00:34:16 · Ty Morse, Casey Handmer
[00:34:16] S0: If you look at Elon over time, he becomes more and more raw, it seems, not only, like, publicly facing on social media and x, but also, like, privately. It feels like he just makes decisions faster. [00:34:29] S1: I'm not sure. I think I think there's more exposure now, but I I know a few people who worked with him in PayPal days, and I think he he also shot from hip then as well sometimes. [00:34:37] S0: I think I think he did. I just don't think he did it in the same way. And do you think do you think [00:34:40] S1: that there's any advantage? He didn't have [00:34:42] S0: Yeah. [00:34:43] S1: You know, a 100,000 people to deal with his messes. So [00:34:45] S0: Do you think there's any advantages to being, like, maybe a little bit more coarse like sandpaper?
00:34:45 · Ty Morse, Casey Handmer
[00:34:45] S0: Do you think there's any advantages to being, like, maybe a little bit more coarse like sandpaper? [00:34:50] S1: Well, there is a chat... There is there is a kind of a question here, which is I think a lot of managers or startup founders or whatever will reach a point where where they can't really scale to the next size of the business. Right? But Elon has been able to work effectively at organizations of a range of sizes. That's actually pretty unusual. The important thing is getting the message out, and it's it's crazy how easy it is to be misunderstood on even the stuff you think is the simplest. And I've been coaching my managers here to, like, boil it down, boil it down. Like, your message is getting lost. Like, one bit of information, like, a single bit of information is really all that needs to be transmitted. If you can transmit it well, that's enough. But, you know, you you don't have enough time in the day to, like, sit over all your report's shoulders all the time. They have to model what you're gonna say in their head so you don't have to say it. So it it... You definitely have to have a big personality or the appearance of a big personality to achieve that. [00:35:43] S0: Do you think that you suffer from Probably. Basically... Warren Buffett has this idea of, you know, there's, like, investing hurdles where sometimes you have to, like, be a genius and jump over this 10 foot bar and other investments. It's like this one foot bar [00:36:00] S1: and And he's talking to Jim Simons. Yeah.
00:36:00 · Casey Handmer, Ty Morse
[00:36:00] S1: and And he's talking to Jim Simons. Yeah. [00:36:02] S0: He likes to just step over the bar. Whereas, I think he mentioned that a lot of smart people get stuck in this trap of trying to jump over the 10 foot bar because they... Like, it's intellectually challenging and interesting. Yes. Do you think that you suffer from that problem? [00:36:16] S1: With a caveat maybe. Warren Buffett was probably dragging Jim Simons in that quote. And Warren Buffett's strategy works brilliantly if you plan to live to 100 years old, which worked for him, but not for everyone. [00:36:27] S0: I think he was dragging long term capital management, actually, the yes. [00:36:30] S1: Probably them too. [00:36:31] S0: He actually... He and Charlie has a lot of respect for Jim Simons's might understand. [00:36:34] S1: Of course. Yeah. As friends do. Like, I'm dragging you from time to time. Actually, Charlie had this amazing book called Paul... Poor Charlie's Almanac. It's really good. Highly recommended. So it's definitely true that when you set out on your entrepreneurial journey... And a year ago, I said, you're a smart guy, access to rich people. Why don't you give up this chitchat nonsense and actually start making things that are useful for people? And here we are. Maybe maybe you just can't. Oh my god. Apparently, there's a competition to see who's the meanest Australian hardware startup founder in LA, and you're adjudicating this competition now. Earlier, Ty told me that no one thinks that Australians can be mean.
00:36:34 · Casey Handmer, Ty Morse
[00:36:34] S1: Of course. Yeah. As friends do. Like, I'm dragging you from time to time. Actually, Charlie had this amazing book called Paul... Poor Charlie's Almanac. It's really good. Highly recommended. So it's definitely true that when you set out on your entrepreneurial journey... And a year ago, I said, you're a smart guy, access to rich people. Why don't you give up this chitchat nonsense and actually start making things that are useful for people? And here we are. Maybe maybe you just can't. Oh my god. Apparently, there's a competition to see who's the meanest Australian hardware startup founder in LA, and you're adjudicating this competition now. Earlier, Ty told me that no one thinks that Australians can be mean. [00:37:18] S0: I think that they can try to be mean. I just don't think that anyone serious would listen to their voice and think, you know, feel bad. Like [00:37:28] S1: We're not testing that proposition. [00:37:29] S0: Alright. Go for it. [00:37:31] S1: As if we just did. [00:37:32] S0: I I great.
00:37:32 · Ty Morse, Casey Handmer
[00:37:32] S0: I I great. [00:37:33] S1: When you start a company, if hypothetically one were, you wanna find an area where you have ideally persistent differential advantage. And so, for example, when I was thinking of starting a company, was also thinking of working on drones. But it's very clear that, like, Soren and Co, like, they're just gonna do a better job than I am. Right? There are some areas where I would have insights because of my background and knowledge that would help me, but it would not help me enough to clear the hurdle, which is that this is already an obvious thing for capitalism to work on, and capitalism is already reasonably effectively allocating capital, human capital and money capital towards solving this problem. And that was before the Ukraine war, like, popped off. And now it's, like... This is six years ago, seven years ago. So now it is extremely obvious that, like, if you don't have AI and drones, you don't have national sovereignty, and a handful of countries have even got the memo on that. So for me, I wanted to find something that I was interested in enough to actually work on for a long time, where my particular interests and skills would give me any kind of advantage, and where capitalism was not currently doing a very good job of allocating resources towards solving the problem. So it has to be, like, kinda on the frontier. And synthetic fuel actually works quite well for that. [00:38:56] S0: If you had to, you know, plot or put synthetic fuel on that one foot to 10 foot bar, where is
00:38:56 · Ty Morse, Casey Handmer
[00:38:56] S0: If you had to, you know, plot or put synthetic fuel on that one foot to 10 foot bar, where is [00:39:03] S1: it? In terms of, like, raw difficulty? Sure. I'm not even sure yet. It's it's higher than I've seen. It's really ridiculously difficult. It... It's not as hard as orbital rockets, I think. But actually doing doing this as a successful business that makes money no one's ever done. Yeah. [00:39:21] S0: Is it currently in the science projects phase?