Relentless

My first interview with Ryan Petersen (@typesfast), Founder of Flexport. 0:03 Pablo Escobar was a logistics guy 2:29 The explosion in tariff fraud 8:58 The Dutch East India Company 11:20 History of global trade 14:39 1,000x spice markup 17:53 The British East India Company 24:02 How the British got 20% of China addicted to opium 27:44 The Forbes family & opium trade 30:40 Jewish trading networks 37:33 It’s illegal to criticize the King of Thailand 38:58 Strait of Hormuz 45:58 Maritime chokepoints

My first interview with US Secretary of Energy @SecretaryWright and @ScottNolan, Founder of @GeneralMatter. This conversation is on nuclear and how we're going to power the AI data center buildout. 0:07 Powering the AI data center boom 3:25 Biggest energy bottlenecks over the next five years 6:03 Ramping power generation before we have SMRs 16:06 Bridging the nuclear transition with natural gas 21:39 What if we’re underestimating how much power we’ll need for AI 27:10 Staying ahead of China 34:07 Why AI is hated + the fear of AI data centers driving up electricity prices 40:21 Increasing baseload capacity 42:50 Building hundreds of gigawatts by 2050 49:37 Copying the SpaceX playbook 53:14 Incentivizing founders to build ahead of demand 59:03 “If you want to build big things in America, come talk to the government”

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

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

My first interview with @EricJorgenson, Author of The Book of Elon. 0:12 Why Elon outcompetes everyone 1:53 Not wanting to be CEO 6:15 Why there was a 1 in 100 chance of Tesla and SpaceX both succeeding 10:03 Thinking in lost future revenue 11:58 Living with a gun next to his bed 15:02 How Elon starts companies 19:23 Giving Larry Page an early demo of the Roadster 21:27 Why Elon calls people into the factory at 2am 25:01 The 20 people who execute Elon’s will autonomously - MrBeast clones 28:52 Working with Elon is doing a tour of duty 31:18 Creating a grand vision that people can believe in 36:42 How to thrive under Elon 37:30 The Algorithm - question every requirement, delete part or process, simplify and optimize, accelerate, automate 41:38 Setting up a tent factory in the Tesla Fremont parking lot 43:28 How Elon would play the game if he was born 300 years ago 45:10 Empathy for the individual vs empathy for the mission 46:57 Being feared vs being loved 48:38 The endless churn at Elon companies 50:49 Ruthlessness and having a willingness to be disliked 56:08 Creating enemies and chaos 58:37 Shifting SpaceX’s focus from Mars to building a base on the Moon 1:00:07 Justifying Tesla’s valuation by reseting the vision 1:02:21 The S-Curve of ambition - colonizing planets, Starlink, Terafab 1:04:44 Throwing billions of dollars behind new companies 1:06:22 A great team is just the sum of the individual vectors 1:11:09 The idiot index at an industry-scale 1:13:53 Why it’s critical for space companies to control launch 1:15:44 Thinking in limits 1:18:47 Expanding the vision until no one can measure it 1:23:41 Internalizing pain and dealing with setbacks 1:26:03 The evolution of Elon’s operating philosophy over the last 30 years 1:27:37 Effectiveness

My first interview with @Brian_Armstrong, Co-Founder and CEO of @Coinbase. 0:25 Crafting narratives 2:28 Bias towards action 4:06 Biggest calls in Coinbase’s history 5:53 Developing intuition for making big bets 7:30 Getting truth out of people 10:04 Being anti-authority 12:30 The 3 levels of communication 14:39 Practicing to pitch w Paul Graham in 2012 16:55 Working w Fred Ehrsam 20:33 Hashing out bad decisions in the early days 22:23 Having a scarcity mentality around people 23:31 Action produces information 27:34 “If you wait for perfect clarity, you’re never going to get anything done” 31:45 Uber vs Lyft in crypto 34:23 Building trust 36:30 Advancing the mission of Coinbase 38:33 Skillsets: fundraising, storytelling, recruiting, sales 40:10 Prediction markets and AI generated content 43:58 How he operates differently than other big startup CEOs 45:18 Solving his greatest fear 48:09 Burnout and running at a marathon pace 51:20 Experiencing pain 54:32 Hiking and getting out in nature 56:54 It’s always wartime 58:58 Defining moments of crisis 1:05:35 Finding the next marching post 1:07:18 Installing ideas in people’s minds 1:10:25 The power of bringing people together over dinner 1:13:00 Action produces action 1:14:10 Backing founders outside of Coinbase 1:15:45 Scheduling 4 week long-long vacations a year 1:18:35 Finding people who raise your energy 1:20:18 Leaving a trail of proof of work 1:23:03 Touching people emotionally 1:25:19 Why we built the Iron Bank of Braavos 1:26:38 Playing an infinite game 1:31:47 Selling brownies on The Silk Road 1:35:36 My philosophy for Relentless 1:38:35 Business is like playing Civilization 1:44:59 Bonding w Fred Ehrsam over video games 1:45:47 Never leave a meeting without next steps 1:49:06 How Coinbase makes acquisitions 1:50:30 Why Coinbase’s best acquisitions were people 1:52:00 Bitcoin is the new gold standard

My first interview with @Peter_J_Beck, Founder & CEO of @RocketLab. Rocket Lab is scaling launch cadence faster than SpaceX scaled Falcon 9. 0:44 The biggest bottleneck to increasing launch cadence and mass to orbit 1:25 Growth of new space startups 3:05 Why governments have been ineffective at scaling launch 3:53 Tall Poppy Syndrome 4:38 Starting Rocket Lab without having $100 million 7:24 Scaling Electron vs focusing on Neutron 9:17 Rocket Lab hustle 11:10 Creating a culture of “F*ck it, let’s do it” 11:40 Worst supplier experiences 13:54 Having an engine explode before an important meeting 18:52 Rocket Lab’s first mission to the moon 20:55 Chewing glass and forcing the outcome to be good 22:57 Similarities in how Elon and Peter operate 25:05 Elon time and how to structure timelines 27:13 Designing a culture where everyone runs towards the fire 28:44 Making the Ferrari of rockets — the importance of creating beautiful things 31:20 “You don’t need to equate a price tag to beauty” 32:12 Why Peter hates launch day 34:48 “After a launch failure this place is a morgue” 35:22 Moving forward after a failure 36:40 Transitioning from an R&D organization to scaling rocket production 38:07 Production hell with rockets 39:09 Taking learnings from Electron to Neutron 41:03 Having dinner with Elon 42:00 Keeping the hiring bar extraordinarily high 44:05 “My job is to fix sh*t” 44:56 Rocket Lab’s first NASA launch 45:55 “The great thing about America is anything is possible” 47:40 Coming to Silicon Valley — meeting with Vinod Khosla 51:22 Why he decided to take $RKLB public 54:12 Creating a company that will outlive you 55:41 Turning Rocket Lab into a profitable business 57:23 The best space companies will all build their own rockets 1:00:35 Scaling Neutron 1:01:32 Why they’re using carbon fiber instead of steel 1:02:56 “Going public was a great capital unlock” 1:04:10 The importance of relentless optimism

My second interview with @soren_ma, Co-Founder and CEO of @neros_tech. Neros just acquired a new 250k square foot factory which will allow them to ramp production to 1M drones a year. 0:50 New 250k square foot factory 5:13 How the Russia Ukraine war has evolved 8:51 Learning from the Starlink production ramp 12:37 Building a military spec drone 15:25 Prototypes vs production product 17:27 Creating a fully China-free drone 20:27 Scaling production capacity 25:53 Production hell vs supply chain hell 29:11 Timelines and urgency 34:08 Flyoff mode and PBAS 37:40 How Soren operates during a sprint 40:54 Shifting from building drones to company building 42:37 Leadership hiring 49:05 Focusing on execution 50:30 Defeating drone jammers 57:55 Oh sh*t moments 1:00:09 Refocusing on health and taking care of yourself 1:05:21 Measuring effectiveness by battle field results 1:13:04 Evolution of their testing process 1:16:05 Archer Fiber 1:17:55 Lifting up the entire drone industrial base 1:21:12 Building region-specific supply chains 1:23:49 How America can win over the coming decades 1:26:55 Are we going fast enough? 1:29:12 Choosing to work on lethal systems 1:32:35 Being pro-America 1:35:37 Future of warfare and autonomous systems

My first interview with @ScottNolan, Co-Founder and CEO of @GeneralMatter. 0:48 What if Russia stopped selling uranium to the US 4:47 The history of uranium enrichment 10:44 What if he was given $25 billion to turn on reactors as fast as possible 13:37 The US doesn’t have the capability to make fuel for Small Modular Reactors today 14:43 How Founders Fund decides to start companies 19:28 Why you shouldn’t start a company 26:02 Working at SpaceX in 2003 28:10 How Elon drove urgency in the early days of SpaceX 30:28 How it felt when the first three Falcon launches failed 32:41 Figuring out what to work on after leaving SpaceX 34:26 How Peter Thiel convinced him to join Founders Fund 38:53 The most unintuitive thing he learned from Peter Thiel 44:03 Lowering the cost of uranium enrichment 47:32 The idiot index for enrichment 50:18 Vertically integrating vs using existing supply chains 53:44 The idiot index for timelines 59:13 Taking risk to pull in schedule: current burn vs future revenue 1:02:44 Choosing where to put their first enrichment facility 1:05:42 Maintaining maniacal urgency with multi-decade timelines 1:09:10 How a war with China will impact our ability to produce energy 1:14:06 What conventional wisdom gets wrong about building this type of company 1:17:48 The AI data center boom requires nuclear 1:21:02 Why SpaceX switched from an ablative engine to a regeneratively cooled all metal engine 1:25:08 How Elon makes nonobvious decisions 1:29:59 Don’t focus on problems that are already getting solved

The US vs. China Manufacturing Debate My first debate between @sdamico, founder of @ImpulseLabs, and @aphysicist, founder of @atomic_inc. Timestamps: 0:39 Introductions 11:34 Is it possible to reverse America’s manufacturing decline? 16:37 Where would Sam invest $100M in a factory today? 21:28 How California made it illegal to do chemistry w metals 25:43 Elon on Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory 32:01 Using the data center boom to pull advanced capabilities onshore 36:51 Building Chinese level capacity in America 38:33 The US Gov hasn't incentivized companies to build base level capacity 42:54 Why space companies have to vertically integrate their supply chains 45:06 The advantage of building a Chinese supply chain 49:10 Why Apple manufactures all their products in China 59:42 Apple exports engineering expertise 1:02:19 Consumer electronics 1:07:55 How the advent of humanoid robots will shift the balance of power 1:12:29 Why Apple spent hundreds of billions building their supply chains in China

Why the Co-Founder of Robinhood is working on Data Centers in Space. My first interview w @BaijuBhatt, Co-Founder of @RobinhoodApp and Founder of @AetherfluxUSA. 0:05 Rock climbing w Jared Leto 5:46 Culture differences at Robinhood vs Aetherflux 15:57 Building a Shelby Daytona during Covid 23:44 The hair patterns of founders at different stages 28:16 Orbital data centers 38:22 Failures before Robinhood $HOOD 45:57 Hitting dead ends 51:39 Seeding Aetherflux with $10M 58:08 Willingness to be scrappy again 1:01:18 Starting from scratch in a new industry 1:08:26 The second company is just as hard as the first 1:12:16 Playing Magic the Gathering as a kid 1:17:32 Goblin mode vs Monk mode

My first interview with @sachaker, Founder & CEO of Babylon Biosciences. Babylon is on a quest to cure Alzheimer’s. 1:00 History of Alzheimer’s research 8:09 Why tackle this problem 12:22 Axon degeneration 13:57 Structuring Babylon to survive many failures 15:24 Self-financing Alzheimer’s moonshots 19:01 Viagra 19:59 Swanson linking and Raynaud syndrome 24:16 Most efficacious drugs for Alzheimer’s 27:29 Experience starting Babylon 31:34 Attracting mission aligned people 36:24 Filtering for missionaries vs mercenaries 41:07 Lack of agency causes burnout 46:02 Living without a phone to reduce distraction 49:31 Why the information to cure Alzheimer’s might already be out there 54:19 How AI changes things 55:36 Controversial science 1:03:11 Volunteering at memory clinics 1:04:28 Impact-per-dollar and being scrappy 1:07:55 Internalizing pain when you make a bad decision 1:09:26 Time to last embarrassment 1:10:51 Risk taking 1:12:57 What causes cognitive impairment 1:22:11 What keeps him up at night

My first interview with @aliansarinik, Founder & CEO of @micro1_ai. 1:10 Continuous model improvement 2:42 Starting with an AI recruiting tool 5:42 Moving into the human data space 7:19 The Human Happiness Index 13:32 Creating a real world robotics dataset 17:03 Hiring hundreds of doctors & lawyers in a week 20:15 Providing a world class white glove service 22:15 Hiring for agency & risk taking 26:03 High velocity on two way decisions 27:35 Going all-in on data 28:52 Structuring incentives 38:18 Leadership & staying in the details 40:10 Losing their biggest customer right before an investor pitch 43:24 Becoming risk averse after an existential crisis 50:45 Taking action as fast as possible when you feel the urge to act 56:12 What it felt like growing revenue 30x in a year 1:00:48 Staying focused & limiting new projects 1:02:30 Predicting what the big AI labs will want 1:06:50 Creating a model to predict timelines 1:12:23 Hiring as a last resort 1:18:25 Taking big bold bets 1:28:49 Long-horizon tasks

My first interview with @EdwardMehr, Co-Founder & CEO of @MachinaLabs_. 0:46 Creating a sculpture of Tesla’s Chief Designer 3:28 What went wrong with early prototypes 5:56 How the metal forming process works 9:01 Rapid design iteration 13:48 The limiting factor in creating more Elons 16:18 Building the first prototype on $300k 22:22 The importance of naiveté & having fun 24:17 What it was like working at SpaceX in 2012 29:57 Celebrating customers 40:36 Focusing on the biggest risks 45:35 Designing the system to fit inside a shipping container 47:25 Early mistakes 52:22 Finding 10 champions 1:06:42 Selling systems, parts, vs finished assemblies 1:10:39 Hardware companies require complex capital structures

My first interview with @Mehul, Co-Founder of @MaticRobots. 0:43 Why Artists Are Never Satisfied w Their Work 3:46 Creating A Minimum Lovable Product 6:35 No One Wants R2-D2, They Want A Solution To Their Problem 10:35 Selling His First Startup To Google 13:30 What YC Was Like In 2012 15:50 Acquisitions Are Like Organ Transplants 19:57 Building The Apple Of Home Robotics 25:00 Creating A Problem Deck 29:05 Why Most Vacuums Suck 35:58 First 250 Iterations 46:13 The Wife Test 51:46 Surviving 2020 56:35 Why Roomba Priced At $199 1:02:35 AI Products: Overpromise, Underdeliver 1:06:13 The Magic Of In-N-Out 1:09:06 Simplicity Is The Goal, Not Perfection 1:15:08 Designing A Company You Enjoy Working On For Decades 1:21:01 Taking Inspiration From Pixar & Harry Potter 1:23:24 Products That Give People Their Time Back 1:32:44 The Day Tobi Lutke Tweeted About Matic 1:39:34 Tesla Optimus 1:48:25 Going Through Production Hell 1:56:15 Designing Their Reliability & Testing Process 2:01:17 Pain As A Moat

My first interview w @sulaimanghori, Member of Technical Staff @xAI. 0:41 WTF is happening at xAI 1:46 Predicting future bottlenecks 3:05 Shredding conventional timelines 4:23 Experience joining xAI 9:23 Bootstrapping off the Tesla network 11:59 What is Macrohard 13:14 How Elon deals w fires 16:30 What it’s like working at xAI 20:33 Cybertruck bet with Elon 21:12 Using 80 mobile generators + battery packs to balance load at their data centers 22:45 How they built Colossus in 122 days 23:35 Work backwards & figure out the highest leverage thing you can be doing 25:51 How xAI hires 30:27 Challenging requirements 32:46 Experimentation 34:55 How Elon recalibrated his timeline estimates 39:15 AI engineers vs AI researchers 40:36 No one tells me ‘no’ 42:09 Everyone’s an engineer 44:06 Why fuzziness between teams is an advantage 48:25 Testing human emulators as employees 50:00 Biggest blunders 53:23 What a meeting w Elon is like 54:22 How Elon gives feedback 56:44 Figuring out ‘what is truth’ for Grokipedia 59:21 What happens when Elon sees wrong Grok outputs on X 1:00:08 What a surge feels like & operating in xAI’s war room 1:02:53 Making fidget spinners & 3D printers in his bedroom 1:08:48 Creating a liquid fuel rocket engine

My first interview with Shuo Wang (@shuooo), Co-Founder & CRO of @Deel. 1:08 Designing Deel To Scale Quickly 3:28 Why Companies Should Go Global Early 7:30 Building Deel’s Sales Team 10:33 Why Shuo Loves Sales 14:44 Pivoting 3 Times During YC & Being Shameless 19:06 Dreaming About Intercom 22:04 Solving Payment Delays Early On 25:11 Joining YC As A Crypto Payment Platform For Content Creators 32:37 How To Make Decisions Before You Have Data 36:30 Why It Was So Painful To Open Corporate Entities During Covid 39:57 Thinking Outside The Box 44:15 Why Covid Was “A Lifetime Opportunity” For Deel 46:11 Deel Speed 47:55 Argentina & Brazil 50:07 Interviewing Deel’s First 400 Employees 51:33 Screening For Happiness 52:59 Creating Ghost Busters (Special Projects Team) 59:16 Having A Co-Founder You Can Rely On 1:03:31 Why Offsites Are Important 1:06:07 Torturing Yourself Into Greatness 1:07:20 Learning How To Run A Business From Her Mom 1:11:26 Growing Up In China With Her Grandparents 1:15:51 Moving To The United States At 16 1:24:13 Building An Air Purifier Company In China 1:30:18 Being An Outsider In Silicon Valley 1:31:08 Focusing On One Product vs. Building Multiple Products 1:32:46 What PMF Was Like At Deel 1:34:46 How Shuo Thinks About Risk 1:37:18 Understand The Problem, Not The Solution 1:42:08 Creating An 11-Star Customer Experience 1:43:44 What Makes Alex Special 1:46:00 Poker 1:46:43 Always Look At The Positives Even In Tough Situations

My first interview with Keller Cliffton (@Keller), co-founder & CEO of @Zipline. 0:51 Building An Automated Logistics System For Earth 2:22 Starting In A Trailer Park 6:09 Scrappiness In The Early Days 9:08 We Do This Not Because It Is Easy, But Because We Thought It Would Be Easy 10:47 Shut Up. Just Do Blood 18:08 Flying To Rwanda 19:46 Scaling Up Is Always A Sh*tshow 23:22 Dropping A Blood Bag On A Hospital Roof 26:38 Falling In Love With The Process & Valor 8:30am Meeting 32:06 WFIO Moments: We’re F*cked It’s Over 38:34 Building A New Industry From Scratch 42:29 Launching In Rwanda Without Looking At The Weather 43:39 Building A Relationship With The FAA 47:49 Creating Customer Love 54:35 4 Traits Of Great Hires: Practical Problem Solver, Fast Learner, Low Ego, Mission Driven 58:34 Scaling Zipline 1:02:01 Growing 15% Week Over Week

My first interview with Ian Brooke (@ianbrooke), founder & CEO of @AstroMechanica. 0:31 Creating Long-Range Supersonic Planes 3:07 Private Jets vs Airliners 8:26 How Insanely Expensive Private Jets Actually Are 11:30 Building Great Products That Last Forever 20:39 Front Loading Work To Design Things Well 30:42 Making Contact With Reality 43:32 Following Your Intuition 48:38 Thinking In Shapes 53:54 Expressing Yourself Through Building Things 58:56 Starting With A Vague Idea & Sharpening The Vision Over Time 1:03:16 Trying To Tell A Story vs Just Building Something 1:17:44 Seed & Soil - Emmett Shear 1:27:57 Doing Things That Bring You Joy & Energy 1:32:35 Keeping The Product Vision In Your Head

My first interview with @laurence1allen, Co-Founder & CEO of Terranova. Terranova is lifting land out of flood zones using terraforming robots by injecting wood chips deep underground. 0:37 How land raising works 4:15 Being reactive vs proactive to wildfires & floods 10:26 How Terranova started 12:03 Using a hacked concrete pump 14:58 The sinking city problem 16:45 Why use wood chips 18:55 The history of land raising 24:32 Working w partners vs vertically integrating 27:46 Scaling to larger projects 34:19 Working at SpaceX 45:10 Creating a high intensity environment 53:57 SF vs El Segundo 57:04 Biggest manufacturing & sourcing challenges 1:01:31 Hiring tinkerers 1:04:47 Setting the right expectations