00:42:59 · Ty Morse, Peter Beck
[00:42:59] S1: How do you actually, like, maintain that bar? Like, I know Jeff Bezos has this idea of he wants to constantly improve the bar over time so that any new hire is basically like the best hire that they've made in the history of the company, and then over time it just becomes like this impossibly high standard of quality of human. How do you kind of maintain that? [00:43:17] S0: Yeah, well, that's a great question because, you know, sometimes, you know, a manager will just be so overwhelmed with how much they've got to do. They just want a pulse. Just give me a pulse. And, you know, the recruiting process just it's pretty rigid about, you know, that. And also, I would say that generally, you know, enough managers have made enough bad hires where, you know, Yeah, this person's not exactly what I need, and they're not quite bought into the mission and the culture, but, you know, hey, they'll be fine. And then, you know, not putting in their hours or they're working from home all of a sudden, and then they get self selected. I mean, so, you know, it's ultimately not successful. If you had [00:44:05] S1: to think about the perfect day for Peter Beck, what does that actually involve? Like, what do you do during that twenty four hour period?
00:44:05 · Ty Morse, Peter Beck
[00:44:05] S1: to think about the perfect day for Peter Beck, what does that actually involve? Like, what do you do during that twenty four hour period? [00:44:12] S0: Perfect day? I don't think there is such a thing. I mean, the is that I'm the chief engineer, I'm the CEO, my job is to fix shit. That's pretty much it, right? And also, you know, think forward and grow the company and all those kinds of stuff. So, the perfect day would just be to successfully, you know, solve a whole bunch of problems. That's when I go home at the end of the day the happiest. It's like, Yeah, we finally nailed that, or, This is a great idea, let's go after that. Those are the best days. It's when you, like, you know, grind on a problem and you just still don't find a resolution. Those are the tough times. [00:44:56] S1: What have been the favorite days for you so far?
00:44:56 · Ty Morse, Peter Beck
[00:44:56] S1: What have been the favorite days for you so far? [00:44:58] S0: I don't know. To be honest with you, I'm not a very retrospective person. It's just like, what is the next day going to throw at me? So, I mean, look, I mean, there's always great days when we have a, you know, a really successful launch. I mean, I think one of them one of the more impactful launches for me was our first NASA launch because, you know, as a kid growing up, my dream was to go and work for NASA. And I had like this little space shuttle that used to sit on my desk at home, you know, and then it sat on my top of my computer when I was, you know, started my career at work, and that space shuttle still sits on my desk today here at Rocket Lab. And that was kind of the thing I would look at, like, I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna do that. And, you know, when we actually, you know, got to launch launch a NASA mission and there's a whole bunch of people in mission control wearing NASA t shirts and high fiving us and doing it successfully, that that was... That that meant a lot. It's like that that was a big tick. [00:45:55] S1: I think the first time that you came to America, you, like, went and talked to a bunch of VCs. Yeah. And there was this day where you came out of a very successful meeting with... I don't know if it was Vinod Khosla [00:46:05] S0: Yep. [00:46:05] S1: Or... Yeah. And you just, like, went home and, like, bought an American flag. I did. [00:46:11] S0: Yeah. Know, you went to Whole Foods. Yeah. They had... Yeah. It was the nearest supermarket I could find. Yeah.
00:46:11 · Peter Beck, Ty Morse
[00:46:11] S0: Yeah. Know, you went to Whole Foods. Yeah. They had... Yeah. It was the nearest supermarket I could find. Yeah. [00:46:17] S1: What did it feel like coming to America? What was different about that, like, Silicon Valley? [00:46:21] S0: Just so invigorating and exciting. Because the great thing about America is anything is possible. Like, if you've got a dream and you've got the energy to go and do it, you can do it. And that is the magic of America. And, you know, how crazy was it that a guy from the arse end of a little country can turn up to America and raise a bunch of money to go and build a rocket? Like, it's nuts. And that is an amazing thing about America and also Silicon Valley and venture capital and, like, there's nowhere else in the world you can do that. Like, I mean, if you look at Europe and, you know, why is Europe not as entrepreneurial as America? And it's because you don't... It's not that culture of belief and the culture of we can give it a go and we can make it successful and rah rah. You know, it's very much a subdued culture. It's like, well, don't screw that up and that might fail and all that rest of it. And I think, you know, if you look at the historical developments and why they always come from America, it's because people can just have a crack. And even if it turns to custard, the crazy thing is you can go back to exactly the same person and have a crack on something totally different again and they'll back you. And that is the magic of America. [00:47:40] S1: When you were on the flight over, what were you thinking?
00:47:40 · Ty Morse, Peter Beck
[00:47:40] S1: When you were on the flight over, what were you thinking? [00:47:42] S0: Well, I knew nothing about how any of this worked. I knew nothing. I mean, so I gave myself three weeks to come home with a check or be run out of town, and that was my philosophy. And coming from New Zealand, everybody told me, it's like, Oh, Silicon Valley venture capital, that's like a shark tank, and then you're just going to get eaten up and spit out and ripped off, and it's like, nah, not at all. [00:48:03] S1: That wasn't your experience? [00:48:04] S0: No. No. I mean, quite the opposite. And I spent the first week just figuring out how the game is played, because I knew absolutely zero, so this is where I went around a bunch of startups and tried to figure out how the game is played. And the second week was figuring out who I wanted to talk to, and the third week was I only pitched to three VCs in the end. There's only three VCs that that, you know, I felt I wanted to work with and I felt that would get it. And we came home with a chip. [00:48:35] S1: What did Vinod say to you in that meeting?
00:48:35 · Ty Morse, Peter Beck
[00:48:35] S1: What did Vinod say to you in that meeting? [00:48:37] S0: Well, Vinod had invested in Skybox, which was an imaging company that was ultimately bought by Google for $500,000,000. And Vinod had felt and their whole team had felt the pain of launch. Like, they were launching off Russian ICBMs. So, you know, when I turned up and said, I'm going to build a rocket,' there was zero question about whether there was a market or not. Absolutely zero question. Like, we 100% understand there's a massive market here. Yep. The only question, I guess, was, you know, could I pull it off? And I didn't come there with a dream, and only that. I came there with, you know, a successful flight, a sounding rocket to space and a whole bunch of stuff, and I came with a complete onetenth scale set of plans for the whole rocket blueprints, and I rolled them out all along the partner's desk in the boardroom, this whole, like, onetenth scale blueprint of the rocket, and I had a pump in my hand. And it's like, here's how we're gonna do this, guys. So, yeah, I mean, it's lucky enough to convince Vinod that it's worth a go. [00:49:47] S1: Was there any moment in your head where you weren't sure whether or not the money was gonna be there or this was something like a problem that was tackleable at all?