Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:29:59 · Charlotte Ross, Steven Simoni, Alexa von Tobel
[00:29:59] S2: Yeah. You [00:29:59] S1: know, think it I think it might be... You know, I turned 40 this month. But if if what if my... If what I'm saying is gonna happen is happening, it'll be a very busy five years because, you know, it won't be like I have a a choice to even work here. I have to work here for the country. You know, it's not like I get to, like, I couldn't, like, start a new company. Like, I have to do this. And I think that's where we're headed. So I think it's gonna be five very long years of very hard work to help defend this country. And I think that, you know, while I'm doing... While we're scaling Bullfrog and doing that, you know, I think that it'll be important to, you know, try to make the company for after the war be defensible for, like, the next forty years, fifty years, hundred years. So that's that's why I'm trying to take it to that multi product air defense crime. [00:30:44] S2: And maybe on that note, like, could you talk a little bit about, like, how you [00:30:47] S0: think about building teams and your philosophy on on hiring, given how important this mission is and how intense the mission is? And also, you're building the team out of Austin, Texas. Yeah. And so a little bit of, like, how how how that plays into the strategy.
00:31:00 · Steven Simoni
[00:31:00] S1: Yeah. I've been learning a lot about this over, like, the last ten years. I I would say it really has to, like... It has to be like a sports team. Like, a sports team doesn't have all all stars. Mhmm. Like, you know what I mean? Like, you have, like, the star shooter and the people who score, and they got, like, the point... You have people who assist. Like, you really do need, like, a team, and it is a gel. I I don't think we even invest enough in leadership team offsites and management team offsites. So I do think a lot about that. That's most of what I think about these days is, is the team working together in an efficient manner where they, like, don't wanna rip each other's throats out? Like, that's, like... That... I think the founder team is... At least at the stage where I need to spend a lot of time on that. So I do think about it like that. It's not all a players, to be honest. Like, you need you need, like, people to, like, utility utility players, players, position position players, you know, stuff like that. And and I spend a lot of time making sure that that's happening. And then the problem is the hardest part of it all is, like, when you get someone who doesn't fit in the team and getting them out of the business is actually... And defense is really challenging because of all government regulation. Oh, interesting. They can claim retaliation or they could see complaints. It's actually much harder in defense than it is in BVOD. In BVOD, can let someone go. It's easy. Non defense, doesn't work like that. So if you get a bad leader, it might take nine months. Might take nine months.
00:32:25 · Alexa von Tobel, Steven Simoni, Charlotte Ross
[00:32:25] S0: Yeah, which means hiring. How big is the team right now? [00:32:27] S1: I'm about three eighty, but a lot it's manufacturing. [00:32:30] S0: Okay, got it. Steve, let's talk a little bit about the next decade. And I think as we're watching the breakneck pace of AI, and even just last week talking about the need to manage some regulation so that we ideally don't end up with a lot more conflict in this world. How do you think about the next decade? If you fast forward, you're someone who has served for our country, is now serving in some ways again for our country by making sure ACS can build some of the best defense weapons humanly possible. When you fast forward a decade and you think about what you see Penny Pritzker and I have talked a lot about this, where the future of defense is just becoming something that matters a lot more in the future, the spend trending towards it, the investment spending towards it, [00:33:19] S2: multiple, multiple [00:33:20] S0: tens of billions of power businesses will be built. What does the war look like in a decade? Like, if we were stop... Stopping you know, 2017, you know, became drones, what does, like, 2035 look like? [00:33:33] S1: Yeah. Think it's even even longer range standoff, more standoff, fewer humans, almost no humans in the no man's land between the two enemy... Like the two countries. Like, it's... It... That's where it's headed. I mean, I I could see that... [00:33:48] S0: Long range meaning, like, across
00:33:48 · Alexa von Tobel, Steven Simoni
[00:33:48] S0: Long range meaning, like, across [00:33:51] S1: countries? Long range meaning, like, you know, just hundreds of miles... Hundreds of miles. Precision strikes, strikes from space, a lot of space weapons in ten years, like a lot of space. Wow. And I think the only time you're gonna see, like, close quarters combat is maybe, like... I don't even know if you will see it, to be honest. But if you... It'd have to be in the final part, like, being... Like, taking a city, like, taking Kyiv or something, like, for Russia. Like... But you're not... I don't think you're gonna see a lot of that, and that... That's in ten years. But I do think it's a lot of... I think it's a lot of space. [00:34:25] S0: But to see more, what is this? [00:34:26] S1: Like lasers in space, guns in space, satellite, anti satellite on satellite warfare. [00:34:32] S0: How do you push ACS for that future? [00:34:34] S1: I mean, we're we have products in the works on that now. So we're we're doing that now. Yeah. Just [00:34:39] S0: out of sheer visualization, what does a weapon in space look like? It looks like a satellite. [00:34:45] S1: Watch the show The Expanse. [00:34:47] S0: The Expanse. Okay. That's what I'm gonna say. The Expanse on the X-ray. Our... Yeah. Yeah. [00:34:52] S1: The the a in ACS actually comes from that show. I stole it. So... Oh. Yeah. It's beautiful. [00:34:58] S0: I'm like, I've got I've got my weekend home. It was [00:35:00] S1: like a sci fi thing. And we're we're into sci fi, Luke and I. That's where the ACSA comes from.
00:35:00 · Steven Simoni, Alexa von Tobel, Charlotte Ross
[00:35:00] S1: like a sci fi thing. And we're we're into sci fi, Luke and I. That's where the ACSA comes from. [00:35:05] S0: Yeah. Okay, so space weapons. How much do you think cyber plays into war and quantum computing? In some ways, an LLM could be part of a weaponry. [00:35:25] S2: And also agents hacking into drones and telling the drones to kill people that we shouldn't be careful. [00:35:31] S1: Well, that's not gonna happen. That's crazy. I mean, there's some Israeli startups that sell that they do that, but there's no way. Yeah, agents, so what was the question? No, [00:35:43] S0: just how we think about technology and the tremendous advancements of agentic AI and AI and how you think [00:35:51] S1: about that [00:35:52] S0: as being part of warfare.
00:35:52 · Alexa von Tobel, Steven Simoni
[00:35:52] S0: as being part of warfare. [00:35:55] S1: Yeah. Mean, it's... Cyber warfare is a huge part of warfare. I though it's a very boutique part. I don't think it's like a... Necessarily a venture backable part of the warfare apparatus. Like, there's hundreds of red team offensive cyber firms that sell to the government and have for the last twenty, twenty, thirty years. It's like a very bespoke industry because it's like, you know, niche. It's like it's like the... Yeah. One of the agencies will be like, I have a mission. Like, I need you guys to hack into this, like, foreign embassy and do this thing for me. And it's like a... Like, it's very bespoke. It's like mission based. It's not like there's no like... Yeah. It's like... It's not like... At least from my perspective now, have some sort of like scalable products there. You know, it's very mission based and that's why the government pays a lot of money to these firms to do missions like that. And I think we're gonna continue to see more and more of that. I think that market will grow, like the CAGR or whatever the term is. I'm not an investor, whatever. But that market grows, but it grows proportionally across all the firms.