00:25:51 · Peter Beck, Ty Morse
[00:25:51] S0: Yeah, but you get in trouble with it. [00:25:53] S1: It doesn't work. [00:25:54] S0: Yeah, no, that's, I mean, you have to be respectful to your shareholders and your investors that they're making decisions off of your timelines, you know, and sometimes you get it wrong and that's unfortunate, But generally, you know, the dates and things that we try and put out there, we try and be right. Now, we always we do run green light schedules, meaning that, you know, when we put a schedule together, there's not some big fat in there that says that, you know, if this doesn't work, it might, you know, we build a bit of extra time in here and build a bit of extra time in here because engineers will take as long as you have allocated them to do a job. If you allocate all the fat in there, then you just that is your default best schedule, whereas we've always run green light schedules from day one, where you put the schedule down in place that you think is if everything goes right, and, you know, if everything goes right, then that is the best time that you're going to achieve. And, course, not everything always goes right, but you can guarantee where you build fat in, it'll be the wrong place anyway. So, you know, has been, you know, very effective for Rocket Lab, and yep, okay, sometimes we're late on some stuff, but it's not horrifically late, and, you know, it's still faster than if you'd have, you know, done a more traditional approach.
00:25:54 · Peter Beck, Ty Morse
[00:25:54] S0: Yeah, no, that's, I mean, you have to be respectful to your shareholders and your investors that they're making decisions off of your timelines, you know, and sometimes you get it wrong and that's unfortunate, But generally, you know, the dates and things that we try and put out there, we try and be right. Now, we always we do run green light schedules, meaning that, you know, when we put a schedule together, there's not some big fat in there that says that, you know, if this doesn't work, it might, you know, we build a bit of extra time in here and build a bit of extra time in here because engineers will take as long as you have allocated them to do a job. If you allocate all the fat in there, then you just that is your default best schedule, whereas we've always run green light schedules from day one, where you put the schedule down in place that you think is if everything goes right, and, you know, if everything goes right, then that is the best time that you're going to achieve. And, course, not everything always goes right, but you can guarantee where you build fat in, it'll be the wrong place anyway. So, you know, has been, you know, very effective for Rocket Lab, and yep, okay, sometimes we're late on some stuff, but it's not horrifically late, and, you know, it's still faster than if you'd have, you know, done a more traditional approach. [00:27:13] S1: If you do have a situation where things do go late, what do you do to basically make sure that whatever the new timeline is happens or it happens as quickly as possible?
00:27:13 · Ty Morse, Peter Beck
[00:27:13] S1: If you do have a situation where things do go late, what do you do to basically make sure that whatever the new timeline is happens or it happens as quickly as possible? [00:27:23] S0: Well, I mean, there's there's nobody at Rocket Lab that doesn't feel the anxiety if something is not going well. Like, everybody here is super high performers, and they want, you know, it's very important for their own ego to deliver beautiful stuff on time. So, you know, it's self policing in that respect. And, look, the stuff we do is freakin' hard, so, and some of it's never been done before, so, inevitably, you know, you have issues. And then I'd say one of the great things about the company is, like, it's not a culture where if somebody has a bad day, everybody runs away and points at them and going, oh, no, glad that's not me. It's the opposite, right? Everybody runs towards the problem and offers their help and assistance. So, you know, as far as a culture goes, it's, you know, some cultures, it's, you know, everybody's standing on each other's throat to try and get ahead. Not here. You know, everybody runs the thing that's on fire to try and put it out. [00:28:22] S1: How do you actually foster that type of culture? [00:28:25] S0: Well, I mean, I wish I could say that there's like a statement or anything, I mean, it's just the way the company is, it's just the way the company has always been. You know, right back to that example I gave you of that engine blowing up, you know, nobody's, you know, nobody's jumping around and screaming, everybody just gets to work.
00:28:25 · Peter Beck, Ty Morse
[00:28:25] S0: Well, I mean, I wish I could say that there's like a statement or anything, I mean, it's just the way the company is, it's just the way the company has always been. You know, right back to that example I gave you of that engine blowing up, you know, nobody's, you know, nobody's jumping around and screaming, everybody just gets to work. [00:28:45] S1: I remember you said we make the Ferrari of rockets, and you really care about design, and you really care about beauty, you really care about, like, function Yeah. All this stuff. What's your philosophy around building beautiful, amazing products that work? And then why does it matter to create things that are great?
00:29:00 · Peter Beck
[00:29:00] S0: Well, it comes down to my belief that if you build something beautifully, then you've taken pride in what you've done. If you've taken pride in what you've done, then chances are you've looked a little bit deeper than your own work. And if everybody is building beautiful things, if somebody doesn't build a beautiful thing, then it becomes really, really obvious. And, you know, generally, if you build beautiful things, they work. It's very rare that you build something that is just beautifully executed and beautifully thought about that's just a piece of crap. It doesn't happen that often. Whereas I'd say if you build a piece of crap, it's like it's a miracle or it's a win if it works. So, and I honestly believe it takes no longer to build something beautiful and nice than it does to build, you know, throw something together that's a piece of crap, especially by the time you spend all the time, you know, going back and rebuilding bits because the clearances weren't right or, you code wasn't right or whatever. So, don't think it takes any longer, but we used to have a saying on the wall that make everything you do a work of art, because, you know, if it doesn't work and looks like crap, you've got nothing. But if it doesn't work and looks beautiful, at least it looks beautiful. So, you know, it's an ingrained culture, and it doesn't apply to hardware. It's like code, it's software, it's the facilities you're in. It's like, you know, we're here to build beautiful things. We're not here to, you know, make crap.
00:30:34 · Ty Morse, Peter Beck
[00:30:34] S1: Who are the people or things that have, like, inspired you on that kind of philosophy and trying to create beautiful products? [00:30:43] S0: I don't know. It's it's probably it probably just my upbringing, like, you know, as as a as a child, well, that's what we were always expected to do. You know, we were, you know, very practical kids. We were building go karts and building these kinds of things. And whether it would be my father or my brother or anything, like, you would know if you built something that was rough. Like, their whole family would go, that's that's piece of shit. Why'd you build like that? So there was, like, you know, an expectation and a pride that everything that came out of the Beck's garage was beautiful. [00:31:20] S1: How do you marry those two philosophies of you both are going to junkyards to find some little piece of, you know, something that you can kinda salvage [00:31:28] S0: Yep. [00:31:28] S1: For a few $100 while also, like, creating the initial prototypes while also understanding that the finished version is going to be, like, this gorgeous thing?