Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:00:16 · Alexa von Tobel
[00:00:16] S2: Welcome to Inspired. I'm Alexa von Tobel. Did you know that in 2030, the International Space Station is retiring and will be dropped in the South Pacific Ocean. Today, I was fortunate enough to speak with the person building what comes next. Dylan Taylor, chairman and CEO of Voyager Technologies, a $1,200,000,000 publicly traded company. Voyager works across defense protecting us from hypersonic threats, space solutions building satellite and data infrastructure, and commercial space stations. In 2019, they won the NASA contract to build Starlab, the replacement for the International Space Station. In this conversation, Dylan takes us from watching Star Trek as a kid in Idaho all the way to building the future of humanity beyond Earth. We connect over our shared experience as Henry Crown fellows, and he walks me through what it was actually like to be the six hundred and sixth human to reach space aboard Blue Origin. He also gives us a sneak peek of how he built Voyager and the wild projects they're working on. And what struck me most was Dylan's vision for why space isn't an industry. It's our eighth continent. We're living through one of the biggest space booms in human history, and Dylan is giving us a front row seat. Let's dive in. If you're running a startup, we know things like managing equity and communicating with investors are always top of mind. Carta has built a connected suite of tools that over 40,000 companies use to do just that. Their platform of software and services helps you lay the groundwork so you can focus on building. To learn more or get started, visit carta.com. With that, let's welcome Dylan. Dylan, first of all, I'm so excited to have you on here today.
00:01:54 · Dylan Taylor, Alexa von Tobel, Dylan Taylor
[00:01:54] S1: Great to be with you. [00:01:55] S2: I'm a girl who grew up obsessed with outer space. I grew up in Florida. We watched many of the launches. I would get woken up by my parents, and we'd go lay in the grass and and and watch different shooting stars and very interesting astronomical events. And so just very, very happy to get to meet you. I wanna start from the beginning, Dylan. So you grew up in Idaho. And I would love just to... I always like to ask this question because I'm sitting here as a parent of three wonderful children. If you look back at your childhood and to everything that you've accomplished today, having gone to outer space and built a publicly traded company in the space category, what, from your childhood, feels like it makes a lot of sense connecting the dots to where you are today? Tell us the story. [00:02:47] S0: Wow. Fascinating question. I would start at the very beginning. So how did I get interested in space, maybe? And that really, for me, I [00:02:56] S1: know it's a it's a
00:02:57 · Dylan Taylor
[00:02:57] S0: bit of a cliche, Alexa, but it was Star Trek. And the reason I was so captivated by Star Trek, and I remember vividly watching this with my dad when I was three years old, literally, we were living in a pretty rough situation. My parents got married really young. My mom was 19, my dad was 20. He got shipped off to Vietnam right around that time. And so he ended up coming back from that, was in graduate school, and we were literally living in a house next to a group of biker gang, basically. I'm not even joking about that. What I was really fascinated by was when I watched Star Trek, not only did you have a new adventure every week and a new planet to explore, which really captivated my sense of adventure, but it was also a post scarcity world, if I can use that term. Everyone had enough stuff, everyone was getting along, it was very diverse, and I was kind of comparing that to what I was living in and going through, and I thought to myself, there's a big disconnect here between this show and my reality. And so, I was always captivated by space, its adventure, but probably more fundamentally, its ability to sort of allow us to reimagine what humanity can be. And I've always thought of it as a blank canvas. I've always thought of it as the best of humans. You know, I know you know a couple of astronauts personally, Alexa. These are some of the best humans that walk the face of the earth. They're not only talented, but they're humble, they're collaborative. So I've always been captivated by how fascinating space can be and how it brings out the best in humanity.
00:04:36 · Alexa von Tobel, Dylan Taylor
[00:04:36] S2: Let's go to your early career. What do you think was the single most important trait that you had, that was essential to founding Voyager? Then tell us, what is Voyager in your own words? [00:04:46] S1: Sure. I... You know, honestly, Alexa, I think it was just ambition, just ambition and hard work. I was super, super, super driven from a young age, and actually probably to a fault. I think we're both Henry Crown fellows, so [00:05:00] S2: I was think gonna connect the dots on that, yep.
00:05:02 · Dylan Taylor
[00:05:02] S1: Yeah, and so for me, Henry Crown came at a great time because, the whole moniker is from success to significance, and I was feeling successful, in quotes, but honestly pretty miserable. I was in industries I didn't care about. I was working with people I didn't necessarily like or respect, and I was not... In my mind, playing small ball, not doing the best work I could do. It wasn't terribly purposeful. I was thinking, what's my impact on the world? Of course, in Henry Crown, you're asked to reflect on all these questions. For me, as we talked about, my passion had always been space, I took my skill set from running public companies and other industries, and I thought, okay, well, we know we need to create a company, and here's the way I would frame Voyager. The companies in aerospace and defense, I'll loop that in a little bit as well, but the companies in aerospace and defense that have the most capability have no ambition to do great projects. The companies that have the ambition to do great projects don't have the capability. And I thought to myself, could we create a company that's assembling enough capability that you could build the replacement to the International Space Station, which we have the privilege of working on that project called Starlab, and projects like that go to the moon, you know, build infrastructure that allows people to live and work in space, but do that in a fun, entrepreneurial, innovative way. That's really what Voyager is. We were founded six years ago now, and we're working on some super cool projects, including we're involved in Golden Dome. We are building a replacement to the International Space Station. So it's an exciting time for us, and as you alluded to, we went public back in June of this year.
00:06:57 · Alexa von Tobel
[00:06:57] S2: Dylan, first of all, thank you so much. And just to kinda get to the chase, you're currently running a company that you founded that is a, call it, $1,200,000,000, and I'm sure more today, even. So very, very successful on every single level. You just said a few things that I'm fascinated by, which is that in the middle of helping the the be part of the the plan and project to replace this current space station, can we just double click on that just as one of the interesting things you said? What goes into that? That's wild. What's Voyager's role in helping make that happen?