00:42:46 · Soren Monroe-Anderson
[00:42:46] S0: I would say my time is is split sort of between leadership hiring. So recruiting, of course, is the driver of company growth. You know, we have a great head of talent and, you know, a team that works around the whole recruiting process, but, you know, like before we had that head of talent, it was hiring that head of talent, ensuring that we get the right person in the door. Now it's focusing, you know, the time I have for interviews on sort of the critical leadership hires, making sure that we, you know, the best thing we can do if we wanna scale rapidly is hire the right leadership to then... For them to go off and hire the people under them. So I'm doing a good bit of that. There's more time being spent on the long term vision of the company and the, you know, product roadmap beyond sort of the, like, more obvious stuff that we've needed to build so far. And then, you know, management just becomes a bigger job, and not necessarily like having to micromanage the people who report into me, that's not how how we operate, but just the the number of meetings in a day that need some amount of my input has become pretty high. So I've I've actually just been looking through like how can I get rid of these recurring events and and like make just more open blocks of time on my my calendar to do like real work, sit down and do real work or or deep work is maybe the better term for it? So that balance can be really tricky. It's very hard to be actually directly responsible for any work product as as the, like, as a co founder or CEO. And so we have to... I have to be very measured in like signing up for things. And and, you know, there's a lot of stuff that I wish I could just sit down and do myself, because I I would like to to do it, but often it's not realistic to to sign up for that, so then you sort of go through the list of, like, alright, what do I have... What do I need to... What can I delegate? And if there's not a person at the company who can take over this task right now, they should... That should probably become a role. So I've been trying to be more intentional about thinking about that too. Like, I I just have a running list of things that I I should be delegating, and then eventually those sort of hit critical mass and become a role.
00:45:20 · Ty Morse, Soren Monroe-Anderson
[00:45:20] S1: What have been the biggest things like over the past year that stopped you from like executing really well? [00:45:26] S0: I think our biggest blocker to execution has been recruiting, and just not leaning forward enough on building up the internal recruiting resources and how, you know, how many people should we have at the company for at any given time. Now we're sort of in the mindset of support maximum sustainable growth. And if we had, you know, more engineering resources, more operations resources, we'd just like be able to go faster, build better. So I I think that's one of my key takeaways from... Like, if I if I was doing this again, if I if I... If you have a company where you see the clear growth trajectory, build the recruiting muscle early and set the bar for talent. I think we did a good job setting the bar for talent. We just didn't build enough of an engine to to find those people because they're super rare, it's really hard. But I just... I I wish I'd put more attention into that earlier on, and sort sort of our our just constant trend is is, like, turning things down or or going slower because because of lack of people resources. We've not really lived in a demand constrained world in the company, so we should have [00:46:51] S1: just built faster. If the biggest constraint over the past twelve or twenty four months was basically just finding amazing people, how are you kind of systematizing figuring that out going forward so that when you need to hire that next executive, things just go work?
00:46:51 · Ty Morse, Soren Monroe-Anderson
[00:46:51] S1: just built faster. If the biggest constraint over the past twelve or twenty four months was basically just finding amazing people, how are you kind of systematizing figuring that out going forward so that when you need to hire that next executive, things just go work? [00:47:07] S0: The whole process gets easier as you scale the company. As you build momentum, people see that, and and there's a lot of great talent who are willing to join a startup, but maybe not willing to join a, you know, seed or series a startup. I'd say there's been a really significant shift post post series b and post a few kind of critical government contracts. It's just been a lot easier to attract and close the level of people that we're looking for. We've also built a pretty good system for finding the people who don't have flashy resumes. [00:47:47] S1: How do you
00:47:47 · Ty Morse, Soren Monroe-Anderson
[00:47:47] S1: How do you [00:47:48] S0: do that? I think instead... You you you train your recruiting team instead of looking for logos, they're looking for sort of core skills, and also seeing the examples of the people at the company who've done incredibly well, who came from, you know, random company. They were like string of random companies that you, as a logo, would not expect them to have the best talent in the world, especially I'd say in Southern California. There's a lot of like shops, like, there's a lot of companies in aerospace and defense and, you know, sort of the technologies that support those and like sub suppliers. There's like tons of companies supporting this industry that aren't very well known that do have some really great people. And then there's a lot of amazing schools here for where people will like go and get an incredible education, but then go to a company that, you know, most people have never heard of, and then sort of be missed by the the typical recruiting pipeline. And so I think we've done a decent job at identifying people like that, which is I'd say something we should lean, you know, even heavier into going forward. [00:49:05] S1: When you're thinking about taking risk and which risks you want to take, I think the most important thing is to just make sure that whatever you're committing, you can actually pull off. But then later on, there's the risk of, like, not scaling fast enough and not building capacity fast enough. How are you kind of going through the, you know, risks in your own mind and then just checking those things off?
00:49:05 · Ty Morse, Soren Monroe-Anderson
[00:49:05] S1: When you're thinking about taking risk and which risks you want to take, I think the most important thing is to just make sure that whatever you're committing, you can actually pull off. But then later on, there's the risk of, like, not scaling fast enough and not building capacity fast enough. How are you kind of going through the, you know, risks in your own mind and then just checking those things off? [00:49:27] S0: I'm 90% concerned about execution to... For for... Like, I'm way more concerned about are we going to be, know, are we gonna be able to build this factory and and do it in a quick timeline and build credible deterrence versus, you know, worrying about, like, the demand side of the side of the equation. Pretty big believer in the, like, if you build it, they will come, especially with the importance of the technology. Yeah. With the importance of the technology that we're making, I'd say it's it's almost all execution risk, and then it, you know, again comes back to like finding the right people to do it. But if you can find the right people to do it and give them resources, then it's it's it's possible. We have the financial resources to do it. And so, again, the mindset is just is just like pick the thing that matters the most, which to me is is building this factory and and putting full steam, full effort into that.
00:50:30 · Ty Morse
[00:50:30] S1: Yeah. I remember, I think I was at Olaf's house probably three or four months ago, and I was talking with one of the people that works at Neros, and he mentioned that when you guys were out on some, like, testing thing, I don't know if it was in, like, Hawaii with with the military, they had a, like, RF or, you know, a a jammer. And you guys flew a drone right by a jammer, and they didn't even pick it up. What's it been like when you kinda run into the situation where the military or some other organization thinks that they have capability to, you know, detect or or jam drones, and then they realize like, oh shit, we don't actually have that?