"Ocean is the new space" - 7 Wild Ideas for the $3 Trillion Dollar Frontier｜My First Million

That episode was a whirlwind.

Yeah, we just recorded with our buddy, Wil O 'Brien.

This episode was like my favorite conversations living in San Francisco, where you run into a weirdo who knows a lot about something you know very little about and you get way smart.

In like 45 minutes your mind gets blown like five times and you just get smarter.

So this is a get smarter episode for me.

And it wasn't just about like the business and the ideas that he talked about, but the mindset and how we thought about just like the philosophy of life that I was inspired by.

Yeah, exactly. So, okay, what are we talking about?

We're talking about how the ocean is the new space, how there's companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin, all these companies that are doing cool shit in space.

He knows a lot about companies that are doing cool things in the ocean, which is something I honestly didn't know anything about going in.

Now I'm pretty fascinated with, but then we talked about the conversation toward the end gets really fun, conspiracy theories, why conspiracy theorists make for great founders, his summer living with monks in Nepal and what he took out of that, it was, the end is really good.

So get there to the end, I promise you, You'll enjoy this episode.

All right. What's up.

We got our friend Will O 'Brien here and Will is an Irish guy who talks my ear off about the ocean.

And I honestly wasn't thinking about the ocean at all until I saw maybe a tweet of yours, which was basically saying the ocean is the new space and and how there's companies like SpaceX and others that have built huge 100 billion dollar plus companies about exploring space, about putting satellites in space, about reusable rockets, and that there's an opportunity for a similar wave of disruption for startups in the ocean.

And I love that idea.

Honestly, I'm never gonna do it.

So I'll just put that in front.

I'm never gonna do something like that.

I think 99 .9 % of people listening to this will also never go do that thing.

But just from a, I don't know, just as a fan of the game, just as a founder, I kinda love the theory and the intellectual idea here of what is the opportunity?

And then if you're one of the rare few hardcore founders that can go do this, this is gonna be right up your alley.

So that's my interest in it.

Sam, I'm curious, from your perspective, are you the same as me?

Dude, I won't even go on a cruise ship.

I was at a party the other day and the like want liner or the icebreaker was what something you're deathly afraid of.

To me, it's being in the ocean to where I can't see land.

So like, I'm not even gonna be out there, but yeah, I agree with your premise.

And Will, did I kind of frame your argument right as to like the potential that you see as far as the business opportunity of building startups that are focused on the ocean?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah.

The framing is like, something like this.

it's like, you know, you know, everyone is like here standing on Earth, like looking looking towards the stars and absolutely.

We know we should be doing that and we should be going like, you know, full pelt with like trying to go interplanetary, trying to put a base on the moon and you know, take the take the dark side of the moon and then, you know, go from there and use that as a line going to go to Mars.

And we should be trying to fly supersonic as well.

But then look, if you're you're trying to build a start up, like you're always asking yourself, like where, you know, what is everyone else looking to do?

and like what where where is everyone else going and where is like underrated?

And I suppose, you know, I grew up by it by the seaside and like in the southwest of Ireland, I've always been obsessed with the ocean.

If I wasn't like on it, in it or near it growing up, there was something something wrong in the same way that you're you're afraid some of it.

Yeah, I'm kind of like when I'm when I'm away from it, I feel something wrong with me.

So I've always been been thinking about it.

And I mean, if you just like and look at it in fundamental terms, the ocean economy right now is already massive.

It's not like the future space economy is going to be massive.

The ocean economy is massive.

It's like $3 trillion in annual spend in different ways.

It covers 70 % of the planet.

3 billion people rely on it as their primary source of food, a billion as their primary source of income.

And then while we have robots and Mars and these low -cost drones going in our skies, the technology like in our oceans like still pales in comparison like you know you look at like the ships that are out there today like much of the technology is like very same and similar to like what we had years ago.

The unmanned you know underwater drones are like you know pretty much like the same as well they're like the the kind of key core technology stack supporting like the the key pillars of the ocean whether it be transport, fisheries, defense, energy you know biodiversity all these areas.

It's just like it's the same old like stagnant incumbents, large scale incumbents offering solutions that are running on ancient software, and there's just like very little innovation going on there.

It's like, you know, you ask someone like what is like a sexy ocean start -up, and it's like, they're kind of scratching their heads for a bit, you know, whereas if you ask them about space, it's like SpaceX straightaway, it's like, you know it straight away, it's like, you ask them about aerospace, it's like, oh, boom.

So yeah, this is like the kind of the core of the thesis.

Sean, you just wound them up really easily.

This is gonna be one of those podcasts that we've had uh we've only had maybe five of them ever where at the end of the hour we are like we're no longer podcasting we're getting into the ocean business like i i let's go so sam he's just said a bunch of stats so which of those surprised you?

So I'm just going to rattle a couple back he said all right this one probably doesn't surprise you 70 % of the Earth is covered in water.

I think only 25 % has ever been explored.

He said a billion people rely on the ocean for their primary source of income.

Three billion is their diet.

Explain that. What's the diet and the jobs one of the income one?

Oh, it's just like people like, you know, most of them, I mean, the human societies generally settle on coastlines, like this is like a very like common trend.

Yeah, but I'm in New York, but I don't eat fish every day.

Yeah, but in developed countries, it's not as at you.

We've developed logistics, which means you can go down the street and walk into some sushi bar and get like, you know, bluefin tuna probably flew in last night from Japan.

However, if you are in, you know, Mogadishu or like Somalia or something like that, this might be a bit more difficult because the systems are not set up so and it's important to remember, most of the world does not live in, you know, developed countries.

So yeah, most humans just live along a coastline naturally then, easiest source of food for them to get is fish.

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All right. So what were some other stats, Sean, that caught your eye?

A billion people rely on it for their income.

So what are the jobs that you're talking about here?

So are you talking about fisheries, shipping, is it like defense?

Like what is that? Are those the big three or am I missing something big and obvious?

The framing for me, how I think about like the ocean economy is like you generally kind of break it up into like three categories, right?

Like you have like the biosphere, right?

which is like your fisheries, it's your ecosystem restoration.

It's like your environmental mapping, it's science in the ocean.

It's like all around like biosphere management.

Then you have like the kind of prosperity -oriented part around it.

It's like the kind of commercial, like your energies, your infrastructure, your oil and gas, so your data infrastructure, you know, these sorts of things.

It's your logistics, shipping.

And then you have like keeping the seas safe, which is like defense and security, border security, critical infrastructure protection, deploying ships in the South China Sea, these sorts of things.

And so give me an example of a start -up today, that's doing really well, as based on this kind of ocean economy that you're talking about.

Yeah, I mean, I think one player that's like interesting in the unmanned systems space that's been around for for a long time, I think over a decade now, and was really kind of one of the first players to start doing interesting new things in the ocean is Seldrone.

What problem are they solving?

What does Seldrone do?

I suppose they are solving the kind of data gathering at scale, in the ocean problem.

They build these like autonomous sailboats, these huge vessels.

They look amazing. Yeah.

They look awesome. They build these are huge vessels, massive sailboats that can basically starce for many, many months at a time.

You can put a load of, you know, fancy sensors on them, you know, that can take data from the water, that can gather video footage at the surface and these sorts of things, and then relay them back to someone like in the United States.

It might be like a government agency like NOAA, who want to know how much fish is in the seas off Alaska.

They could sell it to the US Navy to know how deep is the waters in and around Guam, or something like that.

And then they sell these things as a service.

But they're a very interesting founder there.

It seems like a super sharp guy who's been obsessed with sailing for decades.

Again, a lot of these ocean fenders that you see, they're very obsessed with the ocean.

It's a thing people very often get obsessed about and then try to make a business out of it.

What's your business do, Will?

What's Ulysses? Ulysses or Ulysses?

Ulysses. Yeah, Ulysses.

Ulysses we're building a general purpose autonomy platform for maritime operations.

Say that like we're stupid.

Just pretend, pretend that we're stupid.

Yeah, yeah, I know it's hard to believe, But just go ahead and dumb that down for me.

Autonomous robots for the ocean to do important things.

Okay. And what's one important thing that you would do?

You would, like, for example, you would go to a pipe in the ocean and determine if it's got a hole in it?

That is something you could do.

Our first business line has been working with this weird plant that you've probably never heard of.

There's this plant in the ocean that's probably about 10 times more abundant than coral reefs.

It is 35 times better than rainforest at removing carbon.

It supports about...

It holds about 20 % of the carbon in the ocean, supports about a quarter of the world's most critically important fish stocks.

And it's called seagrass.

It's basically just grass in the ocean.

And this plant is dying off at an insane rate all around the world, by 7 % loss per annum.

If you follow these trends, we lose all our seagrass...

7 % a year of this thing is going away, okay?

And why is it dying?

Is it because pollution or what's the cost?

There's a few things, I mean, water quality is like a very common, you know, cause for loss.

Other things are just like construction, construction around like coastlines, digging it up, dredging, changing ocean temperatures, changing like ocean currents, these sorts of things impact it.

And basically, you know, the kind of context there is there's a lot of governments in and around all over the world like really, really panicking around this.

Like if they lose their seagrasses, they lose their fish stocks.

if they lose their fish tax, you have the 1 billion people who rely on it and 3 billion people who rely on it for food and the billion for income and they're in a tough situation.

And basically restoring it, i .e. bringing it back, is currently a very manual process.

And how are you guys doing that?

We build autonomous robots to do it.

And you're actually building the robots yourself or when you said you're building a platform?

I thought that meant you're allowing other people to build it and use your technology to track them.

Yeah, so, for this first use case, we've built a kind of custom robotic payload.

You know, like, when you're starting and trying to do something new, it's kind of important to get initial traction in a weird place, and I think if we just built something and hoped that people would use it for something, if we just built the platform, which is like an underwater vehicle and a surface vehicle that dock together, we might have trouble getting traction, but we started off with this initial use case.

we've basically built these attachments that go onto our under -order vehicle that do collecting seeds, planting seeds, measuring their growth to get this initial attraction.

So in our first year, we did a million dollars in revenue, first -year five -person team based here in San Francisco.

Why would someone pay you to do this?

So the reason people pay us is because it's a critically important ocean ecosystem that, you know, if lost, has these, like, very negative downstream impacts.

Yeah, that's like, you know, one reason.

Another reason is like lots of governments now around the world have implemented laws that restrict your ability to damage this plant.

Or if you damage it, you have to pay someone to plant it.

So they're paying us to plant it, it's compliance driven restoration.

So that's the kind of contract, we've contracted in Western Australia, we've contracted in Florida, we've contracted in Virginia.

And they're all kind of for like these general reasons, are their compliance driven restoration or voluntary led restorations.

Sam I put uh how important is seagrass into chat gpt here's what I said seagrass is wildly important to the world and it basically says it captures carbon 35 times faster than rain forests which I think he said and then it says it's like a baby crib for the ocean the seagrass basically is where small fish crabs seahorses and even endangered species and turtles they're born and they live early on in their life and if lost then you would uh and it says lose the sea grass and entire marine ecosystems collapse.

Yeah. Well, what's crazy is you, okay, the mission check, like onboard, amazing.

You kind of skipped the headline.

Sean, did we, he built a robotics business set in the first year.

You've only, I think you said you only raised $2 million or something like that.

So with only 2 million in funding, in your first 18 months of business, you did a million in revenue.

Is that right? Yeah.

And just five people as well.

Is there something new about building like a robotics company today that lets you do it way cheaper?

Like did something change like, oh, we all use whatever, you know, it's like when the raspberry PI came out then it's like, oh, we can now have this little computer for 35 bucks or whatever.

Uh, is there something that does that's made it a lot cheaper or maybe just that there's more talent.

What what's changed?

Three D printers has been huge.

Like that's just like a game changer.

It means just like the speed of iteration has gone up massively.

It's easier now to get parts overnight as well and just get sheet metal, cut and the cost of a lot of things has gone down like massively as well.

Like with the advent of electric vehicles, batteries kind of went down massively and a lot of electronic components with drones and motors went down massively in cost. For us as well, like a critical enabler of what we do is Starlink, because, you know, the way our system works is like we have this like autonomous boat, it's like a surface vehicle.

This is like our mothership.

And then we have a docking system that releases these these daughter robots, these like autonomous underwater vehicles to do the actual critical activity in the ocean that you want to do.

And, you know, we wouldn't be able to communicate with these assets without something like Starlink.

You had Iridium before, but like the bandwidth on that wasn't that strong.

And so you have like other like kind of wine out features like that.

And that company you were talking about, Saildrone, they've raised like over a hundred million dollars.

It looks like they're valued 500 to a billion dollars.

That's, that's interesting.

There's another one called Saronic.

Sam, do you know Saronic?

No, how do you spell it?

S -A -R -O -N -I -C. And Will, you probably know a little bit more about this company than me.

I think this Joe Lonsdale seeded this company, right?

Yes. Yeah, this looks sick as well.

So like, when we had Joe on the podcast and I was at his house.

He was telling me about this company.

Should have just invested on the spot, but he was basically like we're building drone, like drones for the water.

And, you know, drones for defense.

Just like andrails doing it for the sky and modern warfare has turned into drone base.

They're building these unmanned surface vehicles, USVs, for the ocean.

And they talked about how...

Did you know this? Like the U .S. Navy, Sam, just take a guess.

how many ships are in the US Navy fleet?

Just what's the number?

Oh, I don't know. 500, what?

It's hard to even say.

100? Okay, so you're a lot closer than I thought.

I would have guessed that we have thousands of ships.

We have 300 ships in the Navy.

Is a ship considered like an aircraft carrier?

Cause those are huge, right?

Those are like cities.

Sure. Oh my God. But only 300.

That's just like a very small number to me.

And we have 67 submarines.

That's it? 67. Dude, I had more kids at my three -year -old birthday party.

Like, that's insane to me.

So we got 300 ships or whatever, and basically every ship is like, I don't know the exact cost of it, but let me pull this up.

I think they're like, Will, correct me if I'm wrong, but the average cost of these is something like, or maybe it's the average cost of these contracts, like $250 million every time you get a contract to do one of these.

And so you're a startup like Seronic and you're like, all you have to do is basically say, all right, we're going to come in, we're going to build the most innovative, autonomous vehicles here.

And we're going to operate, you know, what Anduril did was remarkable.

So what Anduril did was in Silicon Valley, the smartest tech people, nobody was working on defense.

Google had famously shut down its defense project.

And defense was taboo.

Like you're gonna make weapons that was not cool at the time.

And there was basically zero weapons startups in San Francisco.

And what So what they did was they said, we're going to do this.

We're going to use the Silicon Valley method and talent to do this.

We're going to change the cost structure, so all the big defense primes were operating on what's called cost plus model.

And so their incentive really was to have really high cost operations because they were making 10 % on top of whatever the cost was, right?

So the incentive model sort of screwed up, and that's how you get a single airplane that's like a billion dollars or something like that to get paid.

And so it was costing the government a lot.

These guys had no incentive to innovate, no incentive to cut costs, and they were using talent that was not the smartest engineering talent in the world, which was all centered in Silicon Valley.

And then Andoril comes out, Paul Maluckey and Trey and others, they basically came out, and what they said was, we believe this is important, we believe that America needs this, and we believe we should put the best talent in the world on this problem.

And they've built now a 20 to 30 billion dollar company doing this.

And the reason I find this exciting is that I love these huge opportunities that are hidden in plain sight.

I talked to a friend recently who knew Elon, and I said, what was Elon like?

Were you impressed with Elon?

He goes, I was impressed with Elon, but not because he was the smartest guy in the room.

We would be at a party.

There's 20 people. You couldn't say, oh my God, that's the guy.

He goes, but the thing that Elon did better than everybody else was that Elon looked down at the ground and saw a trillion dollar opportunity that was just sitting there.

You know, before Elon, it's not like there were a bunch of people trying to build rocket companies or electric car companies, it wasn't like they were trying and failed and he succeeded.

They weren't even trying.

And he goes, the beautiful part about Elon is that he saw those and he didn't ignore it like the rest of us.

And the idea of, let's go to Mars was there.

It was available to all of us and we were all blind to it.

And so similarly, I think Anderil did that in the defense space.

And now it looks like Seronic is basically doing that in the sort of ocean defense space, where, you know, you have this combination of elite talent at robotics and AI and autonomy, and you pair it with this old industry.

And I think you have a pretty unique window to build a very big company doing this.

Like they're building, um, I think of it like they're building the Humvees and we're building the Toyota Hiluxes, right?

Like they're building like these like ultra -fast like defense focused like vehicles and like they're, you know, going to make the south trying to see a hellscape and make China now want to cross that ocean and keep Taiwan safe if they keep going on the path they're doing.

They're doing an incredible job at that.

And then we occupy a different niche.

We just want every single day to day task that is like done at sea, we want it done on our platform.

And so like, we want all the servicing done by Ulysses platforms and these sorts of things.

There's a lot of things that are making the ocean like very important in this century, more than previous ones.

Like warfare is a good example.

Like every other single war we fought in the last like three decades until now has been like in a desert.

Right. Now we're going to the ocean that requires a complete retooling of the military, you know, and just even how we think about warfare just needs fundamentally needs to change, like the climate question is ultimately an ocean question.

Like the ocean is like the world's largest natural carbon sink.

It is like where most of the life on earth lives.

It is, you know, one of our biggest sources of like food in a world where like a population is growing and food scarcity is always a question.

Even just like, you look at AI, right?

Like the data infrastructure build out for AI is going to be like enormous, right?

And basically that's going to require more data infrastructure, like cables connecting different parts of the world, transmitting data.

We're going to need more data centers, we're going to need more energy.

These are all things like we're already putting, and testing, putting data centers in the ocean.

the cooling costs go down massively, they become more efficient.

So let's go back. So there's there's already pipes under the ocean that basically like internet pipes under the ocean, correct?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, most of the information that our internet connection now, most of that is like traveling through, it is traveling underground.

And who built that?

Is that the government built that or Google built that?

Who put those pipes in the ocean to do that?

So a lot of the initial infrastructure build out for IT in the ocean came from telecoms companies actually?

Yeah, like in the 80s Sean, there's a handful of telecom companies that were startups and they're some of the fastest growing companies in the world.

So like imagine the AI companies today that are scaling to 100 million in revenue in a year, that was what they… Did they die or what happened?

A lot of them are still running.

And then there was some of the, you know, like, what are the biggest frauds on earth?

Uh, like it's like Bernie Madoff and then like, the third one is actually one of these telecom companies that was laying pipes in the, in the ocean.

But a lot of them are still around.

They're just like small B to, they're not small.

But they're b2b companies that you wouldn't even know, but they can be like a $10 billion a year company.

But in the eighties, right.

Well, maybe, I don't know if you know this, but in the eighties, that was like the, the birth of a lot of this, wasn't it?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Massively.

And, and, and now you're seeing a transition to the build out being coming from FANG, from like big tech, and soon I think it'll be like the AI companies.

So what you're saying, Will, now is that AI companies need these data centers, huge amounts of GPUs in a data center, and those data centers need cooling, they need power, they need tons of things, and ideally they need to be close to places where people are using it.

And what you're saying is that somebody is gonna build a data center in the ocean, or are already building data centers in the ocean?

And who's doing that or is this a future idea?

And why are they doing that?

Why is that a good idea?

So I think the first experiment of this was a Microsoft project, they did it.

There's a YC startup as well, run by friends of mine, Sam Mandel.

He's got a company called Network Ocean.

They're building and operating, starting to building and operate these things.

Are they actually under water or are they on top of the water just out in the ocean?

The plan is for it to be subsea.

And again, like these are the sorts of businesses that Ulysses, we want to be the servicing partner for in the future when they need maintenance, when they need inspections done, when they it's like us, they're coming to and we're selling them like a kind of in the box solution to.

I think the biggest opportunity in this paradigm in the future where more and more data cables are being laid subsea is actually in the protection of them.

So I don't know if you guys are familiar what's going on in the Baltic Sea and places, but Like I think in the last year about eleven cables have been cut by foreign actors.

I'm like, you know, basically the kind of… And these cables, by the way, they're like it's like a human sized tunnel.

Are they on the ocean floor or they are like floating in the ocean?

Like to say cable, we're not talking like, like a rope, pull it.

It's like it's like a tunnel right?

And like, OK, like literally the like the Chinese are literally publicly advertising these cutters that they have these cable cutters.

Right. They're literally putting in the south China morning press China unveils powerful deep -sea cable cutter could reset through alert they're not even– they're not even fucking hiding this like they're cutting the cables they're like they're like yeah we're just look how big our cable cutter is like this is just like the new paradigm and then like you know they send these like little like uh you know Taiwanese ships into the– or these Chinese ships into the Baltic Sea on like fishing missions right like what the hell are they doing in the Baltic Sea on fishing missions like they're clearly

just cutting cables and and then two days later, oh, cable cut.

I wonder - Dude, calling this a cable cutter is like calling a robo a ship, you know what I mean?

Maybe technically it's correct, but they need to rebrand this because what you're showing us is basically like a huge submarine.

I'm thinking of like a clip - It's not scissors.

Yeah. This is insane.

So they're going down and they're cutting this.

And what does that do?

Does a country lose internet or is it just like damages?

OK, I'll give you this vision.

These cables run between military bases as well.

And OK, let's say there's a hot war that breaks out in the South China Sea.

First target then is going to be a military base in the Pacific, somewhere like Guam.

If you want to completely scramble what their understanding and situational awareness of what is going on, you are going to be sending these subsea drones down there to go and cut the cables that is giving them comms, that's giving them energy.

And you're going to be scrambling their airwaves with like electromagnetic interference and that's how you're going to like just completely prevent like American military responses in the Pacific right?

But how many how many cables, you're talking about two dummies.

How many cables does America rely on?

There's like not actually that many, right?

Like is in like there's like an insane amount of data that goes over them, but there's only about like 600 active.

I'm so impressed that you knew that number.

That's insane to me.

So there's not a lot of redundancy you're saying?

No, no, not at all.

They're very difficult to lay, right?

And you need to respond quickly.

So yeah, like, I mean, there's like many critical things that rely on them.

But like, yeah. You're way better off defending them with unmanned water drones than trying to lay back up pipes down there and leave them undefended, of course.

You need to be persistently out at sea, like, Century style in the same way that like Andorils like have the, you know, started with these like border systems to like, see what was coming in and over the land border.

We need the exact same type of systems out at sea, permanently just sitting there on top of them.

They need to be cheap so that you can deploy them massively at scale.

The ocean is huge, so they need to be cheap to be scalable.

You need to be able to see what's going on at the surface and you need to be able to see what's going on so surface.

And fundamentally, that's the platform that we've developed.

We have this surface vehicle with a docking system that can drop it a number of water vehicle and we've made it like all by 1010s cheaper than anyone else.

like that's, you know, Seagrass is like a nice place where we started.

How deep do your vehicles go, do they go to like the bottom of the ocean where these pipes are?

So for the Baltic Sea, I mean, it's one of the shallower seas and this is like the major kind of like, you know, activity or area of activity where this is going right now.

So our vehicle works in that sea, you know, at all depth, Prothwells is in that sea.

So for the Baltic Sea part of it, it works.

When you get into like gnarlier parts of the ocean, like some of the Pacific where you're getting down to like 8 ,000 meters, right?

Like Mount Everest, you know, levels of depth.

We can't go there yet.

It just started getting difficult.

But like, yeah. Or we will be adding future vehicles to the fleet.

That can be done. How old are you Will?

I'm 27. Sean, so when you and I moved to San Francisco in, well, I moved there in 12 and we're about the same age, it was the sharing economy.

That was the thing.

So it was Airbnb and Uber and Lyft were the winners.

And then there was a bunch of derivative things like Airbnb for garages or, or for storage.

A few years later, it was AI or crypto.

So like Bitcoin and Coinbase were winners.

Then there was a bunch of like silly things.

Right now, this is so strange to me.

It's AI, but it's also, well, it's whatever category you guys would go in.

You're not quite defense tech, but it's like wild to me that the shift has happened because 10 years ago, I would have told you like, that was when Boom Supersonic was starting and a few other things.

I would've said, this is foolish.

What are you guys doing?

we're technology. This is a technology city.

Why don't you do like software?

To hear you say this, it's so foreign to me.

It's also so interesting.

But for me, it's like a no brainer.

I mean, like, you know, the low hanging fruit of software has been eaten, right?

Like, you know, it's like, Yeah, we ate it.

Like how many more CRM's are there?

Yeah, exactly. The Boomer's got cheaper to say, you guys got like B2B staff, right?

Like, it's like, that's like, and now it's like on us to do like something where, like the next frontier is, which is like fundamental hardware.

And then like also it's like it's like a no brainer.

You look at like the top 10 most valuable companies in the world right now.

It's like seven out of 10 of them have like a hardware.

Like an extreme like hardware component, right, like the biggest companies being built today are hardware companies.

And also in a world where you can just like VibeCode overnight, like a CRM or a sales force, maybe not a sales force, but like a calendly competitor.

It's like, OK, well, is there really a moat and like these sorts of things anymore?

It's like yeah, you're right.

You're absolutely right.

And I think it's so fascinating because it, so when Sean and I lived in San Francisco, if someone who looked like you, so you look, you're wearing a Ford Bronco shirt, I bet you you're wearing cowboy boots and you've got a little bit of swag to you.

And you like, if you were to talk about what you're talking about, it would have been like, you're so out of touch. You're out of touch for the, for the YC group of out of touch people.

Like it's just so interesting to me, and I think it's great.

So there's a, I did a podcast with James Kruger And he has this thing about technology windows, Sam, did you ever see this part?

No. About technology windows.

So he basically says, all right, there's a reason, there's a, there's a almost like a scientific reason why, why what you just described happens, happens.

And so he basically says like, when a wave of startups comes out, it's because of a technology change.

So, for example, an inflection.

So when we, you're right, when we first moved to San Francisco, I moved in 2012 And the mobile window was open.

And that's when Instagram, Uber, Snapchat, a bunch of companies got built that relied on you having a computer with you at all times that had internet connection, that had an accelerometer, that had a map, a GPS feature in it and then all these companies could get built.

But that window opens for a fixed amount of time and basically like you said, the low hanging fruit all gets eaten.

And so he went back all the way to the railroads and he's like, the railroad technology window was open for 40 years and that like if you just look there was not another successful railroad company after that 40 -year period and because all the opportunities basically got eaten.

Automobiles was 25 years and so in a 25 -year window you got Buick, Dodge, Ford, Cadillac, GM, Chevrolet, Lincoln, Chrysler, all of it within a very short window and then you had nothing for another about 80 years and then the window reopened because of battery technology and you got Tesla and Rivian.

And so, that was almost a new technology window around automobiles, because the tech had changed again around batteries.

And so he was basically saying, B2B SaaS has had a 20 -year window, and now AI software — AI starting in 2016, and that's the current window that we're in.

And I would say, what Will is doing, and what a lot of smart entrepreneurs are doing right now, is they're in the technology window of AI, robotics, and 3D And basically those three technologies have opened up the door to build new things that couldn't have been built 10, 15, 20 years ago.

So this is what a technology would looks like.

Just check this out.

If you're on audio, you have to be on YouTube to see this, but I'm sharing my screen here.

So it basically says like, step one, the technology is invented and only the hobbyists are playing with it out of interest and creativity, right?

And then two is the status moment.

One of the hobbyists achieve status and wealth using the tech. So, you know, for example, so this is like, you know, Mark Andreessen on the, on the cover of Time, Barefoot because the hobbyist internet guy became rich by building, you know, the browser.

And then this happened again with social networking.

This happened again with Elon and Palmer Lucky and all those guys right now who've had their status moment where, you know, Palmer was like literally like living in a RV building VR headsets for 90 bucks using spare parts.

He was a hobbyist and then the hobbyist got the wealth, the status moment, when he sold to Facebook for $3 billion.

And then same thing with Elon, Elon was building in relative obscurity, both Open AI, Open AI was a nonprofit.

It was relatively obscure for the first five years that they were doing their thing.

But now Sam Altman and Elon and Palmer, again, with Andrew, have had a new status moment.

And then there's what he calls knowledge diffusion, which is suddenly there's conferences, there's podcasts like this, there's newsletters, there's Twitter, where people are sharing ideas about how to do this, what's going on, and you get this explosion of stuff, and then competition floods, and then the new incumbents are born, and then the new incumbent regime takes over due to their defensibility, like they built something that is defensible, maybe it's because it's hardware, maybe because it requires scale, maybe it has a network effect, and the technology window is 90 % closed.

And you'll only have a few exceptions from there on out.

All right, let's take a quick break because as you know, we are on the HubSpot Podcast Network but we're not the only ones.

There's other podcasts on this network too.

And maybe you like them.

Maybe you should check them out.

One of them that I want to draw your attention to is called Nudge by Phil Agnew.

And whether you're a marketer or a salesperson and you're looking for the small changes you can make, the new habits you could do, the small decisions you could make that will make big difference that's what that podcast is all about check it out it's called Nudge and you can get it wherever you get your podcasts.

It's so funny Sean to meet Will who's like in the thick of actually what you're describing.

Yeah Will when did you start like were you a hobbyist when did you start with doing what doing what you're doing like when were you messing around with drones or Ocean Tech?

So yeah I mean like like as I said I've been like you know it in the ocean on the ocean near the ocean since I was a kid, diving, surfing, you know, whatever, wakeboarding, all these sorts of things growing up, but never had built in it really before this kinda scooter sharing startup thing popped off.

I was like, you know, working, you know, in that, my co -founders all kinda have been tinkering and these sorts of things, but again, none of us had ever actually really done anything in the ocean, which I actually think is a massive benefit, right, like, because none of us came in these preconceived notions for how like subsea drones should work.

You know my, you know, two my co -founders were building aerial drones in a drone delivery startup before so they took like a lot of the primitives from that.

One of them had worked on self -driving cars, took some of the like ideas from that.

But again I think there's like definitely this like idea that I agree with that like you know to really actually shake up an industry it's probably good if you don't come from it because we came to it and like you know we thought initially that we were going to be maybe using someone else's platform and repurposing it but we looked at all of the subsea drones on the market and they were crap.

They cost like, you know, they were like, one of the ones we were looking at, which like actually had the specs that would have meant what we wanted to do cost, like 500 grand.

It's like, that's like a quarter of our pre -seat to do what we want, like, it's like.

And then like, my our CTO, Jamie, he just like went into a cave for a few days and just like came back with like a design for like a new type of like autonomous underwater vehicle.

people. And then we like test it and we're like, oh shit, this works.

Oh shit. It's like 10 -20 times cheaper than anything we could have bought.

So it's like, sometimes you just need a new idea and an artist to go into a cave and then you can change things.

That's how all the great things, that's how all the biggest problems have been solved.

This is like, I mean all religions like Muhammad went into the cave. Like Jesus went into the desert.

You know, like all these prophets, they go off into the old and then they come back with like this like secret and then you know someone else spreads the word for them right like it's like yeah hey St. Peter does it in like the Catholic Church and like oh there is so yes this is a common archetype data that does work yes you said something earlier about how a billion people rely on the sea for their food has anybody done you know food or like tuna or salmon in a way and are they doing anything interesting there with like whether it's like lab grown or something innovative?

Yeah, yeah, my friends got a very very interesting startup called Wild Type, which is like sustainable sushi grade salmon. So basically that's like cultivated seafood.

And so their first product like their...

What do you mean by cultivated?

It's grown. It's grown.

It's not like farmed in or caught at sea.

Like grown in a lab or grown in like in a yeah, exactly in this industrial process.

Yeah, they can basically grow cells and then put them together in such a way that it tastes like sashimi grade salmon. So, you know, in the same way that Elon started off with like a sports car, right, they're starting off with like a sashimi grade salmon the highest end salmon to get.

And I've tried it. It's great.

This is in San Francisco.

It looks like a brewery.

Yes, exactly. It's like similar.

I mean, look, breweries are like where so much of the best kind of biotech...

innovation has come from people building mass industrial processes for cultivating food for a very long period of time, in fact.

So you're telling me that someone is growing salmon that I can go eat right now?

Yeah, I got it through my friend.

I don't know if they're in stores yet.

They're still undergoing FDA approval.

None of these nasty heavy metals or microplastics in them.

It's reducing pressure on fish stocks.

This is good stuff.

It doesn't have any of the nasty parasites that you get in some of this farm salmon as well.

Definitely I think things like this will be important.

Holy shit. This is crazy to me.

This is crazy. Is it like the lab grown meats where it's $10 ,000 an ounce?

It's like we can, we made, you either pick, you either have the cheap thing, like beyond meat or impossible foods, but it doesn't taste great or it's not good for you.

It's made with a bunch of chemicals or you have the real thing, but it's super expensive and so nobody can afford it.

Um, well, I think given that, like, my friend shared it with me that it's not that expensive.

Uh, but, uh, you're not that good at friends.

But I think this stuff is like sooner than we think.

It's around the corner.

Well, these guys did a hundred million dollars series B in 2022.

That's pretty crazy.

What else is cool Will, tell me everything.

What the guys like you are into, like some more ocean shit?

Some crazy ones. Yes.

Okay. All right. This one is wild, right?

Buckle up. Okay. Ocean treasure hunting, right?

So there is actually like, you know, hundreds of wrecks out there in the ocean today that potentially have like more than a billion dollars on them, right?

like gold bullions that like the Spanish were bringing back from their conquests.

And then, you know, they got hit by a storm or these sorts of things.

Right. And there's like probably thousands that have like millions of daughters of funds in them.

So governments, the source governments, so like the Spaniards, the Portuguese still have claim on these things.

However, there is precedent in history for you to do these kind of like profit sharing agreements where it's like, if we find that and we were store, we give you back all your artifacts, we give you back everything, but you know, we sell some of them.

We get to we get we keep them you can do this, right?

It's it's like these models where It's like these SAS Negotiation companies are like hey if we go and save you money on your vendors We get a car keep 20 % is that except for you go to the Spanish royal government and you're like Hey there are if we find any hidden treasures in the ocean, can we keep a couple bars for us exactly around for piracy?

Who's building this so what my friend used to do this his name is chip for site and he would be like, hey I'm going off the coast of whatever to go bro.

You did not have a friend that used to do this That's insane shit for site, you know, he would he went off the coast and just what scuba dive Well, it was chip and AJ Forsyth who I think you've met AJ.

He's crazy his brother chip they basically the way it works now is it's kind of like a movie like you have these crazy people and You get other people to finance it and you say if we find this treasure, you know Here's the agreement and how we split it and they would go off the coat they would somehow narrow in on where they think it is they would spend a week trying to find it and most of the time you don't find it but occasionally you hit the lottery is that I mean is that right Will how it works now pretty much yeah yeah, so there's like fundamentally two parts of like a mission it's like or three

parts there's like there's like you know the pre -mission you know you know negotiating like you know looking through historical records to see like where we think it could be you know kind of scoping it out and also getting permission so that when you do the recovery you have like some chance of being able to hold on to it then there's like this kind of scouting where you're actually on -site and you're doing like scouting and you're basically using sonar to scan the sea bed and understand what's there.

And then there's like recovery where you're bringing out these like gnarly, like JCB style ROVs and remote operated vehicles that could end and just like dig it all up and bring it back up and then you have your party.

And is anybody doing this?

Like, has anybody, do you know, someone who's like made like $10 million finding treasures in the ocean?

I know some people working on this that haven't like shared their plans publicly yet.

I won't like share, but there is like some exciting developments coming in this space that we may or may not be helping with.

Did you say there's three million shipwrecks at the bottom of the ocean?

So I'm not sure specifically on like a total of many shipwrecks.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's like that many shipwrecks, but there is like, there's like hundreds that potentially have billions on them.

Wow. OK. That's insane.

What else? OK, I'll give you like a banker quote, right?

there's this like Canadian billionaire called Ross who had this quote a few years ago he said, give me a tanker of iron filings and I will give you an ice age, right.

What he meant by that is like, you can actually alter like the kind of weather of the earth by like dunking iron into the ocean, right?

So basically like many many parts of the, the ocean are low in iron.

They need more iron.

And if you add iron to these parts of the ocean, you stimulate algae growing at the surface.

Algae then draws down carbon and then the fish eat it and then the fish die and they fall to the bottom of the sea.

And then so the carbon goes from the air into the bottom of the ocean.

So this is generally good because we have too much carbon in the atmosphere, we also want more fish, but you need to balance it because you don't want to put too much in and then just there's too much salmon and then there's salmon take over a certain ecosystem which is maybe like not good or something like that.

There's a basically, when you're doing stuff in ecosystems, it's very difficult to predict how things are going to pan out, so you need to be careful.

So this dude didn't do it that carefully.

It went off the coast of Vancouver, partnered up with these native Americans and just did this experiment where he just basically dumped off a load of iron filings, removed it.

Through his quantifications thousands of tons of carbon off the coast there that year, they like the biggest like take of salmon ever as a result but the kind of DSOU authorities did not like his experimentation and like the Canadians are going to the CIA like busted his home and he got like yeah like a warrant and yeah he got in a lot of trouble.

So people haven't really done it since then because he kind of got like you know he was the kind of first crazy maybe like the first hobbyist to do something like this at scale.

But I think there is going to be like a billion dollar company built in like marine geoengineering of some description.

and there's this, I'm Catholic, so there's this, a lot of my beliefs around my environmentalism and stuff like that comes from this Christian notion of stewardship that like we should look after our lands and our seas because it's like our duty to.

And I think this is kind of like where we're going with, how we manage the climate.

Climate used to be this kind of, let's avoid the worst case scenario.

And it was just very kind of like, let's stop emitting carbon.

But, I think there's a more interesting idea of this stewardship, I think, of environmentalism, where we actually just control, we steward the planet.

We take control, we get involved, someone like Augustus at Rainmaker can make it rain, when we want it to rain.

Someone like you as ease can come in and bring back the sea grasses when we need the sea grasses.

Someone could, when we want to draw down carbon, can do or increase fish stocks somewhere, we could just do a bit of this.

I think we're going to have to build these tools.

Right? because we need these in tandem with growing the size of the economic pie, if we want to keep doing that.

We don't want to just shut down the economy.

We don't want to just stop doing emissions altogether.

It's important for us to have these other kind of compensatory mechanisms. And yeah, I think we're in geoengineering, so an interesting and underexplored space.

I think the main things we need to get right there are science, better science on it, better technology and governance, the governance about it, because the ocean is like a public space.

It's like, you know, you just need to get the governance power right.

Have you seen, Sean, have you seen this guy, uh, Augustus, uh, the founder of Rainmaker?

Incredible mullet. Oh my God, wow.

So there's this whole cohort of people of which Will appears to be one of the, like, you know, class presidents where there's this, like, they're very strange.

They don't fit this stereotype when you think of a tech entrepreneur, they're like, kind of manly men or they're like, They're not the they're not like this engineer.

You're like typical thing that you and I grew up with Sean like there's something about them that is Different and I can't tell if you guys are gonna take over the world to be billionaires or if you're gonna go broke But it's only gonna be one of the two Dude, do you understand Sean like this this new genre that I'm trying to describe I don't I don't know exactly what I'm what I'm saying.

Well, maybe you can like put words to it But there's this new like breed that that Austin and San Francisco had a baby You get the the stash and the mullet of Austin, and then you get the insane ambition and tech tech chops of Silicon Valley.

And that's what's happening.

For example, this guy Augustus, I think his name is.

He he's on the cover, I think, of Forbes or something.

And he's sitting on a on a bench press like like, like a like, work it out.

That is not something that Brian Chesky or, you know, Travis Kalanick would have done in 2012.

I think it's emblematic of like, um, of kind of the evolution of the technology industry though.

I think like, you know, we, we began like as this kind of like hippies that found computers with people like Steve Jobs.

We were like actualizing on like the axis of like the spiritual, uh, you know, realm.

And then it was like, you know, you had like people like Bill Gates and Zuckerberg who were just like nerds, like actualizing on the sense of like mind.

You know, they were like smart and nerdy.

And now you have like people who are like openly flexing on like, were actualizing on the sense of the body, right?

Like we're like becoming strong and like you have like this like full integration of like mind body and spirit.

And it's like no wonder that this like tech becoming like fully actualized on all of the access so like that a human needs to develop on is capping at the exact same time where you have like Elon who is like chief tech bro in the fucking white house, right?

Like these things, no coincidence to me.

It's like tech has like found its voice, it's like found itself.

It's like self -confident, and it's like ready to like actually change the world now because it's like, it's you know, it's, it's like spiritually like aligned.

It's like mentally they're, you know, we're smart and like, we're like now, like, a strong group of people as well who are taking health and fitness seriously.

And it's like, yeah.

So this is why I think like we're at like the most interesting time in technology right now.

I like that, poetic.

You know, last night I watched a clip of the final scene of Ratatouille.

You seen that, Sam?

No. It's a great movie.

And the final scene of Ratatouille is the critic, the critic who is the most fearsome critic in all of the town and writes the review about the restaurant where the rat has been cooking and he just gives this beautiful monologue.

Maybe the best, maybe the most beautiful four minutes in all of film is the last four minutes of Ratatouille here, the monologue.

Will, I think you're up there with the last four minutes of Ratatouille there with your mind, body and spirit analogy for tech. I think that's kind of amazing.

I've actually heard that before with just the technology part of it.

So it's like you had the initial, you know, the bicycle for the mind.

And so you had Steve Jobs talking about how computers will enable creativity.

And then you had sort of AI.

It's like, Oh, we gave computers a brain, and now they can think for themselves.

And then with robotics and self -driving cars, it's like, we gave the computers a body so they can move around and pick up things and do things.

And I like how you extended that to the entrepreneurial will that has grown in that way.

Look at Bezos and Zuckerberg.

They're getting jacked, like they're doing TRT.

They look like, look, look, like, this is like, uh, I think that the spirit is in technology now, it's like, you have the like, one of my favorite podcasts, besides yours, you know, the Tech Bros and like what Jordy and, uh, and John are doing there.

It's like, they're like, they're the technology brothers.

They're like, leaning into the fact that you're like tech pros.

That used to be a slur.

Right now it's like, Oh, I'm confident in it.

I'm like, I'm owning it.

And they're like doing these like hilarious promo videos with them.

Like zipping Dom Perignon like it's like, there's like a confidence and an of like, okay, let's do it now, you know, we're not like, we're not gonna be like, like the events and functions anymore kind of lying about not neutered yourself I got an email from this guy named Jamie at the Wall Street Journal.

So Jamie is a reporter for Wall Street Journal's style team.

And he listened to this.

He goes, I'm writing a story about tech guys embracing Westernwear.

So basically cowboy clothes in the past recent years.

And I want write about how the tech bro uniform has changed from quarter zips and all birds to denim shirts cowboy boots and uh like when i saw this and he said tech bro i was like dude that's amazing i don't think i could talk like this is also life wind that he thinks you're the expert to go to right yeah life wind but i was like i'm not exactly a tech but that's amazing that you think that I am a fashion influencer officially, no. Reply, mission accomplished.

Dude, that's amazing.

And you're right. Like, dude, is there any difference?

You know, the first time you saw Zuck doing MMA?

Do you remember when that video came out?

Is there any difference between that video and the first time you saw like a Boston Robotics or Boston Dynamics robot dog getting kicked and jumping around and doing backflips and shit?

Like, there's no difference between the two videos.

it's one of those days that everyone remembers where they were when they saw it.

I was like wow i didn't know the robots could do that.

That's how I felt watching Zuck.

That's how I felt watching the Boston Dynamics robot.

Well, one last question.

Can I invest? Yes. Great.

Okay cool because i think this is awesome.

You guys are insane, man.

This energy is so wild.

I'm not convinced that it's gonna end one like, okay.

So on one hand, it goes both ways.

So on one hand, there's the hubris, where you're like a, in the case of Androl, you're Boeing or you're one of these huge companies and you're like, you know, Parker or Palmer, you know nothing, just go back to - It would be better if they called them Parker, more condescending.

Little Parker. Listen, Parker.

They would be like, Palmer, you know nothing, you're just, go back to making Facebook apps, you know and like probably eight out of ten times that idea is uh right right where like there's an incumbent and like they fail because it's really hard and there's centuries of of hard work to go against in competition and so that's the same with you i would have to imagine where you have these young really smart people who have no experience and is this the 10 of the time where you guys are just going to take over the world or is this another time where someone's gonna be like, look, this is exactly what you told

you. It does not work.

Listen, that guy John, that guy who said, give me half a tanker of iron and I will give you an ice age.

Here's what I say, give me a hundred mullets and I'll give you a 10x portfolio.

I just need Will, I need Augustus.

I need Palmer with the mullet.

Three mullets. I need 97 more mullets and I'll give you a 10x return.

Okay, give me the fund, I'll find the mullet.

I don't have to do it.

You find the mullet!

Like, I can't - I don't know enough to know if this is achievable or not.

Oh, I definitely understand that feeling, yeah.

For sure I am not qualified to judge the feasibility of something, but I think in general it's not about any - you know, if anybody who's doing a startup like this thinks it's a sure thing or a sure bet, you're nuts, right?

You're gonna have to perform a miracle, right?

And that's okay. The important thing is, oh, wow, we took a portion of our brain power that was otherwise gonna be building X or working at Y company, you know, working at Facebook optimizing, you know, ad clicks or starting a company that was gonna be doing, you know, B2B, HR, whatever software.

And instead now we peeled off a portion of that talent and now we sent, you know, a hundred mullets at these problems. And I think that that's the winning strategy it's 100 or 1000 shots on goal like this, and then the winners will obviously emerge.

Well I can assure you what we're doing is very real.

You wouldn't have a million dollars in our bank account without it.

We wouldn't have done all the things we've done in the last five months.

If you want to come here to San Francisco and see some real robots in Ocean, the door is always open, Sam.

Same for you, Sean.

I got to ask you two quick questions.

Number one, seagrass seems so random, and when if you started this company you might have thought, I'll do drones like for warfare.

Yeah. How did you arrive at the seagrass thing?

Was it instant? Was, was that the initial idea or did you do some discovery to figure that out?

It was the initial idea.

It came to one of my co -founders when he was on a surf trip and he kinda, the same ones who went into the cave and designed our AUV went, heard about Seagrass and went into a cave and like went deep on Seagrass and came back to us and presented like this is , this is a very interesting space and we kinda - He heard about Seagrass on a surf trip from who?

A marine biologist friend of his who was working Just a guy on, a guy on the wave. This co -founder is absolutely caring your company.

He's got to have built the tech and figured out the go -to market.

Yeah. He's the, well, yeah, he, he found, he found the kinda, he was the one who brought Seagrass to us and then myself and my other co -founders kind of put it together and like, this is what the business probably should look like.

But then, yeah, we kind of went out from there into other areas.

And like, you know, like I think any brilliant company finds a local monopoly to build in first, It's just somewhere where there's nobody else doing stuff with technology where it's a great time and nobody's ever heard of what you're even doing initially.

And it's a pretty big market.

You can bring cash into your business as like a lifeblood.

And so it's been a great place for us to start.

It's like the best place for us to start.

Nobody's ever heard of it.

So I think that's always a good place to start off on.

And then, yes, we're going to use that as a launching point to do other interesting things in the ocean.

Who do you admire, Will?

Who do you want to be like?

Steve Irwin, probably.

Dude, motherfucker.

I was going to say this earlier on.

I go, you are Steve Irwin.

I do. You got Steve vibes hardcore, man.

Do you got any khaki shorts on right now?

Not right now, but we have a picture of him up on the wall here.

Ah, you scream Steve Irwin.

You have Steve Irwin vibes through and through.

Yeah, I know. I'm hopeful I can get the Irwin family on the Ulysses train at some point.

We gotta holler at Bindi, Bindi Irwin.

That would be great, Robert as well.

I love those guys. Yeah Robert as well, yeah, you know, Steve, I think is like, and it's so funny, you know, people say Steve on a podcast in the tech, it's like Steve Jobs, it's like, for me it's like Steve Irwin.

You should have just said Steve at the beginning and then let us fall into your trap.

Dude Shaun, Shaun, there's this famous video, I know you've seen this well, There's this famous video of...

It's Steve Irwin and his wife.

What's her name? I forget her name, and anyway, there's an interviewer who asks Steve, like, you know, you don't seem like you care...

Sam. Sam. Sam. Sam.

Sam. Just look. Just look.

Just look what's on my screen.

Just look what's on my screen right now.

Oh, there it is. Thank you!

Just look what I was pulling up, because - I love that clip!

I'm with you, brother.

I love this clip! I love this clip!

Play it. Play it. What good is a fast car, a flash house, and a gold -plated dunny to me?

Absolutely no good at all.

I've been put on this planet to protect wildlife and wilderness areas which in essence is going to help humanity.

I wanna have the purest oceans, I wanna be able to drink water straight out of that creek, I wanna stop the ozone layer, I wanna save the world.

And you know money?

Money's great. I can't get enough money and you know what I'm gonna do with it?

I'm gonna buy wilderness areas with it.

Every single cent I get goes straight into conservation and guess what Charles, I don't give a rip whose money it is mate.

I'll use it and I'll spend it on buying land.

This is how every man should be, by the way.

Like you're passionate about something that's good for others, and like his wife's just like eyeing them, and that's one of my favorite clips of all time.

Yeah, so I think the traits in him that I'm wearing are just like raw passion.

Just like the unbridled passion, it's like this like nonsensical passion.

It's like... You think I'm gonna have a conversation without a microphone?

No, I'm gonna put a microphone there!

I'm gonna record a podcast. I'm gonna record a podcast every day.

And I don't give a rip who's listening.

Cause you know what?

I'm a podcaster, and I'm gonna podcast my ass off it's a whole lot more lame but you're not talking about like saving the earth you know to be like conversion rate optimization or baby back well we kinda my generation and the dream generation before me we we you know what do they say hard times create or dose like we need a hard man to create soft times that's what I did for you you know we went and did the b2b software stuff want.

So you guys can do this fun, amazing stuff.

So really, you're welcome.

Thank you. Thank you.

New York City founders, if you've listened to my First Million Before, you know, I've got this company called Hampton and Hampton is a community for founders and CEOs.

A lot of the stories and ideas that I get for this podcast, I actually got it from people who I met in Hampton.

We have this big community of a thousand plus people and it's amazing.

But the main part is this eight person core group that becomes your board of advisors for your life and for your business and it's life changing.

Now to the folks in New York City, I'm building an in -real -life core group in New York City.

And so if you meet one of the following criteria, your business either does $3 million in revenue or you've raised $3 million in funding or you've started and sold the company for at least $10 million, then you are eligible to apply.

So go to joinhampton .com and apply.

I'm going to be reviewing all of the applications myself so put that you heard about this on mfm so i know to give you a little extra love.

now back to the show.

can we do just a quick happy hour of two topics that you had on this list that i you know sam if you got to run or whatever you feel free but i just got to ask you about these so i want to do the fun one and then the spiritual one.

the fun one is conspiracy theories.

you're a big conspiracy you're a fan of conspiracy theories i believe and you like people who like conspiracy So can you just give me a rant on why conspiracy theories are underrated here?

I think, well, I think it's like, you know, a lot of the traits of like conspiracy theorists are like those of like like a great like founder, I think, like, someone that, like, believes in something that everyone else tells them is like not real, or like, you know, that they shouldn't believe in or like, you know, people that are like able to see patterns that others can't see.

And you know, they, they just like go down these like rabbit holes.

And and I think like just like this contrarian spirit, I think is like very, very good.

And I think it's just like a very important, you know, the default is like doing things that other people do.

And so I think it's very important to cultivate an ability to see the world differently, I think.

Isn't it funny how contrarian is this like really positive description and conspiracy theorist is like this like negative description?

You know what I mean?

It's the same thing.

I just think it's very important to have weird ideas and take them seriously, right?

like, if we just had heard the Seagrass idea and just like, rubbished it, you know, we wouldn't - I would like, I don't know what the hell I'd be doing today, you know, it's like, you need to take something weird, and go with it.

And so like, I don't believe - like, blindly believe every report of telepathy and non -verbal autistic children or every, like, late night UFO sighting, but like, I refuse to dismiss them outright.

And I think, you know, history shows us that breakthroughs often happen at the edges where people are curious enough, or foolhardy enough, to investigate the unexplainable.

So it's like, whether it's like Christian mystics, you know, we swear by miraculous healings or physics experiments that challenge our understanding of space -time, I think it's very important to lean into these weird things and ask what if.

Yeah, I think conspiracy theories are just fun as well.

They're horoscopes for dudes.

So they're like, if nothing else, it's just a fun thing to spend your time reading about.

On here, you talk about aliens.

We are with Joe Gebbia recently, who's like the 90th richest person in the world.

I was like, Joe, look, you're worth $10 billion.

Like if there's a Illuminati, like you are either in it or you're friends with the people in this Tell me one thing that like you guys talk about and he looked at me he goes aliens are real and he went on uh, he went on a big he had a big di tribe on his passion for like You know UFOs and aliens and how he absolutely is on board with them in 100 % is on board with them He came off very passionately like it is absolutely a thing and the funny thing is if you meet Joe he's a serious dude, Joe doesn't just say wild shit for wild shit's sake, you know, Joe's not like, oh, he's a kooky billionaire.

No, no, no, Joe is like an extremely principled artist, he is a very serious individual, and so for him to say something like that, it's not like, you don't discount it with the same discount rate you would if John MacAfee was the guy saying it, you know what I mean?

If your readers want me to address Robert, all the best website I recommend going As I said, a friend of mine runs UAP Evidence .Com.

Is there any other dope conspiracy that I should go look at and rabbit hole that would waste a nice five hours of my time?

I think is less of a conspiracy, more like wacky, weird rabbit hole you need to go down is you need to listen to the telepathy types podcast. I have and I love it.

What is this? Is this like, I can read your mind?

So basically there's this group of people that people have been telling crazy for the last two decades, right?

it's basically the teachers and parents of children with non -verbal autism, because they've been convinced that their kids have been able to like read their mind.

And now for like the first time, with teaching kids how to spell on like iPads, and also with like getting researchers in to study them, they're actually verifying these telepathic capabilities, right?

So like, a mother will like go into one room and she'll be shown like a random number generator and her son Akhil in the other room will hit the exact same three numbers 100 % of the time consistency in test that's awesome yes it's like the serial podcast but it's this woman investigating these claims and she's like you know like an NPR skeptical let me call it right so she she comes in she's like this didn't make a ton of sense but I'm open -minded is he turned I didn't finish the whole thing I listened probably the first two or three but I was listening to a while as going to sleep and I just

had some like wild wild nights there so I decided all right I need to only listen to this you know not falling asleep if I'm gonna do that's right.

But by the way, Will, did you walk away from that?

You know, half convinced?

Three -fourths convinced?

Totally convinced? What did you walk away?

I was going into it already with some sort of like priors that I thought that like consciousness isn't local to the brain.

Like we like to think that like our brain is this kind of like DVD player, where like consciousness is playing and it's like being played to us.

And that's how we experienced things.

I think we're more like I was kind of thought for different reasons that we're more like a radio antenna.

You know, you have these stories of people like their their son dies in an accident and they just know something's wrong, They're just like, no, right?

Like, there's like the, you know, everyone, every family has these stories like death or like something bad happened and they just like knew.

They woke up in the middle of the night and they're like, I couldn't sleep then after that and they wake up the next day to hear about this awful accident or something like that, or you have like, there's like knowingness and these other things like just like telepathy, twins, telepathy and stuff.

And there's like this world of parapsychology, which is like the study of these kind of sci phenomena.

There's like actually very reproducible experiments in it.

Like the Gansveld experiment, which if you allow me to go on this like, very short rabbit hole.

but like the most reproducible experiment in this field is basically you take two people, you put them in two separate rooms. These could be twins, these could be a husband -wife.

They could be two artists.

They could be two people who don't know each other, different settings.

And basically you give me a picture and you're the receiver then in another room.

And I'm in one room and I'm talking about this random picture I've been given.

Let's say it's one in four different pictures.

I get a picture of an elephant.

For five minutes I talk about elephants, I saturate my brain with Africa and wild animals and Savannah.

You're in the other room, you're listening to white noise, and you're talking basically about what you're sensing, feeling that there could be about.

And then at the end of the five minutes, I stop.

And you get replayed what you were saying to yourself for five minutes.

You get the four random images, and you get to pick one of the four.

And then you would assume if complete chance, you know, you would 25 % chance of getting it right.

But pretty consistently, you get like 30 % or above in this experiment.

And then when there's like twins, husband and wives or artists, they actually score like more consistently, 35 in some instances, like 70 % of some of these experiments.

And so I've always kind of been like primed to think that like actually maybe we're more like we're touching into something and like that explains a lot of the spiritual and woo woo stuff.

And then I see this and this is like very good experimental evidence and really well done.

And I'm like, okay, no, that's largely legit.

Like our brain is not like this like AI chip that like runs and just like tells us what to do.

It's like an AI chip, but it's like, it also has a radio antenna that can connect to other people, to maybe connect to God, spirits, other things.

We don't really know.

Dude, I'm so bummed that I grew up in the B2B era of startups.

Yeah, it's so bummed.

Well, I wish, like, I wish I was 10 years younger or you were 10.

I wish we could have hung out.

Dude, let's grab some beers.

I went to a bachelor party this weekend and everybody on, there was a bachelor party where the bachelors and the bachelorettes were both doing it together basically, as a party together.

And the bachelorette side was so cool.

Like every single one of them, just, you know those tattoos that aren't filled in, they're just like, it almost looks like a pencil sketch?

Just seven or eight of those, some piercings.

Sense of style off the charts, knowledge of beer and music, way beyond my recognition.

sexuality was a total spectrum, you never knew who was who, who's dating who, anybody can be dating anybody in the room.

It was insane, I just felt like I literally felt like I came from a, I was a cave man and I was like, I was the gingerbread man actually, I wasn't even a real human being, I was a cookie cutter shape that was placed in this room.

That's awesome, that is so funny.

I think one like universal law by technology is that like it breeds variants, right?

it just creates skewed outcomes.

I think you probably see this in younger generations as well.

You've got weird kind of like schizo people like me that will burn your ear off by conspiracy theories and go down into these weird rabbit holes, but I think also it's maybe on the more negative end, that could send you down to some pretty dark places that maybe you wouldn't be a productive member of society if you go down into those very dark corners of the internet.

Or similarly, you have people who are doing great things, But then you also like, I think there is like a very interesting question that's posed in technology right now.

It's like, you know, where are the, you know, the, the kind of like less than kind of 25 you know.

Uh, you know, billion dollar company founders.

This is like an interesting question that I think is still not really, like, there's no satisfying answers around like previous generations had like the Collison's pretty early.

Um, you know, we had like Alexander Wang like he's maybe a few years older than me pretty early.

Still doesn't seem clear whether there isn't one in this generation.

Maybe we have to wait another year or two for companies like season or rainmaker or others to, like, to get there.

But there is definitely like, I think a bigger skew in both the ideas that young people are interested in today.

And I think that's like broadly just like downstream of.

Yeah, technology. Are you going to become an American?

Yeah, I think I'm going to get I'm on the green carriage path.

My last question was the spiritual.

And you said you lived with Buddhist monks in Nepal for a summer.

He learned a lot. And one thing I liked.

You said I couldn't come around to their view, which states that zero desires leads to enlightenment.

And then you said you wanted to be action oriented and do something with your life rather than sit and sort of renounce everything.

And then you said something like, I came to explain my five desires or six desires.

Can you just give me the quick story on your summer with the monks and then what you landed at?

Yeah, so yeah, I just kind of want, I just heard that you can do this, right?

You can actually just like find a monastery to like put you up if you teach them English.

So, I did that. Found a monastery in Nepal that would like put me up.

It's pretty rural, few hours outside.

And Kathmandu went there, flew there, taught myself to teaching it before I came over, was teaching them English.

And then, like in the downtime was like able to speak to some of the older monks who had like good English and like ask about their ideology.

Because there's just five monks with like a thick Irish accent speaking English out there.

They're like, yeah, I learned from an expert.

Yes, wild actual segue.

I was running in the middle of Nepal one day and I bumped into a dude who was wearing a Galway Bay 5K t shirt and I was like, I was like, sorry now, you might have no English, but I was like, where did you get this like t -shirt?

Like, this is like we're near where I'm from.

And he was like, he was like, had like, kind of like an Irish accent.

He's like, oh, well, you know, I actually work with an Irish guy.

He has like an orphanage and like a charity out here.

And I was like, oh, wait, like, what's this like Irish guy's name.

The Irish guy he named was like the one Irish guy that my neighbor who's like my mum's friend, my mum's friend was like, my mum's worried about me going to Nepal.

She was like, well, you know, and you need to have a contact in Nepal when you go over there, you know.

And I was like, and it's in, my neighbor, new guy who's in Nepal, I've got a charity out there.

Anyway, like this random guy I met in this like tiny village worked with him.

So this is like, you know, there's like Irish people everywhere.

Everyone just talking like, like all these mugs are like, blow up a cannon.

I boxed them. They're like you'll do nothing.

I boxed the bullets off him.

Yeah, you'll do nothing.

Literally. There's people everywhere.

We have people everywhere.

That's the kind of moral.

Is that what the mugs are saying?

We didn't come to take part.

We came to take over.

All right. So sorry.

So you go there and you continue?

Yeah. I'm curious about the original.

I asked them questions about it.

But one thing I just couldn't get over was like, you know, they don't believe in desire.

Like they believe desire is like, what leads to suffering.

If you desire for something, then you're creating a contract with yourself, to be unhappy until you have that thing.

And I'm just like, dude, I'm very, like, American dream pilled.

I'm like, you know, I should want for things, I should want for things.

But I can see how that can go wrong as well, right, because that leads to, like, you know, keeping up with the Joneses type lifestyle or maybe, like, you know, kind of, like, you know, the fatties on the chair at Walmart kind of thing.

You know, that's probably, like, when it goes, like, maybe, like, too far.

Hey, you better watch it, Will.

That's our demo. You better watch it or say it.

No it was very, you're not that fast. So anyway, so that's why I can see where I can go wrong.

Right. But I do think there was like an essence of truth in there where it's like, maybe you should like actually try to trim down things as little as possible.

And I had this like bizarre experience where I was, I went and did EverSpaceCamp afterwards and I was thinking a lot about like the things that they were saying to me.

And again, I feel like I had like a download, like one of these experiences where like something just came into my brain that I hadn't been thinking about it before and I genuinely think it was a download from something spiritual that gave me some guidance on how I knew.

It sounds crazy but I was sitting on a rock just on a break on a hike.

This 10 -day hike up to a base camp.

And I was thinking through, well if you have no desire like what you do?

It's like oh maybe you should have the minimum amount of them.

And I was like what is important to me and on my hand it was like my family, my friends, my health, my wealth, my craft, and I was like, Oh shit, like that's like five things that's like nice and clean.

And then I like had this like idea at the same time of like a rose bush.

Rose bushes, if you like, leave them go unkept, they basically just grow like briars and they go thorns, and the flowers don't really grow.

You have to, like, cut them back to let the energy go back to like the rose.

And I was just like, I had this like, very clear vision of like roses and I was like, Okay, right, so this is it.

Okay, so whenever I'm like down over something, it's like, if it's not one of these, like, five important things to me, then it's like, okay, just let it go.

Like, stop desiring for it.

And I've found that to be helpful.

You had a girlfriend?

No. That was your reaction to his story about the Buddhist monks and realising the meaning of life.

Dude, you're telling me an Irish guy with that in his Tinder profile, is he just gonna destroy the whole city?

Give me a break. Can we do the same week, saving the world sea grass, former monk, Sam's five desires, family, health, wealth, fitness, and will.

Those are Sam's five desires.

This is so good man, you're the best. Will, this is awesome.

People should check you out, where on Twitter you're Will O 'Brien, what's your handle?

At Will O 'Brien, W -I -L -O -B -R -I.

Okay, great. And good luck with the company, man.

Thank you, dude. Thank you guys.

That's it. That's the pod.

Thank you.

[바다의 새로운 시대: 해양 스타트업과 미래 기술의 개척자, 윌 오브라이언]-["Ocean is the new space" - 7 Wild Ideas for the $3 Trillion Dollar Frontier]

📋 Summary

바다, 인류의 새로운 우주가 되다

해양 경제의 잠재력과 기술적 도약

하드웨어 혁신의 시대

데이터 인프라와 지정학적 위기

철학적 통찰: 기술과 신념의 조화

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📖 Transcript