00:08:04 · S1
[00:08:04] S1: This show is brought to you by Frontlines Media, a podcast production studio that helps b two b founders launch, manage, and grow their own podcast. Now if you're a founder, you may be thinking, I don't have time to host a podcast. I've got a company to build. Well, that's exactly what we built our service to do. You show up and host, and we handle literally everything else. To set up a call to discuss launching your own podcast, visit frontlines.io/podcast. Now back to today's episode. I think everyone loves the idea of being contrarian, but I think one downright of that is that you deal with people who are skeptical about your vision and and your point of view on the market. If you have skeptics out there, which would have to imagine there's some, what are they misunderstanding about your approach, your thinking, and your technology?
00:08:45 · Brian Taylor, S1
[00:08:45] S0: I mean, I think to me, this is a systems problem. It's like a black box, and there's a lot of inputs and a lot of outputs. The outputs are, you know, cost, cadence, reliability. The inputs are, launch costs, materials, nonrecurring engineering, all those kinds of things. Can you put that into this box of equations and make it work? Like, that's where the skepticism comes, and it's usually based on someone's specific experience. Especially in the space world, they're like, I built the electrical systems for some satellite, and I know that those are really expensive, and they're right on the edge of operating in space. And so you do that multiple times or you bring it to reentry, it's definitely not gonna work. And so it's about doing the correct systems engineering to get that box to close. And really, the one answer to all the skeptics is to prove it with hardware and with an operational mission, which is what we're doing in 2027. And so usually when you get a skeptic that comes into the conversation, very rarely do you change their mind by talking to them. They have to see the actual change, see the actual hardware, see the mission be successful. And so you kind of say, okay, wait and see, and and we'll show you. [00:09:57] S1: What's been the most, like, meaningful moment for you as you've built this technology? Do any stories stand out?
00:09:57 · S1, Brian Taylor
[00:09:57] S1: What's been the most, like, meaningful moment for you as you've built this technology? Do any stories stand out? [00:10:03] S0: I think on the founder level, we cover lunch for the entire team and everybody eats together in the kitchen that we have that's actually in the shop. And we have one giant big table and everyone eats together. And running out of chairs on that table, every time that happens, it gets me a little bit more. There's this group of very, very smart people that are basing their livelihood and their risk for their families and for their own livelihood on an idea that I had and something that wouldn't exist if I didn't bring it into fruition. And I think that doesn't get lost on me every time we need to add chairs to that table. And it's a little different than on the dates that you get new hires because people are traveling or whatever. And suddenly, you get the whole team there, you're like, holy shit. There's a lot of people here. That's one of these things that shows you I wanted to build a thing from scratch and make that very monumental. We're absolutely in no way there yet. We're still extremely early in a very small team, but just the small moments of adding a new chair to the launch table is really rewarding to me as a founder.
00:11:06 · S1, Brian Taylor
[00:11:06] S1: It's similar. I had a founder the other day telling me about just the cars in the parking lot, and he framed that more as like a... An anxiety inducing thing that, you know, every time he sees more and more cars, he starts to think, oh, yeah. Yeah. There's a car seat in that. You know, there's significant other there and all of that kind of stuff. So sounds like very similar to how you think about the the seats in the cafeteria. [00:11:24] S0: Yeah. I think it's, like, depends on the day of whether or not I feel rewarded or, like, anxiety inducing. There's definitely days where I feel that people's health insurance depends on this being successful and things like that. So it's definitely anxiety inducing. Probably more of the days it's rewarding than it is anxiety inducing. [00:11:42] S1: I feel like the founder of math like, as long as you get like 10% of the days are like the good days, then like it makes up for any of the bad days anyways. So I feel like you're you're ahead there, it sounds like, the the good days.
00:11:42 · S1, Brian Taylor
[00:11:42] S1: I feel like the founder of math like, as long as you get like 10% of the days are like the good days, then like it makes up for any of the bad days anyways. So I feel like you're you're ahead there, it sounds like, the the good days. [00:11:51] S0: Yeah. On that topic at least. Right? One of the other insights that I had was the amount of the emotional roller coaster that can happen across a single day. So I can wake up thinking that the company is gonna, you know, fall apart. I can be at lunch thinking that we're on the top of the world. And then by 5PM again, I can think that we're gonna crumble. And then by midnight that night after I've spent a bunch time in a technical problem, I can get really, really excited about it again. So that roller coaster happens to me every day. So [00:12:20] S1: Do you feel like a... What's the famous Musk quote? Chewing on glass, staring into the abyss? I remember the first time I heard them, like, wow. Those words resonate. They deeply, deeply resonate.
00:12:20 · S1, Brian Taylor
[00:12:20] S1: Do you feel like a... What's the famous Musk quote? Chewing on glass, staring into the abyss? I remember the first time I heard them, like, wow. Those words resonate. They deeply, deeply resonate. [00:12:28] S0: I don't know if I stole this from someone, but the picture that I have is that there was a train moving slow, and I was able to, like, grab onto it and kind of, like, hitch a ride. And then it goes into the forest, and the, like, branches are hitting every now and then on the side of the train and just, like, hitting you in the face, but you just have to hold on. And now the train's going fast enough that you, like, can't get off. Not that you necessarily wanna get off. That's the image I have of just getting kind of hit in the face. And then sometimes the trees aren't there, and it's very beautiful, and you just, like, look at the countryside. But the one that Elon has is also very illustrative. [00:13:03] S1: I think every founder listening in is is nodding their head and and can relate to everything that you just said there. Going into the efforts to, you know, commercialize this technology, where do you stand now on that journey?