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?
00:49:47 · Ty Morse, Peter Beck
[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? [00:49:57] S0: Well, at the risk of sounding arrogant, no, because I think you believe that, then you wouldn't wake up in the morning. Like, I mean, I think a successful entrepreneur is an optimist to their core, because if you're not, then, like, if everybody else is telling you it can't be done, and you believe it can't be done, then it's never going to be done, is it? So, no, I think you... I mean, you have to temper that with the reality of some of the things, and I think this is where maybe the balance is good, like half of my brain is completely entrepreneurial just wanting to go for it, and the other half is like this conservative engineer. So, you know, you fuse those two things together, you know, you get what you get. [00:50:41] S1: What's been the biggest, like, evolution of your own kind of internal philosophy on how you operate the business and just operate day to day over the past couple of years?
00:50:41 · Ty Morse, Peter Beck
[00:50:41] S1: What's been the biggest, like, evolution of your own kind of internal philosophy on how you operate the business and just operate day to day over the past couple of years? [00:50:51] S0: It would be interesting to ask somebody else that question, because in my mind it feels like exactly the same. I don't feel like I've changed my management style or people my expectations of people or the way we run the business has changed at all. You know, there's certain things that change because they have to, like you're a publicly traded company, so you have to do some things differently. But I would I would... You'd have to ask somebody else, because at least to me, it just feels like this is the way that it's always been done. [00:51:22] S1: SpaceX and Elon decided to go public, and for a very long time, for more than twenty years at the company, he was like, I don't even know if SpaceX will ever go public. Yeah. Because he didn't know that public market investors were the type of folks that would be interested in, you know, experiencing failure like that. How did you make the decision to go public in the first place?
00:51:22 · Ty Morse, Peter Beck
[00:51:22] S1: SpaceX and Elon decided to go public, and for a very long time, for more than twenty years at the company, he was like, I don't even know if SpaceX will ever go public. Yeah. Because he didn't know that public market investors were the type of folks that would be interested in, you know, experiencing failure like that. How did you make the decision to go public in the first place? [00:51:42] S0: Well, for us, it was always part of the plan, because it's for a selfish reason and a non selfish reason. So, you know, the selfish reason is, you know, the only thing my parents ever said to me is we don't care what you do as long as you have impact. So, choose something in your life that you can have impact and, you know, contribute to the human history, basically. So, you know, for me, that was space, and I think that you can have a meaningful impact. But I measure impact in not just like a blip in history. I measure impact in, you know, a long, consistent, you know, thing over a long period of time. [00:52:24] S1: Like an enduring thing?
00:52:25 · Peter Beck
[00:52:25] S0: Totally enduring. And one of the reasons why I was very adamant to take the company public was a public company, it's a like, if you do it right, that is a fact, like, many generations of Rocket Lab can go by, and this company can be successful for a very long time and by default have impact, and then I've done what I was supposed to do. So, that's super important. And also, being a public company, it really enforces the diligence and, you know, the rigor to be successful. If you're a private company, especially if you're a private company and you don't have problems raising capital, then, you know, you're just fat and happy for ages until you're not. And there's no, like, extreme For and function? Yeah, no fortune and function or extreme pressure to develop a product, to get it profitable, to make the company sustainable. Like, you know, there's a lot of checks and balances and a lot of pressure as a public company to make sure that those things become true. And those things ultimately, you know, create longevity. And then, you know, as a spin off, then they also, you know, create value. So, you know, I had a lot of investors invest in the company and, you know, want to return that value back to them. And, you know, any venture capitalist that invested in the company, we've made their whole fund back, which is great. And also, you know, the staff have done really well and all of our investors. So, you know, our obligation is to continue, you know, to grow the value of this company, which I think is important as well. So, like I say, there's... I kind of view it as slightly selfish that I'm trying to... I want to build this company that way, way outlives me and can go on and have, you know, a long, long impact.
00:54:13 · Ty Morse, Peter Beck
[00:54:13] S1: Is there any decisions that you make with that kind of understanding of this, like, multi decade, you're in this basically until the day that you die, understanding the back of your mind that you might not make if you weren't planning on trying to create this super enduring institution almost? [00:54:27] S0: Well, I mean, if you look at this, there's a lot of space companies out there where if their founders and leaders die, I think you'd have to question whether or not that company would continue. [00:54:37] S1: I think Elon's one of them. I think the keeper of the soul of those companies is Elon, and the second that he leaves.