Shows / Pirates Only
Pirates Only
“Pirates Only” is a podcast series created by pirates, for pirates (AKA visionary startup founders breaking new ground). Each episode brings together innovative founders working within similar industries to openly discuss groundbreaking ideas, hard challenges, and the massive opportunities ahead. From deep-sea robotics to space tech, AI, and beyond, we’ll explore the bold futures these pioneers are building. Join us as we dive into what’s next, celebrating this adventurous future, and the…
Episodes
Pirates OnlySmack and the Fight for Decision Dominance
Andy Markoff, co-founder and CEO of Smack Technologies, sits down with Andrew Couillard fourteen months after their first conversation. In that time, Smack has…
Pirates OnlyTectonic and the Race to Post-Quantum Security
Mike Berman, co-founder and CEO of Tectonic, joins Andrew Couillard to unpack the future of a post-quantum world. Tectonic entered the first Black Flag cohort…
Pirates OnlyAmerican Supercritical and Powering the Data Center Boom
Simon Shuham, co-founder and CEO of American Supercritical, joins Andrew Couillard to explain why the exhaust heat pouring out of gas turbines may be the most…
Pirates OnlyFrom Memes to Mission: Recruiting the Next Generation with Sitreps
Sitreps began in 2019 as a military meme page Kyle Eberly started while doing M&A work at PwC, built on a simple insight: you do not need three million…
Pirates OnlyEraDrive and Building Autonomy in Space
Sumant Sharma, co-founder and CEO of EraDrive, joins Mat to explain why the satellites circling Earth today are effectively blind and micromanaged from the…
Pirates OnlyOdin and the Future of Maritime Dominance
Amir Khan and Jon Haase came to Odin Dynamics from opposite ends of the same problem. Amir built batteries and powertrains at Tesla, ARC, and Matternet, then…
Pirates OnlyDrones, Drones and More Drones
In this episode, Mat sits down with Dan, CEO of Firestorm, and Michael LaFramboise, CEO of Aurelius Systems, two founders tackling the drone revolution from…
Pirates OnlyElectroflow and the Battery America Needs
Eric McShane spent a decade in battery research before discovering, during his Stanford postdoc, that startups were the path he had been looking for all along…
Pirates OnlyGaladyne and the American Missile Crisis
Chandler Luzsicza spent nearly five years at SpaceX as a propulsion engineer on the Dragon capsule and Starship programs before a brief stop at autonomous…
Pirates OnlyLux Aeterna and How Reusable Satellites Unlock the Next Space Era
Brian Taylor spent 15 years in aerospace before founding Lux Aeterna, including building the first 60 Starlink satellites at SpaceX from zero to launch in nine…
Pirates OnlyVolund and the Future of Propulsion Manufacturing
Eric Hostetler spent years as a mechanical engineer building cult consumer brands, from Fox Racing motocross gear to Beats by Dre, logging nearly 100 trips to…
Pirates OnlyAalo Atomics and the New Nuclear Age
In this episode of Pirates Only, I sat down with Matt Loszak and Yasir, co-founders of Aalo Atomics, the company betting that nuclear power isn't just making a…
Pirates OnlyThe One Big Beautiful Bill: And What It Means for Founders and VCs
In this episode we haul anchor with Clint Brown, our very own Capitol-Hill insider, to chart the One Big, Beautiful Bill that just splashed down in D.C. We…
Pirates OnlyThe Data Center Revolution: Including Discussions on Aerospace, AI and Energy
I had the privilege of hosting two remarkable founders from Y Combinator - Sam Mendel from Network Ocean and Philip Johnston from Star Cloud - who are tackling…
Pirates OnlyLet's Talk About the Weather: AI Forecasting, Ocean Balloons, and Climate Control
In this episode of Pirates Only, I dive into the world of innovative weather technology with three incredible founders: Alex Levy from Atmo, Austin Tindle from…
Pirates OnlyMailbag Q&A: Black Flag, Fundraising & More
In this episode of Pirates Only I invited two of my Black Flag colleagues Andrew Couillard, our Program Director, and Matias Zorrilla, who leads first-look…
Pirates OnlyFrom Cosmos to Quarries: Asteroid Mining, Autonomous Drilling, and the Trillion-Dollar Metals Opportunity
In our latest Pirates Only adventure, we trade surfboards for star-ships and jackhammers for ion thrusters, asking a deceptively simple question: what happens…
Pirates OnlyRobots: Coming to a Home Near You
In this episode of Pirates Only I sat down with industry leaders Ben from K-Scale Labs, Ritwik Pavan from Hardware Nation, and Mehul Nariyawala from Matic…
Pirates OnlyStorytelling on the New Frontier: How Deep Tech Startups Use Narrative, Branding, and Design to Raise Capital and Hire the Best
In this episode of Pirates Only, we sit down with three expert storytellers shaping the narratives behind leading deep tech startups: Emily Gold (OPFOR Media)…
Pirates OnlyThe Ocean is the New Space: Blue Tech, Robotics, and the $3T Opportunity
In this debut episode of Pirates Only, we’re exploring the vast potential of blue tech, the frontier of maritime innovation reshaping how we view the ocean as…