00:50:21 · John Collison, Scott Nolan
[00:50:21] S1: It's a wartime and not a peace time incentive system. [00:50:23] S0: I think so, or it's something where it's very urgent, never been done before, and it's very uncertain what the cost will be. Yeah. Once you get to equilibrium I don't think that structure makes sense at least not to motivate the right behaviors. But I think the bigger thing I walked away with after Boeing even in just being an intern at SpaceX when it was sub 50 people was at the end of the first week or month I felt pretty high certainty that SpaceX would eventually win even though it was at most at oneone thousandth the size. And it was just because of the speed of execution. And so the thing I walked away with that I actually, especially in the early years with that as a more recent memory while I was at Founders Fund, was these small teams, even though they seemed completely outmatched, by moving quickly with a good group of people you can still beat incumbents. [00:51:15] S1: So it gave you this ability to be optimistic about the odds of a five person startup. [00:51:22] S0: Bet on the small guy. Yeah. Yeah. If they have a vision, if they have some insights about how they wanna do it differently, especially if they're motivated by something more than just Yes. Let's stand up a a small business here. Now let's actually change things long term.
00:51:22 · Scott Nolan, John Collison
[00:51:22] S0: Bet on the small guy. Yeah. Yeah. If they have a vision, if they have some insights about how they wanna do it differently, especially if they're motivated by something more than just Yes. Let's stand up a a small business here. Now let's actually change things long term. [00:51:37] S1: You know, the the three examples I I used were SpaceX, Anduril, and and General Matter. I hadn't realized until you said it in formulating those examples that all three are deeply tied to to Founders Fund. What what is it about Founders Fund and the culture that makes it a good breeding ground for these sorts of companies? [00:52:01] S0: May... Maybe the one thing... You know, SpaceX was started before Founders Fund. I don't think Founders Fund can take [00:52:07] S1: No. Founders Fund was an early high conviction backer. [00:52:09] S0: Yeah. First outside investor Yeah. At a time when very few others wanted to do it. I think the... [00:52:14] S1: Trying to go deeply tied.
00:52:14 · John Collison, Scott Nolan
[00:52:14] S1: Trying to go deeply tied. [00:52:15] S0: Yeah? Yeah. Yeah. But I think, you know, SpaceX gets, you know, they get Elon the Elon gets the credit. You know, you could say that it's something coming out of the whole zero to one mindset and these frameworks of work on something that's important that other people don't realize so what important truth do you believe that most of your peers would disagree with you on. Don't go after a trillion dollar market on day one. Focus on a small market that really needs a new solution and satisfy those customers. Make them love your product like own that market and go from there. Those I think are common to those companies but probably even more than that is Founders Fund does not programmatically start companies and it doesn't want to either. Everyone there you know is selected for wanting to be an investor. Mhmm. Not hoping that they can someday be an entrepreneur. So I think this leads to a mindset of don't start companies, don't do it programmatically. It's almost like that airplane with all the, you know, war wounds on it and... [00:53:20] S1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:53:20 · John Collison, Scott Nolan
[00:53:20] S1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:53:21] S0: Which, you know, you would think, okay, there's, what about all the companies that didn't get started out of Founders Fund? Mhmm. And I think the bar for starting something, at least for me, was always, you know, being an investor is a great job. It's a great, you know, great career. It's awesome in so many ways. So to actually go start something it had better be extremely important. You have to believe no one else is doing it which is why you know in both Anduril and our case there is a long search for someone doing it because if there was it wouldn't be worth starting a new company. And then finally the one that's seemingly the most difficult is you know in my case it should be something where my skill set actually contributes to making it more likely. And so it's extremely important no one doing it and actually lines up with the skills is such a small Venn diagram that it's almost like that activation energy is so high to go do it that it has to be extremely compelling and then most of the risk I think ends up being on execution. And so you end up with these sort of forgotten opportunities that were overlooked for a long time but that are actually really central to an industry taking off. And it just so happens like no one did them for a long time because there wasn't the convergence of market opportunity, and often it was just Yes. Extremely hard. [00:54:44] S1: How much conviction did you get to on the idea before you took the jump and went and started the company? [00:54:55] S0: I would say, yeah, extreme conviction.
00:54:55 · Scott Nolan, John Collison
[00:54:55] S0: I would say, yeah, extreme conviction. [00:54:57] S1: What are the intermediate milestones for you guys as you approach production in Paducah by the end of the decade? Like, presumably that is not the target on the whiteboard in the Right. Have short term, exactly target. [00:55:10] S0: In between. So if you think of the big work streams to do that, okay, at the end of it you have a large facility, and it's filled with equipment and the equipment's operating. And if it's operating that means it's licensed. So, one work stream is licensing. [00:55:25] S1: Yep. [00:55:27] S0: As I mentioned, late last month we submitted our NRC license and so, that's one of the work streams. The another one is okay you have this big building that's operating let's work backwards. You have your license that's how it's able to operate. But also the building exists that's important and so you have a large construction effort. Typically in the nuclear space people outsource the construction of their facilities. In our case we copied, you know, the Tesla playbook of build your own in house construction EPC team. [00:56:00] S1: Mhmm. What's EPC?
00:56:00 · John Collison, Scott Nolan
[00:56:00] S1: Mhmm. What's EPC? [00:56:02] S0: Engineer procurement construct. So design your buildings, order the steel, build it. And so we have our own GC on the construction side. We have our own procurement and engineering teams internally. And so that building is, you know being designed and built and that'll basically be online in time to it'll exist in time to install hardware and commission it and operate it by the end of the decade. Then of course you need all of your equipment inside so that's ordering out of your supply chain, it's manufacturing and manufacturing final designs that hit the economics that you want. And so I think a lot of people think of nuclear and they think it's all about core technology or it's all about licensing. And I think for the reactors it's actually about if you're a big reactor it's probably about a construction project. If you're a small one it may be mostly about building your factory. For us it's more like that. It's more manufacturing. And manufacturing is the thing that relatively few companies in The US have really proven that they can do at scale. And I think that'll be that'll be the really exciting part in a, you know, in a year or two. [00:57:13] S1: Last question. We've talked about what you learned at SpaceX and Boeing and various places. What did you learn working at Founders Fund?