The Ocean: Earth’s $2.5 Trillion Last Frontier | Will O’Brien, Co-founder of Ulysses

22:50Turner Novak:What kind of like model work are you doing? Is a lot of computer vision? Vision is the main one. Are you guys using RoboFlow? We are not using RoboFlow. You should be. Have you tried them? No. You haven't even looked? Have you heard of RoboFlow? Yeah, I've heard of it. Have you looked into it yet? I haven't looked into it. You guys got to try RoboFlow. Joseph, the founder, is a prior guest and also a listener of the show. Nice. Let's check it out. I'm going to tell him after this. You guys have got to talk, try it out. So does it work? Yeah, it does. Yeah, we've run multiple successful missions across the US and Australia at this point.

23:30We have customers just last week. We were out in the Great Barrier Reef doing restoration there. Last year, we were in Perth. We're going in Western Australia. We're going out there again soon. We've been working in Virginia. We're going back out to Florida again, Florida again in a few weeks' time. So yeah, we're running concurrent operations across two continents right now. We are scaling up operations here in America with some new contracts as well, beginning work on that later this year in two new domains. So we started in this world of seagrass. Now we're beginning to broaden out into other industries, taking the exact same core technology and serving new needs across offshore infrastructure and defense.

24:13Turner Novak:How's it modular? So you use the same rough kind of system and structure for seagrass restoration as you would for like a deep sea cable inspection? How does that kind of play out? We don't go deep sea yet. Our system doesn't go like, you know, as deep as you would need, but we can go to like a thousand feet. and so but the the modular one of the kind of key differentiators of our system is like it's pretty much like legos right like you can i could give you i could give layout a table here with all the different gadgets that we've developed you could put them together um in any configuration you want and you could customize it for for your mission type so if you want to run a 72 hour long you know sub c cable uh inspection you just take two of our longest battery tubes it's you would put them together oh because it's long that means you need an internal thruster you put the internal thrust module in there for stability you put a brain on here um and then you put our nose cone and then you put our rear rear thrusters and it's like oh you actually want to go like really fast okay then like let's swap out that regular standard rear thrust module for like a faster one you can swap that on oh let's say you want to carry like a payload that is like 100 pounds uh maybe the typical torpedo style auv configuration is not good for that so you actually can just take the same pieces and configure it to be um you know kind of like two meters uh two meter wide um auv so the the software when you click the modules together the software reads what configuration i am where's my infers then where center of gravity how do i do the thrust profile for that size and shape.

25:54And yeah, so this is really good when you're at sea because if you're at sea for multiple days on end,

26:01Turner Novak:you might want to swap something out. You will have different mission profiles for different needs. And one vehicle, you can do them all. And also it makes maintenance really nice because you have this ship of Theseus where like, oh, well, what if my thrusters, I've been pushing them to the limit, they're gone. Swap it out. Swap it out. Swap it out. So you just buy the pieces. And it's also really good from a manufacturing perspective as well because then we're, manufacturing and also the rate at which we can upgrade systems. Because we don't need, it's like software, you can just push an update to one part of the system and you don't have to wait until September when we're launching V2 of the vehicle.

26:35You could be iterating the way your brain works, that thing way quicker than mechanical innovation takes a lot longer. So your thrusters might have six-month innovation kind of windows. You could update this every two months or something like that. I mean, every day, probably, I'm assuming. Yeah, exactly. Well, you can push that over the edge anyway, but over the air. So it's really nice for me keeping the system fresh and keeping innovation going, but also just like from a manufacturing point of view, you're just like, you're just pushing out like small little widgets and it makes the, yeah, the manufacturing line really nice and clean as well.

27:13You said you're, it's Jamie?

27:15Turner Novak:Yeah, my co-founder, one of my co-founders, yeah. So he came across the idea for Seagrass Restoration. So it kind of sounds like you're doing rainforest, forest management, almost in the ocean, like the equivalent. Yeah, pretty much. In the ocean. Yeah. Okay. That's part of it. And so he came up with this idea. Were you guys all kind of working on a company together? Were you friends? Like, how did it kind of become a company? Yeah. So one of my co-founders, Akil, was kind of like the central node for the team. And he like lit the beacon, so to speak, for all of this team together. He'd worked in a drone delivery startup in Europe called Mana, and he worked there very closely with Jamie.

27:53They were two of the first engineers there and built out their kind of R &D team together. And that's where Jamie came from. Akhil worked on Hyperloop or Neuralink or something? He worked on, he led, so how I met Akhil was Akhil led the Irish student Hyperloop team. And the team did really well. and I think there's like

28:15Turner Novak:a picture of him online like showing something to Elon or something yeah exactly they won an award for Elon like most innovative approach pretty much they just like oh that's cool one or two of the parameters they were just like they kind of like overclocked one or two of the parameters just went took a pretty batshit approach to like solving the problem and beat some of these like you know Stanford Caltechs and these like in high school at the time right college oh in college okay and that's where I met Akil and it was very impressive his capabilities so then he went on he worked on style driving cars for a bit he did some work on software he did uh and he was working then in this drone delivery company and they were based in the same shared office space as as i was when i was working at a e-scooter sharing startup as the first employee at a e like ireland's first shared scooter company shared bike company so um we were all in the same office me and those two guys and then cullum which is one of akil's best friends from uh from like secondary school and and primary school, they were good friends and they were in a coding boot camp together.

29:18He was working at Red Bull on the Formula One team at the time and had just won a second championship at Red Bull, but was also just like, kind of had one eye on what he wanted to do next. So Akil, yeah, we kind of call it. Then, yeah, group chat was made. We all started talking about it in a bit more detail. We're like, yeah, this is a really good idea. and yeah, came over here a few months later to raise our pre-seed, did that with Lower Carbon and a few other folks. And that was two years ago now, yeah.

29:51Turner Novak:So how'd you make that happen? Because you were just a bunch of kids from Ireland. Yeah, it was - Probably like, you know, you probably didn't know a lot of people in San Francisco. We didn't know anybody. So the Lower Carbon investment was interesting because like they were like our first call of fundraise and they agreed to lead it on the first call. And it was our first ever call with a VC. So I'm definitely not like the standard, like I spoke to a hundred people and none of them would fund us. And honestly, yeah. So fundraising has not been that, yeah, has been a nice process for us. So we just got on, we had sent, we had basically somehow found someone to introduce us to Lower Harbin.

30:34Then that lead went dry. and then we just like put a meeting in their diary and we didn't even have a calendar. Yeah. You sent a calendar invite. Yeah. It wasn't even like, we didn't even have this partner's personal email. We just had, he was responding to us off leads at, you know, the lowercarboncapital.com. Yeah. And we just were like, okay, fuck it. Like, let's just put like a meeting in his diary. And then like, and then we're just like not expecting him to turn up and then he turns up and he's like, I love the attitude. And like, also, I love the approach. And yeah, like they had seen like, I think they had seen companies being built like this in the terrestrial domain and like drone seed and other people trying to build like technology for reforestation.

31:17And that was still when we were focused very, and they thought that that would work in the ocean as well. And that was kind of, I think, what got them excited. So we did that. We got that wrapped up pretty quickly then with them. But yeah, that was how things started. And yeah, we just hired like one engineer a few months later and we're five people pretty much until for like a year and a half of the company. We kept it really lean, did like our million dollar in revenue last year off a five person team. And only this year I've kind of started to scale up the team a bit, about 15 people now.

31:47Turner Novak:Was that intentional or was it like, did you suck at hiring and no one would join you? Like what was there? Well, part of it was the fact that we were in Dublin and we were, since we started the business, going to move over here to San Francisco. so there's only some people you want to hire when you know you're going to be moving out of out of dublin and but it was also just like a good forcing function and honestly the one person we hired dylan he's a complete tank complete beast and probably the output of like 10 inches so it's like so it's like uh yeah and it was good and then we moved here and hired two to three people initially but now we're up to about 15 yeah you talk about like a couple a couple ways to potentially make money in the ocean?

32:29Turner Novak:What do you think makes the most sense for Ulysses? Like, you know, short, medium term-ish, obviously there's seagrass restoration. I don't know how big that can be, but like, is there like a second act that's coming up? Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think like that domain has been very good to us. As I said, a million in our first year on track for two to three this year off that alone, as well as other businesses we've started to get into. But I think in the long run, two of the main areas where unmanned systems are purchased right now, or at least they're leveraged for services, are the world of offshore infrastructure.

33:09So again, that's data. That's oil-related,

33:12Turner Novak:mining, natural resources. It breaks up into data infrastructure, so submarine cables, and the monitoring, maintenance, protection of those. Then there's like energy infrastructure, which is like wind, which is like oil and gas, mainly. And then, yeah, they're like, I think two of the main ones in the kind of offshore infrastructure space. And then like the world of defense. And these are both kind of two markets now that we have customers in and we're working with them on a variety of different kind of use cases there. but with the same core platform that we built for seagrass. So it's the idea that we've built something that, again, can be adapted for nearly any situation.

34:00It's a very general purpose vehicle. And I suppose part of our approach is like, a lot of it as well is focused on the right capabilities, the ability to physically manipulate the environment in the ocean. It's only so much to just sense in the ocean. You need to be able to do physical manipulation to do some of these more harder kind of frontier tasks in the ocean that current systems are just not good at. They don't have enough degrees of freedom. They're not nimble enough. And then the people who are building general purpose robotic platforms, like your humanoid folks on land, like you will not be able to throw a humanoid robot in the ocean.

34:37There is still...

34:38Turner Novak:You don't think so? It would break. Take a tanker out. You should have like 10 ,000 humanoids jumping in, swimming down to the bottom. And also humans are evolved. for land. Yeah. They're not evolved. So like that form factor is like not, there's no benefit it conveys. So you need to be something that's more like a dolphin or more like a shark or whatever. And that is like where we want to go in the long run is like being this general purpose form factor of the ocean, this generalizable platform that can do any task in the ocean. Do you need like arms to come out and like manipulate? Depends on the task.

35:11Depends on the task. But yeah, like another factor about what we've built as well is like we've built this like underwater vehicle to the same spec that someone you might buy a vehicle for 250k to a million we've built it for you know we can sell our base model at 25k and make money and then better product too would you say way better product and the purpose of that is people would be like wow you're leaving all this like margin on the table it's like no we're actually not leaving that much margin on the table but we're playing a volume game we want to be churning out millions of these units every year.

35:46So there's like trade-offs we make from a design perspective and that like our vehicles maybe don't have like a 10-year life cycle. But you don't want a 10-year life cycle when the tech is advancing this quickly. And also if you have something modular, well, if you want to just like replace something, you can replace it pretty easily, right? So we've just taken a very different approach to building underwater vehicles than like pretty much everybody else out there.

36:06Turner Novak:I think it's kind of interesting just thinking about the ocean is like the, you think of space is like this unexplored frontier, but I'm pretty sure there's, this is true. I don't know if you name the percentage, right? But like, we know more about space than we know about the ocean or whatever. Like, I'm sure you've kind of. We've mapped more of the surface of the moon and Mars than we've mapped of our subsea domain. So there is hidden archaeological treasures. There are species of fish and other you know subsea creatures that we do not know about yet probably some hidden like materials like probably like new periodic table elements discoveries down there yeah there's new biological compounds that could lead to cures for any disease on earth there's like a mineral energy source or something uh that would be cool that would be cool like there's like a hidden like crystal in the ocean that could like kryptonite it's like the power of the sun, but it's like, you know, in like a little crystal packed in like the bottom of the ocean.

37:08Well, that's atomic energy, I suppose. So yeah, maybe there is like radioactive compounds in there. But like the, like one thing that we say is like there is like billions, if not trillions of economic value trapped in our oceans. There's like the equivalent in cultural value and scientific value. And we just need tools to get it out.

37:29Turner Novak:Is there a spiritual connection with the ocean either humanity or for you personally yeah for sure i mean uh there's a question from uh oh and uh intercom and finn oh yeah he wanted me to ask you about this yeah i think uh i think for sure i think uh anyone who like has closed their eyes and like lied back on like a like a soft like body water with like the sun on their on their eyes i think will say like you feel that heat you can feel it and you're just like you're just like there you hear the waves you can feel the waves crashing the water you're touching just there is like the same water some kid in the indian ocean on the other side of the world is touching the same water that like someone like on the south african coast the same ocean that like an oil rig worker in the gulf of america is touching it's like it's all connected the first humans who walked the earth also exact same water it's like the exact same it goes up it comes down it freezes it melts it's all the same and uh yeah i think i think for me there's there's definitely like aspects about my job that match my faith i'm catholic and uh one of the kind of you know this is i think a connection i kind of started develop when we were working started working on the seagrass stuff is like you know genesis opens with you know christ or god bestowing uh bestowing like you know creating earth for us and uh he gives mankind dominion over the seas and the skies and the birds and the fishes and and gives us dominion um and but with that he also asks us and commands to steward it it's not ours it's his uh we're just minding it for him and all religions kind to have this aspect of stewardship.

39:16Like you don't own it. Like you're just carrying it on for the next generation kind of thing. It takes different forms. And that is something that like very much resonated with. And our team, like our mission statement is stewarding the ocean for an abundant future. Building these vehicles that can steward and command the oceans and the high seas and bring an element of order to a very disordered world so that we can like move forward. So yeah, I think that's like part of like I take my that's like my command from God is to build these like machines for stewardship in the ocean to keep and stewardship in my opinion is like means that they're healthy so that's like the seagrass side of the business the they're safe that's like the defense side of business that like there's you know no pirates or people doing funny business that at sea no illegal fishing that kind of thing and prosperous like that day that we are able to extract the value that they they provide but not in like in a extractive like let's take all the fish out like i mean like a stewardship aspect that like we keep we keep we extract but we give back as well and we're diligently you know stewarding it so that would be i think my uh yeah my kind of more like spiritual connection to it i think it's like very human a very human substrate it's i think everyone has like this intuitive connection to it.

40:35And it also has like a relationship to my faith. Yeah.

40:39Turner Novak:So this is actually something I don't really even know if this is a good question to ask you, but I'm curious if you thought about this. So the ocean is so big. If you just go to like a random spot in the Pacific in the middle of nowhere, like the furthest you can get from any piece of land, are there tons of fish and sea life there? And if it, you know, maybe it's like super deep, is like most of the ocean not filled with life or is it pretty like dense no matter where you go or they're like areas where no yeah nothing really happening yeah i think like the more remote you go generally uh the the more like biodiverse and stuff um it gets uh yeah like i mean well there's like less there's less like stressors on it uh like that's like the main driver of like biodiversity loss has been stressors like water pollution yeah yeah water pollution main one so if i go like the exact midpoint between hawaii and california i'm assuming that's like a pretty remote spot in the pacific and i just like good i was like just tons of sharks in there no no like they they agglomerate in like in like hopes but uh so like yeah when you have that deep they're spread out over a lot a lot of area but like yeah shallower areas are typically like quite biodiverse per unit area but as you get deeper it gets harder for life to sustain like is it like yeah like it's a function of energy right so like the deeper you are the less light there is the less light there is the less things like that are at the bottom of the food chain can grow um it's all a function of energy really um energy and um you know another yeah so um so a lot of the ocean is just big emptiness really like a decent chunk of it yeah it's kind of like space in that sense it just yeah there's just nothing for a long time yeah yeah do you know irish yeah absolutely yeah you say something what would you like me to say hey thank you ramp for yeah say thank you ramp for sponsoring me the market ramp done uh the podcast show.

42:49Thank you for the money. Thank you for the cash. That was the first podcast call out in Irish. We've just made world record. A world first. Made history. Ramp used in a sentence in Irish. I wonder if I have any Irish customers. Is Irish? Yeah, we were using them when we were based in Ireland. Oh, really? There you go. Okay. Okay.

43:16Turner Novak:Well, that's good to know that they have a global presence. We were talking a little bit earlier about ways that actually, like currently people are making money in the ocean. What are some interesting ways, like a little bit more esoteric, but like actually somewhat semi-realistic ways that people might actually make money in the ocean economy? I think like, again, you said esoteric, so I'm going to take that as free reign to get wacky. like one idea that was popular in Silicon Valley in the tech community in the 2000s which has kind of fallen off a little bit was the idea of seasteading that like you could build communities at sea and be a city yeah and be outside the jurisdiction of you know regulations pretty much biology would probably love this yes nation states floating nation states in the ocean yeah so I think like when you have better support infrastructure you can do more of that So I still think that one has legs.

44:15And I think I could feasibly see that being done in the future.

44:18Turner Novak:What's the cost? Like, is it actually cheaper or more expensive to probably more expensive to do like because the upside is greater. If you could develop if you can do R &D and sell like real like what would you not like rather to have like lab space in an area where you don't have to report to the FDA? You know what I mean? like where you don't have to like follow register so like you're selling office space you know like it's commercial real estate or like so it's kind of like crypto where it's like you don't have to quite follow the law if you if you yeah yeah yeah okay okay interesting thing that like yeah i don't i'm not like yeah i know there's like a whole institute dedicated to this stuff um and uh so i think i think like i i'm a personal fan of that and uh i mean another one is like everyone who was hating on Ocean Gate and every like most Ocean Gate remember the guy who went down to the Titanic and the thing exploded oh he's a billionaire yeah multiple billionaires yeah that dude was retarded I hope I can say that he was retarded he like I actually know people who personally knew him and were like telling him like the way you've done the carbon fiber layup here is like there's like a fucking hole in it like there's like basically an air bubble in it like that is going to pop uh that is not going to go down well and people were attacking he was like yeah so that guy himself but i i think more broadly this case there's like business of like recreational uh you know in like doing recreation recreation industries in the ocean like going subsea um like i would love to see like a submarine uh like uh adventure like a tour business like a tour business yeah where you're just going like from like continent to continent with like like a glass topped uh submarine or something like that and you're just like going like something like sharks above humanities coral reefs all that shit or like a subsea hotel like this exists in some countries you can't go to like hotels in the ocean so i think that's tough yeah dubai has this like whole didn't they make like just artificial half the city is like yeah yeah something like that there's a big dubai episode yeah i think um yeah like uh deep sea money is going to be very big deep sea mining yeah that's gonna be big i think i think it just needs to be done right i think the obvious concerns people have are like we know so little about this subsea ecosystem that like if you do extraction there like you don't even know what you're taking away um and that could have like ramifications on yeah but basically like the the rest of the the ocean ecosystem we don't know how far it ripples up so you like extract a bunch of iron ore so it's not iron ore but it's like it's basically you have these like metallic nodules with like rare earth minerals in them formed at the in the typically in this one area called the claret and clipperton zone in the pacific ocean and uh the there's companies now sniffing around like the metals companies others that want to go in and extract that and take out these pot these nodules and bring them back to surface and uh you know extract the minerals from them so it's like hunks of rare earth minerals they're like they're like that size like you know like the size of a fist and bigger and they're like they're created around these vents uh where you have the metal the mineral coming out of the ocean and then like high temperatures and then they cool on the outside and you have these reactions you got these module nodules so the concern of people in ocean conservation which is extremely valid and i agree with many cases like you need to understand what's down there first there's two ways they're looking at doing extraction and i think if they do pick in place rather than this kind of vacuum system that like they were initially looking at which is like we're just going to vacuum up but like that could take up anything else at the bottom and it would just kill it uh the other option is like using the robotic implement just pick it up literally pick up the stone yeah and like pick it up and put it in your basket and go up and honestly even just from like a engineering perspective it's much more efficient to do the latter because think about like if you're going like six thousand eight thousand feet up right think about the amount of energy it's going to take to move something 6 ,000 against gravity with the down pressure of water on it.

48:29It makes a lot more sense to move something physical, like something solid, and you don't have this 80 % of waste to transport, and you're not causing this biodiversity damage. And I think you can do that safely when you start quantifying what is on the outside of the module. Because there is good research to show that actually on the outside of these modules, you have some fungi population and bacteria populations that could be the basis for the food chain of other things going around there. So I think we need to quantify that and we understand what's going on there. Then we can say maybe, ah, yeah, per annum you can take 1 % of the modules in an area or something like that, or 2%.

49:08If you take too much, the fungi die.

49:11Turner Novak:The rest of the food chain collapses around it. If we can quantify it, I think it's much better to be taking it from there than to be making Central African children go into these like mines and take it there. Like if there's like a well-being point of view. And that's what's happening right now. Yeah, that's where most like the supply chain of rare earth minerals is deplorable, to be honest. It's like, yeah, it's pretty bleak. So yeah, so I think like it's worth exploration. There's again, billions of dollars like to be made there. There's like other like more like esoteric things that I find interesting, like ocean iron fertilization.

49:50so there's this like banger quote from this like crazy Canadian billionaire called Russ George and he says I've seen his quote yeah yeah he's like yeah give me a tanker of iron filings and I will give you an ice age basically the idea is that like if you there's many parts of the ocean which are iron deficient if you add iron there you stimulate stimulate phytoplankton growth plankton when it grows draws in carbon from the atmosphere if you can draw on enough carbon you could actually change the weather on earth and it's a geoengineering technique pretty much now you don't want to actually change weather patterns but you do want to probably draw excess carbon out of the atmosphere so that economy can still continue to grow and uh we have and but also in very interesting aspect of this he did an experiment off the coast of vancouver one year and they did uh they used an area run owned by like native americans did an experiment there put some iron filings in that year that that that part of Canada had its greatest salmon take ever so I think and like what this and other aspects of kind of like intervention the ocean like along coupled with restoration it's an idea I'm very interested in which is like closed loop kind of full stack ocean stewardship where if I was sitting down with like someone in Indonesia, like a minister, who was like struggling with like fish populations or something like that.

51:12I could send out a legion of Ulysses surface vehicles to go and patrol for illegal fishing and keep the Chinese out of their waters and send underwater vehicles to do seagrass restoration with some, maybe some other intervention techniques that are adding minerals into fishing areas. But this general idea that we're taking the stewardship mandate really seriously and yet building businesses on it, Like not too dissimilar to how Augustus wants to like create rain, right? Like it's like this idea that like you can do these things in a safe way. So you should probably be doing it. So there, yeah, some of my...

51:47What about like treasure hunting? Isn't there like tens of billions of dollars of treasure that's just down there? Yeah, there's like one wreck off the coast of Columbia. It's like billions of gold and emerald. Yeah, again, another use case to use is uniquely like tailored to solve because we don't have the cost. We can make it we can basically make these, we can increase the area of the of the search. And because we're much like an order of magnitude cheaper, you don't need any humans, you could send all of our service vehicles from port, no humans would need to go out, you could do weeks on end of continual mapping, quantification, doubling down on areas of interest.

52:28going down maybe like using jets to like blow kind of sand off like areas because a lot of this stuff is better buried so you need to get like you need a bottom profiler to like see what's down there first and then you want to go down and dig so yeah interesting so is that uh

52:45Turner Novak:there's an interesting question of like do you guys have to do anything else or do you just have to you know no yeah there's a lot so basically the the rightful owners of that treasure is the flagged state. So the, I think the one in Colombia was a Spanish ship that went off the coast. So Spain has claimed that. So if somebody fines it, you have to say to Spain, you have to get permission from them, first of all, to recover it. They will want probably most of the proceeds, but they might give you a sliver, which could be a billion. You know, so it's like, so it's a negotiation thing. There's no set process for it.

53:18But yeah, honestly, I'm more interested probably in the archaeological fines as well.

53:23Turner Novak:Just the interesting like learnings of history that come from this or find Atlantis yeah is Atlantis real yeah you think it's real why do you say that um are you familiar with like Graham Cancock and like this idea of like lost like civilizations and uh there was like potentially like advanced civilizations before uh modern time before like we we commonly believe that like modern civilizations began around like 11 ,500 years ago. But you have a lot of, you have two things. You have a lot of structures that are older than that. Like you go to East Ride and these like huge heads. You look at like some of these like megalithic structures in other parts of the world, like pyramids, like other that are indicative of like knowledge that just people didn't have at that time.

54:10Like just like really complex. Again, we still don't really have like convincing answers on how they built pyramids in these sorts of things.

54:15Turner Novak:So aliens, I think is what they say, UFOs. the most convincing one I've seen is like the water levels where you're like using like you know water pressure to like push things up I don't know I don't know that's one way but the question that that doesn't answer still is where do some of that granite that they use there came from like 150-200 miles away do you think they dug a canal that long 200 miles I think that's what I've seen in like the YouTube videos is like they floated down the river like they float down the Nile like the Nile changed levels over time and yeah it's hard to know like you're right it could have been made a hundred thousand years ago but uh so and then you also have like these like this also you have around the time you have like these cataclysm stories which are kind of like the the kind of foundational myth for a lot of uh a lot of uh different religions different cultures um so like you know noah is like the kind of standard kind of like flood myth in the west but the incas the aztecs like all these like other or like the Mesopotamians, others have these foundational stories that are originating in a flood.

55:17So there's one theory, the Younger Dryas Impact Theory, which states that there was a comet that crashed on Earth that led to massive tsunamis and floods near all these kind of major population centers. And the best description we have of Atlantis is Plato describes. He's the first person we have that describes Atlantis. And he says that he spoke to someone in Egypt and he said the Egyptians claimed to be the inheritors of Atlantis and that there was someone in Egypt who told him about Atlantis when he went there. And Atlantis is three concentric rings with water in each ring. And it was a seafaring civilization and the streets were paved with gold and they had in the middle of this like three concentric rings with the center of Atlantis.

56:08then you there's this location that matches these descriptions in mauritania and africa so mauritania is in the sahara desert what people don't know about mauritania around 11 500 years ago before is that sahara desert actually used to be a lush rainforest so it actually used to be like a place where you conceivably have a civilization um additionally you have this like structure in mauritania with has three concentric rings in it and salt deposits in each ring and then you have like if you look from the west coast of africa to mauritania you have these like salt striations indicative of like a huge flood all the way from there to mauritania additionally streets paved with gold richest person ever is mauritanian king was it tim mott too or was more masa

56:52Turner Novak:musa musa yeah yeah more masses and masa's a different king a different rich guy it's dj i think yeah um oh i was thinking masa like the soft man oh yeah that guy too yeah also goaded um but uh yeah this guy you know had more money than sense he was he had gold that's mauritania also atlantis wealth might have come from raiding atlantis well no but that's like there's huge gold deposits in mauritania so the streets paved with gold could conceivably be there literally paved with gold also you have like the atlas mountains atlantis it's like etymologically similar to like the atlas mountains which are just like north of mauritania and so like there's like one theory that like that like seafaring civilization existed before was based there that's where Egypt came from potentially also the Celts came from this as well the Irish Celts came from Atlantis and yeah so I would like to if I had the money go out into the western Atlantic and and map a lot of that and see if we have good wrecks from that time So you think, so I was just looking at where Mauritania is.

58:00Turner Novak:Yeah. It's basically like, you think of the shape of Africa. It's in like the middle of the top. Yeah, the West. The West Coast. Yeah. If you want to look it up, it's the RICAT structure, R-I-C-H-A-T structure. And yeah, there's this guy, Jimmy Corsetti, who covers this quite well on YouTube. Interesting. So the actual Atlantis, it is where the desert currently is or it is in the water? It was, I think it was a society that stretched beyond that. Um, and, uh, but yeah, I think that the kind of center was, was there. Interesting. Well, we can, we could do digs there. We could like, there, there hasn't been much archeology done on that side.

58:39So if there is a billionaire that would like to do that, we go and LIDAR Atlantis, the recap structure and see what's going on there.

58:47Turner Novak:There's any billionaires listening. There actually are a couple, I think that I know of. So maybe if you, if you're, if you're one of them, yeah, I know if you're listening, I think we'll throw your, your kind of... I have a friend doing LIDAR drones for, or like LIDARing like archaeological sites right now in Mehran, based in San Francisco. He's doing a lot of this in South and Central America. He's like using LIDAR to find archaeological sites we didn't know about before. That are like hidden in the forest or something? Yeah, exactly. Kind of buried a little bit probably too. Like El Dorado.

59:22Turner Novak:You think El Dorado's real? Yeah. What do you think El Dorado is? I think it's like, yeah, I think it's like hidden somewhere in the Amazon. I don't know specifics about where it is, but. So it's just like, it's a city that's made of gold. Who probably ran like the Aztecs? We don't know. Did the Spanish build it or did the. I think it was before that. You think it was before that? Yeah, it was before that. Yeah. Interesting. I know you're a pretty big believer in conspiracy theories. Is that, that's, what is your favorite conspiracy theory? One I love right now is, well, aliens are my favorite by far.

59:57Okay. Just aliens exist. But there's so many places you can go with that. How do aliens interface religion? Are there mummies in Nazca of aliens, tridactyl beings? Is there like, is the US government like doing reverse engineering programs on craft? Are they like, are they in the ocean? Are they like, are they unidentified? Like, are they like, are they subterranean? um are they future humans are they like there's just like i like i sometimes i call us conspiracy theories like astrology for men uh it's like uh this like it's kind of like this like uh this fun thing to think about uh not really sure how much of it is real but it's fun to think about uh and it because the world is very uncertain and it gives us kind of some element of certainty but yeah the the alien one is is by far um the one i i think about probably the most frequently

1:00:49Turner Novak:Do you think we're the most advanced life form in the universe? Define advanced, but like on a technological basis? I think there's people out there that are just so advanced, they're kind of just like monitoring us and they're like making sure we're staying in line. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think I definitely don't think we're alone. I think there's probably some things that we seem like better than that others might be interested in humans. but yeah I think I think it's like very likely that there's very like advanced other life forms out there have you ever heard the uh titanic conspiracy theory this is my favorite one for like insurance or something there's that so there's well there's two there's people on it we're like mate yeah so my my favorite conspiracy theory is that they sunk the titanic to create the Fed.

1:01:42Turner Novak:Have you heard this one? Okay. So there's one element of it is like the guy who owned this other ship, it was called the Cornucopia, I believe was the name of it. It got some damage and he couldn't get insurance reimbursement. So he actually swapped it with the Titanic and then sunk this other ship so that he could get paid out in his Titanic insurance policy. Oh, yeah, yeah. And that's the one that's like a little bit more well-known. The other one that I just think is, it's so ridiculous, but it actually, like it could be true. I don't know. It's that when they wanted to create the Fed, there was basically three people who opposed it.

1:02:15Turner Novak:It was basically like the seven wealthiest men in the world that wanted to create this system. And there was three people that opposed it, and they were all on the Titanic when it sunk. And it was JP Morgan and this guy, I think it was Jacob Astor. JP Morgan died on the Titanic. He didn't. He was supposed to be on it, but it was like the day of the journey. He just... He didn't show up. And these other three guys, three of the wealthiest people in the world, were on the ship. It sank. They died. And those were the people who opposed the creation of the Fed. And there was, like, no resistance to create this thing.

1:02:52And, like, you know, control the world.

1:02:55Turner Novak:Control the world's money supply, basically. Interesting. And so, it's, like, it's one of those experiences where you're, like, it could be real. But there's no way to actually prove, really, at the end of the day that... Well, you know who runs the Federal Reserve? The wizard people? The Irish. Oh, the Irish. Lucky charms and the gold at the end of the rainbow. That's like a hidden messaging, subliminal messaging. Oh, interesting. Leprechauns, like they're Irish people. Like they're in Fort Knox. There's my favorite one. If you like look up 4chan Hibernian conspiracy, it's like this theory that the Irish run the world.

1:03:31And there's a whole section dedicated to the Irish control of the Federal Reserve. all these people of like Irish ancestry running like famous banks and like being a part of like the Federal Reserve's like original board. So yeah, that was, I mean, you know, the last stop for the Titanic was in Ireland.

1:03:50Turner Novak:The last stop before it left the US? Cove near where I grew up. Interesting. The last stop. So maybe that was, that was a part of it. We, a few Irish guys got on board there. Or got off. The ones you wanted to create the Fed. They got off. They tricked everyone. Like, hey guys, Let's do this. One of them stayed on board and drove into the iceberg, man. Yeah, that's true. They had like one guy. It was like Kamikaze Irish Fed creator. He's like, you know what? My life's mission is to make sure this gets created. He was a leprechaun. Yeah. You know this other pretty interesting just general theory?

1:04:22Turner Novak:You think that people who believe in conspiracy theories are better founders or could be good founders? Can you explain that? I think there's a, I like it in the same way that I like a Sudoku or like a New York Times mini or like connections or something like that, because there's a lot of BS in this world. There's a lot, there's in this conspiracy world, there's a lot of like crazies, schizo, and you get really good at going to like online forums or like Reddit threads or like 4chan and like parsing who here is like, like autistic schizo genius that has seen through the trees. And who here is like, just like, yeah, the other side of the bell curve.

1:05:04Turner Novak:And you're like, the people can be like COVID, they can sort through like 10 different crazy ideas and be like COVID lab leak. Exactly. That's the one that's actually real or something like that. Yeah, exactly. Like, I think, like, yeah, people who can like really just like quickly, I think it helps you. Like, one thing I go back to, because I didn't, you mentioned COVID there, like, because I didn't, I didn't immediately see COVID coming. I didn't see like it happened. It was going to have the effects that it did. And I was like pretty slow to like be like, ah, like pay concern to it. And then also I was like pretty slow to realize like how much of like the measures around it were BS.

1:05:42That like that really like made me realize like I need to develop like a better like way of like seeing the wood from the trees, like seeing when something's going to happen. Like there's this weird thing going on in Wuhan. and I think like some of the best people in technology can do this like biology was like on it like a rocket like at the start of COVID January tweeting me like this is gonna happen like Andreessen had like a sign up two weeks before everyone like lost their shit and they were calling it on it.

1:06:08Turner Novak:People were making fun of them the no handshakes please thing yeah. This is a this is like how the skill is like portable and transferable and I think if you can I think it's a skill it's a trainable skill so I think like lurking in these worlds spending time like you know one of those I'm looking into recently is these like Nazca mummies these like mummified mummified aliens that they're claiming they're coming out of somewhere like Nazca where's Nazca is that Latin America yeah Peru have you ever heard of the Nazca lines as well I don't think so these are like these are these formations in the ground made by like white rocks that you can really only see from space and like one of them looks like an astronaut one of them looks like a bird uh one of them and they all have like three fingers um and like these beings now are three fingers i think aliens made those things they are aliens they are oh well the the they think that like the lines are like made by the people there who like worship the aliens or had some like relationship with them and like that's art but the beings then are um so there's a really good video on this jesse michaels like my favorite YouTuber, really good guy.

1:07:17He actually formerly an investor as well. He was an investor at The Old Capital and he now runs a podcast. He does investing as well, but he also does, he runs his podcast talking about a lot of alien type topics. But yeah, I think this ability to kind of parse what's true and what's not, being able to think about things that other people think are controversial or weird or taboo and not be ashamed. but I think they're transferable skills.

1:07:44Turner Novak:Interesting. And talking about skills, one of the things that's, I think, really hard for anyone doing anything related to government sales, like interacting, convincing the government to make a purchase from you. I know you've sold a couple different government contracts. And like, how do you approach that? Like if I'm somebody who I'm thinking about starting a company, maybe I did start a company. I'm like, man, I got to, how do I get like the state of New Zealand to purchase my commercial product? How do you approach those situations? It depends. There's one playbook for doing things in a military domain.

1:08:19There's another one for local government, another one for national, another one for state agencies. These are all types of playbooks I've run before. So I think that's the first thing. I think it's figuring out which playbook to run. I think the things that are the things that are consistent are making sure you are speaking with the right people again like there's like a lot of these things that are just like very similar to regular playbook like a lot of people just like don't have power in the government like there's like actually like in the US military it's like warranted you know warranted officers right like there's like not everyone can do it so I think but like there is also a common playbook is this is that you find the end user you get them passionate about it you find then the person who has the buying authority you get them to care about it you get them you're a champion to speak with them and get them to want to give them budget to do their job and then the third leg of it is going to the political folks at government level like national level and getting them to care about it because they're the ones who send the money and they're the ones who send the priorities.

1:09:41So you kind of have to push on three kind of different, there's three prongs to it. I think that ports across like a lot of these fronts. And yeah, so you have like a bit of lobbying, you have a bit of kind of like low level building up your champion and then you have your other person, like their boss basically that can like control the money supply and you kind of have to play all these three kind of off of each other. But it starts, again, fundamentally with getting the end user, the person who is responsible for if you're if you're selling like a autonomous, you know, steamroller. Oh, yeah.

1:10:13Seagrass. The person who is like their KPI is that. Then it's like the person who owns that overarching marine biodiversity strategy or marine conservation strategy. And then it's like the politician who needs to get votes from the local fishermen and getting him passionate about it and getting him to be like, yeah, you need to add a$2 million line item next year. You're going to get 3 ,000 votes if you support this thing. Yeah. And you have to run three different kind of things instead of just being like, this is my end user, my buyer, and they just have to convince the CFO. There's like more parts of it.

1:10:46And also it's like a lot of it is like not monetary. Like you're not convincing someone about or why. You're thinking about what is the published strategy that the manager needs to meet or requirements or whatever and convince them about that. Votes and then just getting them excited about your product.

1:11:06Turner Novak:Yeah. So it's probably like there's some parallels to selling like a traditional software deal like your champion, owning the budget, perception around it. But it's like maybe more from a, you know. It's a three-sided deal, which is the unique part about it typically. It's like that it's, and I found actually in my career, that's what I've become very good at is like multi-sided deals. What do you think when you say you've gotten good at it? Is there something a lot of people get wrong on that? Like do they forget about one of it? Yeah. The people think you just have to sell to one person. And actually you can make, you can make deals move faster when you have multiple people on board.

1:11:44Because you can like, let's say there's one person with the money and there's one person without the money, but they have credibility. And then you're the person who has the product, but you don't have any money. You don't have any credibility. and that's the startup right so you partner with a person with credibility and you say hey you want my product you don't have money i don't have money buy the product you have credibility let's go talk to the person over here who has money but and then you and you have then product and capability you go there you get the money three people are happy that would not happen if i went to that person by myself it would not happen to them but because i was the person who brought everyone together we got a deal done win win win around the table and everyone gets what they want and they get credibility, you get money, they get a product.

1:12:24And these kind of complex multi-sided deals, sometimes you have like an independent arbitrator in there as well. Like I think that's where I've kind of like developed a bit of a niche. Most deals have typically been something like that.

1:12:38Turner Novak:And how do you, what's the go-to-market look like? Like do you have to host a lot of events? Do you have to do a lot of podcasts? Do you have to like write a lot? Do you have to make TikTok videos? Like how do you make that work? there's it's um for us it's been a lot of outbound it's it's like because you're trying to because like this the other worlds we work in are like not like they don't have like they're like pretty small it's like been conferences where all these people in the world you care about this problem are there and like outbound and like uh partners uh like partners like that can do intros to us, warm intros to us.

1:13:18They have been the ones that have been like most effective because they're typically small. So like with a few good, with a small advisory board, you can probably access all the people you need to get.

1:13:27Turner Novak:So you, I think one time you, you wrote a letter to an Irish billionaire. This is a while back. What's the story? That's how I got my first job. Well, my first real job. I was always working in college and high school or secondary school. But yeah, there's this Irish billionaire called Dennis O 'Brien. No relation, unfortunately. But he got his first letter by his first job by sending a letter to the founder of Ryanair asking him to be his personal assistant. And I did the same. And I didn't get the personal assistant job, but he rang me up a few days later. I wrote him a letter because I was like, that'll strike a chord with him.

1:14:05And in fact, the strategy is very good writing letters to people we got. This is a literal physical letter to print out or you write hand writing. Yeah, and just send it. And in fact, we hired a brilliant intern at the start of this year who did this to me after hearing I did this on a podcast. He's very quickly was moved up to full-timer and is a very, very good member of the team. His name is Jack. So this is a good strategy if you want to stand out in a world of... AI slop. Yeah. AI generated emails with the three follow-ups. You need to be letter maxing.

1:14:36Turner Novak:You need to be with a quill. and a wax seal yeah like wax you need to buy one of those i actually think we have one of the blood of an enemy like i think our family has a family seal a wax seal like my wife got it is kind of like yeah just a fun thing yeah like we have actually wax sealed things so i i send this letter to this guy he rings me up on the phone a few days later he's like you're not becoming my personal assistant you're 19 and uh and you need to finish college and also i travel a lot and i don't need a 19 year old right now you're gonna probably be a big nuisance to ever yeah exactly yeah like uh so but he was looking he was he was nice enough to give me a job in his company uh he has a large telecoms business across uh asia and uh uh the caribbean and he gave me a job in the caribbean and i worked there for in the cayman islands for a summer um doing like kind of data science business analytics for his company and it's funny like first week there they all thought I was his son because I had the same surname and I was Irish.

1:15:37Turner Novak:I was given a job. Just a Nepo hire. I was like, and like the Friday they were like, they're so nice to me. I was like, they're so polite. I love Jamaica. I love Caymanian people. And they're like, what's it like how Dennis is your dad? And I was just like, uh, he's not my dad. They're like, what? Yeah, fuck you. We hate you now. That was, yeah. And they went back to island time. that's awesome you also had another interesting you you've lived with monks in nepal for what what's what's the story there yeah so i had my college had like a year where you can do like an internship and i worked at kpmg in consulting oh nice it's a very uh you know no well well meaning like good set yourself up type of job i i like i'm sure your college counselor was happy you you had that role.

1:16:25They were probably happy. I was like, this is the most depressing and bleak environment I've ever been in in my entire life. I think the life unlived is the biggest tragedy. And I was like, the life unlived. Unlived. So the missed opportunities. Not going, not going whole hog, not going for it. I think that is infinitely more sad and tragic than at least trying something and failing. And you know what? It's fine for most people. like you can do that you can get your knife and like they will be happy doing that i will not i was very unhappy and i was just like so shocked that anyone could just have such a banal life and work on pointless like work just like a complete shite and like you could probably not exist like

1:17:18Turner Novak:you you could never show up for work and like nothing would be affected bullshit jobs like just fake laptop jobs that like hopefully ai will automate these people will find some meaningful work uh but for me it was soul crushing spirit crushing and i was having a crisis i was like i can not be one of these people they're just like definitional npc and i might sound bad like these people are some good friends smart people yeah yeah and like it works for them i just knew i couldn't do it i could not do that um like yeah so i was like what is the most crazy thing I could do. I was kind of like interested in Eastern philosophy at the time and reading a lot about it.

1:17:57I was like, okay, let's just go like the middle of nowhere and just like switch off for a summer. And I was like, where, where's the most, right? You know, like, but we live with Buddhist monks in rural Nepal. I heard someone had done that before. So I taught myself how to teach English and applied for job, like sent a few monasteries, emails asking, could I like work there for a summer and in return for bed and board and did that and learned a lot from them. I had some good takeaways from it, but also realized that Buddhism wasn't for me. And that was, I think, actually, funnily, one of my first steps on coming back.

1:18:32I was raised Catholic, but coming back to it then because I went to the bottom of the glass and I just realized there's a few things there that they just couldn't answer. But yeah, it was a cool time. Nepal is a beautiful country. I went to visit a lot of other Asia after that trip. and yeah, highly recommend anyone visit Nepal.

1:18:53Turner Novak:So what's it like living in a monastery like that? Like for somebody who doesn't know, I've seen some TV shows like White Lotus, she tries to live in a monastery. I don't know if you've seen that one. Season three, I think? Yeah, I haven't watched any White Lotus. Oh man, great show. You gotta watch it. Yeah. I always, when everything's, I know I have such a, and this is not good, but I do have like an apprehension to like watch something when everyone's talking about it. I just, it just feels like I'm like, sometimes it's good. You're becoming a normie. Yeah, I feel like a compulsion to avoid those things, which is not a good instinct.

1:19:23I think there's many things that are vanilla, which are great, like some of these TV shows, but I've never seen like Game of Thrones or I've never watched Lord of the Rings or Star Wars or actually like, there's a lot of normal stuff that I just, I have never been able to bring myself to watch.

1:19:37Turner Novak:Yeah, I feel like when it comes to pop culture or like shared experiences with other humans, like you kind of want to do those more like well-known things because you know like imagine have you watched star wars no yeah you haven't seen star wars or lord of the rings any lord of the rings you're so you're yeah i even was a kid everyone was talking about it and i was just like no i'm not sure do you know who luke skywalker is yeah no he is yeah luke you're not my father or luke i am your father

1:20:13Turner Novak:this is like an iconic like global film um okay so this is what i was gonna say it's like i love dune though like this thing i love dune i love dune and i watched like dune prophecy like the season i thought it was great but like i don't know i just i have i don't know i it's weird like there's only a few of the like i watched the old ones like i've watched like sopranos right like i watch I love Sopranos like I watch the older stuff after they've kind of aged out a little bit but yeah I think I was maybe maybe I was like really just like viciously like this scared by my experience as an intern and like uh you know strategy consulting in KPMG I think like I was like I was like you know I do not become an NPC I was like yeah like I was turbo normied like uh you know I like I like uh I now have like an allergic reaction or something like that maybe I don't know.

1:21:02Turner Novak:I mean, that is fair. I don't actually watch a lot of like Netflix or movies or TV. I think it's good. I don't think it's bad. I just, yeah. But I think it's like, if there's something where I feel like it'd be a good, it'd be good to experience like the shared social or cultural context. Like I try to. That's the nice thing about Twitter. Like while I may not be watching whatever, you know, these TV series, I consume. Love Island? No. I consume a very healthy amount of Instagram Reels. So you're like, you know, realified like brain rot, Gen Z brain rot, you know, all that stuff. So yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:21:42Turner Novak:That's true. So wait, so okay. So you, the, you basically, wait, what was I, oh, I asked you. Oh yeah. What's it like when you live there? So what's it like actually living in a monastery? It's very regimented. sometimes they'll just like randomly go on like side retreat for a few days as well or just not eat so I just would do that I think you'd go like three days no talk because something would have happened or like there was some holiday they were celebrating you just wake up one morning and there's no classes and nobody gives you the heads up and I did like yeah three day no talking and no food and so like things like that would happen honestly though like the kids there that I was teaching English to like they were kind of ages like 8 to 13.

1:22:27Turner Novak:And these are local children that want to learn English? They're local monks. Like trainee monks. They're training to become monks. Yeah, yeah. Like their families will put them in there at a young age. Other than poor families, like this is how you can get your child a good education is you put them in to become a monk. Some of them actually don't want to become monks. Like they're there, but they secretly have a girlfriend outside the school and stuff. Yeah. I mean, it's actually common in every culture where it's like you kind of do the thing especially if you're a kid you know some people just know they're not made for the faith you know I don't necessarily agree with this idea of putting them in there at a young age that doesn't happen in Christianity like you don't get put on that path it's a self-directed path so yeah I mean but the kids are just like normal like kids they got their like phones on a Sunday and they just wanted to play PUBG you know like a Fortnite a free Fortnite like equivalent and they all love like watching videos about Neymar and like these other footballers like messy and stuff and we just played a ton of like soccer with them and uh you know and yeah and the older ones i had like conversations with them about like philosophy and their faith and stuff like that and you were teaching them english i was only teaching the younger eight to twelves but there was also 13 to 18 as well there 13 to 16 at 16 then you go into like a university equivalent and you can pick a few different paths you can become like a craftsman or an artist you can become an administrator you can become a teacher you can become an academic um or yeah or you can you can pick a life of hermit and you can go off into the mountains and just never speak to anyone again wow and so you your biggest takeaway was understanding your desires and what you really wanted in life yeah um i had i've been doing hiking ever space camp and i was thinking i'm reflecting a lot on my experiences there and I realized what was important in my life I think I uh I one of the things the Buddhists talk a lot about is like you shouldn't desire for anything because when you desire for something you create a contract of suffering until you have that thing I'm like I'm thirsty I'm not going to be happy until I have a drink and then you're like momentarily happy but then you're like thinking about the next drink so they believe that you should actually not desire for anything you desire for nothing that's one of the preconditions to achieve nirvana or enlightenment you have no desires and you're always happy because you don't need anything you just are you're just empty you just exist but that that's the flip side of it then right he's like are you just empty then are you but then they'd be like well no there's like there's life force running for you you're not empty you are the world anyway i struggled to vibe with that and i was thinking about that particularly one day i was literally sitting down on a rock and i had like this download experience where I was sitting down and I was like I get it now though okay you shouldn't want for many things you shouldn't not want for you know you shouldn't just want for nothing I think there's like a minimum viable number of desires the minimum like set of desires you should want for and I was like what is that my health my wealth my family my friends my craft I was like okay if I have those things down you know my good relationship with family and friends I've got health I've got some money and I've got a craft that I do every day that I give to the world then I think I'll I'm happy so if I'm if one of those is not going well then that's enough to that's enough to be you know annoyed and I should be annoyed about that and it's there's also this like very visceral image of a rose bush came into my head and when you like trim at that moment there's only there's only two times in my life where I've had an experience like this where I literally feel like something was pushed into my brain but yeah like rose bushes you just trim them back and you let the energy go back towards the flower and if you don't do that to a rose bush basically they grow thorns and they don't the flower doesn't fully develop it doesn't get big but if you do trim back you do get like something so yeah i got i came away that kind of that's one of my kind of moral principles or frameworks that i use now going through life and i find it very helpful and i i developed it when i was over there i didn't know roses grew like that yeah yeah like that's like the you have to like you have to always be trimming them back.

1:26:38They require a lot of maintenance and care. It's literally a bush. There's a lot of different species or variants of roses, but you want to be cutting them back and just letting the energy redirect to the flowers.

1:26:56Turner Novak:I know you have a note on your phone where you just keep a lot of stuff about finance, technology. What's the contents of the note? So there was, I basically, I studied finance in university. I studied like a math and economics degree. And I studied a lot about like, you know, quant finance and statistics. And I developed a real appreciation for some of these, for people like Jim Simmons, who founded like Renaissance Technologies and kind of pioneered like algorithmic trading. and then like you know people like citadel you know uh and like other yeah like other pioneers of of kind of more quant finance and high frequency trading and dalio as well and like you go before that as well like just general like pioneers in finance like milking and inventing the the junk bond like wow well i find that such a beautiful and like an instrument like we basically have cable tv because of that guy and that's the evolution like this podcast is an evolution of the talk show which is because of cable tv built on cable television yeah like the nfl like sports like the backbone of american cultural dominance is built on the junk it's built on the junk bond yeah so i think you know you have like kravis um and like american like like economic dominance in the 80s through 90s built on the lbo right like just like not built necessarily but like huge consolidated on the i mean yeah yeah the degree to which financial innovation is a precursor for you know uh economic uh well-being dominance and like uh the mortgage the mortgage is like the foundation of every american's retirement the roth the roth ira yeah my second favorite ira um but you put on another irish that i just look up irish irish irish republican army um and or like the 401k a good example of this 401k is called the 401k because it's paragraph 401 item k snuck into some bill in the u.s in like the like 70s and it basically created the vessel for the one of the greatest like developments of a middle class that humanity has ever seen like the American American middle class is like an economic development uh like miracle social security another one actually like I legitimately think that's a pyramid scheme current social security model but another like we enabled a class of retirees to exist and actually retire like people can retire now because of this stuff retirement wasn't a thing you just worked until you died So financial innovation, as you've evidenced from all these examples, is incredible.

1:29:44It's beautiful. It's elegant. However, you have this group of people that coalesce around technology and finance. Some people call them VCs. Some people have other words for them. And they claim to be innovators of some description. And okay, what? The peak of their innovation is the YCSA for the 20 % discount. That's the frontier. The people funding tomorrow, the best they can come up with is, sorry, I'm getting excited, is like a wastey safe with a 20 % disc. Wow, wow. Pass off to you. You are, wow, what a pioneer you are. You know, you're incredible. The greats of finance are shaking in their boots looking at you and your massive brain.

1:30:23So you're not even getting real equity in the business.

1:30:26Turner Novak:Like it's fake equity. It's like a simple agreement for future equity. Yes. So my conviction here is that there is a lot still left to shake out at the intersection of financing tomorrow and, yeah, like the intersection of technology and finance and financing tomorrow. And I think, you know, like the retort to this would be something like, oh, well, financial complexity is like, it's a bad sign when a company has like financial complexity. It's like, what are they trying to hide? you know like uh the good companies shouldn't need that i'm like yes but like also it's like like also i don't know i think that's like what is the basis for that like why like what is your actual basis for that other than like your pattern matching to other companies that done it just because other companies have done so anyway long story short i think there's there's there's something that there's more that can be done here especially as we move into a world from where you know from a kind of a bit world to an Atom's world.

1:31:31I think there's definitely going to be interesting questions to ask about like how do we like, how do we finance data center development? How do we like, what does the business model look like for large language models? Like, okay, we're just going to do advertising again. Great. I mean, it's a beautiful business model. Advertising is great, right? And like, God knows, I'm already using ChatBT to like buy a lot of things on the internet, right? Or so like for sure.

1:31:55Turner Novak:We've got to give Sam all of his take. Yeah, for sure. Like take a fine of flesh. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. AI and Tim Apple and all these good people. Tim Apple is my favorite. Yeah. But I don't know. I think there's more to be done here. And I've been thinking a lot about it. So what would you do? Like if you were to propose a new financing structure of some kind for a, you know, an innovative technology business, what's a different take on it? I think there's, I think for sure, like basically like debt financing, like at earlier stages becoming interesting. I even just saw like a graph today that like the biggest private equity firms in the world now are actually just private credit firms.

1:32:35And like the proliferation about credit in the last, like has been one of the dominant trends in finance the last 10 years. It really hasn't come down though, to the kind of like startup level, really. So I think there's like interesting plays here that like when we're deploying hundreds and thousands of these vehicles out there in the world that we're working with a debt partner so that we're not paying for all of that with our thing up front. And we're talking to some debt providers at the moment to kind of tee that up. I think another interesting concept is the use of basically doing buyouts on traditional businesses.

1:33:13Like a cash flowing business. Cash flowing businesses and juicing up margins with technology. So this would be us buying an offshore survey company, running a 5%, 10 % margin and juicing it up to a 25 % margin with use of our technology, right? And also like the benefits of that as well are that like we get revenue, which is like very important to technology business. These aging business owners get like an out for their business. And again, I would use debt to finance that. I think there's a lot of hardware businesses that can do that. We're starting to see a little bit of it with software, with like these companies.

1:33:51Turner Novak:Accounting firms, I've seen is pretty common one. Yeah, like Slow Ventures has this really good thesis called the growth buyout. They've been running this playbook on some software businesses. Parking software and then they're calling parking lots. Yeah, I think that's that. But I think you can do the equivalent in hardware. I think that's really interesting. I think there's another interesting idea where I believe it's I think it's Every which is the media company did a round recently and like they but the round is like they're getting 5 million but it's a facility that they can draw down on as they need it's not like they're not getting the 5 million today it's like they get the ability to draw down 5 million credit yeah and I think that's really interesting how many companies have been foie grad with capital and then their fucking liver burst, right?

1:34:38Like it's like this idea that like you have to take all of the money and then use it. That doesn't make any sense to me.

1:34:45Turner Novak:Yeah. So it would be, you know, that you have 5 million available to you, but you might only need to use two. So you don't fully dilute yourself on the 5 million. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. As an investor though, you want to deploy capital. You want to, that's the thing. That's the difference. So it would have to be come from an investor that believes they can get better deal flow, higher upside from that by doing this. From that innovative product. Yeah. Basically saying like, you know, this is like massive TAM, incredible founder, great market. We know this is like a thousand X return from here, like upside.

1:35:19And we will probably

1:35:23Turner Novak:cut our returns in half. Yeah. Because we only deploy half of ultimately what we think. But like, they might actually take it though too. It's like they might actually end up using it. Yeah. The worst would be you do this deal with someone, like you find like literally like, let's say cursor three years ago. I don't know what the first round is. I would just say it's like 10 million posts. And now it's worth like 10 billion. You gave them this line of credit of it's worth 5 million. They use none of it. And like you get no equity in that. Like that would be a real bummer. Well, I think the way you use it is you use it to win deals.

1:35:57In a world where ever crowded and people are trying to stand out with podcasts or other like ways or like media or like, you know, like these firms that are developing these like platform teams and stuff like that. Like, I do think that like for me, like helping a founder to try to minimize dilution of their business, I'm going to partner with that guy 10 days a week. If he's got like a debt fund that he's going to like, or she is going to write like nice terms for me and that will help you win the better deals.

1:36:23Turner Novak:Yeah. I feel like you'd have to package it with that. Like you do a$2 million equity check and it's like, you just, you make sure that you actually get to make the investment. But then like, we've got this line you can draw on anywhere from zero to 10. Yeah. And you might take one, you might take the full 10. But like, even if you don't use it, we still did invest. And like, we made sure that we got to participate in some way. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think so. You think you'd have to have, that's what I mean, like, it would be part of the equity and debt deal. Yeah. That's an interesting way to think about it.

1:36:52I think there's, I do like think again, I think one of these stereotypes that Silicon Valley loves to like shit on is the MBA, right? And like, it's the finance bro. And like, actually, these people, again, are like, they're the backbone of a lot of American businesses, right? Like, there's like actual like merits and these things. And I think investment banking does have like some incredibly smart people in there. And I think like just bringing more complexity, I wonder would like, you know, like a startup native investment bank do well here. If someone has to set up, hire like some analysts from the, and like associates from the top funds, like Morgan Stanley, TMT team or something like that and start bringing some of those ideas around financial innovation to startups here in the valley i wonder if that would um or i mean it's a beautiful business i mean investment banking is you are speaking money into existence it is just like you're getting paid for your advice it's like beautiful no assets just i will sit i charge you 10 million dollars to convince google to buy you exactly or to convince the public markets to take you so i think i think there's like i think it's a beautiful business um investment bank i think like special situations as well as like you know there was this team within goldman for like a decade just churning out like not public info what their returns are but i know a guy he was like with birth team like like stuff that would make your eye water they were just like these guys were like the navy seals of finance they would go into they would like like a navy seal drop into any situation and and run run an investment They could go into a debt deal.

1:38:23They could go into Pakistan. They could sell government debt. They could do a refinance of an offshore infrastructure deal. They could do anything. And they got really good at quantifying returns and risk in generalizable terms and ran this strategy for 40 plus years. And some of them have left to do their own. But I think that in tech would go a long way. I think there's a lot of balance sheet. I think there's a lot of zombie companies in San Francisco in general that you could chop up for parts and sell to people who'll actually use the assets and give some money back to investors. You could do refinance.

1:38:57You could get investors off the cap table and turn them to more. They're not going to be venture-scale businesses. They just need to be cash-in-lawing businesses. You could do a refi on that. So I think there's a lot of stuff there. Yeah.

1:39:09Turner Novak:I think there's different lenses to think about it as the cost of equity is pretty high. Like if you say, let's say you're, we'll take Kurser again as an example. Kurser sold probably 20 % of their business in that first round, if that would have been debt that they had to pay back, like turning 2 million into 2 billion, like what was the technical interest rate that they gave up on that equity? It was definitely three digits, right? So like the interest rate that they were paying, like the cost of the equity that they gave up was basically like a payday loan, probably more, like the most expensive financial capital versus let's say they funded it on a credit card where you pay 20 % interest actually would have been way smarter.

1:39:50Turner Novak:Yeah. Like technically. Yeah. But, but then the, the trade-off is like, you know, it's debt and you do have to pay it back. And I think, yeah, I think the debt stuff makes sense when you have line of sight on a cashflow. Or collateral. Yeah. And the collateral is worth something and like, you know how much it's worth. And there's going to be like, but like you have line of sight on, on the cashflows. Um, and yeah, you would need collateral as well. but i mean collateral is hand wavy as well ip is collateral you know like you can technically have like so i think it's more like closely related to the cash flows um and uh but yeah i mean other things i just think companies should be going public earlier i think uh i think like you know uh and nvidia went public at 50 million market cap amazon went public at a 500 million dollar market cap, you and like maybe there's a way of like putting a small amount of your float like on on the market like early and having an appreciation that way.

1:40:50And then you can potentially participate. Then you have like a better sense of when things are really going to pop. Like I think it's a travesty that you have these tech companies going public and they get a 3x pop on day one. And then so then you have these like like kind of like predatory hedge funds that will just kind of take IPOs in New York. And I know a guy used to work on one of these funds and they just get a call being like, hey, do you want to, Figma's going public tomorrow. Do you want like 50 million? And they just buy it and they just triple their money like on the same day. And there's like whole funds that strategy that's like someone needs to eat their lunch.

1:41:21Like they should not exist. That is not like, that is not like, they're not working hard for their money. They should not exist. So I think that would be interesting as well. I mean, dude, when Android goes public, Lord have mercy. meme stock of the century it's gonna make palantir look like a baby like a party like jesus that's one trillion another one trillion dollars to to to andro the one meme with like

1:41:47Turner Novak:the spongebob donkey name another trillion to andro you know that one yeah it's like it's oh my god it's gonna look like a tea party like so um yeah uh so i think like i'm like yeah like so i think there's a lot of things that could could be and like look i see the argument for not look there's like there's scrutiny you get and other things but I think people are leaving a lot of money on the table and I think in this world where you can kind of you you like you have like meme stocks and stuff like that like uh there's more you can do there but um another idea I have is like that like it seems there's just been so many like insane money making opportunities in the public markets for technology that like uh you like I'm not entirely convinced that like venture is the best way to make like uh you know like insane returns as an investor like you had like caravana do something like a 200x it dropped 99 and then back up to the same above the same price yeah 200x you had amd do like a 40x um in in the space of a few years you video outperformed basically every venture fund over the past exactly you have like so on here by the way Yeah, all these companies.

1:42:56And then like, again, like Situational Awareness Fund, like they, you know, they, Leopold and Nick, they like they're running a huge strategy. They're apparently like 40 % year to date, according to Wall Street Journal, 47 % year to date, like performing every like venture fund, you know, like so on a risk adjusted basis in particular. but more generally, I actually think like maybe public markets is like a better place to find alpha. You have more information. There's like maybe less risk. There's for sure 10 bagger plus opportunities there. So it's liquid.

1:43:36Turner Novak:It's liquid. More liquid. I feel like there's more secondary opportunities coming to the private markets. If you have like a top 20 asset, like there's like probably 20 private companies. Maybe it's like 25, maybe it's 50. Or if you just say, hey, I own stock in SpaceX or Android, there's a thousand willing buyers that will, I think there's the, I think secondary, I think it closely tied to this idea that companies should go public sooner. If that does not happen, there's a business in doing secondaries really well. I mean, that's a big business model of a lot of funds is just giving out allocation into SPVs in late stage companies, whether it's directly on the cap table into someone else's SPV, into an SPV that's going into another SPV.

1:44:17Turner Novak:Like that is a pretty significant business model in the private markets. I think as well, like crypto gets a lot of shit. I think there's still, like there's still the fact that you can program money. I think there's like definitely like stuff you can do there with that. Yeah, you can see that. Well, yeah. I think that one of the issues with increasing public markets is like if you're an asset management firm, you make money from management fees. Like you don't, like carry is kind of like a sweetener. But like you make your money on day to day from management fees. and you can charge about 1 % and fee in a public market fund and you can charge two, two and a half.

1:44:55Turner Novak:Some of these SPVs, people charge 5 % right up front. Wow. In a private market SPV. I didn't know that. Yeah. So you can, that's why people, that is why the private markets are so big and they're continuing to accumulate capital because if you're an asset manager, it's more profitable. Like why would you fuck around with 1 % fees and 10 % carry when you can charge two or three and 20 or 30. There's also, because it's illiquid, you can, let's say you invest a bunch of dog shit, bad investments in the public markets that is immediately apparent. Not necessarily so in the private markets. You can also, in the public markets, you get paid your carry quarterly.

1:45:37Turner Novak:So if you're good and you get paid faster, you don't get carried quite as much. Maybe carry is like more of the business model if you're in public markets. I think in private markets too, it's mostly insider trading and dark business arts and deals, which is like, you can't really do that in the public markets. But in the private markets, it's like, Andrew is signing this massive customer. We're going to raise this round ahead of it. We do the round. They announce the customer and then there's massive interest. And you can't do that in the public markets, right? You can't trade an insider information, but that is how startup financing and private market financing, like when you're an investor and you're pitching to your LPs, you're saying like, I have this edge.

1:46:19Turner Novak:I have this access to information that no one else has. Like I insider trade is basically what it is. So it's kind of like, you can argue it both ways. And it's kind of like there's different incentives for different people. And it's like, I think the interesting with SPACs is you can relay information differently. Like if you do a traditional IPO, you have to be pretty careful what you say. With SPACs, you can just be like, yeah, a couple of years, we're going to get to a trillion in revenue. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Like the TAM is a trillion dollars. And we think, we think this company will be worth one times TAM.

1:46:53Yeah.

1:46:54Turner Novak:Like whatever the crazy thing that people were saying, which gave them a bad rep. Community of your city, but yeah, you can like literally just say whatever you want and there's not as much you know enforcement yeah so there's like i think you need to and that's why some people benefited from specs and did a lot of them because you can like disclose things in different ways strategically so um i know i know you have an interesting you think we should be doing more specs well i i think for sure they are they they're they're stupid in a lot of ways um but i don't think we should throw the baby out with the bathwater at the same time i think like yeah there is a lot of idiots some of them very well known they're back now they're going around the back is back uh but i think again i think well i just want to see more public market access to the greatest investment opportunities of our time do you know this guy his name's brad jacobs i think his name he's founded like eight billion dollar companies.

1:47:57Turner Novak:Oh, his strategy, he, one of them is, he started waste management, like rolled up garbage collection companies. Another one is, what's it called? It's like a logistics trucking company. It was like a third party freight forwarding business. It's publicly traded, I'm blanking on the name. But he started about eight companies that are worth over a billion and like exited, you know, he's cleared the value, like it's like a real economic value that was create real real companies i mean i think waste management is like a 30 or 40 billion dollar public company but anyways he he did a spack but it was kind of like a private spack like i just think i think it was sort of like an ip like you kind of had to get allocation in it and i think i can't remember what was public but i think it's public i'm gonna have to we we're probably gonna leave this in the episode but we might we might trim it um that like i believe like mike moritz was a big investor.

1:48:50Turner Novak:I was just a friend who invested in it. And he was basically like, it was like this SPAC from this guy who is like a legend. I don't remember why he did a SPAC, but I think he wanted like a liquid vehicle to work with because when you're... It's like the same idea as like a search fund. You want to have negotiating power in advance of speaking to a business owner. Yeah. He acquired a company. Yeah. Like he did this thing and they immediately did an acquisition. Yeah. And I think his like the strategy around, I think he's said this publicly, but he's just going to do a couple deals a week. His thesis and just generally his general model, he goes to an antiquated industry that literally does not have any technology.

1:49:30Turner Novak:The people who run the companies don't use the internet. They print off their emails to meet them or whatever. They still send faxes. And you just use software and that's who you're competing against. Yeah, I love them. Same string thesis. Well, this is a lot of fun. Yeah, thanks for having me, man. This is pretty fun. I feel like we went all over the map with literally figuratively got talked about the ocean talk with Dubai chocolate treasure hunting conspiracy theories yeah it was good fun yeah it's a lot of fun and thank you for listening and thanks to ramp for supporting this episode head to ramp.com slash the peel for 250 dollars on your first set of cards if you missed it make sure to check out last week's episode with Isaac Medeiros founder of mini katana and kumpai foods where he shares the strategies he uses to get a billion views on his videos per month.

1:50:17Turner Novak:If you like this conversation, please like, comment, subscribe, and name your next innovative financial instrument after me. If you don't want to miss a future episode, subscribe to my newsletter, The Split, linked in the description to get each episode plus a transcript emailed directly to your inbox every week. Thanks again. See you next time.