00:07:50 · Zach Dell
[00:07:50] S0: Well, I I think there's a definite chip on my shoulder that I'll just, you know, let's let's let's call it out, I have a very recognizable last name. Right? And basically anything I do forever, I will do as the son of my father, which some people, you know, they they struggle with, that gives them anxiety. It's an immense source of pride for me. I've got the most incredible dad in the world. I mean, he's my best friend. He's my number one mentor. He's the person I call when I can't figure things out. And, but like no matter what I do, how much success I have, like I'll always be his son in the eyes of whoever. And that kinda creates this natural chip, but it also, once you move past that, you're like, okay, well, if no matter what I do, I'm his son then like, f that. I don't actually care about that anymore. Like, it's kind of freeing once you kind of move move on from that. So like, yes, there's a chip, but you also kind of move on from the chip and you're like, you kind of, you enter this new zone of like, I don't actually give a shit about all that. Like now I just get to go do my thing. And so I think early in my life before I kind of got over that hump, which you know, honestly, Josh really helped me get over in a lot of ways we can talk about like that was a big source of motivation for me. It's like, I'm gonna prove that I'm capable and it's not just my dad, you know, like I think every kid, you know, in my situation has to go through that process. And now I feel like I'm in a different place where, I'm doing things because I love to do them and because I feel passionately about them and I'm part of a team that, needs me, and I need them and we're in it together and we're taking on, you know, the world, and doing something big and hard and important. And then I'd say one other thing which is like, if you think that I get my competitiveness from my dad, you haven't met my mom. Mhmm. Mhmm. She is a machine. She is a competitive machine. She's a fighter. She's a killer. And however intense or competitive you think my dad is, like, she is 10 times more. And she's she's the secret weapon for sure.
00:10:00 · Sachin, Zach Dell
[00:10:00] S1: You've been both an investor in private equity venture capital and now building this enormous company. How do you see the difference between investing and building a company? [00:10:09] S0: Yeah. Both are really fun and both are really important, but I would think about it like this. Have you ever been to an NBA game? Okay. Well, NBA games are awesome. I'm a big basketball fan. And if you ever are able to sit courtside at an NBA game, it's an incredible luxury. It's very expensive, but it is unbelievable. Your feet are on the hardwood. You can see the sweat on the players' bodies. It's like you're in the game. Your heart's racing. It's totally incredible. You're really close to the action, but there's nothing like dribbling the ball. There's nothing like having the ball in your hands. It's a tie game. Your team needs to score. Coach calls a timeout. Who's gonna do it? When you're on the sideline, you can say, hey, like pass at Denver three or like, the guy's open in the corner. Right? But there's nothing like having the ball in your hand. Right? So when you're investing, sometimes you're in the fifth row, you're in the tenth row, sometimes you're sitting courtside, sometimes you're in the huddle, but you're never on the floor. The ball's never in your hand and dribbling the ball and having a chance to score, that is the greatest feeling in the world. [00:11:24] S1: So Zach, you've got an exceptional co founder in Justin. We've been looking at his LinkedIn, researching him and just an absolutely crack background. Tell us how you met him.
00:11:33 · Zach Dell
[00:11:33] S0: Yeah. I met Justin when I was an investor at Thrive and we were doing diligence on Anduril. And I went down with a current Thrive partner, Philip Clark, and we went to do a factory tour of the Anduril facility in Costa Mesa. And Justin was our tour guide. He was the head of manufacturing there at the time. Before that, he had been at SpaceX. He was running manufacturing for the Starship site in Boca. And, you know, we we meet Justin in in the morning. He shows us around the first warehouse. We end up spending the entire day with him through dinner, and I was blown away by him. He is deeply technical, maniacally operational, incredible attention to detail, understood everything that he was doing, that the company was doing, down to the atomic unit. And I think this is kind of a core Justinism that I've learned from him is if you own a thing, if you are working on a thing, to get it right, to do it right, you better understand it like all the way down to the atomic unit. And that is, you know, definitionally like just how Justin operates. And I saw that like the day I met him. And I think we just, first things first, just hit it off. Like we were just friendly, right? Like we'd see the world the same way, both very ambitious, both very driven, very hungry, very competitive, think very big. And we just kind hit it off. We started chatting and quickly I was like, okay, we have very complimentary skill sets. Like he's very operational, very technical. Most of my background and, you know, experience to date had been kind of strategic, commercial and financial and his was, you know, operational and technical. Those things are kind of a natural match. Right? And I realized that we had this very similar, hunger and drive. And candidly, I had not met a lot of people to date, or at that time that had that same level of hunger and drive. And, to build a company like Base that genuinely can be one of the largest companies in the world, like you gotta be pretty crazy and to put it simply like I recognize that he was as crazy as me, pretty quickly and we started talking and first it was like, hey, you know, would you ever think about leaving Anduril to start a company? What are some ideas? I've got some ideas. You have some ideas. And we were kinda... I think we were kinda testing each other. Right?
00:13:29 · Zach Dell
So like, you know, nights and weekends after work we would share ideas with each other and, you know, he would send me an idea and I would put a spreadsheet together and, you know, I would send him an idea and he would put a spreadsheet together and we would kind of talk through things. And it quickly became obvious that he was like incredibly capable, incredibly ambitious, very passionate. And I think we had similar value in, look, I think this is really important. Like he's a good human. He's a he's he's a great husband. He cares about his family. You know, he comes from, he he has similar values that I do. He's he's, you know, he he's not willing to compromise on integrity. He's not gonna break the rules. He's gonna play fair, but he's damn damn sure gonna win. Right? He's like, you know, play nice but win. Right? To use my dad's favorite line. Right? And I think that was really important to me too. So I saw someone who had the ambition, the drive, the integrity, the humility, And then, you know, I think we both just picked up steam together around this this idea and the way, you know, it came together was I called him a couple months after we met and said, hey, look, I think there's an opportunity to do to energy what SpaceX did to aerospace and what Anduril did to defense. And I need a co founder, are you interested? And he said, yeah, I'm interested, but you know, let's talk through it. And we said the next three months, you know, we would get on the phone every night, basically at 9PM and talk sometimes for thirty minutes, sometimes for three hours and just, you know, churn through the idea and kind of iterate, iterate, iterate together. And about three months in, we said, okay, let's meet in Austin. Let's spend a week together. And if it goes well, you know, we'll decide to start a company together. And it was kind of a funny story. You know, the Sunday night before the Austin trip, I sent him a schedule that was like scheduled to the minute of like, here are all the things we're... And it was like, you know, 7AM to 10PM, like, here are all the things we're gonna do, and it was a test because I was like, let's see how this guy responds to the intensity, and he couldn't have responded. I mean, he effing loved it, right? He like, you know, responded with all these thoughts before the meeting. He showed up, know, thirty minutes before.
00:15:29 · Zach Dell, Adam Miller, Sachin
We jammed you know, twelve hours a day, all day long, like... And it was just clear that we were both, like, singing the same song. We were both kinda maniacally focused on this opportunity, and we never looked back from there. And it's been an incredible journey, you know, it's been an absolute pleasure building the company [00:15:46] S2: with him and we're we're truly just getting started. Zach, you've raised over $1,000,000,000, in such a short amount of time and put together one of the best teams in the world and convinced them to move across the country to Austin. How would all these people describe you as a leader and why did their tech just bet on you? [00:16:02] S1: I think you'd have [00:16:03] S0: to ask them, I don't think all that much about that, I just try to show up every day and do the best work I can do, But if I had to describe it, would say I try to be a player coach, right? I want to be on the field, you know, still in icy roles in places where I can drive the most value for the company. But I also need to be helping people scale themselves. And talking [00:16:25] S2: about commercially at the moment?
00:16:25 · Adam Miller, Zach Dell
[00:16:25] S2: about commercially at the moment? [00:16:27] S0: It could be everything from go to market to finance, business operations, supply chain operations, really anything the company is doing where I have some kind of competitive advantage, like I wanna go, make things happen and help the team execute. But at the end of the day, my job is to set the mission, the vision and the strategy for the company, communicate that very clearly to everybody and make sure we're all singing the same song marching in the same direction, use whatever metaphor you want to use. But being a player coach in the sense that I can, you know, if there's two minutes on the clock and it's a tie game, like, I can take the ball and go get a bucket and we can win the game. But if I'm double teamed and the defense collapses, I can pass it to somebody else and set them up to score. Right? And I can go to that person and be like, you're gonna score. I know you're gonna make it. You're the person. This is why you're so great. This is how we're gonna do it. Ready, break. And like when the play happens and the defense collapses, they get the ball and they score like that is way better than me getting the bucket. Right? So like I just want to win, and you know, and I've got a bunch of playmakers around me who can who can help do that. And so, you know, I want be the best player coach possible, and really be the person who sets the mission, the vision, the strategy and creates the kind of initial conditions, for our incredible group of people to do the best work of their career.