Robinhood Co-Founder Baiju Bhatt on Space Energy, AI Power & Building the Galactic Brain

13:42Shawn French:like I can literally someone called me a degenerate the other day on Instagram and I'm like it's funny because I read it in line now you listen it used to really bother me Bijou I'm like I'm not I'm not this person I'm like they don't even know me but I but I read it I just I was in line for something I looked at and I laughed because I can separate now because I know who I am but I just feel like it gave people on these platforms an opportunity like you don't agree with something be as direct be as mean be as disgusting as humanly possible and I'm allowed to type this and send it to somebody it blows me away see I don't know I mean like

14:28Baiju Bhatt:don't don't like I don't you feel like I'm saying you, but like more broadly speaking, like when you do stuff like that and you look back on it, like you feel like kind of shitty about yourself. It's like, why did I put that out there? Why did I put that negative thought out there?

14:41Shawn French:Yeah, absolutely. But I mean, I don't think a lot of people have that, that, that awareness. I think they live in this state where their limbic system has to be all rushed up, you know, and it's like, okay, you know, I'm going to say this because I have to show that person they're wrong or that I don't like them. And then after that, they go on this thing to where they continue to do that because that's their baseline that's what they were taught yeah these generational curses man they're a real thing and if they're that's

15:08Baiju Bhatt:not how my head works at all jeez this is not how my head works at all what do you mean i just like there's so much we all have negative feelings right it's kind of what do you do with them i'm very firmly of the opinion like i mean i grew up like idolizing people like michael jordan and Kobe Bryant right come on dude you take somebody says something negative to you you're like watch thank you yeah love it thank you right it's like you you internalize it you motivate yourself with it and I'm of the opinion that like the fiercest competition the thing that like makes you the strongest is you versus yourself you versus your own demons your own fears whatever it is right like yeah so there's other other ways of taking this and the idea of like negative

15:57Shawn French:feelings and then just vomiting it out on people i don't get it i think i'm tracking my brain is not working like that at all mine either right i don't i could be in the darkest place of my life i'm never going to go to a social platform and in in say something like that and spew negativity right or even respond negatively like i don't even sometimes i just don't even engage yeah but um You know, I truly do feel, and to your point, you know, our generation, and depending on how we were raised or how anybody else was raised, if someone tells me that's not going to work or you can't do that, who do you think you are?

16:36Because I got a lot of that when I started the show.

16:38Baiju Bhatt:Yeah, I've gotten that plenty of times over the years. I bet you have.

16:41Shawn French:Yeah. Like, I'm like of the school of thought. I'm like, you just added to this chip on my shoulder. You don't know who you're dealing with. Thank you. You just put jet fuel in an engine, buddy. Yeah.

16:53Baiju Bhatt:Watch me.

16:54Shawn French:You know, and I think that if we handle those thoughts and feelings and process them correctly and stay in our process and really focus on the mission at hand for the cause and the purpose and not because of what they said, cool, I'm in. Yeah. But if you let this control your actions, then you're going to hit so many roadblocks because you're operating out of a negative motivational space instead of the purpose. But yeah, man, when someone tells me I can't do something, I'm like, whoo.

17:23Baiju Bhatt:I know.

17:23Shawn French:Have fun watching the show. Get your damn popcorn because you're going to need it.

17:28Baiju Bhatt:I mean, I've had this example again and again in my life. I don't know if we talked about this or not, but I was jumping around a little bit. I was like a pretty overweight kid growing up. And I got made fun of a lot for that. and at one point in 10th grade to quote the great Michael Jordan I took it personally and I was like I don't want to live in this body anymore and watch me and I came back and I lost like almost a third of my body weight granted I was kind of a string bean at that point but like

18:04Shawn French:people were like who are you

18:06Baiju Bhatt:what did you do people didn't even recognize me afterwards and I'm like, hi, it's me. Yeah. I took it personally, you know, like I, this exact thing we're talking about, right. It's like when people say negative things or they make fun of you or like they do the things that like actually kind of get to you a little bit.

18:24Shawn French:I personally, I relish those opportunities. Cause I'm like, I, at this point, cause the alternative is malaise, right?

18:31Baiju Bhatt:The alternative is like not having as much motivation and more motivation. I think it's

18:36Shawn French:better you know i'm i'm in the space where i welcome i welcome people to push back and tell me that i can't do something or to it won't work i welcome it like go ahead like i'm fine but you know i do want to share something with you yeah my whole life i grew up overweight i still battle it right so it's like when i was in high school when when when was the last time you were overweight you're not overrated at all um november i was november of last year um that's when i started my journey um of of getting back in shape and you know when i was playing baseball in college i wasn't out of shape just to be clear it was high school freshman year and then you know some of the subsequent you know ups and downs as an adult you know um in november of 2024 i was severely depressed couldn't get off the couch unless i was recording under a blanket watching tv and i was 230 pounds and 31 body fat wait this is this is november of 24 yeah and by january i was 199 pounds and then i worked my butt off and i got to july and i was 188 pounds and then vacation happened and it took me a while to get back on track and right now i sit about 195 in the morning you know 195 but you know i'm still working to get some of the stubborn areas off right just staying consistent but you know yeah but you know it's crazy because once i got in really good shape last year everything changed everything changed what changed tell me oh dude i couldn't get in i couldn't get a dime of capital for people to invest couldn't until marina and brad miller brad miller was their friends of mine they were on the show he was on the show he owns this massive telecom company uh 60 million dollar company southern telecom they crush it and they saw me a couple weeks later and like what are you doing holy shit and then they see me again like dude you look phenomenal like your discipline level like holy shit the determination this is unreal and then all of a sudden it was how do we do this

20:53Baiju Bhatt:with you yeah and then respond to this dude across the board in society yeah and then another partner

20:59Shawn French:named roman came on afterwards with another infusion it's like hold on and now i'm turning

21:04Baiju Bhatt:people away isn't it funny how that happened isn't it funny i mean you have a similar story too right

21:10Shawn French:when you you know i don't want it to be about me but i'm just saying that when i fixed me that one thing that always bothered me that was in my frontal lobe every single day like it i don't feel good in these clothes i don't feel good in this shell right now like this has got to be impacting the way people view me because if i'm giving off an energy that i'm not confident i need to fix that and all of a sudden it blew up you know but you had a lot of people tell you and vlad know when you were creating when you're looking for for money for robin hood let's let's

21:41Baiju Bhatt:let's go through that oh haters at every step along the way yeah adversity bro adversity i mean one one kind of thought on this right is like it's for some reason it's okay for successful men to just be fatzos right like historically speaking if you're a successful dude it's totally fine to be completely out of shape and not give a shit about your outward appearance

22:09Shawn French:and I think the point that you're kind of getting at here is like at the risk of sort of being a

22:16Baiju Bhatt:little controversial like the same rules apply for men as for women like if you take care of yourself and you present yourself in a way that you feel like you're putting your best foot forward I think it's because women kind of do this naturally and a lot of dudes don't but like if you actually show that you care about your body the way that you look that feeds back right Like people take notice of that. They show you more respect. If you just in the way that you show up, you're like, I'm showing myself respect by being fit, like being reasonably well-groomed, like not smelling like. Yeah, smell good.

22:55Baiju Bhatt:You've been coding for the last 12 hours or whatever.

22:58Shawn French:Smell like Lil Debbie's.

23:00Baiju Bhatt:Smelling like hard work. Yeah, exactly.

23:03Shawn French:It's funny because like I always, you know, take it a step further for myself too. Like, how do I want Bijou to feel and his entourage to feel when they walk through the door and meet me for the first time?

23:16Baiju Bhatt:Pretty good.

23:17Shawn French:Right? You gave me a big hug. It was awesome. But that's the thing for me. Like, I have to chase those feelings. I have to chase those feelings for myself so I can exude that to other people and give it to the audience. Right? Because that's the deal. Right? I want – you know, this show is about determination, overcoming obstacles. And, you know, when you and Vlad were building Robin Hood, it wasn't the first thing that you tried, right? You went through multiple ventures that failed, which is normal. Failure is good. But then you were, you know, looking for VC money for Robin Hood.

23:53Baiju Bhatt:Yeah.

23:54Shawn French:And I mentioned it earlier. I can't remember if it was when we started the show or in the kitchen. like dude you and Vlad are the pioneers like I look at you I'm sitting here with a guy right now and I want the audience to really understand this there's teachers right now on their planning period day trading day trading to make more money I truly believe that Robin Hood is the cause of that because before you had to go to a broker and there was broker fees, commission fees, like all this kind of stuff, but then insert Robinhood. And now there's no minimums. There's no minimum spins. There's like, okay, you can do it this way.

24:35Shawn French:Do it under your own terms and educate themselves on the market and this trading. So like, dude, you built something amazing. And, you know, I'd love for you to share with the audience some of the pitfalls that you've had in creating it and, you know, kind of how you feel about it now. I mean, I think it's interesting because at this particular moment in time, it's like, in many ways, it's like it is the zeitgeist, right?

25:02Baiju Bhatt:Let me just tell you this sort of like emotional philosophical backdrop of this. Love it. When we started Robin Hood, this was like in the wake of the 2008 economic collapse. and I mean I entered the working world like literally the month or like two months before Lehman going under and I stumbled into a job in finance didn't really know whether I even wanted to be doing it or not like I had been an academic mathematician before this and a combination of like the economy kind of going south. It's how I ended up working in finance. And just kind of looking around and seeing these like financial tectonic plates kind of moving.

25:50Baiju Bhatt:And seeing a generation of young people, like my generation of people entering the working world, looking at the financial system and being like, this thing is totally broken. Like it doesn't work for ordinary people. It systematically advantages the people that already have money, all these things. And then the three to four years that followed 2008, I don't remember the exact numbers on this, but I remember something like 90 % of the recovery went to like the wealthiest people. And this is like the backdrop of things like Occupy Wall Street that are happening. Mind you at the time, Vlad and I are two wildly unsuccessful nobody entrepreneurs.

26:35Shawn French:right like roommates at stanford correct roommates at stanford roommates for years and years after

26:40Baiju Bhatt:that too for like seven or eight years we were roommates in a row this is major like uh you know facebook vibes yeah it's yeah it was i mean like really fun period of time yeah we had like nothing but we had each other that's cool man um so this like period that follows 2008 and this is kind of talking about society and the way the zeitgeist is changing, you talk to young people and it was not cool to know what you were doing with your money. Like if you actually kind of showed up and you were kind of dopey about it, it's like, yeah, you know, I just like spend money.

27:14Shawn French:I don't really care.

27:15Baiju Bhatt:Like that, you would get nods of social approval for that. And coming back to this immigrant story stuff, I remember just being like, what is happening here? Right? Because I grew up like without a lot, wanting to get further ahead in life. It was the story of my parents' life. And all of a sudden, I'm an adult now and I look around at my generation of peers and they don't believe in this anymore. Like they just straight up don't believe in the financial system. If you want real evidence of that, like look at clips of Occupy Wall Street. And this was the point in time where the light bulb I think went off for both me and Vlad, we're like wait a second to the extent that people are protesting the financial system right what are they asking for we're like what's what's the implicit ask here it's that somebody's going to come to save this thing right maybe the government will help maybe it'll fix the financial system and i remember just thinking to myself that ain't happening there's no way that's happening.

28:24Moreover, if you kind of look at, if you look at this, right, it's like, how could it

28:32Baiju Bhatt:be that a generation of young people don't realize that they have access to the greatest tool for upward economic mobility? And how is it that this sort of like engaging in the capital system is something that is like, it's falling out of the, you know, it's falling out of the bloodstream of society in some way. And we, I think, saw it very clearly as immigrants looking in because, again, our families opted into wanting to be a part of the system. We wanted to come to the land of opportunity and to Robin Hood. And we're like, we can't solve the whole thing, right? We're two entrepreneurs with really bad haircuts and have been borderline homeless for the last couple of years.

29:22Shawn French:Oh, college, I miss it.

29:23Baiju Bhatt:Yeah, it was years after college, too. Plenty of our peers had good jobs. We were like bumbling, spending like months at our parents' house, like coding in the basement, trying to make one of our startups work. Wow. We're like, we're not going to be able to solve the whole thing, but we understand how the stock market works. And in the stock market, it's kind of a microcosm of all the stuff that young people are upset about, right? Right. It's we thought prohibitively expensive for young people to invest in the stock market. There's kind of this pervasive wisdom where, you know. Like finger wagging, like you don't know what you're doing.

30:02Baiju Bhatt:Right. Like you need to go and talk to an expert before you do it. And you you end up with the phenomenon of a generation of people that just doesn't engage in this. And we're like, there is another way you can make it accessible for people. you can make it something that young people have access to you can put it on mobile and if we're able to solve this problem meaning give more people access to the markets that's actually a microcosm of this bigger thing and we can put a real dent in it and

30:41what is like 10 15 years out from that now putting aside like the fact that you have a

30:49Baiju Bhatt:generation of people that have had the ability to participate in the upward mobility of the economy look at the way culture is now especially let's talk let's be real for young men right where not knowing about your money, you're like a dumbass. Yeah, you do. Right? Yeah. That's what we want. Like we want there to be societal pressure for people to be self-sufficient, self-reliant, engaged with the economy because we have it here at our disposal.

31:22Shawn French:Dude, pressure is such a fucking privilege. I'm so tired of people thinking pressure is a bad thing.

31:26Baiju Bhatt:Yeah. No matter what it is. The absence of pressure is just malaise. Dude, it's boring. It's boring. you'll be in your blanket watching tv right yeah i got some good binging in though yeah that's some

31:36Shawn French:good tv watching it dude but i've played not going back i've played the legend of zelda so many times

31:41Baiju Bhatt:oh my god what a game dude what a game my son we've played it like multiple times now but he's he's a little kid i'm like like remember we played this once already he's like nope i'm like okay so let's play it again is it you have the original nintendo uh no i don't i gotta switch i wish i remember when i was a kid this is like what my life was like as a kid my like once or twice a year my parents would rent a nintendo like a super nintendo for the weekend from like blockbuster yeah yeah those are the days that was like pretty much what i got that's awesome dude that's awesome

32:18Shawn French:i had the nintendo i had the nintendo i did the original one the original original bro i'd sit there and play tecmo bowl and fuck shit up bro i'd be like all the time now we have this thing that plugs into the TV and I got like 250 of them.

32:31Baiju Bhatt:Oh yeah, the little sort of like dongle that you plug in that has everything on it.

32:35Shawn French:It's okay, it's okay. It's not the same, but anyway, sidetracked. But yeah, dude, like it's, you know, where were you at with that? You went Nintendo and then we got -

32:44Baiju Bhatt:Oh yeah, binging, watching TV, not having any motivation. Coding in a basement. Coding in a basement. So yeah, we were talking about Robin Hood for a second there. So yeah, it was kind of the backdrop of it and you look at it today and it's, It's ubiquitous that people understand the importance of this. And in many ways, if you look around at the economy as a whole, there was a study I was reading on this kind of recently. But you look at the people that feel good about the economy today versus the people that don't feel so good about it. And one of the dividing lines is whether or not they're engaged in the capital markets.

33:25Shawn French:Wow. That's very interesting.

33:28Baiju Bhatt:Yeah.

33:28Shawn French:That is very interesting.

33:29Baiju Bhatt:Because there's a lot of like the economy, the sort of structure of capitalism. To me, it feels like we're in the beginning of like what feels like a pretty substantial change. Where there's this boogeyman of AI and its impact on the job market, which I intuitively both believe it and don't believe it at some levels. but it's there right it's very real and there's prices of things going up like the prices of things you need to live not the prices of things that you necessarily want to have um there's a lot of layoffs that are happening in the system at the same time the stock market or at least parts of the stock market have been showing a lot of strength so it's kind of we live in we live in kind of like changing economic times i guess is the point yeah i agree and i also think that the

34:26Shawn French:people are the happiest with the economy or the things that are going on are those that are taking control. Yeah, I can like and I think that's, I think that's a special thought for any industry, you're going to be happier with your health, you're gonna be happy in your business. If you're a student, you're gonna be happier in your math class, because you're taking ownership of what you're what you're what you're doing, you're, you're allowing yourself to become educated in that that vertical. I think that's massively important. The one thing I do want to touch on, though, you know, and I've hinted around at it a couple of different times, you know, in building something, there's a, there's a massive amount of adversity and, you know, low points, you know, and you guys went through that.

35:06Shawn French:You, you went through a ton of different things to build this platform to where it is now. You know, how, how did you guys, and maybe more you specifically, I guess, navigate those waters of the adversity and potential thinking about man, this isn't going to work and nobody believes they don't want to invest. Because the audience right now is listening. I'm like, okay, how can I apply that information to what I'm doing, right? So how did you go through all that? Yeah, I think you have to be pretty stubborn about your ideas.

35:40Baiju Bhatt:I think you have to both be stubborn in your belief in yourself. You also have to be really systematic about verifying that you're not barking up the wrong tree. so i for me at least it was kind of this the i mean i'm if i believe something is important like i will follow that belief very like purely so but at the same time like what was the belief the belief was that we could build something that would help a lot of young people be a part of the financial system a prerequisite for that was that young people would or just people in general would actually use it, which in and of itself, I thought was like the central challenge for, you know, the founding chapter of the company.

36:22Baiju Bhatt:It's like, how do you build something that resonates with people? How do you do that? Right. So what, what became kind of the mantra of the company for a very long time was we would spend an inordinate amount of time with our customers, with ordinary people. And for years and years, when we were kind of through the early founding years of Robin Hood, like, let's talk about year one. Like, what would we do? We'd be like, okay, we have an idea for why we think people are going to use this. We would go and spend hours every week interviewing customers, being like, here's what we're building. Like, what is this thing?

36:59Baiju Bhatt:Like, can you read it? Can you understand it? Like, explain back to us what this is. Wow. And it was through that process of like, there's a word for it's called user research or customer research. But if you kind of boil it down to what it is, right, you're getting feedback for your ideas. So the point I'm trying to make is, is like, you have to be stubborn about like believing in yourself, but you don't want to be like dumb about it. So while we, I think we were both very stubborn about wanting to see this thing come to life, we were also very deliberately and systematically trying to validate that we were barking up the right tree and tweaking it as we got feedback.

37:40Shawn French:I think that's smart. You know, it's funny because...

37:42Baiju Bhatt:Because the right answer here is not just to be, you know, a knucklehead and just be like, I've got an idea.

37:47Shawn French:No, I think you need to be really connected with the actual purpose of why you are doing something. Exactly. You know, I look at this and it's so funny because, you know, I watch a lot of things now, right as as research right i i coined my tv time with my wife as research i find things i'm like okay this is interesting i can do a story on this i can potentially get this guest and we can talk about this tie this in so i'm always working in the background right and i watched this this funny movie with eddie murphy and um jonah hill they called you people right and in that in that movie you know he had a podcast with his with his good friend that was a female and and in that like there was this there was this underlying tone of like dude I'm a douchebag because I quit my career and I'm I'm a podcaster now they can make fun of people like like of me like me like this is literally what I did I left a successful medical sales business right career sales sales career and eventually in 2024 I went full time and I'm like I'm that cliche you know and there was a lot of pushback there was a lot of all these different things of why it wouldn't work like we don't understand like how are you gonna make money how you're gonna feed your family yeah I was like that's easy watch me like you don't need to know the how I guess it's like really you need to know why you need to know why and so for me and just like you and Vlad my connection with my why or the reason I was doing this and the purpose was so great that I'm like, I'm going to double down because if I don't, I'm going to regret it.

39:27Baiju Bhatt:Yeah. You know? I mean, dude, I get my fair share of that right now. It's like, oh, aren't you just another successful tech guy trying to mess around in space? Isn't this just like a little hobby playground thing that you're doing? You and the billionaires club, like, you know, just like launching satellites or whatever, because that's what really successful rich people do and i'm like i mean no like that i'm doing this because i want to do it right it's like yeah let's talk about it right a good segue man you stole my thunder look at this guy dude look at this guy look at this guy so okay i can tell the audience

40:06Shawn French:right now that's not who you are right that's that's easy to see you know you're the same dude on camera than you are off camera they were sitting 100 you know and that's what i that's what I really, really do love about you already. Um, so, but, but talk to me about this. What is the galactic brain?

40:23Baiju Bhatt:The galactic brain. Yes. Uh, I love that name. I do too. I read it. I'm like, what the hell? Yeah. So I, a little bit, a little bit of backdrop. So I left Robin Hood full time year and a half ago.

40:37Shawn French:You're bored, right? You're on board now. Yeah. Yeah.

40:39Baiju Bhatt:Very much so. I'm still actively involved. But I stopped working on it full time because I'd had this dream of wanting to build a space company. And like, this is not a new thing. Like this is something that I'd wanted to do probably my whole life. Because again, like when I was growing up, my dad was a research scientist at Langley Research Center in Southern Virginia. He was working with NASA. He was doing atmospheric science and i remember you know like we didn't we didn't have a lot but i remember when my dad would go to work it just felt like oh he's doing very important things and you get to see like the big buildings and kind of all the machinery behind the science there so i'm like if i ever get a chance to do this at some point in my life i want to be a part of the space industry um and especially in the the 2010s like being like oh there's people building rockets like that's cool to watch and then kind of realizing it's like oh this concept of reusable rocketry is actually the fundamental gating factor for humans to be able to do a lot of stuff in space because you can't if you if you were to blow up you know every time you flew from new york to san Francisco, you scrap the plane, you wouldn't do it very much.

41:54Shawn French:Right, exactly.

41:55Baiju Bhatt:Right. That's kind of the core idea behind it. And I remember thinking to myself, if I ever get a chance to do this in my lifetime, I need to take that opportunity. So I did that a year and a half ago and started a company called Aetherflux with a mission to build power grid in space.

42:14Shawn French:Endless energy and endless power up there.

42:16Baiju Bhatt:Endless energy and power up there. And that was kind of the core idea is we wanted to stand up another industrial use case for outer space. This is where the dots connect between this idea and Robinhood. Like we started Robinhood because we wanted to sort of create a native financial platform in mobile, right? Here the analogy is we want to build an energy company on the platform that is low-Earth orbiter space. because it doesn't really exist. Like nobody, there's not a lot of people out there that are building energy companies in space, I guess up until maybe like a month ago where now everybody's doing it.

42:59Baiju Bhatt:But the core idea behind this was to build an energy grid in space. Why? Because there's a lot of really unique advantages to collecting power in space. We can get into that a little bit more, but maybe zooming a little bit in on this idea of the galactic brain is we announced this week that we're launching, we're targeting 2027 for the first version of a solar powered AI data center satellite. So kind of, if you kind of look at energy as an industry and as a problem space, this is probably the most interesting the energy industry has been in our lifetime.

43:39Shawn French:Yeah, I'm locked in on this, man.

43:41Baiju Bhatt:Right, because we're, the amount of energy that is going to be required for scaling artificial intelligence is like it it's kind of difficult to fathom right the numbers that i've heard are there's something like a 44 gigawatt power gap between in the next like five years or even less between what's planned to be built and what people actually need to to do ai and the issue too and forgive me if i'm wrong i

44:10Shawn French:I did read it in the press release. There's a massive timeframe, like eight to 10 years. It's like a decade to build a data center. So it would take 10 years to build something to support.

44:22Baiju Bhatt:Well, think about what we're talking about doing here, right? It's like we've got the path of technological progress, which is developing artificial intelligence, and it's being resolved down to the timeline of like digging dirt and constructing buildings and getting permitting and putting power lines into these data centers. This is the problem that we're solving from a practical perspective because our approach, kind of the thing that we see playing out here is that space is this abundant place for power, in particular in orbits that are still pretty close to the Earth. So you can fly way more consumer grade electronics.

45:04Baiju Bhatt:You can get near continuous illumination from the sun. So imagine if you're the sun, let's even get some props as an analogy in here. Imagine you're the sun and this is the earth. This is actually perfect. There are these orbits that go over sort of near the North Pole and South Pole, not exactly, but are kind of like if the earth is rotating like this, this half of the earth is where there's sunrise, this half of the earth is where there's sunset. these satellites will kind of always be going over sunrise and sunset the reason that's relevant is because those solar panels are always facing the sun meaning they're producing power darn near 24 7 exactly so and also there's a lot of space up there like there's there's no real limits to how much stuff we can put in space because it's so big right even this we're just talking about like a little sliver right off the surface of the earth some coffee i'm saying this yeah drink from the earth right now that's yours yeah it literally is um so the idea is is that this is actually a very natural place to build really power hungry applications and artificial intelligence is kind of the biggest one of them so more specifically the concept is is we're going to build um we aim to build a constellation of satellites each one doesn't have to be this like monumentally large thing can power a cluster of GPUs that are used for artificial intelligence.

46:37And you actually kind of start with that cluster of chips and you build a satellite out from

46:42Baiju Bhatt:it. So you start with the chips and you say, what's the power requirement of it? And you size the power array based on that. And you say, okay, how much heat is this thing generating? You size out the radiator array that you need for it. and turns out the math on this points is something that's actually quite buildable and at a normal size or size of satellites that are being built a la starlink you can build something really useful that will over time we think substantially put a dent in this energy

47:13Shawn French:use problem for artificial intelligence that's some wild stuff dude yeah that's wild the galactic

47:18Baiju Bhatt:brain it's cool yeah it is and it's cool if you kind of fast forward in the future like what does this look like this will look like rings around the earth like the rings around saturn and i kind of imagine like the the the artificial intelligence brain of humanity orbiting earth that's badass

47:39Shawn French:that's pretty cool that's freaking cool dude yeah you did it like well i haven't done it yet and we're going to like you're going to so i read something too and forgive me if i completely butcher this the power source from space to here there's a gap right there's a time period gap i figure i read it in the press release of something it was like what four to eight years or something like that and these satellites cut this down and because it's through like a late

48:08Baiju Bhatt:it's laser ah yeah there's a couple it's not like a complete jackass right now i told you i was going to sound like one no no no so there's there's like there's a four there's you know it'll take however long, say eight to 10 years, if that's what it takes to build a data center on the ground. The difference here is, is that you can kind of take the chips for artificial intelligence and put them on an assembly line, right? Build satellites around them. And it's literally how quickly you can build a satellite. How quickly can you build a car? Pretty darn quick, right? Like you can apply those same manufacturing techniques to building satellites.

48:44Baiju Bhatt:And then you kind of turn this problem that otherwise requires you know multiple years build out to build a new data center to just say hey we're going to take chips and turn them into satellites you get stacks and stacks of them put them on rockets that go to space and rockets are launching multiple times a week yeah right so you can kind of cut the time from when you buy the chips for artificial intelligence to get them into working use to basically how quickly you can build the satellites how how long do you think it would take to build a satellite good question we're gonna be scaling that up over the next couple of years so i think we're we're gonna have two satellites that go to space in 26 both of which are currently targeting doing a slightly different variation of this power grid and space concept which i can talk about in a minute but you know we're going to be targeting let's say roughly speaking 10 to 20 satellites the year after you know 50 to hundreds of satellites the year after that to thousands the year after that now these are ambitious right we haven't done it yet and no guarantees will do it but like if you don't set your goals that ambitious yeah you'll never hit them you're gonna fall like it's crazy like

50:00Shawn French:always set something you know um set something really really high and people look at me like dude that's not realistic i'm like oh so should i make it more because because my thing is is if i And I talked to, you know, my colleagues like this too as well. I was like, well, if I set the goal here, then we're going to fall here. And that's unacceptable. But if I make it out of this world, put it in, you know, in space pretty much. Set this goal. But if we fall short, we fall way higher.

50:31Baiju Bhatt:Exactly. You know? I mean, I even think about this in the context of Robinhood, right? Like what was our goal then? And we're like, we're going to change the way a generation of people invest in the stock market. You kind of like think about that as an idea on its base value. And you're like, that's kind of a long shot. Don't you think so? Like you're going to do something. You're going to figure out something that natively fits into the lives of like tens of millions of people who you've never met.

51:02Shawn French:Yeah.

51:02Baiju Bhatt:Like you think you're actually going to be able to do that? Right. And it's like, this is kind of the thing is like, you can shoot that high or you can shoot much more modestly. But a lot of the times, like doing stuff is just hard and the failure rate intrinsic in doing anything is like, it's intrinsically a number and it doesn't get that much harder. It doesn't get that much higher if you're doing something much harder, for example, right? Like you're going to – there's still a probability if you compare trying to convince a generation of young people that the stock market is something they should care about versus building – let me think of something that feels more mundane, like an accounting platform for some kind of commerce.

51:48Shawn French:Sure, some type of SaaS software. Cool. Yeah, neat.

51:51Baiju Bhatt:Right? Like that's not easy. Like you're going to run into a bunch of roadblocks there too. There's like let's say a 20 % failure rate there. like 20 % of the time it's just not going to work. It's, you know, it, it might kind of be the same failure rate, but you just apply it to something much bigger. Yeah. You'll end up with something much bigger.

52:11Shawn French:That's the one thing that I really want the audience to take home with them and really sit in it is set big, hairy ass audacious.

52:22Baiju Bhatt:Dreaming big is free. Being optimistic is free.

52:25Shawn French:Yeah. But then you also have to put in the work to get there. Right. So it's like, if you don't do it, you're just a talker. But if you dream it up and you take action, you're a doer. And that's who wins. But I always like to say this is I want to make myself and my direct team, whether it's my publicist, my production team, my partners in my business, my wife, whomever we're working with, whoever we've contracted for this business. my agent over at CA it doesn't matter whoever I want everybody to be so uncomfortable with my goal like if they're not uncomfortable right then I'm not doing my job and I mean that in a good way like whoa you're actually trying to do this what the fuck Sean what the fuck yeah that's what I want that's exactly what I want and that's the reaction I want so now you know how important it is let's try to get it done you know because if we don't hit it right but we fall short we are going to be so much better you know and i think that's the thing i want i really want people to give themselves permission to dream again yeah there's another thing too is like get your failures out of

53:45Baiju Bhatt:the way quickly i kind of have this mantra where it's like whenever i do something new which mind you like this has been the story of my whole fucking life like i've always been doing stuff where i didn't really know what i was doing i entered the finance industry as a mathematician physicist 22 year old college grad unreal like i didn't know anything about that and i spent a decade of my life like being a novice to that industry right doing it again 10 years 15 years later right i kind of make this joke sometimes when i talk to people in the space industry because i'm building a space company right now i'm like you you do realize for all intents and purposes like i'm a finance bro like i've been a finance bro for kind of a long time right so just like bear with me here right um yeah if you if you don't know how to do something wear this badge of honor and like try to get good at it um you know you you gave me an interesting

54:51Shawn French:idea a very interesting idea i'm doing another ted talk in march oh cool and the topic is lifelong learner and being being a lifelong learner and why is it important and you gave me a really good idea because i want to start off with a nice story maybe the story is is what you've done maybe the story is you know building robin hood and like i told said earlier you could be home doing nothing

55:18Baiju Bhatt:right now you don't you don't be sitting on my keister totally good bro you don't have to lift the finger the rest of your life very well aware of that instead you've chosen to learn another industry it'd be profoundly boring it would be profoundly i don't even because you're so young

55:33Shawn French:too dude like that would that'd be miserable i think there's a lot of truth to that and

55:38Baiju Bhatt:without getting too political here to quote our president right i think president trump's right on this it's like to retire is to expire like as soon as you stop well what's the true definition of retire to put out of use yeah are you ready to be put out of use hell no no man fuck that

56:02Shawn French:Fuck that. It's like, what more can I do? I want to die tired and busy. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because you stay sharp. You stay alive longer, right? You truly do. And you have that purpose and you're doing something. Like, you stay healthier longer. Everything is still working, right? I mean, I always say like, you know, someone asks me like, hey, what happens when you get the big Spotify deal or the big deal from Sirius for hundreds of millions of dollars? I'm like, what do you mean what happens? Yeah. I don't understand the question. I'm going to fulfill my contract. I'm going to kick ass. But after that, you're just going to walk away, right?

56:40I'm like, where's the fun in that?

56:43Baiju Bhatt:Yeah.

56:44Shawn French:Like I do this because, excuse me, I do this because I love it. I don't do this for the potential payout. I know that's going to come, but like I can do this until I'm like 70 or 80. Like I can sit in a chair and talk. Why would I ever stop? Why would I ever stop building? I have children to think about. There's also just, I mean, something I'm acutely aware of, right? It's like, I have a pretty, I have a pretty hyperactive mind.

57:11Baiju Bhatt:Yeah. And I kind of like draw the distinction between real problems and fake problems.

57:16Shawn French:Right.

57:17Baiju Bhatt:Like another way of saying it, like the, you know, the, the idle mind is the devil's playground. Like I would way rather have a big, healthy, steaming dose of real problems to deal with. Yeah. Because otherwise your mind will just make stuff up for you to be equally fixated on, equally angry about or grumpy about. You know what I mean?

57:40Shawn French:Yeah. Like. Well, the mind will find what you were looking for.

57:43Baiju Bhatt:The mind will find what you're looking for. So like you might as well channel that and try to put it to use on some real problems where you have stuff to work through and challenges, right? Like right now I'm trying to figure out how to stand up manufacturing satellites, which is really fun and is a very real problem, right? Real problem in that we need to solve it.

58:06Shawn French:Yeah. And you will, right? But it's being able to work through that, right? And give yourself the opportunity to struggle with something I think is important, right? You know, anything we do, we, you know, we, we've touched on health and fitness, right? You know, um, anything we do in, in, you know, in conditioning our body, it's going to hurt a little bit, but it's going to hurt a lot. Yeah. If you want to get the real results, there's a lot of suffering that goes into it, right? You need to, you know, feed your body and get rid of the noise that food makes you fat. No, it doesn't. Okay. Real food does not.

58:40Shawn French:Okay. But you also have to go through the, like, getting through the fact that or the thought process of, like, I don't like failure. You better learn to love it. If you want to be successful, you better learn to love failure and seek it early and often. It's like, so that's the thing with weight training, right? They say the last three reps should be the hardest. And you should, there's times where you should go to failure. Why is it okay there but not okay in your life? Like, why do you go to failure? because you break your muscle all the way down and it goes to repair and it comes back stronger

59:13Baiju Bhatt:how is you failing yeah that's actually in a pretty good fucking different yeah it's a pretty good it makes you stronger it makes you better like fail like we failed a bunch of times during

59:27Shawn French:this show i mean like in in creating this this brand there's a lot of things i failed at yeah

59:32Baiju Bhatt:i mean i think the the version of for me which i kind of was getting to a second ago is like get your failures out of the way quickly. Just assume you're going to fail and just be done with it quickly. Don't wait too long to fail. I think this is kind of like a related concept is a lot of the times, and I'm guilty of this as well, is you work on something and you're working on it and the idea is very precious in your head, right? And you kind of, you're like, well, let me get a little further along before I really put it out into the world and let the idea get tested. What's going on there? It's an implicit fear of failure.

1:00:12Baiju Bhatt:Yeah. Where I kind of try to turn that on its head where I say, let's just take whatever the first version is, get it out there, let it fail. Assume there's a good chance it'll fail the first time. Hopefully not. You never really want to fail. If you can avoid failure, you always want to avoid failure. but just like put yourself out there and try to get the failure out of the way quickly because you'll kind of condition yourself not to be super precious with your ideas in that way.

1:00:41Shawn French:You know, it's funny you mentioned that because a lot of people talk about it's not ready yet. It has to be perfect. No, no, no. You're hesitating because you're worried. You're afraid to fail. You're afraid to put yourself out there publicly. And I always wonder why people define failure as something so bad.

1:00:58Baiju Bhatt:Failure hurts. failure sucks yeah it's like sunk cost sunk time you know um there's also something that's related to this right which is like it you put yourself out there as being different which for some reason our society puts very little value in that today at least from my perspective i feel like conformity is like the status quo i i just you know i i agree with you and i just think look at music man like music in the 80s and 90s was like super fucking alternative and weird and different and strange and pushing the boundaries yeah um yeah like where where is that today yeah i don't know about music today dude there's only a few artists i really like there there is good music but yeah by and large i feel like this is not this is not the most one of the more compelling periods what's your favorite genre i love all kinds of music i've had the last couple of years i've had a profound love affair with 90s hip-hop you're my guy a profound love affair 90s hip-hop in particular tupac fucking love tupac

1:02:12Shawn French:look i grew up on that i was listening to tupac this morning too oh dude he's so good i listened to uh california love on the way over here rest in peace yeah my guy dude my guy could you imagine if he were still around. You know, it always blows me away. But the thing that I loved about Tupac, he was so deep he was a poet, right? But he could help. He was an enigma. He was an enigma. Yeah, but if you cross him, he'd hose your ass. And he'd hose you hard. Yeah. He was good, man.

1:02:39Baiju Bhatt:It's like you see echoes. I mean, we have a whole podcast talking about Pac. Yeah. But I think one of the interesting things is you see echoes of that in society even today. like even the like I think about when Obama ran for president right and a lot of the messaging there on hope and change I hear a lot of Tupac's lyrics in that yeah like the song changes

1:03:02Shawn French:exactly yeah yeah that song dude I listened to it the other day it was so prophetic it was so good who do you think the best rapper ever to live oh I think we just you think it's Puck for me it's

1:03:14Baiju Bhatt:I'll actually go a step further it's Tupac and then there's a huge gap and then there's everybody else I think he is in a league of one

1:03:22Shawn French:1 billion percent I also think like Eminem is like Eminem's awesome that dude that dude's amazing

1:03:30Baiju Bhatt:he's lyrically amazing Pac was just different dude he didn't yeah Eminem didn't Eminem's awesome doesn't cast the same shadow on society like even you think about like the beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar like that was from a certain point of view, that was about Tupac. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Because Drake put out that song where he was AI-ing Tupac, which I'm like, oh, dude,

1:03:59Shawn French:what are you doing? Do you know you're the greatest of all time when people still think you're alive?

1:04:04Baiju Bhatt:Yeah.

1:04:05Shawn French:Like, I still make arguments like, that dude ain't dead. Show me. Show me. Well, it's because he had albums

1:04:12Baiju Bhatt:coming out for like 10 years after he passed away.

1:04:14Shawn French:Dude, when Machiavelli came out, I'm like, I'm like I knew it I knew it

1:04:19Baiju Bhatt:I knew it I knew it

1:04:21Shawn French:oh man sadly I don't think he's actually no he's not sad dude that's sad but you know it's crazy so you've had this this new love for 90s

1:04:31Baiju Bhatt:hip hop another part of it also if I may on this little point like I'm Indian my family were immigrants coming to America right like America is a complicated cultural society where there are these like massive cultural divides between like white society and black society let's just call it what it is and as a kid i was like this shit's all pretty complicated i kind of understand white people and white society like i don't like just candidly like it's a little difficult for me to wrap my brain around all the challenges that black people have in american society like i didn't say it said differently like i didn't really get hip-hop as a kid yeah like it was it was difficult enough kind of understanding like my relationship to uh sort of white society i guess that but i was always profoundly curious like there are all these things as like an immigrant kid growing up in this country right like like what the fuck is the point of wearing backwards baseball caps like i never really understood that as a kid or like tailgating like what the fuck is happening when you hold on hold on hold the fuck on me and you are going to a college football game i'd love to

1:05:43Shawn French:I'm taking you to Baton Rouge next year when I take my family. You're coming. You and your family are coming because I'm going to put you in Tiger Stadium parking lot and you'll be like, fuck. Honey, I think we should move to Baton Rouge. I think we should move here. Tailgating is the best.

1:06:00Baiju Bhatt:I've since come to love tailgating. But as a kid, I'm like, this is an enigma. And so kind of with that in mind, you're like, well, there's this whole tension between these two factions of society. Like I'm having enough difficulty understanding this, but I was like, what is going on there? It's like, it's so, and now I'm talking about hip hop specifically, because obviously I'm like, you know, I'm talking more specifically about hip hop here. Like I never really understood that music until I was much older as an adult. And when I did, I was like, oh my God, this was, these were like the, this was the lyrical backdrop of my childhood.

1:06:39Baiju Bhatt:this was that little piece of the puzzle that now fits in perfectly i get it that's amazing why this is so important and i get why this music is so freaking resonant i love that i love music i i

1:06:52Shawn French:love i'm a big music guy too you know i will say i've always been a bigger hip-hop guy than than anything um you know growing up in the san francisco bay you got e40 40 ruthless by law rbl posse which was more, you know, wasn't underground, but, you know, never was massive, like, Pac or Biggie. Now I'm like, you know, hip-hop artist today, I'm like, I don't know. I mean, you know, Eminem's still at it. You know, Kendrick Lamar's pretty dope. Kendrick Lamar is super dope.

1:07:24Baiju Bhatt:So good. Super dope. Outside of that, for me, dude, I'm listening to old school. I was talking to my son this morning. I was like, do people in school say this like 6-7 thing? Oh, Jesus, dude. He's like, yeah. I'm like, do you know what that is? He's like, no. I'm like, and he kind of asked me what it is. I'm like, it's based on a song which might be the single worst song ever recorded. Like, it should not have been recorded. It sounds awful. It's a god-awful song. It's a god-awful song. And it's about terrible stuff too, right?

1:08:04Shawn French:Yep. Yep. Yeah.

1:08:06Baiju Bhatt:I don't know.

1:08:06Shawn French:Yeah, I don't know who's saying.

1:08:07Baiju Bhatt:I don't know like a real boomer.

1:08:08Shawn French:Yeah. Boomer over here. But I will tell you. But that song fucking sucks. It fucking sucks. And so does the 6-7 saying. It doesn't mean anything. It's ridiculous. Did you? Oh my God. Okay. Hold on. Did you see the, there's these clips that are going around. These reels on Instagram.

1:08:29Baiju Bhatt:and it's like middle schoolers these days six seven and then it's like me in middle school

1:08:37Shawn French:and it's like the opening of hit them up from tupac that is that right there is game on that is dead on yeah that is dead on because that's how i think i saw that real this morning oh dude i died i sent it to my wife i'm like this is the difference like this is this is our kids and this is what i was like right like but it's it's just so funny i mean i saw that i'm like dude like it's so funny you bring that up because my my my daughter still does it like when we go to we go buy you know dog food at pet smart you know and it's like hey do you have you have a good number for us you know because we get rewards and we get a couple bucks off you know the dog bags and we are our dog food's expensive because it's the prescription one because my wife's extra

1:09:23Baiju Bhatt:and um love you baby um our dog has all kinds of prescriptions yeah i just it's complicated being a dog in 2025 i mean seriously they should identify as humans and it'll be okay it'd be way easier but fuck why did i say that because it's true um so we give the number right i go 305 you

1:09:49Shawn French:know and then i'm not gonna give the rest but then and then the last two digits are six seven and so my daughter anytime she used to say a phone number or uh or a zip six seven i'm like what in the fuck is this and so i flipped everybody on their heads on halloween and so dumb I, ridiculous.

1:10:15Baiju Bhatt:So dumb.

1:10:16Shawn French:I bought two Halloween shirts, one for my wife and one for me. It was six and seven. And we walked around the neighborhood and we were hits. Oh, my God, we're seven. We're seven. I'm like, she's got her sweatshirt on. She's back there. She sucks. I was walking around with six. It's cold. I'm like, babe, put the shirt on the outside then. Because you're defeating the purpose of the costume. Shortly after that, you know, it got a little bit less. But yeah, six, seven, dude. Like, it's amazing. I can't believe we're talking about that on my show.

1:10:44Baiju Bhatt:I can't believe we're talking about it.

1:10:45Shawn French:But I love it. I love it.

1:10:46Baiju Bhatt:You know, because we're both a little dumber for it.

1:10:48Shawn French:No, we are. We are. But I love having these types of conversations because it's so relatable. Yeah. You don't understand. Like we're laughing at it, but there's a parent that's listening right now. I'm like, oh, my God, my kid won't stop saying it.

1:11:02Baiju Bhatt:How about this? I'll come back to Miami and we'll just record an entire podcast on on the history the significance will like liken 6-7 to something having to do with the Romans and like its relevance through

1:11:19Shawn French:like the you know oh that's hilarious let's do it no god no yeah so needless to say 6-7 I think is dying I think and I think we're I think we're good with that you know it's funny dude because i everybody's talking about it you know like whatever artist it was and then there was this basketball game and it's about this basketball player six seven well you know lil wayne did a song called six foot seven foot a long ass time ago yeah lil

1:11:48Baiju Bhatt:wayne's awesome dude that guy's badass he is that's badass he is he's on a different level

1:11:54Shawn French:different level and i love when he does the collabs with eminem they're very good um drop the world have you ever heard that one i don't know if i have actually i'm gonna send it to you yeah send it to me i'm gonna i'm gonna text it to you um and then the eminem verse is kind of how i

1:12:09Baiju Bhatt:feel like when i feel a certain way or when people count me out like the underdog that's that verse

1:12:17Shawn French:so when you listen to it when eminem comes in he's like oh shit sean's on a different level this is how he thinks i think you'll probably relate to it yeah i think you'll i think send it to me i'm We're running out of time, and this has been such an amazing conversation and the beginning of a new, good friendship. Yeah, it's been fun. Yeah, I agree. Which is what I cherish most. I was telling Bruce and Giles that when you snuck away for a second. This doesn't happen very often, right? There's a guess that it does happen, but when it happens so organically, I really cherish it. Cheers, man. my man thank you i'm looking forward to many more interactions with you and and uh you know getting the families together eventually and all that good stuff but this has been one of the better episodes ever recorded yes and that makes me very happy because low-key i was like don't fuck this one up sean that's straight up like i it was funny i called my uh my buddy mike um before you know on the way over here we hadn't talked in a long time we talked for an hour and 15 minutes okay just catching up talking about the kids and good friends yeah yeah and um he's like what are you doing why are you still driving i said i'm going to miami you know i'm gonna interview this gentleman named bijou bot he goes hold on hold on i'm like dude i'm driving like what the fuck i've got all the time in the world like what he goes you're interviewing bijou i was like yeah you know who he is he's like yeah i use his shit all the time and and it was just it was a cool moment he goes he goes hey dude don't fuck that one up i'm like you know it wasn't enough that i was already thinking of this i gotta talk about two different things that i'm not necessarily in the world we're talking about space we're talking about all this other stuff but but it's funny you know it it turned into something that immediately i felt comfort with you and your friends and dude it was just such a great show man um one of the things i always talk to my guests about as we're you know landing the proverbial plane is i built this platform because i had something missing inside me you know i didn't understand and i was successful.

1:14:45Shawn French:I was doing well in sales, but something felt empty. There was this gap and I couldn't figure out what it was until I did. And I just wanted to do some of those massive amounts of purpose. Right. And the one thing that I felt was missing in society, and I still think, but at large today, it's still missing is people waking up determined society, waking up, waking up into society that's determined to chase their dreams, no matter how they feel emotionally at that time. I think it's missing. And I wanted to build something that can inspire people to do so. And so that's my true definition of what determination means to me is chasing your dreams, no matter how you feel emotionally at that time.

1:15:29Shawn French:You just don't stop. What's your definition of determination?

1:15:33Baiju Bhatt:I think on a day-to-day basis, it's cutting the noise out and putting one foot in front of the other right love it it just is because you can always regardless of how existential things feel and lord knows things have felt that way for me many times over the years like you can always kind of plot the next one move two moves three moves and those add up right wow like those they snowball like this is um yeah being being again kind of like being stubborn about your ideas and seeing them through also being systematic about like figuring out whether it's the right idea or not like systematic about getting feedback to validate or invalidate your thinking for me it's always thinking about things as hypotheses right like i i believe this to be true like how can i validate that this is true or false to the extent that I can before which kind of have to do it.

1:16:40Baiju Bhatt:But like once, you know, once you do, you're still just putting one foot in front of the other. Like you're being determined about what your process is to go from A to B. And yeah, I think that's pretty much it.

1:16:54Shawn French:I love that. It's very in line of how I feel and how I look at things, right? You have a process, but you also have standards. The standards are what you do no matter what, no matter how you feel. It's like I'm going to have four to five meals today. That's a standard. And they're going to all be healthy. That's a standard. I have to stick to that every day. I get to stick to that every day. Right. But the idea of moving forward, no matter what is, is I think simpler than people really truly think about it, that it is. It's like, you know, I had somebody say on my show, like Marcus Luttrell, that he was a Navy SEAL.

1:17:40Shawn French:He was a lone survivor. They made a movie about it and I sat down with him and his brother about three weeks ago in my buddy's ranch in Mississippi, Wing Ranch. And so for people that are having a hard time to go into the gym, drive yourself to the gym, pick up the dumbbell, put it back on the rack and walk out. You worked out. You went. And I think that determination is that. It's not these big sexy moves every day. It's rarely that, guys. What it really is, is when you feel defeated and just broken, you still go for the walk. You still go lift the weight. You still make that phone call for your business.

1:18:18Shawn French:You still shoot the show. Because like no bullshit, dude. Last night, I could barely move. Didn't feel good. I was just exhausted, man. I think I was, you know, I felt like I was getting sick, but I'm not clearly because I feel great. is I looked at my wife, I'm like, I have one of the most important interviews tomorrow and I'm feeling like this. Like I was like, I got to get through this. I was like, so here's what I need. I was like, if you could support me in this. So I'm going to make dinner. I'm going to do everything that I normally would. I'm going to put the girls down as well.

1:18:49Baiju Bhatt:Isn't it awesome having a partner that you love and trust?

1:18:52Shawn French:Dude, this isn't possible without my wife, dude. Same for me. The autonomy to take a risk like this. I couldn't have done it without her. And early on, I remember getting so excited about certain people come on the show and she goes, she wasn't excited. I'm like, are you not understanding? She goes, no, I understand fully that they get to talk to you.

1:19:17Baiju Bhatt:Yeah.

1:19:18Shawn French:Because I know you. I know what you're going to do in this business. I know how this is going to end.

1:19:23Baiju Bhatt:Isn't it awesome when your wife says that to you?

1:19:26Shawn French:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I wish though? I wish I would have taken it in more when she said it. Because I myself didn't think that. So she has seen things in me in different iterations and moments of our lives together and has never shifted belief in me.

1:19:46Baiju Bhatt:How long have you guys been together?

1:19:48Shawn French:10 years. 10 years. Has never not believed in me. It's wild. Right? And I was at my most broken point when I met her. I was going through a divorce. I was broken. You know, like everything. Like I'm starting to talk more about this publicly. I never really said these things. But I think it's important because I think it's relatable, right? And I think more people need to be - Nobody's life is perfect.

1:20:16Baiju Bhatt:Everybody's life has adversities, right? Everybody makes mistakes along the way. To err is human, right?

1:20:22Shawn French:But dude, that woman, there's no way. There's no way I could have done it without her.

1:20:28Baiju Bhatt:It's kind of interesting you say that because when I was embarking on this journey to go from something that I definitely knew how to do to something that I definitely did not know how to do, my wife was like, you're going to crush it at this. You're going to succeed at this. And I'm like, why do you? I'm just kind of curious. Is this just a truism? Are you just saying this to make me feel better? she's like, no, I've seen you over the years. Like when you put your mind to something, like you're not going to stop until you're successful. And so she's like, this is going to be just like that. And in those couple of moments early on, I was like, yeah, yes, that's right.

1:21:07Baiju Bhatt:Yeah. I guess that is what's going to happen here.

1:21:09Shawn French:It's what I do.

1:21:10Baiju Bhatt:Yeah. It's what I do.

1:21:11Shawn French:You know, it's funny because when I heard about it, right. When we, when we, when Sarah and I I started throwing this around and talking about it. And it finally got to the point where it was going to happen. She goes, okay, this is what it is. Right? I'm like, oh, oh, wow. Like, we're going to talk about this? Like, this is crazy. But as I continued with the research and looking at all the different components, to me, it was a no-brainer that you'd be successful. Because you'd already built something. Hasn't happened yet.

1:21:44Baiju Bhatt:We're working on it. You're going to be fine.

1:21:48Shawn French:I find another component that's very interesting of this, and you haven't mentioned it, and I don't know if it's true or not, but your dad was involved in this business. He was working for NASA, doing important things. And now here you are years later, and you have this love for physics, love for space, and you're doing something. Does any of that honor your dad? Absolutely.

1:22:12Baiju Bhatt:My dad loves it. It's kind of funny. My dad is a character. He's very disciplined in his thinking. I remember the Thanksgiving after we took Robin Hood public. My dad's like, well, you know, he's like, you should go and get your PhD. I'm like, what?

1:22:34Shawn French:Why?

1:22:36Baiju Bhatt:I'm like, Dad, I have tons of PhDs that work for me at Robin Hood. He's like, no. He's like, it's very important to go and get your PhD. Science is very important. And I'm just like, are you, like, do you realize what's going on right now in my life? Like, do you realize what Robinhood is? Like, I'm not gonna go get a PhD right now. But that's kind of like one of the things that I think about often is like his, his love of science and his like love of physics and math are so pure. And I don't know if it's as pure for me. Like I went and started businesses. I would like to think I'm fairly practically minded.

1:23:12Baiju Bhatt:But here I am like doing something that I'm drawn to purely out of like a deep sort of like, you know, I feel like it's a part of my life story to want to do this. Sure, sure. And just like a deep love of it.

1:23:24Shawn French:Well, I can't wait to see how it turns out. I know how it's going to turn out, but I can't wait to see it.

1:23:28Baiju Bhatt:Well, we're going to have satellites going up to space this year. So we're targeting two launches this year. So we talked about this a little bit. Maybe I can kind of.

1:23:36Shawn French:What quarter are we talking about? q2 q3 q1 yeah like summertime summertime summertime in the fall okay perfect yeah

1:23:44Baiju Bhatt:and these are actually going to do something that's a little different than the galactic brain which is they're going to beam power so the two ideas that we have so the concept for aetherflux is a power grid in space almost like a utility that you can plug different kinds of appliances into and so we kind of have a vision for two different kinds of appliances one that is the galactic brain, which is actually taking the chips, the silicon chips that do artificial intelligence and putting them in space because there's this unique power advantage. The other one is actually collecting power in space and then beaming it down to the ground.

1:24:24Baiju Bhatt:So, you know, you can kind of think of it sort of like power lines from space. And that's the thing we're demonstrating in June. And so the utility for this is much more for like getting power in places where there's no existing power grid. Okay. Not directly having to do with like the artificial intelligence stuff, but for military applications, you can imagine like groups of troops out in the battlefield where in order for them to get power, the best alternative is actually bringing out diesel fuel and generators, right? Instead, this would be a small portable array that you can put out about 10 meters in diameter at first, but we think we can get it significantly smaller, sub five meter diameter, where you're able to link up to satellites in space and just get power dropped down.

1:25:19Shawn French:Damn.

1:25:20Baiju Bhatt:And the way you do it is with lasers. Yes. Space lasers. Space lasers. More specifically. Wow, dude. So that's what's happening in June.

1:25:31And it's complicated.

1:25:32Baiju Bhatt:There's a lot of stuff we have to get right. But assuming we do, knock on wood, I think that's going to be a pretty significant step forward in that it's a new way of generating power on Earth. Sure. Right? And it sort of fundamentally addresses many of the limitations with putting solar panels on the ground. Yeah. It's kind of the alternative that we're against.

1:25:54Shawn French:Wow. Well, I'll be on the lookout for that, dude. That's going to be freaking rad.

1:25:58Baiju Bhatt:We should have you out for it. We're going to have a big demonstration party. I would love to come. Yeah. We're going to be in California or? Probably in the desert of, in the deserts. Okay.

1:26:09Shawn French:I'm there.

1:26:10Baiju Bhatt:Yeah.

1:26:10Shawn French:I'll be there.

1:26:11Baiju Bhatt:New Mexico, I think is what we're thinking.

1:26:12Shawn French:Oh, very cool. Very cool. Love it. Love it. Can't wait for that.

1:26:16Baiju Bhatt:Yeah, me too.

1:26:17Shawn French:It's going to be cool.

1:26:18Baiju Bhatt:It is. We've got a lot of work to do between now and then, but I think we can make it happen. Yeah. You will. You will.

1:26:24Shawn French:Well, dude, thank you again.

1:26:25Baiju Bhatt:it's been it's been an honor and for the audience man um is it aetherflux.com okay aetherflux.com

1:26:33Shawn French:um go check it out um and and it's a pretty it's a great site you know really cool stuff i mean my my dumb ass even understood kind of what was going on so i'm sure you guys at home will be fine and and researching it but go check it out support it and uh you know you never know like this could really impact somebody in your life like troops in the desert and if you have a service member out there fighting for our country this could really benefit them right or if you're in and if you've got family or you're in an area where there's not a whole lot of power or whatever like hey man this could really they're probably not listening to the show if there's no power but

1:27:09Baiju Bhatt:you know that concept is kind of like starlink for power right yeah of course yeah so go check

1:27:15Shawn French:them out and uh please guys as always i'm gonna ask you to share this show this episode with someone you know, love and trust. And whether you listen to us on Spotify, Apple, please go leave a review. Like tell us what you love about the show. Maybe even get suggestions of who you want me to interview, but stay steadfast in your journey for success, guys. Don't ever let up and don't let anybody ever tell you what your limits are. You set your limits and you push forward every day. And so until next time, guys, stay determined.