00:20:42 · Ty Morse, Baiju Bhatt
[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. [00:20:56] S1: Well, the five to ten years leading up to it, I'd been very busy. Yes. And I'd I'd had a love of cars during that time. I think, like, the impetus for doing it was I was cramped up in my house. And, I mean, I was, like, working over COVID. Was, like, working... I mean, the days and weeks blur together. There were, twelve hour days, like, week after week. It's, like, I'm on a call on like a Saturday afternoon. I'm like, what day of the week is it? Like, it the weekend or is it the weekday? There was a I need an outlet. Like, I need something that's not just work. Yep. That's not that problem space where I can still let that sort of like creative, you know, almost frenetic energy from like my monkey brain. Like I need to project it somewhere Creation energy. Exactly. Like I need to project it somewhere else. And so I think that's kind of what what was the inspiration for. I mean, also, like, let's be real, like, ten years before I was dead broke. Like, I don't have money. Like, I... The idea of, like, you know, it's like, well, why don't I build a car for fun? It's like, well, I have this car that I drive that's kinda broken, and I can't really afford to fix it.
00:22:10 · Ty Morse, Baiju Bhatt
[00:22:10] S0: Yeah. So I'm always interested in, like, what made people start. Like, what made people fundamentally shift what they were doing, you know, years in advance to one day they just decide to take some other direction. Mhmm. Because it's always a... I think for a long time, you're kind of building something up in your mind, and then there's some domino that just kinda like knocks over and Yeah. You suddenly go... Like, for this, like, why did I not start a podcast six months earlier [00:22:34] S1: or another company? That's a good question. [00:22:37] S0: The answer was I actually did start a podcast six months earlier and no one said yes to an interview. So I just did it myself. Like, I just researched founders and there was like another version of Relentless prior to Relentless where I, you know, spent two two weeks researching someone and then basically do like a Founders podcast episode on them. Only ended up doing two episodes. And on my third, I decided to create a, like, Airbnb themed product instead of actually doing an episode on Brian Chesky. [00:23:04] S1: Can I tell you I love that hustle? Yeah. Like, I just freaking love that. [00:23:08] S0: Do you wanna see my product from Airbnb? [00:23:10] S1: I would love to. Yeah. Show me. [00:23:11] S0: So I I tried to record the interview, like, I think it was like 14 different times. And I just it just felt like the wrong way to tell the story. And so instead of doing that, I created. [00:23:29] S1: Dude, you could have made him look a little better than this. We'll we'll know
00:23:29 · Baiju Bhatt, Ty Morse
[00:23:29] S1: Dude, you could have made him look a little better than this. We'll we'll know [00:23:33] S0: for next time. This [00:23:35] S1: is cool, though. This is really cool. Sorry. I'm getting fixated on how the guy looks. He is a handsome dude. [00:23:41] S0: Yeah. He is a handsome dude. He works out [00:23:43] S1: a lot. Yeah. Coming back to this theme of working out a lot. [00:23:47] S0: Do you think all great founders will work out in the future? [00:23:52] S1: No. Okay. Because I think it's possible to be a great founder and just spend like a decade in goblin mode. Fair. Just like subsisting on the sheer sort of power that comes from the chemical bonds that hold ramen together. Fair. Yeah. There's a meme that I saw which is like the hair patterns for founders at different stages. Right? It's like seed stage, you've got a full ahead of hair. Series a, you're starting to go a little bald. Series b, it's a big old donut hole. Series c, there's like nothing there. And then like pre IPO, all of a sudden there's a full head of hair. Post IPO, there's a full head of hair. [00:24:34] S0: Yeah. I haven't noticed this. I think that was the the Pavel Durov situation. [00:24:39] S1: Oh, was it? [00:24:39] S0: Uh-huh. Yeah. But with with him, he was like, I don't think Putin was super happy with him. So that that that may cause a little bit of hair loss. [00:24:49] S1: That would cause some hair loss for sure.
00:24:49 · Baiju Bhatt, Ty Morse
[00:24:49] S1: That would cause some hair loss for sure. [00:24:51] S0: You know, there's been these different evolutions of SpaceX. First, it was Elon wanted to do the first greenhouse on Mars, and then he tried to buy rockets, and he couldn't buy the rockets. So he decided to build them himself. [00:25:02] S1: The ICBM to Mars? I plant in the ICBM. It's a cool idea.
00:25:02 · Baiju Bhatt, Ty Morse
[00:25:02] S1: The ICBM to Mars? I plant in the ICBM. It's a cool idea. [00:25:07] S0: It's a it's a good idea. And what's crazy is you could do it for... I think they... The Russians were saying it was gonna be like $40,000,000 of rocket, and he was gonna buy two. And I think it was initially like 20,000,000, and then he was like 20,000,000, and they were like, fuck it. 40,000,000. But anyway, he didn't end buying them. But there's been these different evolutions of SpaceX. And I think at any given point in time, like, couldn't really know exactly how the business would develop. Like, even until very recently, I was watching this interview with Elon a couple days ago where someone brought up the the space data center thing. And they were like, how did you come up with this? And he's like, it went viral on Twitter or it went viral on X. And I was like, seriously? Is that... That's what he said. And I was like, okay. This is how you came up with the idea? And then, you know, there's maybe some massive business where it just so happens that because he's decreased the launch cost to orbit, it works. Right? Is this the sort of similar thing thing with you where right now you start out with this idea of you're basically collecting all this energy in in orbit and then you beam it down to Earth. Mhmm. And then suddenly because you have all this engineering know how on building satellites and and conducting this, you can suddenly expand into other areas
00:26:20 · Baiju Bhatt, Ty Morse
[00:26:20] S1: as well. I think we're we're in the early stages of this because I... Look. I mean, we're... Like, you're you're you're here. Like, this is a a small but mighty operation. It's about 30, 35 people that are just hustling. [00:26:34] S0: It's kinda like being on a pirate ship. It's just a very small crew, but everyone's rowing in the same direction. [00:26:39] S1: Everyone's rowing the same direction. It's... And it... It's... It gets harder to do as organizations get better... Bigger. And I remember the the sort of points at which, like, we felt like we had a mastery. This is Robinhood, where we felt like we had a mastery the core thing, and it felt like doing adjacent things. We're like, ah, we know how to do this. Yeah. I wouldn't necessarily say we're quite there yet. I... We're getting closer, but there's a path to that, which is like... And maybe this is more from my point of view as the founder of the company. But, like, you know, I haven't been doing this for terribly long. Like, I've been doing this little less than two years full time. [00:27:19] S0: And