Jason Carman

It's been 2+ years since S3 last featured @AstroMechanica — they've been quietly building a new vision of supersonic passenger travel. By building electric adaptive engines (efficient at every stage of flight) to reimagining airline economics itself, @ianbrooke and team's next step... is taking flight.

@ti_morse @jimbelosic @sendcutsend The playbook for building things in America

My second interview with @JimBelosic, Founder of @SendCutSend. 0:15 Beating China in manufacturing requires scale 1:10 Automation is not a magic bullet 2:12 Scaling profitably 4:31 Delivering a great customer experience 8:44 Why SCS raised $110M 11:20 Expectations are promises 15:33 Increasing speed and capacity 18:46 Focusing on customers 22:20 Frugality and generosity 25:06 Creating The Anything Factory 26:33 3pm is the new midnight 27:49 Figuring out the next bottleneck 30:37 Finding buildings with enough power 35:21 Lowering prices 37:36 Gambling to turn on factories faster 39:03 Aim for perfection and you’ll end up at excellence 40:04 Maintaining a maniacal sense of urgency through impatience 41:30 Seeding SCS DNA at new factories 43:08 Solving challenges 45:32 Finding great capital partners 48:40 Focus on customer pain 51:59 Learning from Home Depot 54:16 Bringing manufacturing back to America 55:11 Building capacity creates demand 57:01 Handling demand surges 58:21 Being default skeptical and sensing bullsh*t 1:00:27 Getting back to building

Congratulations @jimbelosic on the $110M round... American manufacturing is coming back bigger and better than ever before. ONCE AGAIN, IT IS TIME TO BUILD!

Worth noting: The traditional PR/video agency model SUCKS. It's partially why I started @storyandscience — to create better video, faster, while doing better deep-tech/science messaging than any PR firm can. We don't advertise ourselves, but reach out if you need story help!

The inverse is true for deciding to WORK at a company! I'll never forget the day I toured Astranis, talked to the engineers, met Christian (who ended up being the best boss I ever had) and realized how life changing it would be to work there.

@suffiyanmalikk @pronounced_kyle @a16z @Astranis Awesome episode (biased)

E28: Christian Keil (@pronounced_kyle), Partner @a16z American Dynamism on Scaling @Astranis and Traits of Elite Operators. I first met Christian over Twitter/X DMs probably 3 years ago or so. He started building the Astranis media function in public, he was the face of it as he figured out @X and video in real time. When he joined, they were a team of 50 and by the time he left they were about 500 people. How to be an elite operator at a startup? Take on more projects. I agree with Christian on this and can relate. Some of them become whole orgs, Christian was hired for a finance job, got looped into recruiting as the company was struggling to find a good recruiter, he was involved in regulatory and building their owned premium media. He hired @jasonjoyride (E21 on We The Builders), who he describes as generational video talent to start their owned premium media production at the company and they started doing this before cinematic video went mainstream as a channel for startups, especially frontier tech startups. In this conversation, we cover: --> Hiring generational talent --> How become good at something you have no experience in? --> How to get good at Twitter/X without rage baiting --> Podcasting and his show 1st Principles --> How to think about what problem to go after? --> Time allocation, digital and physical cleanliness Tune into the full episode for all the insights. Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction 01:57 - Growing Twitter/X 04:37 - Finding the message to fit the audience 06:24 - “Reply Guy” as a growth strategy 08:46 - Building a marketing function from scratch 10:50 - Spotting generational talent 12:47 - Why you should only hire “Standard Deviation” outliers? 15:13 - Curiosity as the core predictor for successful operators at startups 16:52 - From 50 to 500 people 18:46 - When to hire specialists vs. promoting from within? 20:25 - What is the Chief of Staff role? 21:54 - The process of becoming good at something new 23:33 - Lessons in practicality and steady leadership 24:30 - The stress and spectacle of a satellite launch 33:31 - How space regulations work? 35:44 - The “Parking Spots” of space and the ITU 37:21 - Range Safety: Proving you won’t explode the pad 40:15 - Why space-based Internet is easier than fiber? 42:06 - Dedicated satellites vs. shared constellations 44:33 - Why we don’t see many startups challenging telecom giants? 46:09 - Goal of “First Principles”: Getting better at technical video 48:23 - The harder path: Choosing optimism over rage-bait 51:53 - How high school debate channels competitive energy? 54:27 - 180 Mindset shift: Realizing parenting is hard 58:11 - Joining the American Dynamism team at a16z 1:00:06 - Why media and government engagement matter for VCs? 1:01:46 - Advice for early talent: Optimizing for trajectory 1:03:19 - Why you should work in-person early in your career? 1:05:40 - Reducing mental burden through time allocation 1:07:50 - The danger of “Job Hopping” every two years 1:10:18 - Sci-Fi and the best Harry Potter book 1:14:42 - Rebranding the “State Schooler” party with Chipotle 1:17:52 - Closing thoughts

For our first return company on S³, we peek into how Astro Mechanica is going to redefine passenger travel, starting with the engine. Thank you, Ian, Ashley, Shirley, and team, for letting us film with you all for several days! Test engine hot fires are pretty epic (and hot)!

We also created a limited edition S³ tee inspired by the vision of faster flight and the future of aviation. You can grab yours here: saturdaystartupstories.myshopify.com

It's been 2+ years since S3 last featured @AstroMechanica — they've been quietly building a new vision of supersonic passenger travel. By building electric adaptive engines (efficient at every stage of flight) to reimagining airline economics itself, @ianbrooke and team's next step... is taking flight.

@Jrey_dev @AstroMechanica The exciting stuff in this episode isn't about supersonic...

@jasonjoyride @AstroMechanica subsonic flow be like

S3 EPISODE 71 TOMORROW Get ready for dual thrust... @AstroMechanica

@packyM !!!!

Appointment Viewing

@milspecshitpost @83dollaroring Let em' test their engines

This is like the third promo video I’ve seen from Astro Mechanica where the exhaust is visibly subsonic

@ti_morse Wait this is where we filmed Greatest Lie! 😂

"There are three levels of story for a company. The first level is just literally: what are you even doing? Half of startup founders probably can't even articulate just that. Level two is: what does that represent? What is the upshot of you doing this successfully? Level three is: what is the shape of the dent in the universe and in society, if this works? For SpaceX, level one might be: we're building a rocket. Pretty cool, not maximum cool. Level two is: we're building a rocket to restore American space flight from the private sector to revive an industry that's been stagnant for decades. More inspiring, not final form. Level three would be: we're restoring space flight from America, humanity's last best hope, because we need to make mankind an interplanetary species."

@ti_morse @lulumeservey Banger

My first interview with @lulumeservey, Founder of Rostra. 0:07 How to Destroy a Terrorist Group 3:01 What Makes a Great Cult Leader 4:42 Unleashing Palmer Luckey 7:34 Why Elon Is Unpredictable 10:41 Demanding a Hardcore Culture After the X Acquisition 13:41 How Napoleon Rallied Troops to Volunteer for a Suicide Mission 18:24 Choosing Who to Alienate 20:59 Picking Someone to Fight For 22:59 Deterrence and Shaping Incentives 25:19 Why Google Had an Activist Problem 29:12 Tyrant Mode: Stopping a Leaky Culture 32:11 Building Loyalty 35:58 Why Visuals Are So Powerful 37:40 Time to Train AlexNet: Jensen Huang and Inventing Metrics 39:36 Why People Root for You 42:15 Recruit Based on the Spirit Not the Letter 43:20 The Three Levels of Story 51:01 Secret Truths and Trusting Yourself 55:25 Cicero’s Impossible Trial 58:11 Offense vs Defense 1:03:44 The Roman Concept of Auctoritas

@pabloantonio @costofglory @jamespoulos @EliahOverbey Very excited for this

Austin, TX. This weekend. With talks from @costofglory @jasonjoyride @jamespoulos @EliahOverbey torchlightsummit.org

With Greco-futurism, I'm asking the question "if the ancients had our technology, what would they build?" If engineering is applied physics, then architecture is applied philosophy. And the ideas behind Greco-futurism are growing. Register to the Summit this weekend bellow.

Boy oh boy I can't wait to share the footage we shot this week... I love movies

Sexy camera, legendary antenna

@aryelipman 💡

@jasonjoyride hmm that location rings a Bell

Filming something pretty special about one of the most influential labs of all time. If you're in the Holmdel, NJ area and are interested in being an extra in our film, please join us tomorrow on set! We'll share a sign up link and location info.

Sign up here! Feel free to share the link. :) docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI…