IBA,
29:03
SPEAKER_03: they commercialized cyclotrons,
29:04
which is basically a device or an accelerator that you plug
29:07
into the wall,
29:08
SPEAKER_03: electrically powered,
29:09
SPEAKER_03: and it produces high energy protons.
29:11
SPEAKER_03: So instead of high energy neutrons, it produces high energy protons.
29:14
Suddenly you can put a high energy proton device in the
29:18
basement of a hospital.
29:19
SPEAKER_03: And what happened after that,
29:21
SPEAKER_03: In light of that technology existing,
29:24
SPEAKER_03: clinicians moved away from longer-lived isotopes for diagnosis.
29:29
SPEAKER_03: And we ended up with what we have today,
29:31
which is over 1,000 cyclotrons scattered all over the world in
29:34
basements of
29:35
SPEAKER_03: hospitals that produce PET isotopes,
29:38
SPEAKER_03: positron emission tomography isotopes,
29:40
SPEAKER_03: PET CT scans,
29:41
SPEAKER_03: the cancer diagnosis and other disease diagnosis.
29:44
So we want to do essentially to neutron-produce isotopes what
29:47
accelerators and
29:48
SPEAKER_03: cyclotrons did for proton-produced isotopes.
29:51
SPEAKER_01: On the treatment side,
29:52
SPEAKER_01: one was on the scanning and detecting it,
29:55
SPEAKER_01: and this one comes on the treatment side.
29:57
SPEAKER_01: And if we would be using the analogy of cow and milk you've had earlier,
30:02
SPEAKER_01: you're also not looking at just selling the milk,
30:05
SPEAKER_01: but also giving cows to be closer to the source and having a healthier,
30:10
SPEAKER_01: fresher milk.
30:12
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
30:13
SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
30:13
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's exactly it.
30:15
SPEAKER_03: And empowering people to make their own cheeses as well.
30:19
I'm sure a lot of people would be able to understand that
30:23
analogy as well.
30:24
SPEAKER_01: So,
30:24
SPEAKER_01: Tom,
30:25
SPEAKER_01: something that you've been doing,
30:27
SPEAKER_01: basically,
30:28
SPEAKER_01: you've been working in the background on the science and the product end.
30:31
what people would understand from the tech side more,
30:35
you've been in stealth mode.
30:37
SPEAKER_01: So how do you hire and scale and grow and get funding in stealth mode?
30:44
SPEAKER_01: How does it work once you get out of it?
30:46
SPEAKER_01: Because as far as I understand,
30:48
SPEAKER_01: you've been doing some fundraising,
30:50
SPEAKER_01: some pre-seed and seed funding and grew your team.
30:55
SPEAKER_01: And now you're out of stealth mode, which is
30:58
why you've been getting some press and also one of the other
31:01
reasons why we're
31:02
SPEAKER_01: talking about it now?
31:04
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's a very, very, very good question.
31:06
So I would say it definitely helps having some level of
31:10
maturity to the technology.
31:12
SPEAKER_03: So having Talman as my co-founder,
31:15
SPEAKER_03: And having already that high TRL basis of an architecture ready to go,
31:20
I guess it's the product of any good literature review that
31:22
you're not reinventing
31:24
SPEAKER_03: the wheel.
31:24
There's probably something out there similar to what you've
31:26
already done you can
31:26
SPEAKER_03: use as a springboard.
31:28
SPEAKER_03: And that coupled with building good relationships with people.
31:36
From my end,
31:37
being the physicist and the tech guy,
31:39
I love talking about physics with people.
31:43
I love talking to the nerds and they tend to be the people in
31:46
big organizations,
31:47
SPEAKER_03: governments or businesses
31:49
SPEAKER_03: The business people ask, should we buy something?
31:52
SPEAKER_03: Or should we pay for something?
31:53
SPEAKER_03: Do you trust these guys?
31:54
SPEAKER_01: So they're the advisors.
31:55
SPEAKER_01: So you basically speak the language of the advisors.
31:59
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
32:00
SPEAKER_03: So you build relationships with those people.
32:02
I would actually go back even further and say that the overall
32:05
vision of what
32:06
SPEAKER_03: you're doing,
32:07
SPEAKER_03: the moral aspect,
32:08
SPEAKER_03: price type supply being a national strategic imperative,
32:12
SPEAKER_03: everyone knowing someone that's suffered cancer,
32:15
SPEAKER_03: And that being your vision.
32:16
Also being a younger entrepreneur,
32:18
for me personally,
32:19
people want to help you.
32:20
SPEAKER_03: They want to mentor you.
32:21
SPEAKER_03: They want to see you succeed.
32:23
That helps when you're building those early relationships with
32:25
people who are
32:26
SPEAKER_03: potential sort of customers or corporate stakeholders.
32:29
SPEAKER_03: And then good old-fashioned sales tactics from Talman.
32:32
I mean,
32:32
I remember we were in a meeting with the National Nuclear
32:35
Laboratory.
32:36
SPEAKER_03: This must have been in 2022, I think.
32:39
And we were just talking because we knew they were looking at
32:41
maybe having a
32:42
facility with some neutron sources to do medical history
32:44
production and other
32:45
SPEAKER_03: interesting research.
32:47
SPEAKER_03: And Talman says that he smelled blood in the meeting.
32:51
SPEAKER_03: And he just said, how about we do a design study?
32:54
SPEAKER_03: Would you guys be interested?
32:54
SPEAKER_03: We've had this initial call.
32:56
SPEAKER_03: You're interested in the technology.
32:58
SPEAKER_03: You pay us, we'll write you a big report or 40 pages.
33:02
We'll do some simulations as to how the system would look,
33:04
how it would behave.
33:05
SPEAKER_03: And they said, yeah, sounds good.
33:07
That was our first sort of commercial traction was a design
33:11
study for them to see
33:12
SPEAKER_03: how the system would look,
33:13
SPEAKER_03: how it behaves,
33:14
SPEAKER_03: you know,
33:15
SPEAKER_03: what it could do for them,
33:16
SPEAKER_03: the different capabilities.
33:17
SPEAKER_03: And that, to be honest, that document that we produced is huge.
33:21
SPEAKER_03: we ended up using a lot of that information again and again and again.
33:24
So the work that went into that just kept paying dividends
33:28
because we could then
33:29
SPEAKER_03: redact it or take chunks of it and use it for other stakeholders and say,
33:34
SPEAKER_03: oh,
33:34
SPEAKER_03: the NNL paid for this report.
33:36
SPEAKER_03: So you can sort of,
33:37
SPEAKER_03: build on that momentum.
33:39
SPEAKER_03: And essentially,
33:39
SPEAKER_03: the third piece is just because of the technology,
33:42
SPEAKER_03: there's nothing else out there that can do the same thing.
33:44
We're sort of head and shoulders above the performance of
33:48
systems that you can
33:49
SPEAKER_03: commercially get off the market.
33:51
So that sort of kept the interest of relevant stakeholders and
33:55
people so that
33:56
SPEAKER_03: they'd be interested in doing design studies.
33:58
Or once we got a research contract from the UKAA through the
34:03
Fusion Industry
34:03
SPEAKER_03: Program,
34:04
SPEAKER_03: big shout out to the Fusion Industry Program,
34:07
SPEAKER_03: That was kind of like an SBIR or SBRI style research contract.
34:12
So that essentially allows you to have specific milestones that
34:17
you then are measured against.
34:19
SPEAKER_03: So it's not like a research grant where they say,
34:21
SPEAKER_03: okay,
34:22
SPEAKER_03: do some work,
34:22
SPEAKER_03: get some publications,
34:23
SPEAKER_03: and that sounds good.
34:24
You have monthly milestones where you have to present work or
34:27
you have to show them
34:28
SPEAKER_03: data,
34:29
SPEAKER_03: show them results,
34:29
SPEAKER_03: or show them a product,
34:30
SPEAKER_03: and then they pay you.
34:31
So that gave us a really good sort of commercial seasoning,
34:35
I guess,
34:35
early on.
34:37
SPEAKER_03: where we had to stick to deadlines.
34:39
SPEAKER_03: We had to pivot when things went wrong.
34:41
SPEAKER_03: We had to try and save costs.
34:45
SPEAKER_03: And that ended up with us at our first private facility,
34:48
SPEAKER_03: which was in Winfrith,
34:49
SPEAKER_03: an old decommissioned nuclear site in Dorset,
34:51
SPEAKER_03: where I grew up,
34:52
SPEAKER_03: and very far from Bristol.
34:54
SPEAKER_03: but there's a very good reason for that.
34:56
SPEAKER_03: And that was because,
34:56
SPEAKER_03: as many people who have startups will probably know,
34:59
SPEAKER_03: if you try and get space,
35:02
SPEAKER_03: industrial space,
35:02
especially fairly large industrial space that we needed to be
35:05
able to do this,
35:06
SPEAKER_03: you have lease terms,
35:07
SPEAKER_03: which are usually five years with a three-year break.
35:10
And then when you have only a few hundred thousand or a hundred
35:13
thousand in cash
35:14
SPEAKER_03: from a contract,
35:16
SPEAKER_03: it's not a wise move to get into a contract like that.
35:18
SPEAKER_03: So we had to find somewhere that was pretty far away
35:22
SPEAKER_03: that had a two-month break.
35:25
SPEAKER_03: And then it was basically free in terms of the rent.
35:28
SPEAKER_03: That allowed us to actually have our own space,
35:31
SPEAKER_03: move on our own timelines,
35:32
SPEAKER_03: do our own thing,
35:33
SPEAKER_03: and set up our first bunker,
35:34
SPEAKER_03: our first reactor.
35:36
SPEAKER_03: And we got that done on time.
35:37
SPEAKER_03: That was a novel capability in the UK.
35:40
SPEAKER_03: It had never been done before like that.
35:42
SPEAKER_03: And yeah,
35:44
we had a lot of interest from a lot of the national labs and a
35:47
lot of the relevant
35:48
SPEAKER_03: stakeholders.
35:49
SPEAKER_03: And we got a lot of kudos for that.
35:51
SPEAKER_03: We ended up actually
35:52
SPEAKER_03: garnering the interest of Matt Farrell from Undecided.
35:57
SPEAKER_03: He did a YouTube video on us back in 2023,
36:00
SPEAKER_03: and that really led to the funding round in some ways,
36:05
SPEAKER_03: which I could talk about.
36:07
SPEAKER_03: It was actually more in, I'd say, 2022.
36:11
SPEAKER_03: And me and Talman were getting research contracts.
36:13
SPEAKER_03: And we were thinking, you know, do we want to raise money?
36:15
SPEAKER_03: Do we want to bootstrap the company?
36:17
SPEAKER_01: So you weren't really looking at raising money.
36:20
You were looking directly at getting contracts and running it
36:24
as a business straight on.
36:26
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
36:26
SPEAKER_03: So at the start of the formation of Astral, we sort of
36:31
We spent a lot of time thinking about what kind of company we
36:33
wanted to be,
36:34
SPEAKER_03: and Taoman didn't want to repeat anything he'd done before.
36:37
We both agreed that we didn't want to be fusion company number
36:40
50-something,
36:41
SPEAKER_03: going for energy breakeven and going for big experimental milestone,
36:46
SPEAKER_03: after experimental milestone.
36:47
SPEAKER_03: We wanted to build a commercial company that was market-facing,
36:51
SPEAKER_03: that was driven by revenue,
36:53
SPEAKER_03: strong commercial backbone to it,
36:57
SPEAKER_03: because we wanted to have lasting impact.
37:00
We believe that if you want to have a company that actually has
37:02
lasting global
37:04
SPEAKER_03: impact,
37:04
SPEAKER_03: it has to have a strong commercial backbone.
37:06
SPEAKER_03: Otherwise, the wind blows too strong and then it's gone.
37:10
SPEAKER_03: So that was the decision from very, very early on.
37:12
SPEAKER_03: And we knew that there was a path for us to bootstrap.
37:15
To be honest,
37:15
if you can bootstrap and you're fine with it,
37:18
I would probably recommend it.
37:19
SPEAKER_03: I've met a lot of senior entrepreneurs that have managed it.
37:23
SPEAKER_03: But the caveat to that is speed.
37:25
SPEAKER_03: And to be honest,
37:26
SPEAKER_03: what happened was,
37:27
SPEAKER_03: is we heard about a nuclear medicine shortage around Christmas time.
37:30
SPEAKER_03: It was several months long.
37:32
And we heard about some people being moved on to less effective
37:35
treatment.
37:35
SPEAKER_03: And it really,
37:36
SPEAKER_03: really touched us in a way where we said,
37:39
SPEAKER_03: why are we going slowly by bootstrapping?
37:43
SPEAKER_03: If we raise money, we can move faster.
37:46
SPEAKER_03: It might take us five years to get there.
37:47
SPEAKER_03: But if we raise money, it might take us two or less.
37:50
So that was the decision where we said,
37:51
okay,
37:52
I think we want to do something around.
37:53
And that was the immediate impact you wanted to make as well
37:56
through your work.
37:58
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
37:58
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
37:59
SPEAKER_03: So that was the decision that we took.
38:02
SPEAKER_03: That sort of led to us being like, okay, we should get more coverage.
38:07
SPEAKER_03: We should get a YouTube video that sort of encapsulates what we're doing,
38:10
SPEAKER_03: get someone who's fairly well-known.
38:12
SPEAKER_03: So we had Matt Frel come out to video.
38:15
SPEAKER_03: It's quite funny, actually.
38:15
SPEAKER_03: When he was here, we introduced him to the UK Atomic Energy Authority.
38:19
SPEAKER_03: So he said, oh, you're flying over from the US.
38:21
SPEAKER_03: You should cover some other fusion stuff while you're here.
38:24
SPEAKER_03: So he's got this great sort of triplet of videos of us.
38:26
SPEAKER_03: I think it's first LightFusion and then UKAA.
38:30
SPEAKER_03: And when we're speaking to the UKAA,
38:31
SPEAKER_03: we said,
38:32
SPEAKER_03: oh,
38:32
SPEAKER_03: Matt Frel's thinking about doing a video with you guys.
38:34
SPEAKER_03: And they sort of said, we don't know what to do.
38:36
SPEAKER_03: We've never had a YouTuber come and cover us before.
38:38
SPEAKER_03: We're not sure how to handle this.
38:40
SPEAKER_03: Initially,
38:41
SPEAKER_03: they went back and forth for a while,
38:42
SPEAKER_03: and then they said,
38:43
SPEAKER_03: oh,
38:43
I'm not sure about theirs because I think they were scared that
38:47
the YouTuber might
38:48
SPEAKER_03: do an expose that might color them in a negative light.
38:50
SPEAKER_03: They didn't really trust the guy.
38:53
SPEAKER_03: I believe it was Fernanda,
38:54
SPEAKER_03: who's head of Jet at the time,
38:57
SPEAKER_03: jumped out in the email chain and said,
38:59
SPEAKER_03: I love Matt Farrell.
39:00
SPEAKER_03: I wanted to come and interview me.
39:01
SPEAKER_03: I'm a big fan.
39:02
SPEAKER_03: Get him in.
39:03
SPEAKER_03: Since then, they've been doing a lot better social media.
39:07
But the thing that was really important for the funding round
39:09
was after that
39:10
SPEAKER_03: YouTube video came out,
39:11
we had someone from a very high-profile investment firm that's
39:15
kind of like a
39:16
SPEAKER_03: Silicon Valley household name firm.
39:19
SPEAKER_03: And they just moved from Southeast Asia to London.
39:24
SPEAKER_03: And they reached out and said, oh, what you're doing is really cool.
39:26
SPEAKER_03: I love what you're doing.
39:27
SPEAKER_03: It's a really interesting approach.
39:29
SPEAKER_03: Where I am at the moment, funding round you're looking for is too small.
39:33
When you do series A,
39:35
tens of millions of ticket sizes,
39:37
you're up to thousands or a few million.
39:40
But what I can do is I can maybe introduce you to some other
39:43
investors who might be interested.
39:45
SPEAKER_03: On top of that,
39:46
SPEAKER_03: we were doing a pitch event,
39:47
SPEAKER_03: I believe,
39:47
SPEAKER_03: in London,
39:48
SPEAKER_03: where we brought an old reactor that Taiwan had sold back 10 years ago.
39:54
SPEAKER_03: We got off an old customer who wasn't using it anymore.
39:58
SPEAKER_03: It was sold for dark matter research.
39:59
SPEAKER_03: It had flown across Italy and the US and all over the place.
40:03
SPEAKER_03: Still functional.
40:05
We took off the outer cowling so you could see some of the
40:07
interesting components underneath.
40:08
SPEAKER_03: We actually brought it in a backpack on the London tube.
40:11
SPEAKER_03: I wanted to take it out and pose with it,
40:13
SPEAKER_03: but I feel like the special forces might have been alarmed.
40:16
SPEAKER_03: It might have caused a bit of an incident, yeah.
40:20
SPEAKER_03: But we ended up bringing the reactor to their head offices in London,
40:24
SPEAKER_03: to that investor's offices,
40:25
SPEAKER_03: and put it on the table one evening.
40:28
And we had a few of the investors poking in and taking photos
40:30
and being like,
40:31
SPEAKER_03: oh,
40:31
SPEAKER_03: what the hell's this?
40:32
SPEAKER_03: Come have a look at this fusion reactor.
40:34
SPEAKER_03: So even though they weren't on the table as an investor in that round,
40:38
SPEAKER_03: we built the relationship,
40:39
SPEAKER_03: and we ended up getting warm introductions.
40:43
SPEAKER_03: through the investors, them saying, oh, you should check out Astrol.
40:46
SPEAKER_03: You should talk to these guys.
40:48
And yeah,
40:49
the difference in cold introductions versus warm introductions
40:53
is like night and day.
40:54
SPEAKER_03: I mean, for a cold introduction, the investor's got their guard up.
40:57
SPEAKER_03: They're in pitch receive mode.
41:00
SPEAKER_03: They're very skeptical, very doubtful.
41:02
SPEAKER_03: They want to find reasons not to invest in you,
41:04
SPEAKER_03: basically,
41:04
SPEAKER_03: because they get so many people talking to them.
41:07
SPEAKER_03: The warm introduction, that person's almost avowed for you in a way where
41:12
the guard's a little bit dropped and they're saying,
41:14
okay,
41:14
how can we make this work?
41:18
Even if you're slightly outside of their investment thesis or
41:20
you're a little bit
41:20
SPEAKER_03: different,
41:21
SPEAKER_03: it makes it a lot easier rather than just them saying,
41:24
SPEAKER_03: I'd rather have less on my plate.
41:25
SPEAKER_03: I'm putting you in the no bin because it makes things simpler.
41:28
And what was really interesting about their approach is
41:30
initially when we were
41:31
SPEAKER_03: pitching,
41:32
SPEAKER_03: we'd do pitch after pitch after pitch.
41:33
SPEAKER_03: I thought maybe one or two a week or something like that.
41:36
SPEAKER_03: So not crazy pitching.
41:38
I've met entrepreneurs and co-founders that have done basically
41:41
every hour of the
41:42
SPEAKER_03: day doing pitching.
41:43
SPEAKER_03: We did quite a lot still.
41:44
SPEAKER_03: But in the early days when we were pitching,
41:46
SPEAKER_03: we'd come away from the pitch and be like,
41:48
SPEAKER_03: introduce us to that investor,
41:49
but they weren't the right ticket size and they weren't the
41:50
right thesis for us.
41:51
SPEAKER_03: Like, why are they introducing us to the wrong fit?
41:53
SPEAKER_03: And after we'd been pitching for maybe two months, two and a half months,
41:58
SPEAKER_03: then they started to introduce us to people that were the right fit,
42:01
SPEAKER_03: that were the right thesis.
42:03
And they've basically been training us on investors that
42:06
weren't the right fit as
42:07
SPEAKER_03: practice so that when we spoke to people that were relevant,
42:12
SPEAKER_03: the right ticket size,
42:12
SPEAKER_03: the right kind of investor,
42:14
SPEAKER_03: we were ready and we had a polished pitch.
42:16
Whereas if we'd been introduced to them straight off the bat at
42:19
the start,
42:20
SPEAKER_03: we probably would have
42:21
Mr.
42:21
Bo,
42:21
and they would have these guys that don't know what they're
42:23
talking about.
42:23
SPEAKER_03: That pitch was kind of lame.
42:25
SPEAKER_03: We'd basically been trained.
42:27
SPEAKER_03: Unwittingly, we didn't know.
42:28
It was only afterwards when we looked back,
42:29
we said,
42:30
yeah,
42:30
they were training us.
42:32
SPEAKER_01: So what's your learning from pitching?
42:35
SPEAKER_01: What are your tips and your learning from pitching?
42:37
SPEAKER_01: Especially a lot of entrepreneurs don't even get to the pitching stage.
42:41
SPEAKER_01: So obviously in your deep tech space,
42:44
it would be slightly different and say you had a different
42:48
application and a
42:49
SPEAKER_01: different kind,
42:50
SPEAKER_01: say,
42:50
SPEAKER_01: to
42:51
SPEAKER_01: compared to somebody building a SaaS product.
42:53
SPEAKER_01: It's not something you're doing.
42:55
But what were your learnings from all those pitching sessions
42:58
before you got in
42:59
SPEAKER_01: front of the real match investors?
43:02
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
43:04
I'd say that because you're so deep in your own field or you're
43:08
a discipline as you
43:09
SPEAKER_03: should be if you're starting up a company in it.
43:12
that sometimes you don't see the sort of wood for the trees to
43:15
some degree.
43:16
SPEAKER_03: So maybe you go straight into the tech,
43:18
SPEAKER_03: you go straight into,
43:19
you take it as granted that you already know why it's so
43:22
important what you're
43:22
SPEAKER_03: doing.
43:23
Sort of as I alluded to earlier,
43:25
the mission and the vision is so critical to get right.
43:28
Like it's worth just spending so much time in what's the story
43:33
of the company?
43:34
SPEAKER_03: What's the problem?
43:35
SPEAKER_03: What's the need?
43:36
SPEAKER_03: What are you solving?
43:36
SPEAKER_03: And what's the vision for the future?
43:38
SPEAKER_03: How are you going to change the world?
43:39
SPEAKER_03: How are you going to change this industry?
43:40
SPEAKER_03: How are you going to disrupt it?
43:43
SPEAKER_03: And then starting with that,
43:44
SPEAKER_03: we had our personal introductions and we were very natural about this
43:49
SPEAKER_03: chronological.
43:50
SPEAKER_03: Talman had a longer,
43:51
SPEAKER_03: he's older than me,
43:52
so he sort of did his introductory history and then how we met
43:55
each other.
43:56
SPEAKER_03: And then we go into what the company is about, what it means.
43:59
But in terms of the framing of the pitch,
44:01
you got to start with the problem.
44:03
SPEAKER_03: You got to start with the hook.
44:05
SPEAKER_03: Why are the stakes high?
44:06
SPEAKER_03: This is exactly the same thing as in storytelling.
44:08
SPEAKER_03: Actually, I was at a conference.
44:10
SPEAKER_03: This is quite funny, actually.
44:12
SPEAKER_03: I was at a conference in LA called a NIAC conference,
44:16
SPEAKER_03: which is a NASA conference,
44:18
SPEAKER_03: where they just sort of take all of their wackiest ideas.
44:21
SPEAKER_03: They sort of pitch them to some degree to the rest of the people there.
44:25
SPEAKER_03: And then they make proposals and they see what they can fund.
44:28
SPEAKER_03: And it's quite a small group.
44:30
SPEAKER_03: It was in a hotel,
44:31
SPEAKER_03: I think it was behind the Hilton Hotel,
44:33
SPEAKER_03: with no signs outside,
44:34
SPEAKER_03: in a back room that maybe fit about 100 people.
44:37
And then as people would,
44:38
because I thought maybe I was in the wrong place.
44:40
SPEAKER_03: I was like, these people are, this is tiny.
44:42
SPEAKER_03: This is supposed to be like a big NASA conference.
44:43
SPEAKER_03: These are really big missions.
44:45
And then as people started to talk,
44:46
they were like,
44:47
oh yeah,
44:47
I trained people.
44:47
SPEAKER_03: I'm training people for the Mars mission or I've been to space twice.
44:50
SPEAKER_03: I'm thinking, oh my God, this is the real deal.
44:53
SPEAKER_01: I am in the right place.
44:54
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm in the right place.
44:56
SPEAKER_03: And they actually had this fantastic session where they had,
44:59
SPEAKER_03: because they're in LA,
45:01
SPEAKER_03: they got all the female writers of Star Trek to turn up and do a panel.
45:06
So they had all of these writers on the stage and they had the
45:10
longest queue for
45:11
questions they ever had at one of these conferences of all the
45:13
NASA scientists
45:14
SPEAKER_03: wanting to ask questions to the Star Trek writers.
45:17
SPEAKER_03: Really,
45:17
really cute because the Star Trek writers were starstruck by
45:21
the NASA people and
45:21
the NASA people were starstruck by the writers because they
45:25
both held each other in
45:25
SPEAKER_03: such high regard.
45:26
SPEAKER_03: It was quite cute because all of the NASA people were saying,
45:29
SPEAKER_03: I've been inspired by the sci-fi that you guys have written.
45:31
And then one of the writers actually sort of started to tear up
45:35
because of that.
45:37
SPEAKER_03: But the point is that someone stood up.
45:39
It was actually a guy who's now on our board of advisors,
45:41
Lawrence Forsley.
45:42
He stood up and he said,
45:43
you know,
45:44
we write a lot of grant proposals at NASA.
45:46
Do you have any advice on how we should frame our grant writing
45:51
in terms of how we
45:52
SPEAKER_03: should frame the way that we write it?
45:54
SPEAKER_03: And then initially the writers sort of said,
45:56
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
45:57
SPEAKER_03: We don't know the science.
45:58
SPEAKER_03: You don't really know how that really applies.
45:59
SPEAKER_03: And one of them actually said, it's just like pitching.
46:02
SPEAKER_03: It's exactly the same as pitching.
46:04
Like when we pitch for ideas for movies or ideas for TV shows,
46:08
it's exactly the same.
46:09
SPEAKER_03: And she said,
46:10
SPEAKER_03: and it applies to VC pitching as well,
46:14
SPEAKER_03: I think,
46:14
SPEAKER_03: to be honest,
46:15
SPEAKER_03: pitching for investment.
46:16
SPEAKER_03: And she said, you've got to have high stakes
46:19
SPEAKER_03: In any story, the stakes have to be super, super high.
46:21
SPEAKER_03: There's actually a Greek story,
46:24
SPEAKER_03: I believe,
46:24
SPEAKER_03: about a challenge,
46:25
SPEAKER_03: I forget the exact name of it,
46:26
SPEAKER_03: of trying to get an ant through a conch shell,
46:29
SPEAKER_03: which is kind of like a little maze,
46:31
SPEAKER_03: which is an interesting puzzle,
46:32
SPEAKER_03: right?
46:32
SPEAKER_03: But in the story,
46:34
SPEAKER_03: he has to get the ant through the conch shell,
46:36
SPEAKER_03: otherwise he dies,
46:37
SPEAKER_03: and he's in the middle of an arena.
46:39
So you got to get the stakes high for people to get interested
46:42
in the story.
46:44
SPEAKER_03: And if you watch TV shows,
46:45
SPEAKER_03: you'll realize this time and time again,
46:47
SPEAKER_03: there'll be some relatively routine plot,
46:49
but then they're going to die if it doesn't happen or there's
46:51
this huge stakes.
46:53
And that's why people watch the TV show because they think,
46:55
oh,
46:55
what's going to happen?
46:56
SPEAKER_03: Are they going to die?
46:57
SPEAKER_03: What's going to happen next?
46:58
SPEAKER_03: It's exactly the same with storytelling.
46:59
SPEAKER_03: It's exactly the same with pitching.
47:00
SPEAKER_03: And what ends up happening is he ends up...
47:03
SPEAKER_03: putting a little bit of honey at the end of the conch shell,
47:05
SPEAKER_03: and then tying a string to the end,
47:07
SPEAKER_03: and then that end goes through.
47:09
Essentially,
47:10
when it comes to pitching,
47:11
you've got to start with your problem.
47:12
SPEAKER_03: The stakes have to be high.
47:14
You've got to try and find whatever reason or whatever
47:17
connecting dot there is,
47:18
SPEAKER_03: because you'll know that the stakes are high.
47:20
SPEAKER_03: You'll know what motivates you.
47:23
SPEAKER_03: It will be there,
47:23
SPEAKER_03: which is why you wake up in the morning,
47:25
SPEAKER_03: why you do what you do,
47:26
SPEAKER_03: but you just have to articulate it.
47:28
If you don't articulate it,
47:29
people will just say,
47:30
oh,
47:30
that's interesting,
47:31
but
47:32
SPEAKER_03: Is it really important?
47:33
SPEAKER_03: So you've got to find that narrative and understand it.
47:37
SPEAKER_03: And then beyond that,
47:38
SPEAKER_03: solving that narrative,
47:39
your solution to the problem and how that changes and disrupts
47:44
the industry and the
47:46
SPEAKER_03: vision for the future.
47:46
SPEAKER_03: You have to have vision as well to tie into it.
47:50
and then then to follow up with that really is just the
47:53
commercial backbone you
47:54
know do you have commercial traction are there partners out
47:56
there that are very
47:57
respected given their rubber stamp that say they know what
48:00
they're talking about um
48:01
i agree with them this is a good idea yeah and i wanted to
48:04
touch on that because
48:05
when we we spoke before you told me that you're targeting break
48:10
even before a
48:11
SPEAKER_01: series a which is quite rare in deep tech um and
48:17
SPEAKER_01: I'm assuming this is why being revenue first was so important for you,
48:21
because you also need to show traction as you continue
48:24
fundraising and scaling.
48:26
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
48:28
SPEAKER_03: That's just a given for us, really, is having commercial traction.
48:33
SPEAKER_03: It's more of an ethos,
48:34
SPEAKER_03: and it's actually a bit of a dividing line and a distinction,
48:37
a very deliberate distinction with a lot of the rest of the
48:40
fusion power companies
48:41
SPEAKER_03: that focus on a very,
48:43
very respectable mission of fusion breakeven in terms of the
48:47
power plant designs.
48:48
SPEAKER_03: But for us, the attitude is to get
48:52
SPEAKER_03: innovation moving fast.
48:53
The company has to be affected and driven by market forces,
48:57
and you've got to be market facing.
48:59
I think that that's not just something that you can just switch
49:02
on at a later stage
49:03
SPEAKER_03: in a company and go,
49:04
SPEAKER_03: oh,
49:04
SPEAKER_03: we're doing something we've discovered.
49:06
SPEAKER_03: Now we understand how this works.
49:08
SPEAKER_03: Now we're going to become culturally commercially minded,
49:11
SPEAKER_03: and now we're going to become market driven.
49:13
SPEAKER_03: It's actually quite challenging to do that, culturally speaking.
49:16
So we wanted it from the outset for people to understand,
49:19
what are you working towards?
49:21
SPEAKER_03: Try and save money where you can.
49:22
If something is going to cost too much going through a
49:25
corporate body doing it,
49:27
SPEAKER_03: can we do it in-house?
49:28
SPEAKER_03: Can you be innovative about the approach?
49:31
SPEAKER_03: It's a mindset.
49:32
SPEAKER_03: It's like a market-driven mindset.
49:35
SPEAKER_03: So we wanted that from the start.
49:37
SPEAKER_03: Getting the revenue in and having that.
49:40
planned into the financials and planned into how the company is
49:42
structured and how
49:43
SPEAKER_03: it works was really important to us.
49:46
SPEAKER_03: And,
49:47
SPEAKER_03: you know,
49:47
I guess you could call myself and my co-founder and our head of
49:51
finance old school
49:53
SPEAKER_03: because a lot of them,
49:55
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
49:56
SPEAKER_03: our finance guy is so funny when he hears about these huge,
49:58
SPEAKER_03: huge fundraisers and he's like,
50:01
SPEAKER_03: well,
50:02
SPEAKER_03: they've got no commercial traction.
50:03
SPEAKER_03: There's no, where's the business model?
50:05
SPEAKER_03: Where's the revenue?
50:06
SPEAKER_03: How does that work?
50:07
SPEAKER_01: And you hear a lot about them, yeah?
50:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
50:11
and he only invests in stocks and shares where you can look up
50:16
the finances of the
50:17
company online and then basis his investments on their
50:20
financials of revenue,
50:22
SPEAKER_03: turnover,
50:22
SPEAKER_03: profit,
50:24
SPEAKER_03: old school stuff.
50:25
So that's in our blood,
50:28
if you will,
50:29
as to why we're approaching it in this way.
50:31
SPEAKER_03: And to be honest, the technology allows for it.
50:34
We've got something where you can monetize it in many,
50:37
many different ways.
50:39
SPEAKER_03: We do it with radiations because it's such a high performance.
50:42
It serves as a platform that can't be used or is not accessible
50:46
elsewhere.
50:47
SPEAKER_03: It's a unique platform.
50:50
SPEAKER_03: For example, just a month ago, we developed these flyers, QR codes.
50:55
So you could scan the QR code when we're going to these
50:57
different events with lots
50:58
SPEAKER_03: of different stakeholders where they could go on a form.
51:01
And we have irradiation campaigns happening in September and
51:04
then a Q1 next year
51:07
where users and academics and other fusion companies or
51:10
interested parties,
51:11
SPEAKER_03: consultants can bring an experiment to us.
51:14
We can put it next to our reactor and we can irradiate it and
51:16
they can get results.
51:18
And that's a different way of monetizing and commercializing
51:22
and bringing in
51:23
SPEAKER_03: stakeholders for the infrastructure that we've already got.
51:25
SPEAKER_03: So yeah, that's the sort of approach that we have.
51:28
SPEAKER_03: And yeah, we're pretty well tracked this year to be able to achieve it.
51:32
SPEAKER_03: But the counter to that is talking to investors at the moment.
51:38
I mentioned that to a very,
51:40
very high profile,
51:41
very,
51:41
very big investor in Germany.
51:42
SPEAKER_03: I said, my point was kind of, oh, we've got revenue.
51:47
SPEAKER_03: We're looking for a financial break even before the end of the year.
51:50
SPEAKER_03: So we're not rushing on doing investment.
51:52
SPEAKER_03: We're not time pressured.
51:53
SPEAKER_03: There's not a cliff.
51:55
SPEAKER_03: where if we reach that, that's something we have to raise money.
51:58
SPEAKER_03: And then her response was, well, don't you want to scale fast?
52:01
Because if you think about your hours in your week or your
52:04
hours in your month that
52:05
SPEAKER_03: you can spend doing things as a founder,
52:08
SPEAKER_03: particularly sort of post-seed round,
52:10
SPEAKER_03: you've got running the company,
52:12
SPEAKER_03: okay,
52:13
getting financial revenue in and getting traction and
52:16
day-to-day operations and
52:18
SPEAKER_03: logistics and HR or whatever.
52:20
SPEAKER_03: And then you've got putting effort towards a Series A round.
52:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it starts spiraling.
52:27
The fundraising is basically ongoing continuously or at least
52:31
pitching to a certain extent.
52:33
SPEAKER_01: Because once you start scaling,
52:36
then you have the runway and you already have an idea when the
52:40
runway would end and
52:42
SPEAKER_01: you have to continue fundraising.
52:44
SPEAKER_03: Exactly, yeah.
52:45
SPEAKER_03: There's not really a pause.
52:47
There's not really a moment where you can sort of put your feet
52:49
up and then not
52:51
SPEAKER_03: think about it at all.
52:52
SPEAKER_03: It's really worth keeping in mind basically continuously.
52:55
SPEAKER_03: But for us,
52:57
it's so important to actually look at the fundraiser and look
53:02
at the Series A
53:03
SPEAKER_03: activity almost as a work package that we would resource,
53:08
SPEAKER_03: project plan out,
53:09
and give out to different team members and divide up the labor
53:14
as you would any
53:15
SPEAKER_03: other project or contract that might come in,
53:17
SPEAKER_03: giving it that same,
53:18
SPEAKER_03: if not higher priority.
53:20
SPEAKER_03: Because especially when you've got a lot of things going on,
53:22
SPEAKER_03: a lot of different projects,
53:24
SPEAKER_03: you scale up to a large team,
53:28
it's very easy to just go for whatever's in your face and that
53:32
is the loudest thing
53:33
SPEAKER_03: in the day or the email that just came through the inbox.
53:36
SPEAKER_03: So being very deliberate and having everyone on the same page of what the
53:39
SPEAKER_03: priorities are month by month.
53:42
SPEAKER_03: means that you can start chipping away at the stuff that matters.
53:45
SPEAKER_01: That's what I wanted to touch on next,
53:47
SPEAKER_01: because you started Astral as a two-person mission,
53:52
SPEAKER_01: and now you're pushing 20 staff,
53:54
SPEAKER_01: most of whom joined you in the last year or so.
53:59
SPEAKER_01: So I'm wondering why you didn't see coming in that kind of scale-up.
54:04
SPEAKER_03: What didn't I see coming scaling up?
54:07
SPEAKER_03: There's so many things.
54:08
SPEAKER_01: Share some, share some.
54:10
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
54:12
SPEAKER_03: I'll share the good, though.
54:13
So the thing I didn't see coming that was good was how
54:18
satisfying it would be.
54:20
how deeply,
54:20
deeply satisfying it would be to have a team of multiple teams
54:24
of people.
54:24
So we've got two senior engineers who are doing the
54:26
manufacturing of the device,
54:28
SPEAKER_03: of the fusion system.
54:29
SPEAKER_03: We've got two people in our nuclear medicine,
54:31
SPEAKER_03: a director of nuclear medicine and a staff scientist.
54:35
SPEAKER_03: And then we have the R&D team, which is the largest team at the moment.
54:39
SPEAKER_03: And then we have operations and admin.
54:42
And just seeing their own culture develop and their own
54:44
relationships develop and
54:46
SPEAKER_03: then being able to give them and say,
54:48
SPEAKER_03: we need this done in the next few months.
54:51
SPEAKER_03: Go ahead and do it.
54:52
SPEAKER_03: And then they figure out their own project plan.
54:54
SPEAKER_03: They figure it out.
54:55
SPEAKER_03: They put in extra hours.
54:56
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
54:57
we did a radiation in February that was 55 hours long and we
55:01
did it before
55:03
SPEAKER_03: Thursday,
55:04
SPEAKER_03: Monday to Thursday,
55:04
SPEAKER_03: end of Thursday,
55:05
SPEAKER_03: I believe,
55:05
SPEAKER_03: a little bit off Friday.
55:07
But the teams pitched in and they said,
55:09
okay,
55:09
we're going to have to start at 8 a.m.
55:11
SPEAKER_03: and finish at 8 p.m.
55:12
SPEAKER_03: It'll be 12-hour days.
55:14
SPEAKER_03: We'll split up the shifts.
55:15
SPEAKER_03: We're going to bring in extra help.
55:17
Someone's going to bring in a Nintendo Switch in case we get
55:20
bored when we're running the tests.
55:22
SPEAKER_03: And that was a really,
55:25
really groundbreaking campaign that we'll be doing some
55:27
publicity about in terms of
55:30
SPEAKER_03: different isotopes that we produced during the campaign.
55:32
SPEAKER_03: But seeing people pull together amongst themselves,
55:36
SPEAKER_03: I didn't expect how deeply gratifying it would be to see that,
55:40
SPEAKER_03: I think.
55:41
SPEAKER_03: But the flip side of that,
55:42
SPEAKER_03: in terms of putting a team together,
55:44
SPEAKER_03: you can do as much preparation as you can,
55:48
SPEAKER_03: I think.
55:52
SPEAKER_03: Which is kind of a result of the nature of stealth mode,
55:56
SPEAKER_03: where the more public you are,
55:58
SPEAKER_03: I think the more traction you've got in the media or PR.
56:01
SPEAKER_03: It's a bit easier to attract talent,
56:03
SPEAKER_03: I think,
56:03
SPEAKER_03: because they see you're out there,
56:06
SPEAKER_03: they see you're in the media,
56:08
SPEAKER_03: they can understand your positioning a bit more.
56:09
SPEAKER_01: There's material about you.
56:11
SPEAKER_01: They get a bit of an idea about the company.
56:14
SPEAKER_01: If they can't find much about it, then yeah, it's...
56:18
SPEAKER_03: Makes it a bit easier.
56:19
SPEAKER_03: So they sort of come to you and you can sort of sift through things.
56:22
So we ended up having to put quite a lot of effort into
56:27
specific hires where we
56:29
SPEAKER_03: interviewed over 20 people.
56:31
SPEAKER_03: Because at that point, we were basically still in stealth mode.
56:34
SPEAKER_03: So we're basically unknown.
56:35
SPEAKER_03: We had the YouTube video from Matt Farrell,
56:37
SPEAKER_03: but that was basically a year out of date at that point.
56:40
SPEAKER_03: So it was quite a lot of faith.
56:41
So we ended up sort of almost re-pitching in the interview,
56:46
having people understand the vision.
56:48
SPEAKER_03: seeing how they responded and trying to understand their personalities,
56:53
hiring multiple people at once and understanding how their
56:56
personalities might
56:56
SPEAKER_03: bounce out with each other.
56:57
SPEAKER_03: And one of the things I did is I looked at our team and I said,
57:01
SPEAKER_03: A,
57:01
no one's really done this before in terms of hiring this many
57:04
people and managing
57:05
SPEAKER_03: this many people.
57:06
SPEAKER_03: And B, we should definitely lean on other expertise.
57:10
In my career,
57:11
being young and being in a nuclear field,
57:14
very complex,
57:15
tech-heavy field,
57:17
SPEAKER_03: I've always had to lean on more senior people for advice.
57:20
SPEAKER_03: So I've never looked at myself and said,
57:23
SPEAKER_03: I'm a perfect genius that knows everything about every topic.
57:27
I tend to try and find who's the best person at this within my
57:31
network and go and
57:32
SPEAKER_03: ask them for help first.
57:34
SPEAKER_03: So what I did is I tried to contact through my network, HR experts.
57:38
So people that were respected in HR and understanding how to
57:41
build and grow teams
57:43
In startups,
57:44
I joined the Bessemer Society,
57:45
which is a hard tech group in London.
57:48
SPEAKER_03: So there are a lot of older entrepreneurs,
57:51
SPEAKER_03: serial entrepreneurs,
57:52
and talking to them and just getting advice about how do you
57:56
decide who you hire?
57:57
SPEAKER_03: One of the phrases that came through that was,
57:59
SPEAKER_03: I'd rather have a hole than an asshole in the company.
58:02
So it's better to have no one in a position rather than having
58:04
someone that's not a
58:05
SPEAKER_03: good fit that's going to cause friction or problems.
58:07
SPEAKER_03: That was a gospel for us going into the hiring process.
58:11
SPEAKER_03: To be honest,
58:12
I think the average turnover rate for startups in this phase is
58:16
something like 30%.
58:16
SPEAKER_03: I've had to fire people.
58:20
SPEAKER_03: I've had to fire multiple people.
58:21
SPEAKER_03: It's always unpleasant.
58:23
SPEAKER_03: It's terrible.
58:23
SPEAKER_03: There might be tears.
58:25
SPEAKER_03: It's going to scar you as well as the other person.
58:28
SPEAKER_03: You might get flashbacks.
58:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I know.
58:32
SPEAKER_03: That person's going to be feeling pretty bad today.
58:34
Maybe they're on LinkedIn and they can see the stuff that we're
58:38
doing and they're
58:39
SPEAKER_03: no longer part of the company.
58:41
SPEAKER_03: But it's the nature of the beast.
58:43
if you're a startup founder it's almost a rite of passage but
58:46
i've known like a few
58:47
people um uh in in my sort of startup network in bristol and i
58:52
remember sort of
58:53
sharing with them because they're basically at the same level
58:56
if not a few months
58:56
ahead or a year ahead which is amazing people to talk to you
59:00
can talk to people who
59:00
are senior like those old grade uh serial entrepreneurs very
59:04
very useful but
59:05
To talk to people that have literally just done it or a few
59:07
months ahead of you is
59:09
SPEAKER_03: like gold dust because it's fresh and the startup world 10 years ago,
59:13
SPEAKER_03: 20 years ago.
59:13
SPEAKER_01: And it's more relevant as well.
59:16
SPEAKER_03: Way more relevant.
59:17
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's way more relatable.
59:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
59:19
SPEAKER_01: And I'm assuming compared to somebody who has done it 15 or 20 years ago,
59:25
there's new elements in play when we're talking about hybrid or
59:30
remote work.
59:32
SPEAKER_01: and a range of other things.
59:35
SPEAKER_01: How do you operate?
59:37
SPEAKER_01: Do you operate hybrid?
59:39
SPEAKER_01: Do you have anybody remote altogether?
59:42
SPEAKER_03: Yeah,
59:42
so I've had Talman working as my co-founder from Toronto since
59:47
the foundation of
59:47
SPEAKER_03: the company.
59:48
SPEAKER_03: He gets up at something like 5 or 6 a.m.
59:50
I know that his kids come in before they go to school every
59:53
morning because when
59:54
SPEAKER_03: I'm in meetings with him,
59:55
SPEAKER_03: sometimes the kids run in and he gives them a hug when they go to school.
59:57
SPEAKER_03: So that's sort of in the DNA of the company that we can make that work.
1:00:02
SPEAKER_03: So we've got Talman, Eitan, finance director,
1:00:08
Over in Canada,
1:00:09
we've just hired someone else that might be joining in Toronto
1:00:12
as well.
1:00:14
SPEAKER_03: And then we have our legal counsel, David English.
1:00:19
SPEAKER_03: He started off being relatively remote from Oxford coming in,
1:00:22
SPEAKER_03: and now he's just moved to New Zealand,
1:00:25
SPEAKER_03: which is a big risk,
1:00:26
SPEAKER_03: right?
1:00:27
But to be honest,
1:00:29
now when we're doing legal documents...
1:00:30
Basically a whole day ahead,
1:00:32
yeah.
1:00:32
SPEAKER_01: But finance being a whole day ahead is not a bad thing.
1:00:37
SPEAKER_03: Yeah,
1:00:38
SPEAKER_03: so now we've been doing letters of intent and different contracts,
1:00:42
SPEAKER_03: and you send it to David,
1:00:43
SPEAKER_03: and then in the morning,
1:00:45
SPEAKER_03: he's already gone through it overnight.
1:00:47
SPEAKER_03: But the thing that's really,
1:00:49
SPEAKER_03: really key,
1:00:50
SPEAKER_03: particularly for the guys that are remote,
1:00:52
SPEAKER_03: when you're in a space working together and you're hands on,
1:00:55
SPEAKER_03: you see each other all the time,
1:00:57
you're so in the loop about the tone and the feeling and what's
1:01:00
on people's minds,
1:01:01
SPEAKER_03: and maybe the unit's a little bit too hot because it's
1:01:05
summer months and you know maybe we need to put a ventilation
1:01:07
thing in and if
1:01:08
you're not on the ground you don't know that that's like a
1:01:10
priority right that sort
1:01:12
of thing so we've made it very very deliberate and we have
1:01:16
discussions about this
1:01:16
sort of thing that people will have check-ins and they have
1:01:19
one-on-ones even just
1:01:20
half an hour calls particularly the ones that are remote so
1:01:23
they understand what's
1:01:24
going on they know how people are doing in the team and they
1:01:28
make time for that and
1:01:29
SPEAKER_03: they make space for that sort of check-in
1:01:32
One of the other things that's been extremely useful in general
1:01:36
was we did,
1:01:36
this came from talking to some HR experts or entrepreneurs that
1:01:42
know their stuff
1:01:42
SPEAKER_03: with this sort of thing,
1:01:43
SPEAKER_03: is we did an annual performance review in December.
1:01:47
SPEAKER_03: And essentially,
1:01:48
some people in the company had only been with us for maybe two
1:01:51
or three months,
1:01:52
SPEAKER_03: others a full year.
1:01:53
SPEAKER_03: But the process was just so valuable, so, so valuable.
1:01:57
So we had people fill out a sort of questionnaire,
1:01:59
like,
1:01:59
how do you think you're doing?
1:02:00
SPEAKER_03: What's your...
1:02:01
main achievements what's the main thing you think you could
1:02:03
have done better and
1:02:05
then we sat down individually with everyone either me on my own
1:02:08
with them as a sort
1:02:09
of line manager or me and talman together so talman flew out we
1:02:12
did a whole bunch
1:02:13
SPEAKER_03: of these conversations together around christmas and in the new year
1:02:17
It was just so enlightening to get multiple perspectives to
1:02:20
understand where the
1:02:21
SPEAKER_03: gaps were,
1:02:22
SPEAKER_03: where things weren't working quite as well as they should.
1:02:25
SPEAKER_03: You can really see in particular sub-teams,
1:02:28
SPEAKER_03: in particular groups,
1:02:29
you have what almost I call a positive feedback loop in a group
1:02:32
or in a pairing of
1:02:33
SPEAKER_03: people where the sum is greater than the individual parts.
1:02:38
SPEAKER_03: You get a lot more stuff done, things are happening a lot faster.
1:02:42
So seeing that in a company makes you really understand the
1:02:46
benefits of getting it
1:02:48
right and having people understand how the other person likes
1:02:51
to be worked with.
1:02:52
So it definitely drives the company and talking about it openly
1:02:56
and giving space to it.
1:02:57
SPEAKER_03: There's a phrase that's used called the growth mindset.
1:03:00
SPEAKER_03: You've probably heard of this before.
1:03:02
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:03:03
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:03:03
SPEAKER_03: So hiring people on the basis of that and
1:03:06
being able to have their own sort of impetus to solve problems
1:03:10
and take things on
1:03:11
SPEAKER_03: themselves is really,
1:03:12
SPEAKER_03: really important.
1:03:13
SPEAKER_03: So the growth mindset is kind of like being able to self-reflect and say,
1:03:18
SPEAKER_03: okay,
1:03:18
SPEAKER_03: I may be really,
1:03:19
SPEAKER_03: really good at these things,
1:03:20
SPEAKER_03: really good at these things,
1:03:21
SPEAKER_03: but I can improve on this and this.
1:03:24
SPEAKER_03: And it's not just omni-disciplinary.
1:03:26
So it's not just,
1:03:27
you know,
1:03:27
in general,
1:03:28
are you,
1:03:29
do you have a growth mindset?
1:03:30
SPEAKER_03: Do you have it in your
1:03:32
Maybe I don't have a growth mindset in physics or in
1:03:35
simulations because I've done
1:03:36
SPEAKER_03: a PhD in it,
1:03:37
SPEAKER_03: so I feel like I'm overconfident in it or something like that.
1:03:41
But maybe I've got more of a growth mindset when it comes to
1:03:43
soft skills or working
1:03:45
SPEAKER_03: with people or being a leader,
1:03:46
SPEAKER_03: for example.
1:03:48
It's areas where you're able to be vulnerable and you're able
1:03:52
to sit down with the
1:03:53
SPEAKER_03: people that you work with and say,
1:03:54
SPEAKER_03: you know,
1:03:55
Do you have any feedback in terms of how I'm working on this
1:03:59
type of topic as a
1:04:01
SPEAKER_03: leader or how I'm arranging my time with you?
1:04:04
SPEAKER_03: Do you want to meet more?
1:04:05
SPEAKER_03: Do you want to meet less?
1:04:06
SPEAKER_03: So yeah, that sort of stuff's been really, really useful.
1:04:09
SPEAKER_03: And for some people,
1:04:11
SPEAKER_03: it comes a lot more naturally,
1:04:12
SPEAKER_03: either culturally or because of their personality.
1:04:14
SPEAKER_03: In other people, it takes more time.
1:04:17
SPEAKER_01: That's what I wanted to ask.
1:04:18
What's one skill you've had to pick up on the fly that science
1:04:23
didn't prepare you for?
1:04:25
SPEAKER_03: There's many things that science didn't teach me,
1:04:27
SPEAKER_03: but I wouldn't say that I learned them on the fly during Astral,
1:04:32
SPEAKER_03: during the foundation of the company.
1:04:35
SPEAKER_03: But I think, yeah.
1:04:38
SPEAKER_03: Okay, yeah.
1:04:39
SPEAKER_03: So how do I describe this?
1:04:41
SPEAKER_03: I'm not even sure if it's a skill.
1:04:43
SPEAKER_03: You might have to help me out with, I'll describe the situations.
1:04:45
SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's diagnose it together.
1:04:48
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we can diagnose it, yeah.
1:04:50
So there's been several times during Astral where there's been
1:04:56
hard decisions that
1:04:57
SPEAKER_03: have been made in terms of,
1:04:59
SPEAKER_03: let's say,
1:05:00
SPEAKER_03: really early on in the foundation of the company or later on with
1:05:03
particular partners or people that we're working with where you
1:05:07
have to really
1:05:07
defend astral's interests right where you have to basically
1:05:12
stand up for not only
1:05:13
yourself but you have to stand up for the company and you have
1:05:16
to be very firm and
1:05:17
assertive right particularly as a young founder you have to be
1:05:21
firm and assertive
1:05:22
over people that are older than you more senior than you right
1:05:26
in other positions
1:05:27
SPEAKER_03: would probably be your boss
1:05:29
SPEAKER_03: right?
1:05:29
And you have to stand your ground and you have to assert your
1:05:32
position and you have
1:05:33
SPEAKER_03: to sort of let out,
1:05:35
be calm in the face of whatever might come at you in those
1:05:37
situations because you
1:05:39
never know how someone might react in that sort of position if
1:05:41
they've never been
1:05:42
SPEAKER_03: challenged in that way before.
1:05:43
SPEAKER_03: So yeah, that's been a skill that, uh, that,
1:05:46
Yeah,
1:05:47
I've definitely gained on the fly within the company that,
1:05:51
I guess,
1:05:51
a PhD.
1:05:52
SPEAKER_03: To some degree,
1:05:53
SPEAKER_03: your viva helps with that,
1:05:55
SPEAKER_03: to some degree,
1:05:56
in terms of just confidence in defending yourself in a
1:05:58
one-on-one or two-on-one or
1:06:00
SPEAKER_01: whatever.
1:06:01
SPEAKER_01: That's just a single process through the academic side,
1:06:05
SPEAKER_01: but otherwise you wouldn't go through that.
1:06:07
SPEAKER_01: So I'm guessing is in science,
1:06:11
SPEAKER_01: or at least in academia,
1:06:12
SPEAKER_01: you defer to your elders,
1:06:15
but here you had to defend and stand your ground when you were
1:06:20
being challenged and
1:06:21
SPEAKER_01: look after your best interests and or the company's best interests.
1:06:27
SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
1:06:28
SPEAKER_03: The attitude is like being a good steward for the company.
1:06:33
SPEAKER_03: I like the term of servant leaders.
1:06:36
The phrase that comes to mind for me a lot is doing the
1:06:40
technology and doing the
1:06:41
SPEAKER_03: company justice.
1:06:42
SPEAKER_03: Seeing it to its absolute formation and to its full fruition.
1:06:48
SPEAKER_03: Um,
1:06:48
SPEAKER_03: and in many ways,
1:06:50
SPEAKER_03: yeah,
1:06:50
SPEAKER_03: you have to make a lot of decisions,
1:06:51
especially as a founder where you've got to make sacrifices or
1:06:55
you've got to make
1:06:55
SPEAKER_03: critical decisions in your life,
1:06:57
SPEAKER_03: your personal life,
1:06:58
SPEAKER_03: you know,
1:06:59
SPEAKER_03: doing a hundred hour weeks.
1:07:00
SPEAKER_03: It's not easy doing it consistently.
1:07:02
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:07:03
SPEAKER_01: And it is something I ask every millennial master I speak, I interview.
1:07:07
SPEAKER_01: Similarly,
1:07:08
I know from my own journey that you have crazy growth times
1:07:15
with long hours and
1:07:17
SPEAKER_01: that involves sacrifices.
1:07:19
SPEAKER_01: So the question is,
1:07:20
SPEAKER_01: Tom,
1:07:20
SPEAKER_01: what's the biggest sacrifice you've had to make to build astrals so far?
1:07:25
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I talk about this so much.
1:07:28
So the process was particularly in that sort of era from late
1:07:34
2022 through 2023,
1:07:36
SPEAKER_03: when we were building our first private facility from scratch,
1:07:41
SPEAKER_03: basically,
1:07:42
SPEAKER_03: and far away from where I was living in Bristol,
1:07:45
SPEAKER_03: so like a two-hour drive.
1:07:47
SPEAKER_03: Me and Mahmoud would do 12, 16-hour days
1:07:51
Quite a lot of physical manual labor as well that was involved
1:07:54
in physically
1:07:55
SPEAKER_03: building something,
1:07:56
SPEAKER_03: building the bunker.
1:07:57
And during that period,
1:07:58
it was just a given that it just consumed basically my whole
1:08:03
life.
1:08:03
And whenever I'd see my family or my friends,
1:08:07
basically all I could talk about was work.
1:08:09
SPEAKER_03: I was basically aware of that.
1:08:12
SPEAKER_03: And then,
1:08:12
SPEAKER_03: you know,
1:08:13
SPEAKER_03: finding time to see friends,
1:08:14
SPEAKER_03: finding time to see friends was hard enough,
1:08:17
SPEAKER_03: but finding time for myself was even harder,
1:08:20
SPEAKER_03: right?
1:08:21
SPEAKER_03: Because friends ask some friends, they're like, oh, how's it going?
1:08:24
SPEAKER_03: Do you want to go to the pub or do you want to go and do something?
1:08:27
SPEAKER_03: Do you want to go watch a movie?
1:08:28
SPEAKER_03: Whereas finding time for yourself is the hard part.
1:08:30
SPEAKER_03: And it really hit home where things started to calm down slightly.
1:08:34
SPEAKER_03: We managed to hire someone part-time to just assist with
1:08:37
the admin and running the company and all the mail that you get
1:08:40
from the UK
1:08:41
SPEAKER_03: government,
1:08:41
SPEAKER_03: which just sucks.
1:08:42
SPEAKER_03: We got a letter.
1:08:43
Our first letter from His Majesty the King for our tax was a
1:08:47
tax bill for £200,000,
1:08:50
SPEAKER_03: which is basically the entire revenue of the company that year.
1:08:54
SPEAKER_03: As a founder not really knowing what was going on,
1:08:59
SPEAKER_03: your heart sinks and you think,
1:09:01
SPEAKER_03: oh my God,
1:09:01
SPEAKER_03: this is terrible.
1:09:02
SPEAKER_03: Obviously, it was a mistake on their part.
1:09:05
SPEAKER_03: You laugh about these things now.
1:09:07
SPEAKER_03: But during that time...
1:09:08
SPEAKER_01: You had a brief or not so brief moment of panic,
1:09:12
SPEAKER_01: though,
1:09:12
SPEAKER_01: when you saw it,
1:09:13
especially when your finance director on a totally different
1:09:17
time zone takes a
1:09:19
SPEAKER_01: while to respond,
1:09:20
SPEAKER_01: right?
1:09:21
SPEAKER_01: There's a few hours of total panic.
1:09:24
SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
1:09:25
SPEAKER_03: So I want to get that framed because it's just such a funny document.
1:09:31
The point is that it really dawned on me when stuff started to
1:09:34
calm down and started to
1:09:37
SPEAKER_03: divide up the labor a little bit more.
1:09:38
SPEAKER_03: And I was able to reflect.
1:09:41
SPEAKER_03: And suddenly I had a weekend.
1:09:43
SPEAKER_03: I got to Friday, 7, 8 p.m.
1:09:46
SPEAKER_03: Okay, I have a weekend now.
1:09:47
SPEAKER_03: I was like, oh, I haven't planned anything in advance.
1:09:50
SPEAKER_03: What do I do?
1:09:51
SPEAKER_03: And I remember getting my notepad because I write a lot of notes.
1:09:54
SPEAKER_03: I write a lot in the evenings as well, sometimes if I can't sleep.
1:09:58
SPEAKER_03: And I'd write down, I could always write down to-do lists for work.
1:10:01
SPEAKER_03: That's very, very useful for me.
1:10:04
SPEAKER_03: And I literally wrote.
1:10:05
SPEAKER_01: A lot of people tell me that.
1:10:07
SPEAKER_01: And they, unlike me, they seem pretty set on paper to-do lists.
1:10:12
I like to do mine in my notes digitally because you won't
1:10:19
forget your phone,
1:10:19
SPEAKER_01: but you might forget your notebook.
1:10:21
SPEAKER_03: Yes, exactly.
1:10:22
SPEAKER_03: I could talk about that in a sec, but the list that I wrote was hobbies.
1:10:28
SPEAKER_03: I had to find time in my diary.
1:10:30
I literally had to find time,
1:10:32
put in an hour to say,
1:10:34
you know,
1:10:35
remember what your hobbies are.
1:10:37
SPEAKER_03: Block the time, yeah.
1:10:39
SPEAKER_03: Block the time out.
1:10:40
And I remember writing lists of like,
1:10:41
so what did I enjoy before I started doing this?
1:10:44
SPEAKER_03: I did pottery.
1:10:45
SPEAKER_03: I think I used to play squash.
1:10:46
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:10:47
SPEAKER_03: And I had to like write,
1:10:48
remember what they were because I'd like half forgotten that
1:10:51
and write them down
1:10:52
SPEAKER_03: and then start to block them and then start to do them again.
1:10:55
And I totally saw during that period how some people just
1:10:59
become just horrible
1:11:01
SPEAKER_03: people to work with just because of the way that they burden the stress,
1:11:05
SPEAKER_03: they go inwards.
1:11:07
SPEAKER_03: They don't never find time for themselves and they just get really,
1:11:10
SPEAKER_03: when things go wrong,
1:11:11
SPEAKER_03: it kind of sets them off in a certain way.
1:11:12
SPEAKER_03: And I was like, wow, I totally see how this happens to people.
1:11:15
I know the feeling because you get so invested into it and you
1:11:19
know you're putting
1:11:20
SPEAKER_01: every waking hour into it.
1:11:23
And if something goes wrong,
1:11:25
it feels even more personal and affected than it should be.
1:11:31
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's the roller coaster.
1:11:33
SPEAKER_03: So the highs are really high, right?
1:11:35
SPEAKER_03: Because it's your whole life.
1:11:36
SPEAKER_03: But then anytime anything happens,
1:11:37
SPEAKER_03: like a letter that is an unreasonably high tax bill,
1:11:42
SPEAKER_03: then it hits hard.
1:11:45
SPEAKER_03: You just get seasoned to it.
1:11:47
SPEAKER_03: You get more used to it.
1:11:47
And it's actually quite cute almost when you're hiring new
1:11:50
people who haven't been
1:11:51
SPEAKER_03: in a startup environment and you see them going through the same process.
1:11:55
And they're reacting to something that they think is a
1:11:58
rollercoaster moment.
1:11:59
SPEAKER_03: It's like a tiny,
1:12:00
tiny blip in comparison to what you've experienced in the past
1:12:04
in terms of crunch
1:12:06
SPEAKER_03: time and having to adapt.
1:12:08
Um,
1:12:08
but yeah,
1:12:08
when it comes to note taking,
1:12:09
I've,
1:12:10
I've had a bit of a journey.
1:12:12
SPEAKER_03: So I used to be,
1:12:13
SPEAKER_03: you know,
1:12:13
SPEAKER_03: like a good grammar school kid when I was younger with a,
1:12:17
SPEAKER_03: with a little diary of each day of the week,
1:12:20
SPEAKER_03: get it signed off.
1:12:21
SPEAKER_03: I basically kept that all the way through university where I,
1:12:24
SPEAKER_03: where I had a,
1:12:24
SPEAKER_03: I think it was Muji.
1:12:25
SPEAKER_03: I love Muji,
1:12:26
SPEAKER_03: Muji notebooks,
1:12:27
where it has one side as the seven days of the week and the
1:12:29
other side is just
1:12:30
SPEAKER_03: notes.
1:12:31
So I just do what I'm doing during the week and I do it to do
1:12:34
for work and I do it
1:12:35
SPEAKER_03: like a basically life admin.
1:12:38
SPEAKER_03: separate them out into two separate lists.
1:12:40
SPEAKER_03: The chores.
1:12:42
SPEAKER_03: The chores, yeah.
1:12:43
SPEAKER_03: Seeing friends, having fun.
1:12:44
SPEAKER_03: And then moving that to digital has been tough for me.
1:12:48
SPEAKER_03: I sort of struggled.
1:12:49
SPEAKER_03: I was like, how do I do this?
1:12:50
And then I went for a period of trying to get a digital and it
1:12:52
just meant that I
1:12:53
SPEAKER_03: just didn't have a diary.
1:12:54
SPEAKER_03: I didn't have my to-do sorted out.
1:12:56
SPEAKER_03: And I really saw it drop in the productivity.
1:12:58
SPEAKER_03: And now I've kind of figured it out.
1:13:00
SPEAKER_03: And it's not without these technologies.
1:13:02
SPEAKER_03: So I have one of these digital notepads.
1:13:07
SPEAKER_03: Is that a remarkable?
1:13:08
SPEAKER_03: This is a remarkable.
1:13:09
SPEAKER_03: It's not the pro with the different colors.
1:13:12
SPEAKER_03: It's just black and white.
1:13:14
SPEAKER_03: But what I do is I make notes religiously for stuff.
1:13:19
SPEAKER_03: If I'm in a situation where I can hold a notebook like this,
1:13:22
SPEAKER_03: if not,
1:13:22
SPEAKER_03: then I'm using the notes on the phone.
1:13:24
But what I do is when you go to the wider view where you can
1:13:28
sort of skim through
1:13:29
SPEAKER_03: all the pages,
1:13:31
SPEAKER_03: you can actually still see some text.
1:13:33
SPEAKER_03: So every time I'm making notes,
1:13:34
SPEAKER_03: if there's an action of something that needs to be done,
1:13:37
SPEAKER_03: I do like a big double close bracket symbol,
1:13:41
SPEAKER_03: like two big close brackets.
1:13:44
So when I zoom out and I'm skimming through,
1:13:45
I do this maybe once a month.
1:13:47
SPEAKER_03: I do like a collation of my tasks.
1:13:50
SPEAKER_03: I skim back through the month and I do like monthly notebooks.
1:13:52
SPEAKER_03: So I go like, for example, I went back through April.
1:13:55
SPEAKER_03: I skim through, I go, oh, there's a task.
1:13:56
SPEAKER_03: I go into the notes.
1:13:58
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'll put that into planner.
1:13:59
SPEAKER_03: It's my to-do.
1:14:00
SPEAKER_03: And I talk with the team and I make sure that,
1:14:02
SPEAKER_03: you know,
1:14:02
SPEAKER_03: that's delegated to this person or this person.
1:14:05
SPEAKER_03: That works super, super well for me.
1:14:07
And I've been shocked about how much stuff that I've just
1:14:09
totally forgot about that
1:14:12
SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't have captured.
1:14:13
SPEAKER_01: If you don't take notes, you will easily forget all the tasks.
1:14:18
That's why a lot of people I've been talking to say that their
1:14:21
notes app on their
1:14:23
phone is their goldmine and personal assistant in terms of
1:14:27
whenever inspiration
1:14:28
SPEAKER_01: strikes you,
1:14:29
SPEAKER_01: you tend to have your phone on you rather than a notebook.
1:14:33
SPEAKER_01: And that's where most of the ideas go.
1:14:36
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of people have started telling me now as well about
1:14:40
SPEAKER_01: voice notes and recording their voice but with the advances in technology
1:14:45
especially with AI now and especially on iPhones you can record
1:14:49
your voice note and
1:14:50
you get a transcript of it automatically that can live in your
1:14:54
notes so it's much
1:14:54
more easily searchable as well and you don't have to look back
1:14:58
through it so that's
1:15:00
another evolution thanks to technology more so but you seem to
1:15:04
be quite set on that
1:15:06
paper feeling one way or another yeah it is it's the paper
1:15:09
fitting and it's because
1:15:10
i um this is actually probably a good point around productivity
1:15:15
and just general
1:15:16
SPEAKER_03: mental health to be honest is ever since i was 16 um i would just
1:15:23
SPEAKER_03: not journal to a degree.
1:15:26
SPEAKER_03: I've always struggled with sleep,
1:15:27
but it's actually only been since last year when I started
1:15:30
taking methylated B12
1:15:31
SPEAKER_03: that I managed to actually sleep properly,
1:15:34
SPEAKER_03: probably because I had a deficiency.
1:15:35
SPEAKER_03: I recommend it to people.
1:15:39
SPEAKER_03: So for 10 years and for maybe even longer,
1:15:42
SPEAKER_03: I'd be lying awake at night,
1:15:44
SPEAKER_03: my mind buzzing with ideas,
1:15:46
SPEAKER_03: not able to sleep.
1:15:47
SPEAKER_03: So I'd go over and I'd get a book out
1:15:51
notebook and I'd just start to write and I'd write stream of
1:15:55
consciousness and I'd
1:15:56
commit to myself that before the end of the first page or the
1:16:00
second page,
1:16:00
SPEAKER_03: if I was writing a lot,
1:16:03
SPEAKER_03: I would have to summarize
1:16:06
elegantly the thing that was on my mind and hopefully maybe
1:16:10
even conclude it in a
1:16:12
SPEAKER_03: satisfying manner.
1:16:13
SPEAKER_03: And so it almost turned into these like stream of consciousness essays on
1:16:17
SPEAKER_03: particular topics that were just stuck in my head.
1:16:20
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, okay, why is this stuck in my head?
1:16:22
SPEAKER_03: What does this mean?
1:16:23
SPEAKER_03: How can I describe this elegantly?
1:16:25
SPEAKER_03: I've been doing that for over 10 years.
1:16:28
Part of writing for me is almost like it takes what's quite
1:16:33
ethereal in the brain
1:16:34
SPEAKER_03: of opinions or thoughts or ideas,
1:16:37
SPEAKER_03: makes them concrete and it's almost final.
1:16:41
SPEAKER_03: You don't have to think about it as much anymore because you said,
1:16:43
SPEAKER_03: that's how I feel about it and it's done.
1:16:48
SPEAKER_03: For me, it's very tactical.
1:16:49
SPEAKER_03: It's very physical.
1:16:51
SPEAKER_03: I like doing stuff with my hands like pottery.
1:16:53
SPEAKER_01: So it's a way to offload your brain.
1:16:55
SPEAKER_01: Do you go back through your journal?
1:16:57
SPEAKER_01: Again,
1:16:58
some millennial masters who told me they do journaling in one
1:17:01
shape or another,
1:17:02
SPEAKER_01: they use it for gratitude or for progress and going back through it.
1:17:08
SPEAKER_01: What do you do with your notes besides the practical part,
1:17:11
SPEAKER_01: which you already mentioned about collating tasks and turning them into
1:17:15
SPEAKER_01: productivity?
1:17:16
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I have occasionally looked back at my old notes.
1:17:20
SPEAKER_03: The ones when I was a late teenager are quite funny.
1:17:24
SPEAKER_03: That's more of a diary, yeah.
1:17:27
SPEAKER_03: Yeah,
1:17:28
SPEAKER_03: but the ones more recently are very,
1:17:30
very interesting because sometimes you forget what you've
1:17:33
written and it can be
1:17:35
SPEAKER_03: quite helpful just to be reminded of different things.
1:17:38
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, in the future, I don't know.
1:17:40
SPEAKER_03: I don't know what I'll do with them.
1:17:42
SPEAKER_03: I've toyed with the idea of
1:17:45
SPEAKER_03: when I'm older into some kind of self-help book for people.
1:17:48
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
1:17:49
SPEAKER_03: But for me, that's been really, really helpful.
1:17:50
SPEAKER_03: That and meditation in particular.
1:17:54
So these are basically touching what tends to be usually among
1:17:59
my final questions,
1:18:00
SPEAKER_01: your habits and systems to disconnect and or keep focused and productive.
1:18:06
SPEAKER_01: So besides journaling, you said you meditate as well.
1:18:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:18:11
SPEAKER_01: What sort of meditation are we talking about?
1:18:13
SPEAKER_03: Yeah,
1:18:14
SPEAKER_03: so the origin of meditation in my life comes from,
1:18:18
SPEAKER_03: as you said at the start,
1:18:19
SPEAKER_03: me wanting to be either a teacher or an inventor.
1:18:21
SPEAKER_03: I had this dichotomy when I was doing my GCSEs and then A-levels of,
1:18:26
SPEAKER_03: do I want to go into physics or do I want to go into philosophy?
1:18:30
SPEAKER_03: Because I really, really loved philosophy.
1:18:32
SPEAKER_03: But they are at opposite ends.
1:18:35
SPEAKER_03: You would think that, yeah.
1:18:38
SPEAKER_03: I actually applied for a few courses.
1:18:40
There's some good courses in the UK,
1:18:42
universities that do physics and philosophy together.
1:18:45
SPEAKER_03: Very interesting.
1:18:46
SPEAKER_03: But the teacher that I had,
1:18:47
SPEAKER_03: Brian Kreisel,
1:18:48
SPEAKER_03: who taught religion and philosophy,
1:18:50
the standard syllabus for the religion and philosophy tends to
1:18:53
be Christianity or
1:18:54
SPEAKER_03: Judeo-Christian beliefs with something like Islam or Hinduism.
1:18:59
SPEAKER_03: But he sort of went off piste and he said,
1:19:02
SPEAKER_03: no,
1:19:02
SPEAKER_03: I'm going to teach Judeo-Christian beliefs and Buddhism.
1:19:05
SPEAKER_03: That was his syllabus that he had and it was quite rare.
1:19:08
And I remember one of the sessions that he had,
1:19:11
he was quite an imposing guy.
1:19:12
SPEAKER_03: I think he was almost on the UK basketball team,
1:19:16
SPEAKER_03: very big guy,
1:19:16
SPEAKER_03: very round head,
1:19:17
SPEAKER_03: big hands,
1:19:18
SPEAKER_03: very softly spoken.
1:19:19
SPEAKER_03: He sort of sat in front of the class and said,
1:19:21
SPEAKER_03: OK,
1:19:21
SPEAKER_03: boys,
1:19:22
today we're going to do some guided thought exercises because
1:19:27
this is a Church of
1:19:27
SPEAKER_03: England school.
1:19:28
SPEAKER_03: Right now,
1:19:29
SPEAKER_03: as of this year,
1:19:29
we are not able to do meditation exercises at the school
1:19:33
because it will let the
1:19:34
SPEAKER_03: devil in.
1:19:35
SPEAKER_03: But we can do guided thought exercises.
1:19:37
SPEAKER_03: So he had us close our eyes, visualize different things.
1:19:41
SPEAKER_03: Not actually try to shut things out, but actually be more present.
1:19:45
So actually listen to the sounds that are going on around you
1:19:47
more closely.
1:19:48
SPEAKER_03: Listen to the sounds of the birds or the sound outside,
1:19:51
SPEAKER_03: the sound that you're breathing,
1:19:52
SPEAKER_03: sensations of touch in your hand.
1:19:54
So I think there can be a bit of a misjudgment around Buddhist
1:19:58
meditation that it's
1:19:59
SPEAKER_03: almost detaching from reality in some way.
1:20:02
SPEAKER_03: But I kind of view it for me personally as being even more present.
1:20:06
Because actually the things that are affecting you and the
1:20:09
stress in your mind aren't
1:20:12
real unless you're being chased by a tiger right that's a
1:20:14
different kind of
1:20:14
situation but in modern day it tends not in bristol not in
1:20:18
bristol yeah the zoo's a
1:20:20
bit further out now they've moved the zoo but um the so you
1:20:24
have this place that
1:20:25
you can go where you become more present and you and you're
1:20:28
you're sort of
1:20:29
observing the thoughts that go through your mind like clouds
1:20:33
over a mountain you've
1:20:34
probably heard that kind of analogy before so you can you can
1:20:37
start you can kind of
1:20:38
look at the thoughts that are happening on in your mind in
1:20:40
third person you can say
1:20:41
SPEAKER_03: okay
1:20:42
SPEAKER_03: That's interesting that that thought keeps coming up.
1:20:43
SPEAKER_03: I wonder why that is.
1:20:44
So that's the sort of exercise I do with my writing is I do
1:20:48
that exercise of
1:20:48
emptying my mind and just see what bubbles up and then try to
1:20:51
address it or just
1:20:53
SPEAKER_03: let it be.
1:20:53
SPEAKER_03: So yeah,
1:20:54
I found that useful as a centering exercise and particularly
1:20:57
the lectures of Alan
1:20:59
SPEAKER_03: Watts.
1:20:59
SPEAKER_03: Really, really good.
1:21:00
SPEAKER_03: I believe they're on Spotify or YouTube.
1:21:02
There's Out of Your Mind,
1:21:03
the series Out of Your Mind,
1:21:04
the lecture series by Alan Watts.
1:21:06
SPEAKER_03: Fantastic.
1:21:07
SPEAKER_03: Every couple of years, I forget about it.
1:21:08
SPEAKER_03: I go, I should probably listen to that again.
1:21:10
SPEAKER_03: And I listen to it.
1:21:11
SPEAKER_03: it resonates with different parts of life again,
1:21:14
SPEAKER_03: because,
1:21:15
SPEAKER_03: you know,
1:21:15
SPEAKER_03: you change as a person and,
1:21:16
SPEAKER_03: uh,
1:21:17
SPEAKER_03: if you find it useful in different ways,
1:21:19
SPEAKER_03: that and the lectures of Richard Feynman,
1:21:20
SPEAKER_03: which are online as well.
1:21:21
SPEAKER_03: Awesome.
1:21:23
Are there any particular books you would recommend to fellow
1:21:28
entrepreneurs and deep
1:21:29
SPEAKER_01: tech startups,
1:21:31
SPEAKER_01: uh,
1:21:31
It's also something I ask people and I have a growing reading
1:21:36
list as well that I
1:21:38
share with all the book recommendations from Millennial Masters
1:21:42
and they'll make it
1:21:42
SPEAKER_01: into the show notes as well.
1:21:45
SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
1:21:47
SPEAKER_03: For fundraising and for startups, I'd say venture deals.
1:21:50
SPEAKER_03: You must have had that before.
1:21:51
SPEAKER_03: Venture deals, V-E-N-T-U-R-E deals.
1:21:55
SPEAKER_03: Like a little handbook.
1:21:56
SPEAKER_03: It also comes with links to blogs as well by a couple of guys who are...
1:22:01
SPEAKER_03: very well-storied venture capitalists and entrepreneurs.
1:22:05
SPEAKER_03: And it's still as true as it was 10 years ago.
1:22:08
SPEAKER_03: It's a relatively old text.
1:22:10
SPEAKER_03: But for someone who's totally got no idea about
1:22:15
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
1:22:15
SPEAKER_03: to be honest,
1:22:15
SPEAKER_03: when I was doing my physics course,
1:22:17
SPEAKER_03: I never thought I'd be a guy that would know anything about,
1:22:19
SPEAKER_03: you know,
1:22:19
SPEAKER_03: ASA safe agreements or,
1:22:22
SPEAKER_03: you know,
1:22:22
SPEAKER_03: option pools and things like this.
1:22:24
But for understanding the language and understanding the
1:22:27
meaning and the process
1:22:29
SPEAKER_03: and even the history of how all this language came to be,
1:22:31
SPEAKER_03: I found that really,
1:22:32
SPEAKER_03: really useful.
1:22:33
And I'll probably go back to rereading it again because it's
1:22:35
got advice for
1:22:36
SPEAKER_03: different stages of company.
1:22:38
as well so yeah definitely yeah with each round as a new set of
1:22:41
terminology and
1:22:43
then then you go into dilution and the range of other things as
1:22:46
you yeah yeah yeah
1:22:48
so i i would i would really really recommend before you before
1:22:51
you speak to anyone
1:22:53
an investory or investory definitely familiarize yourself with
1:22:56
the language um
1:22:58
because it just takes the conversations to a different a
1:23:01
different level if you can
1:23:03
SPEAKER_03: talk the talk basically otherwise you're sort of uh yeah it's it's a
1:23:07
It's a bit of a struggle to wrap your head around what's going
1:23:10
on if you don't
1:23:10
SPEAKER_03: understand the mechanisms.
1:23:11
SPEAKER_03: Because I looked at it as a physicist,
1:23:15
SPEAKER_03: and at this point,
1:23:16
SPEAKER_03: it's almost formulaic,
1:23:20
the way that you can understand processes and what actually
1:23:22
matters and what you
1:23:24
SPEAKER_03: need to do.
1:23:24
SPEAKER_03: But everyone will interpret it in their own way to understand it.
1:23:29
SPEAKER_03: But yeah,
1:23:30
that's what I'd say in terms of the book for directly helping
1:23:34
with fundraising and
1:23:35
SPEAKER_03: entrepreneurship,
1:23:36
SPEAKER_03: I'd say.
1:23:37
SPEAKER_01: And as a wrap-up question,
1:23:40
SPEAKER_01: Tom,
1:23:40
SPEAKER_01: now that we've gotten a bit more introspective,
1:23:43
I'm wondering what would be the advice you'd be able to give
1:23:48
yourself now to Tom
1:23:51
SPEAKER_01: five years ago when you started Astral Systems on a
1:23:57
SPEAKER_01: Kind of a whim with a remote founder and a big idea.
1:24:04
SPEAKER_03: That would have been 2020.
1:24:04
SPEAKER_03: That would have been COVID.
1:24:07
SPEAKER_03: I would have just had COVID in February.
1:24:09
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's just probably just telling myself it's going to be worth it.
1:24:15
SPEAKER_03: It's going to be worth it in more ways than you understand, to be honest.
1:24:19
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, don't lose sight of it.
1:24:23
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, definitely give yourself a pat on the back when you can.
1:24:29
SPEAKER_03: I think you mentioned gratitude before.
1:24:31
I think definitely a big thing for me last year was being able
1:24:35
to let in the
1:24:36
gratitude of what we've achieved basically as a team and how
1:24:40
far we've come and
1:24:41
SPEAKER_03: what that actually means.
1:24:43
I think part of being successful in any kind of job is if
1:24:48
you've maybe got
1:24:48
SPEAKER_03: something slightly wrong with you that you don't stop.
1:24:51
SPEAKER_01: It is a trait of entrepreneurs, yeah.
1:24:54
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you don't stop and go, oh, I'm good.
1:24:57
SPEAKER_03: Let me check out now and I'll put my feet up.
1:25:00
So sometimes there isn't that moment of sort of patting
1:25:03
yourself on the back and
1:25:04
SPEAKER_03: saying,
1:25:04
SPEAKER_03: you know,
1:25:05
that was a good job rather than just looking back and being
1:25:07
critical and thinking,
1:25:08
SPEAKER_03: oh,
1:25:08
SPEAKER_03: that could have been better or on to the next thing,
1:25:10
SPEAKER_03: on to the next thing.
1:25:11
Yeah,
1:25:12
taking that time and space is really,
1:25:14
really important,
1:25:15
definitely.
1:25:15
SPEAKER_03: And prioritizing yourself, definitely.
1:25:17
SPEAKER_03: And your own space.
1:25:18
SPEAKER_03: Not prioritizing yourself in an egotistical,
1:25:22
SPEAKER_03: success-driven way,
1:25:23
but in a more emotionally aware way for making space for
1:25:27
yourself as an individual
1:25:28
SPEAKER_03: to grow independently from what's going on in the company,
1:25:31
SPEAKER_03: your own personal growth.
1:25:32
And I think that's a great idea to keep in mind as we wrap up
1:25:37
this conversation.
1:25:39
SPEAKER_01: So thank you so much,
1:25:40
SPEAKER_01: Tom,
1:25:41
SPEAKER_01: for coming on Millennial Masters,
1:25:43
SPEAKER_01: sharing your story and some of the wisdom you gathered so far.
1:25:47
SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Daniel.
1:25:48
SPEAKER_03: It was a pleasure.
1:25:48
SPEAKER_03: It was lovely speaking with you.
1:25:50
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for sticking till the end.
1:25:53
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