00:14:18 · Ty Morse, Baiju Bhatt
[00:14:18] S0: So, basically, the, solar panel is gonna both dissipate heat while also collecting? Exactly. [00:14:24] S1: Or can you get the actual, you know, diodes that go from electrical to optical to reject the heat and leverage the surface area of the thing that you've already got to reject the heat? So there... There's a video playing right here, which is a very early rendering of how we thought the system's gonna work. Obviously, a lot of evolution in the idea since then. But even in this, you can see on the backside of the satellite, there are these big sheets, which are effectively the radiators that dissipate the heat. Right? So, like, to answer your question, like, what does marriaging form and function look like in the context of a thing that has a very extreme job to do as opposed to something that, like, fundamentally just needs to represent simplicity to a person that wants to press a button, have it do the thing that it's supposed to do. [00:15:09] S0: Do you have a specific feeling? Like, whenever I see something beautiful that just looks right, I get this feeling of it just looks right. It feels right. Do you have that same feeling when you are designing something?
00:15:09 · Ty Morse, Baiju Bhatt
[00:15:09] S0: Do you have a specific feeling? Like, whenever I see something beautiful that just looks right, I get this feeling of it just looks right. It feels right. Do you have that same feeling when you are designing something? [00:15:23] S1: Yeah. There's definitely the thing that you strive for. Right? It's like when you look at something and you ask the question, like, how could it possibly look any other way? Like, this just looks final. It looks like the last and final version of the thing. Yeah. That's something I thought about a bunch over the years and was something that, you know, in the context of my my old gig, very much front and center. Like, how do you keep the the form and the function kind of as simple as possible but still doing the job that it needs to do? [00:15:54] S0: Yeah. It's like as simple as possible, but no simpler. Yeah. Has that evolved? Has your, like, taste and ability to kind of rep or, like, understand what good looks like evolved over time?
00:15:54 · Ty Morse, Baiju Bhatt
[00:15:54] S0: Yeah. It's like as simple as possible, but no simpler. Yeah. Has that evolved? Has your, like, taste and ability to kind of rep or, like, understand what good looks like evolved over time? [00:16:05] S1: I have been drawn towards expressing that in other things. In the context of like building software and, you know, like a lot of the the first ten years of the design language of Robinhood was something that I was like leading in at the absolute forefront of. Right? Which is really fun to express those ideas in the context of building digital products. But the part of my brain that kind of was getting activated as I started thinking about other things was like, okay, feel like I know how to do it when I'm building digital products. But like, can I apply this same lens that I look at that world to building hardware? [00:16:43] S0: Yeah. [00:16:43] S1: And my original version of this was actually... I built a car in my spare time. [00:16:47] S0: Can you talk about that? [00:16:48] S1: Yeah. I built, sorry. I built a Shelby Daytona, like a factory five racing. Do you know this company? [00:16:55] S0: Isn't it like a like a racing car? Heard of [00:16:57] S1: it? Yeah. It's basically a race car. Okay. So I built one of those from scratch. Had had a lot of help along the way, and I had some, had some pro mechanics look over and, like, actually go through and make sure everything worked correctly [00:17:11] S0: before I took
00:17:11 · Ty Morse, Baiju Bhatt
[00:17:11] S0: before I took [00:17:12] S1: it on the road. So I actually did this over COVID. I was feeling the itch to do exactly this, which I was like, I really wanna express this creativity, this, like, way of thinking about things onto something that's not software or just not just software. Right? I kinda wanna expand my horizons because I... Just a little bit of a step back here. I've always found that in order to be creative at the main thing that I'm doing, I need to have, like, a hobby or a creative outlet or sort of a creative muse that's not related to the thing that I'm doing, which stems from the idea of, like, what is creativity? Creativity is about taking unrelated ideas and seeing the commonality of them. [00:18:00] S0: Right? Like marrying them together and Yeah. Yeah.
00:18:00 · Ty Morse, Baiju Bhatt
[00:18:00] S0: Right? Like marrying them together and Yeah. Yeah. [00:18:03] S1: And so that sort of drew me towards, like, I wanna build physical things. I know how to build digital things. What are... What's like a physical thing that I've always wanted to build? I've always loved cars, and I've... This is back when I was building my very first car over COVID. I was like, I really wanna get into classic cars. Like, I'd like to own some classic cars someday. So how am I gonna do this? And my little, you know, sort of creator brain was like, oh, I know what the way to do this is. I'll build a car from scratch, and then I'll understand how all the different pieces of it work so that then if I want to, you know, get into classic cars, I'll really understand what's going on. And so I did. And so it took, probably took, like, six to nine months to go from, like, box of parts to something that I could drives? [00:18:57] S0: Kinda. Mean, I could creaks? [00:18:59] S1: Yeah. Squeaks and creaks like a rolling chassis that you can turn on, and you can, like, drive it down the driveway and drive it back. That was freaking cool, man. Do you wanna see it? [00:19:10] S0: I do wanna see it. [00:19:11] S1: Can I show you? Alright. Check it out. Here's how it started literally as a box. [00:19:18] S0: Okay. In a truck. Yeah. [00:19:19] S1: Nice. In a truck. [00:19:20] S0: And that's the full car, but just in a box form? Yeah. Like like this? Mhmm. [00:19:27] S1: And it got the first version of it kind of put all the pieces together on the frame. [00:19:34] S0: And how long did that take?
00:19:34 · Ty Morse, Baiju Bhatt
[00:19:34] S0: And how long did that take? [00:19:35] S1: That that didn't take more than, like, a couple of weeks, I think. And I'll just... I'll I'll show you the... I'll send you some pictures later on. K. But here's the finished version of it. Beautiful. [00:19:44] S0: Yeah. Is it driving? [00:19:46] S1: Yeah. It is. Back it up. [00:19:48] S0: There we go. [00:19:49] S1: So I didn't paint the thing. I didn't do any of the upholstery. There's like there's a whole there's, like, there's the artistry of it, right, which is, like, how do you paint a car like this? Well, you don't wanna fuck around and find out in painting a car because you'll just do a terrible job. Like, you wanna have somebody that's done a bunch of time that has, like, that has, like, kind of the the tactile feel for it. There's a... There's an old design word for it. Let me see if I can remember it right now. I think it's called, like, finger spitzingafel, which is Hear me? The finger feel. Right? It's like if you put your hands on it, does it feel right to the human touch? Yeah. You want that with dudes that are, like, doing paint or upholstery or any of the sort of, like, you can't mess it up things. [00:20:36] S0: Yeah. [00:20:38] S1: Which is why it looks good. [00:20:42] S0: What kind of held you back from starting this maybe five or ten years earlier and deciding to just go for it? Like, was it just COVID and you have lots of time to think to yourself when nothing's happening and you think, fuck it. I'm gonna build a car.