S3 | Saturday Startup Stories

0:00 What is Fuse?

1:16 Background (pre-potato guns)

3:22 Founding at 19, why?

4:13 Why fusion?

5:47 Energy transportability

6:43 Potato guns

8:38 Main Fuse facilities

11:01 Intense Fuse culture

12:27 Why?

14:01 Fixing bureaucracy

15:28 How do you think

16:45 Learnings

20:06 US vs China in fusion

21:52 Deep tech issues

23:30 The S³ problem

26:52 Current life philosophy 

0:00 Intro

0:43 Notes on the wall

2:50 What is Daylight

6:12 Duality

7:58 Why?

12:17 Biggest learnings

15:18 What to do in life

19:00 Kink? 

23:52 Hardest technical challenge

26:20 

31:00 Should we inspire people?

35:11 Current life philosophy

Interview with CEO & Cofounder of Forward Adrian Aoun for Episode 44 of S³

0:00 What & why is the CarePod?

3:21 A career in AI

6:01 Future of AI

7:47 The Google Problem

12:42 Larry Page’s right hand man

15:08 First principles thinking

17:16 Founder learnings

19:57 I wanted to start a police force

22:35 The future of society & AI

25:39 Inspiring people

29:34 How do you think?

31:28 Current life philosophy

Interview with CEO & Cofounder of Hermeus AJ Piplica for Episode 42 of S³.

0:00 What is Hermeus

0:57 Why go fast?

5:09 Founding inspiration

10:16 Planning something big

15:50 First 6 months

18:44 Pain of building

21:45 Mental models for speed

24:41 Why haven’t we done this yet?

28:25 Keeping high speed travel

32:15 What to build

34:58 Current life philosophy 

Interview with roboticist, fine fashion maker, 3D-weaving inventor, CTO & Cofounder of unspun Kevin Martin for Episode 42 of S³

0:00 Oops, it’s dark now

0:32 What is unspun?

3:08 My dad crashed an F-16

4:08 K-pop, robots

6:52 Meeting cofounders

9:13 Inventing 3D weaving

11:08 Catching up to China

12:26 Founder learnings

16:22 How do you think?

18:15 Inspiring Gen-Z, maybe? 

23:22 Future of robotics

26:33 How do we distribute automation wealth?

28:31 Current life philosophy

Interview with quantum maxer, e/acc founder, thermodynamic pioneer, CEO & Cofounder of Extropic Guillaume Verdon for Episode 41 of S³

0:00 What’s behind you? 1:29 What is Extropic? 4:08 Young Gill 7:12 Why Extropic? 11:25 Secret quantum lab experience 13:05 How does Extropic work? 16:20 Hardest technical challenge 17:50 Quantum & silicon strapping 20:56 Why decentralize AI 24:00 Doomerism 25:48 E/acc vitality 28:13 Regulatory capture 30:32 Founder learnings 31:36 How do you think? 33:23 What does deep tech get wrong? 35:53 How do we inspire people? 37:22 Current life philosophy

Interview with founding member of Oculus, hardware-pioneer, and CEO of Framework, Nirav Patel.

0:00 Breaking into Framework HQ

1:11 Experience at Apple

2:05 Becoming employee 0001 at Oculus

3:20 What worked for Oculus? 

4:30 Founding Framework

6:32 GTM for Framework & Linus

9:48 Advice for hardware

12:22 Nirav on AI Hardware

15:36 Raising little, huge impact

17:00 Hardest technical challenge

18:33 Emerging research/tech

19:06 How do you think?

20:26 Master plan

22:01 Consumer Hardware mistakes

23:12 Why Consumer Hardware?

23:48 Helpful founder resources

25:17 Branding for Framework

27:08 Framework manufacturing story

24:45 Fundraising is hard

35:45 Judging Consumer Hardware

36:47 Current Life Philosophy 

Interview with carbon-carbon printer, artificial solar sun schemer, space robotics guru, and future-space pirate Cole Nielsen-Cole, CTO of Orbital Composites.

0:00 Founding inspiration

4:53 Similarity between drones & satellites

6:20 Why Carbon Fiber is hard

9:42 Heat treatment for rocket nozzles

14:38 Cole’s artificial sun

16:59 List everything you’re doing

21:28 What first inspired you? 

24:44 More projects

27:58 Orbital & Artemis mission

30:39 Why care about Mars?

35:10 How do you focus? 

36:14 Hardest challenge

38:17 What does deep tech get wrong?

40:26 The inspiration problem

42:56 How do you think?

46:55 Why build hard things?

Interview with Loyal CEO and Founder Celine Halioua for Episode 37 of S³. 0:00 Dogs! 1:05 Celine’s founding inspiration 5:37 Research vs. spinning out 7:20 Celine’s superpower 8:20 Hardest technical challenge 10:14 Can bio revolutionize? 15:32 Stories from raising 18:56 Bio vs Hardtech vs Software 21:38 How do you think? 24:14 Founder learnings 26:38 Solo vs Cofounding 27:23 What deep tech gets wrong 32:01 Current life philosophy

0:00 Casey’s background 6:52 Casey’s Mars map 8:08 Terraform inspiration 15:04 Vision quest 17:32 Hardest technical challenge 19:35 How do you think? 24:48 Exciting future tech/research 31:11 Uncommon question 35:03 Inspiring the world 38:26 Current life philosophy

0:00 Founding inspiration 2:46 Retro design vision 5:40 Decentralized manufacturing 10:26 Highlights building 12:30 How to design a beautiful car 17:20 Different customer demand 24:29 Supply chain 27:20 Updates for Olympian 30:44 What deep tech gets wrong 33:00 Hardest engineering problem 36:15 Our own “Gigapress” 37:42 Uncommon question 40:40 Current life philosophy

0:00 Intro 0:42 Zane loves sensors 1:38 Zane’s experience with US Military 3:45 Improving the military industrial complex 5:19 I want an F-35 7:43 Founding inspiration 9:09 Hardest technical challenge 14:22 Future tech 17:40 Uncommon question (Funny VC dig) 20:30 What does deep tech get wrong? 23:28 Best Call of Duty games 24:25 How to know what to work on? 27:30 How do you think? 29:05 Current life philosophy

0:00 Verdie!

1:05 Their approach

2:55 Your business model

4:17 Founding inspiration

5:22 Origin of the idea

7:13 Nag’s first company

8:59 Why didn’t you quit?

10:22 AGI & Singularity

12:02 The S³ mission

13:11 Cutting edge research

14:08 Hardest technical challenge

15:30 Fundamental AI shifts

16:43 What deep gets wrong

18:00 How do you think?

18:47 Uncommon question

20:20 Physical based AI

22:04 Biggest learning

25:38 Current life philosophy

Interview with CEO and Cofounder Chris Power of Hadrian for Episode 32 of S³

Apologies for how bad my audio is and Chris's camera angle in this episode, it was my 2nd time filming the S³ podcast which resulted in some ~learnigng experiences~ 2:40 Why full-stack? 5:30 Hadrian tech stack 8:30 Software approach 11:10 Software importance 14:24 A general manufacturing solution 16:41 Exciting research & tech 17:38 Deep tech pitfalls 19:00 Biggest learning 20:41 Uncommon question 22:36 Culture 23:34 Building for automation 24:10 Next big step 26:58 How do you think? 28:54 Life philosophy 33:33 Inspiring builders

Podcast with Aleh Kandrashou of Cuby for Episode 31 of S³ 0:00 We filmed remotely! 0:29 Before founding: physics 3:43 Tech behind Cuby 4:43 Emerging tech 6:06 Hardest challenge 7:05 Mistakes building hard tech 7:53 Uncommon questions 8:38 How do you think? 10:05 Next for Cuby 11:38 How to change the world 12:25 What is your life philosophy?

Interview with Augustus Doricko, CEO & Founder of Rainmaker for their feature on episode 30 of S³:    • We Can Control The Weather | Rainmaker  0:00 Based & burnt thumb 2:03 Before founding Rainmaker 8:17 Hardest problem with Rainmaker 10:03 Future tech & research 13:16 Founder learnings 14:58 What does hard tech get wrong? 16:22 Chemtrails 17:35 How do you think? 19:27 Culture war 23:38 the Bible 25:44 What is your life philosophy?

Interview with Sam D'Amico, CEO & Founder of Impulse for their feature on episode 28 of S³: https://youtu.be/YdawGen0QPc 0:00 Fresh from CES 2024 1:20 Building solar cars 3:49 What is the Impulse master plan? 6:13 From Oculus VR to founding 8:02 Pizza? 12:25 Deciding what to build 13:52 Most interesting engineering problem 15:35 Upcoming battery breakthroughs 16:57 Supply chain!!! 18:48 Advice for manufacturing partners 19:36 Founder learnings 20:26 What do most hardware startups get wrong? 22:46 How do you think? 25:03 Current life philosophy

Interview with Anton Troynikov, CTO & Cofounder of Chroma for their feature on Episode 27 of S³ 0:00 Anton and AI & robotics2:51 Discrete vs Vector Data

4:13 Evolving humanity's data reasoning

6:39 Approach to building Chroma

8:48 How is Chroma different?

10:30 What should you build with AI?

19:10 Upcoming AI breakthroughs

23:52 How do you think?

25:57 Uncommon Chroma insights

29:00 Current life philosophy