Determined Society with Shawn French | Adversity & Mindset - Robinhood Co-Founder Baiju Bhatt on Space Energy, AI Power & Building the Galactic Brain

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

In this episode of The Determined Society, Shawn French sits down with Baiju Bhatt, co-founder of Robinhood, for a wide-ranging conversation that spans entrepreneurship, immigration, resilience, artificial intelligence, and humanity’s next energy frontier: space.Baiju opens up about growing up as the child of Indian immigrants, learning English by watching TV, and how that outsider perspective shaped his worldview, work ethic, and belief in opportunity. He reflects on building Robinhood in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the skepticism they faced, and how democratizing access to the markets reshaped an entire generation’s relationship with money.The conversation then moves beyond finance into the future of energy and AI. Baiju introduces his newest venture, Aetherflux, and the bold vision behind what he calls the “Galactic Brain” a solar-powered AI data centers and energy grids built in space.From space-based power transmission using lasers to solving the massive energy demands of artificial intelligence, this episode explores ideas that sound like science fiction but are rapidly becoming reality. Key Takeaways-Baiju Bhatt’s immigrant upbringing and how it shaped his mindset-The real story behind building Robinhood after the 2008 financial collapse-Why access to investing became a cultural and generational shift-The philosophy of failure, stubborn belief, and customer-driven validation-What the “Galactic Brain” means for AI, power, and the future of humanity-How space solar power and laser energy transmission actually work-Health, discipline, confidence, and how self-respect changes outcomes Connect with me :https://link.me/theshawnfrench?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaY2s9TipS1cPaEZZ9h692pnV-rlsO-lzvK6LSFGtkKZ53WvtCAYTKY7lmQ_aem_OY08g381oa759QqTr7iPGABaiju Bhatthttps://www.instagram.com/realbaijubhatt/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What is the galactic brain? The galactic brain. Yes. This is something that I wanted to do. Probably my whole life started a company called Atherflux with a mission to build power grid in space. Hold on. Hold the fuck on. And the way you do is with lasers.

Yes. Space lasers. Space lasers more specifically. You want to freaking... What the fuck? That concept is kind of like Starlink for power, right? This is probably the most interesting the energy industry has been in our lifetime. Yeah, I'm locked in on this, man.

The artificial intelligence brain of humanity orbiting Earth. Ooh! I know. Have fun watching the show. Get your damn popcorn. Because you're going to need it. What's up, guys? We are back.

And we are here at an amazing location in Midtown in Miami, Florida, at 305 podcast. And today's guest, I'm going to tell you what, probably one of the bigger accomplished guests that we've ever had on the show. And I'm really excited for you guys to hear what he has to say about. about his life, about his upbringing and what he has built. And then later on in the show, we have a very big announcement for something that he has launched. And it's going to be a big deal. I have with me today, Bijou bought, co-founder of Robin Hood and just an amazing deal.

We had so much fun, you know, talking off camera. I feel like we are already friends, already know each other. And just welcome to the show, man. It's great to have you. Thanks for having me, man. It's fun to be here. Oh, man, it's been great already. We had a great conversation already about, like, fitness and shit.

Yeah, like fitness and like, you. You came in, you gave me a hug. I'm like, all right, this is my kind of dude. Of course, of course. This is great. No, dude, it's great to have you. And, you know, we've been, you know, throwing around when we can get this thing going for, I think, a couple months. Yeah.

And I finally forgot about it. And just like, okay, maybe just not right now. If it's meant to be, it'll come around. And then I think like a week later after I said that, like, Sarah just sent me the email. And she goes, hey, he going to be in town. I'm like, well, let's do this thing. Yeah, that's perfect. We're here, man.

We're here. you have an amazing story. Like, you know, and I'm not just talking about the entrepreneurial story of what you've built and how you've, in my opinion, impacted the market and how the landscape is for the layperson now, right? That wants to invest and get into the market, whether it's, you know, traditional or Bitcoin. Like, dude, you can blab with the pioneers. In my humble opinion, we'll get to that later. But, you know, your family came over from India, right?

You were in the womb when your mom and dad came here as immigrants of this country. What was that like when growing up here and listening to their stories and their experiences? I tell you one of my first memories in life is watching the Dukes of Hazard. Oh, hell yeah, dude. Yeah. Yeah, because my family moved to the U.S. from India right before I was born. And my dad had, it's kind of an interesting story. I'll tell you a little about it.

So my dad, my grandfather on my dad's side was, I think, one of the first Western trained eye doctors. And at the time was probably much more of a village. Now it's a huge city in Bhavnagar and Gadrath. So he was one of the first Western trained eye doctors. So he made glasses for everybody. He was like, oh, all of my children are going to go into the optometry business with me. And my dad had always wanted to study physics. He had always had like a love of science and like the core.

poor truths of how the universe works to the extent that our little monkey brains can understand it. And so he starts out in like, I guess, biology, and he starts switching to chemistry, and he starts a PhD in India in chemistry. He kind of, I don't think he finishes that. And he goes and joins my dad's optometry business, my grandfather's optometry business. But all the while, he's applying to PhD programs in the U.S. He wants to study physics. He wants to study in particular kind of the real nature of how gravity works.

And he's applying year in, year out. I think he's kind of at this point he's like devoting himself to science. He's like, I want to be, that's all I want to do. He doesn't want to get married, doesn't want to have kids, but ends up getting married to my mom. And it kind of all happens in rapid succession, which is that they get married, my mom is pregnant, and then he gets into University of Huntsville, Alabama, which were the Duke's of hazard connection comes in. And my mom didn't speak English, loved her family in India, had no interest in moving to America. And apparently my mom's dad, my grandfather, had like a talk with

my dad. And it's like, look, you can marry my daughter, but like under one condition, can't go to America. Because he was like, it was known that he was trying to go to America. And lo and behold, it happens immediately. And he gets into University of Huntsville, Alabama, to study physics. as a PhD student and my mom doesn't speak any English. Like, you know, she like wasn't even sure she was going to come. She goes, the way she describes it, she goes to the embassy. And they're like, oh, you're pregnant, right? And she's like, yeah, and they're like, oh, it's a boy.

And they're like, cool, you're coming to America. And your son is going to be born America. Wow. So for the first five years of my life, I actually didn't even speak English. Like, I learned English watching TV with my mom. that's pretty cool watching dukes a hazard watching dukes a hazard well i mean obviously like i love that show by yeah you know like dude come on i grew up on duke's of hazard too yeah yeah i had the lunchbox yeah the dux sauser lunchbox and the knight rider lunchbox i had that

that was dope that was some good shit man like i was i thought i could literally have a car that would talk to me like kit would but you know car culture was awesome in the 80s dude you love cars i heard you love cars yeah yeah i love everything about them I love the way they work. We can get into this more. Yeah, we'll get into that. I want to stay on where we're at right now. So in first five years, you learned English through watching TV with your mom.

And, you know, I just, every one that I speak to that is a successful entrepreneur, right? And I'm not talking like mid-success. I'm talking massive success, like what you've created. A lot of them are immigrants. Yeah. And so I think there's a thing to be said. And I don't know what it is. I have my theories, but I think that being born in America, myself, you go through life, just kind of taking things for granted knowing that you live in utopia.

Yeah. Right? You live in utopia. You know, you may not live in, you know, San Francisco or New York. You might live in, you know, the Midwest. But you can go anywhere in the landscape of the United States and have anything you want. Yeah. And, you know, immigrants, they come over with this different understanding.

You know, they are, they are getting away from a. country that they may not have the opportunity that they want, so they come here and they appreciate it more. And even if the children are not born yet, you know, al-a-bi-jubot, the benefit of that, the benefit of being in a family that immigrates here, having a different perspective within the household and how to work and how to appreciate, I always find that those individuals are massively successful. What are your thoughts on that? I mean, I wholeheartedly agree. I mean, we'll get to this in a little bit,

but this kind of is the bedrock of the idea behind Robinhood even, right? Because my family came to the U.S. because my dad wanted to study physics. They wanted to come here because this is a land of opportunity. And especially if you rewind the clock back to the 80s when they did this, right? It's like, as Americans, we kind of lose sight of the fact that living in this great nation is the envy of literally everybody in the world, right? And the reason people come here, by and large, is because of upward economic mobility. This is the land of opportunity.

Has been, and as long as we don't fuck it up too badly, we'll continue to be for our kids' generation and kids and kids' generation. Like, it's the place in the world where if you want to do something and you want to make it for yourself, you can do it. And the thing is, like, where else in the world can you do this? Like, what's number two? I don't even know. There is no number two.

I don't know. Exactly. It's your point. And yet, you know, you made a, you made a comment of like, hopefully we don't fuck it up. It's like, we're trying to fuck it up. Oh, yeah. We're trying to hard. I mean, like, give it to the college try, man.

Like, really screw this fucking country up. So our kids and their kids and their kids don't have what we have. Hopefully it recorrects itself. I don't know the answer. But I mean, I think about this sometimes, right? Like we, I think, as adults of this generation, right? Like, the baton is in our hands right now. We're grown-ass men.

Like, this is our time to sort of shepherd society, culture, all these things through this era. And we kind of look at it where we are right now with a lot of skepticism. You can talk about, like, where the United States position is in the world relative to China and some of our other adversaries. But this is also the era of, like, the information boom, right? Like, there's, when we look back on what our generation's done, like, we should, I think, be pretty fucking proud of it, too. I think so, man.

Despite the fact that I think both of us are acutely aware of the risk of totally fucking it up right now. Well, I think, yeah, man, I think what's really sad is you go back to when we were kids, right? Yeah. You know, I don't know how it was in Huntsville, Alabama. But I grew up in the San Francisco Bay. Oh, did you? Like, yeah, I'm from Concord, California.

That's right. Yeah. So like I look at these two things and it used to be, you know, in California, if we needed an egg or if we needed sugar or if we needed sugar or a cup of milk, we'd go to our neighbors and ask for it. And it was a normal thing. Yeah. It was a normal thing to go borrow shit from your neighbor and to knock on the door and see a bee's you want to come out and play. We don't have that now. What we have now is I think this constant need to be right and need to be better than somebody else.

It's a point where you look at just even if we were. to post a clip on Instagram. Yeah. And it goes viral. Someone's going to say some shit because they're jealous of where they're at in their life and they haven't created what you have or what I have. But we don't have this culture of the love for the community more like we used to. Like I mean, it's kind of like how I feel.

Yeah. I love people in general until you give me a reason not to like you and not to love you. So I always start it with very open. and that gap can close based on my experience level with you, right? Or if I read your energy and like, okay, I'm out. Like, this is dark, right? I can't be a part of this. But I just feel, and I don't know if it's because of all the screens

and everything else going on with the technology. No, it is because of the screens. Like that is one of the main reasons of the lines. So, you know, but, but yeah, I mean, I just think we're on a tangent, but I just feel like in an effort to rebuild, I think respect in the community and within society, it starts with dudes like us and wives like our wives to truly raise the children and to give them love,

and to provide this safe space for them that they can communicate their feelings when they're feeling a certain way and the proper way to, I guess, talk to their friends or in relationships when they are feeling a certain way. It's on us. It's on parents, man, to really parent children to where they can go out in the world and be kind and successful and hopefully compassionally empathetic. Yeah.

I think we're talking about being trad dads right now. What is it? Traditional dads. Oh, trad. Yeah, right? Yeah, traditional, right? It's actually kind of nice at being traditional as bad. in vogue in some way that it wasn't for a while.

And I was like we were just talking about this a little while ago, right? It's like you kind of think about what happened with the generation of people that you take a generation of developing young people and you isolate them for two years. Like what's going to happen? We did this during COVID. We did this all around the US, all around the world and like we're living with it right now in addition to all the screens. Yep.

Right? Yeah. Yeah, it's like, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. COVID was one hell of a production. I know, and I, and I, let me give some context to the audience. I believe in it. I believe people lost their lives. I believe it was a nasty thing.

What I'm saying the production is from the media, the government, and how. The byproduct of what happened, right? Exactly. It's like the isolation of people for multiple years, like, and we did it to everybody uniformly across society. And I agree. I'm like, I'm not trying to say COVID didn't happen or it wasn't real or any of that sort of stuff. It's sort of just commentary on like what was the emergent phenomenon as we look back a couple of years.

Yeah. One of the biggest things that I saw that I still see today because of that era, it gave people the permission to be assholes on social media. 100%. I mean, like, well, I think people already kind of were taking that permission, but it just turbocharged it and it cut out all the normal communication that people do. Yeah. Like I can literally, someone called me a degenerate

the other day on Instagram. And I'm like, it's funny because I read it in line. Now, you used, listen, it used to really bother me, Bijou.

I'm like, I'm not, I'm not this per. I'm like, they don't even know me. But I read it. I just, I was in line for something.

I looked at night, and I laughed. Because I can separate now because I know who I am. But I just feel like it gave, people on these platforms and opportunity, like, you don't agree with something. Be as direct, be as mean, be as discussing as humanly possible.

And I'm allowed to type this and send it to somebody. It blows me away. See, I don't know. I mean, like, don't, don't like, don't you feel like, I'm saying you, but like, more broadly speaking, like, when you do stuff like that and you look back on it, like, you don't feel like kind of shitty about yourself? It's like, why did I put that out there? Why did I put that negative thought out there?

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

And if they're parents- That's just not how my head works at all. She's this is not how my head works at all. What do you mean? I just like there's so much, we all have negative feelings, right? It's kind of what do you do with them? I'm very firmly of the opinion. Like, I mean, I grew up like idolizing people like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, right?

Come on, dude. You take, somebody says something negative to you. You're like, watch. Thank you. Yeah. Love it. Thank you. Yeah.

It's like you internalize it. You motivate yourself with it. And I'm of the opinion. that like the fiercest competition, the thing that like makes you the strongest is you versus yourself, you versus your own demons, your own fears, whatever it is, right? Like yeah, so there's other ways of taking this and the idea of like negative feelings and then just vomiting it out on people. I don't get it. I think I'm tracking me now.

My brain just not working like that or all. Mine neither, right? I don't, I could be in the darkest place of my life. I'm never going to go to a social platform. and say something like that and spew negativity, right, or even respond negatively. Like I don't even, sometimes I just don't even engage. Yeah.

But, you know, I truly do feel, and to your point, you know, our generation, and depending on how we were raised, or how anybody else was raised, if someone tells me that's not going to work or you can't do that, who do you think you are? Because I got a lot of that when I started the show. Yeah. I've gotten that plenty of times.

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

Yeah. Watch me. You know, and I, and I think that if we handle those thoughts and feelings and process them correctly and stay in our process and really focus on the mission at hand for the cause and the purpose and not because of what they said, cool. I'm in. Yeah. But if you let this control your actions, then you're, you're going to, you're going to hit so many roadblocks because you're operating out of a negative motivational space instead of the purpose.

But yeah, man, when someone tells me I can't do something, I'm like, ooh. I know. Have fun watching the show. Get your damn, get your damn popcorn because you're going to need it. I mean, I've had this example again and again in my life. I don't know if we talk about this or not, but I was jumping around a little bit. I was like a pretty overweight kid growing up. And I got made fun of a lot for that.

And at one point in 10th grade, to quote the great Michael Jordan, I took it personally. Yeah. And I was like, I don't want to live in this body anymore. And watch me. Wow. And I came back and I lost like almost a third of my body weight. Granted, I was kind of a string bean at that point. But like, yeah, people were like, who are you?

Like, yeah, I don't think people didn't even recognize me afterwards. And I'm like, hi, it's me. Yeah, I took it personally, you know? Like I, this exact thing we're talking about, right? It's like when people say negative things or they make fun of you or like, they do the things that like actually kind of get to you a little bit. I personally, I relish those opportunities because I'm like, at this point. Because the alternative is malaise, right?

The alternative is like not having as much motivation and more motivation. I think it's just better. You know, I'm, I'm in the space where I welcome. I welcome people to push back and tell me that I can't do something or to it won't work. I welcome it. Like, go ahead. Like, I'm fine. But, you know, I do want to share something with you.

Yeah. My whole life I grew up overweight. I still battle it, right? So it's like when I was in high school? Wait, when was the last time you were overweight? You don't not overweight at all. November I was November of last year that's when I started my journey of getting back in shape and you know when I was playing baseball in college I wasn't out of shape to be to be clear it was high school freshman year and then you know some of the subsequent you know ups and downs as an adult you know in November of 2024 I was severely depressed couldn't get off the couch unless I was recording under a blanket watching TV And I was 230 pounds and 31% body fat.

Wait, this is, this was November of 24? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And by January, I was 199 pounds. And then I worked my butt off and I got to July and I was 188 pounds. And then vacation happened and it took me a while to get back on track. And right now I sit about 195 in the morning. You know, 195 of it.

But, you know, I'm still working to. get some of the stubborn areas off, right? Just staying consistent. Me too. Yeah, but it's crazy because once I got in really good shape last year, everything changed. Everything changed. What changed? Tell me.

Oh, dude, I couldn't get in, I couldn't get a dime of capital for people to invest. Couldn't until Marina and Brad Miller. Brad Miller was their friends of mine, they were on the show. He was on the show. He was this massive telecom company, a $60 million company. company, Southern Interior Calacom, they crush it. And they saw me a couple weeks later and like, what are you doing? Holy shit.

And then they see me again, like, dude, you look phenomenal. Like your discipline level, like, holy shit, the determination. This is unreal. And then all of a sudden it was, how do we do this with you? Yeah. And then respond to this. Dude. Across the board in society.

Yeah. And then another partner named Roman came on afterwards with another infusion. It's like, hold on. And now I'm turning people. away. Isn't it funny how that happened? Isn't it funny? I mean, you have a similar story too, right? When you, you know, I don't want it to be about me, but I'm just saying that when I fixed me, that one thing that always bothered me that was in my frontal lobe every single day, like, I don't feel good in these clothes. I don't feel good in the shell right now. Like, this has got

to be impacting the way people view me because if I'm giving off an energy that I'm not confident, I need to fix that. And all of a sudden, it blew up. You know, but you had a lot of people tell you and Vlad know when you were creating, when you're looking for money for Robin Hood. Let's go through that. Haters at every step along the way. Yeah. Adversity, bro. Yeah.

I mean, one kind of thought on this, right, is like, it's for some reason it's okay for successful men to just be fat-sos. Right? Like, historically speaking, if you're a successful dude, it's totally. totally fine and be completely out of shape and not give a shit about your outward appearance. And I think the point that you're kind of getting at here is like at the risk of sort of being a little controversial, like the same rules apply for men as for women. Like if you take care of yourself and you present yourself in a way that you feel like you're putting your best foot forward, is because women kind of do this naturally and a lot of dudes don't. But like if you actually show that you care about your body, the way that you look,

that feeds back, right? Like people take notice of that. They show you more respect. If you, just in the way that you show up, you're like, I'm showing myself respect by being fit, like being reasonably while groomed, like not smelling like coding for the last 12 hours or whatever. Smell like Lil Debbie's.

Smelling like hard work. Yeah, exactly. It's funny because like I always, always, you know, take it a step further for myself, too. Like, how do I want Bejou to feel and his entourage to feel when they walk through the door and meet me for the first time? Pretty good. Right? Like, I gave me big hug.

It was awesome. But that's the thing for me. Like, I have to chase those feelings. I have to chase those feelings from myself so I can exude that to other people and give it to the audience, right? Because that's the deal, right? I want, you know, this, the show is about determination, overcoming. obstacles and you know when you and vlad were were building robin hood it wasn't the first thing that you tried right you you went through multiple ventures that failed which is normal um failures

good um but then you were you know looking for VC money for robin hood yeah and and i and i mentioned it earlier i can't remember it was when we started the show or in the kitchen like dude you and blad are the pioneers like i look at you i'm sitting here with a guy right now and I want the audience to really understand this. There's teachers right now on their planning period, day trading, day trading to make more money. I truly believe that Robin Hood is the cause of that because before you had to go to a broker and there was broker fees, commission fees, like all this kind of stuff, but then insert Robin Hood. And now there's no minimums, there's no minimum spins.

There's like, okay, you can do it this way, do it under your own terms and educate them. themselves on the market and this trading. So like, dude, you built something amazing. And, you know, I'd love for you to share with the audience some of the the, the, the pitfalls that you've had and creating it and, you know, kind of how you feel about it now. I mean, I think it's, it's interesting because at this particular moment in time, it's like, in many ways, like, at, it's like, it is the zeitgeist, right? Let me just tell you this sort of like emotional, philosophical backdrop of this. Love it.

When we started Robin Hood, this was like in the wake of the 2008 economic collapse. And I mean, I entered the working world like literally the month or like two months before Lehman going under. And I stumbled into a job in finance, didn't really know whether I even wanted to be doing it or not. Like I had been an academic mathematician before this and a combination of like, you. economy kind of going south. It's how I ended up working in finance. And just kind of looking around and seeing these like financial tectonic plates kind of moving and seeing a generation of young people, like my generation of people entering

the working world, looking at the financial system and being like, this thing is totally broken. Like it doesn't work for ordinary people. It systematically advantages. the people that already have money, all these things. And then the three to four years that followed 2008, I remember the exact numbers on this, but remember something like 90% of the recovery

went to like the wealthiest people. And this is like the backdrop of things like Occupy Wall Street that are happening. Mind you at the time, Vlad and I are too wildly unsuccessful, nobody entrepreneurs, right? Roommate's at Stanford, correct? Roommates of Stanford, roommates for years and years after that, too. For like seven or eight years, we were roommates in a row.

This is major, like, you know, Facebook vibes. Yeah, it was, I mean, like really fun period of time. Yeah. We had, like, nothing, but we had each other, right? That's cool, man. So this, like, period that follows 2008, and this is kind of talking about society and the way the Zycise is changing, you talk to young people, and it was not cool. to know what you were doing with your money.

Like if you actually kind of showed up and you were kind of dope you about it, it's like, yeah, you know, just like spend money, I don't really care. Yeah. Like that, you would get nods of social approval for that. And coming back to this immigrant story stuff, I remember just being like,

what is happening here? Right? Because I grew up like without a lot, wanting to get further ahead in life. It was the story of my parents' life. And all of a sudden, I'm an adult now and I look around at my generation of peers and they don't believe in this anymore.

Like they just straight up don't believe in the financial system. If you want real evidence of that, like look at clips of Occupy Wall Street. And this was the point in time where the light bulb, I think, went off for both me and Vlad, where like, wait a second, to the extent that people are protesting the financial system, right? what are they asking for? Or like, what's the implicit ask here? It's that somebody's going to come to save this thing, right? Maybe the government will help.

Maybe it'll fix the financial system. And I remember just thinking to myself, that ain't happening. There's no way that's happening. Moreover, if you kind of look at, if you look at this, right, it's like how could it be that a generation of young people don't realize that they have access to the greatest tool for upward economic mobility. And how is it that this sort of like engaging in the capital system is something that is like it's falling out of the bloodstream of society in some way?

And we, I think, saw it very clearly as immigrants looking in because, again, our families opted into wanting to be a part of the system. We wanted to come to the land of opportunity and to Robin Hood. And we're like, we can't solve the whole thing, right? We're two entrepreneurs with really bad haircuts and like have been borderline homeless for the last couple of years. Oh, college. I miss it. Yeah, it was years after college, too. Plenty of our peers had good jobs.

We were like bumbling, spending like months at her parents' house, like, coding in the basement, trying to make one of our startups work. Wow. We're like, we're not going to be able to solve the whole thing, but we understand how the stock market works. And in the stock market, it's kind of a microcosm of all the stuff that young people are upset about, right?

We thought prohibitively expensive for young people to invest in the stock market. There's kind of this pervasive wisdom where, you know, like finger wagging. Like, you don't know what you're doing. doing, right? Like, you need to go and talk to an expert before you do it. And you end up with the phenomenon of a generation of people that just doesn't engage in this. And we're like, there is another way. You can make it accessible for people. You can make it something that

young people have access to. You can put it on mobile. And if we're able to solve this problem, meaning give more people access to the markets, that's actually a microcosm of this bigger thing, and we can put a real dent in it. And what is like 10, 15 years out from that now? Putting aside like the fact that you have a generation of people that have had the ability to participate in the upward mobility of the economy, look at the way culture is now.

Especially, let's talk, let's be real. for young men, right? Where not knowing about your money, you're like a dumb ass. Yeah, you do. Right? Yeah. That's what we want.

Like, we want there to be societal pressure for people to be self-sufficient, self-reliant, engaged with the economy because we have it here at our disposal. Dude, pressure is such a fucking privilege. I'm so tired of people thinking pressure is a bad thing. Yeah.

No matter what it is. The absence of pressure is just malaise. Dude, it's boring. It's boring. You'll be in your blanket watching TV, right? I got some good binging in, though. Yeah. Got some good TV watching it, dude. Not going back, me.

I've played The Legend of Zelda so many times. Oh, my God. What a game, dude. What a game. My son, we've played it like multiple times now, but he's a little kid. I'm like, remember we played this once already? He's like, nope. I'm like, okay, so let's play again. Is it? You have the original Nintendo?

No, I don't. I've got to switch. I wish I remember when I was a kid This is like what my life was like as a kid My like once or twice a year My parents would rent a Nintendo like a Super Nintendo For the weekend From like Blockbuster or some shit

Yeah those are the days That was like pretty much what I got back in the day That's awesome dude That's awesome I had the Nintendo I had the Nintendo I did The original one

The original Original right I'd sit there and play Tecmo Bowl And fuck shit up bro All the time Now we have this thing that plugs into the TV and I got like 250 of it. Oh yeah, the little sort of like

dongle that you plug in that has everything on it. It's okay. It's okay. It's not the same. But anyway, sidetracked. But yeah, dude, like it's, you know, where were you at with that? You went Nintendo and then we got... Oh, yeah. Binging, watching TV, not having any motivation.

Coding in a basement. Coding in a basement. So yeah, we were talking about Robin Hood for a second there. So that was kind of the backdrop of it. And you look at it today and it's, ubiquitous that people understand the importance of this. And in many ways, if you look around at the economy as a whole, there was a study I was reading on this kind of recently, but you look at the people that feel good about the economy today

versus the people that don't feel so good about it. And one of the dividing lines is whether or not they're engaged in the capital markets. Wow. That's very interesting. Yeah. That is very interesting. Because there's a lot of like the economy, the sort of structure of capitalism, to me it feels like we're in the beginning of like what feels like a pretty substantial change.

Where there's this boogeyman of AI and its impact on the job market, which I intuitively both believe it and don't believe it in some levels. But it's there, right? It's very real. And there's the prices of things going up, like the prices of things you need to live, not the prices of things that you necessarily want to have. There's a lot of layoffs that are happening in the system. At the same time, the stock market, or at least parts of the stock market, have been showing a lot of strength.

So it's kind of we live in kind of like changing economic times, I guess, is the point. Yeah, I agree. And I also think that the people are the happiest with the economy or the things that are going on, are those that are taking control for what they can. And I think that's a special thought for any industry. You're going to be happier with your health. You're going to be happier in your business. If you're a student, you're going to be happier in your math class

because you're taking ownership of what you're doing. You're allowing yourself to become educated in that vertical. I think that's massively important. The one thing I do want to touch on, though, and I've hinted around at it, a couple different times, you know, in building something, there's a massive amount. of adversity and, you know, low points, you know, and you guys went through that.

You went through a ton of different things to build this platform to where it is now. You know, how did you guys, and maybe more you specifically, I guess, navigate those waters of the adversity and potential thinking about, man, this isn't gonna work and nobody believes they don't wanna invest. Like, because the audience right now is listening,

I'm like, okay, how can I apply that information to what I'm doing, right? So how did you go through all that? Yeah, I think you have to be pretty stubborn about your ideas. I think you have to both be stubborn in your belief in yourself. You also have to be really systematic about like verifying that you're not barking up the wrong tree. So for me at least, it was kind of this. I mean, if I believe something is important, like I will follow that belief. very like purely so but the same time like what was the belief the belief was that we could build

something that would help a lot of young people be a part of the financial system a prerequisite for that was that young people would or just people in general would actually use it which in and of itself I thought was like the central challenge for you know the founding chapter of the company it's like how do you build something that resonates with people like how do you do that right so what what became kind of the mantra of the company for a very long time was we would spend an inordinate amount of time with our customers, with ordinary people. And for years and years, when we were kind of through the early founding years of Robin Hood, like, let's talk about year one. Like, what do we do? We'd be like, okay, we have an idea for why we think people are going to

use this. We would go and spend hours every week interviewing customers, being like, here's what we're building. Like, what is this thing? Like, can you read it? Can you understand it? Like, explain back to us what this is. Wow. And it was through that process of like, there's a word for, it's called user research or customer research. But if you kind of boil it down to what it is, right, you're getting feedback for your ideas. So the point I'm trying to make is, is like, you have to be stubborn about, like, believing in yourself, but you don't want to be, like, dumb about it. Yeah.

So while we, I think we were both very stubborn about wanting to see this thing come to life, we were also very deliberately and systematically trying to validate that we were barking up the right tree and tweaking it as we got feedback. I think that's smart. You know, it's funny because... Because the right answer here is not just to be, you know, a knucklehead and just be like, no, no. No, I think you need to be really connected with the actual purpose.

of why you were doing something. Exactly. You know, I look at this and it's so funny because, you know, I watch a lot of things now, right? As research, right? I coin my TV time with my wife as research. I find things. I'm like, okay, this is interesting.

I can do a story on this. I can potentially get this guest and we can talk about this, tie this in. So I'm always working in the background, right? And I watch this funny movie with Eddie Murphy and Jonah Hill. It called You People, right? and in that in that movie you know he had a podcast with his with his good friend that was a female and and in that like there was this there was this underlying tone of like dude I'm a douchebag because I quit my career and I'm I'm a podcaster now they can make fun of people like like me like me like this is literally what I did I left a successful medical sales business right career sales sales sales sales and eventually in 2024, I went full time and I'm like, I'm that cliche, you know?

And there was a lot of pushback. There was a lot of all these different things of why it wouldn't work. Like, we don't understand. Like, how are you going to make money? How are you going to feed your family? Yeah. I was like, that's easy. Watch me.

You don't need to know the how. I guess it's like really, you need to know why. You need to know why. And so for me, and just like you and Vlad, my connection with my why or the reason I was doing this and the purpose was so great that I'm like, I'm going to double down because if I don't, I'm going to regret it. Yeah. You know? I mean, dude, I get my fair share of that right now. It's like, oh, aren't you just another successful tech guy trying to mess around in space? Isn't this just like a little hobby playground thing that you're doing? You and the billionaires

club, like, you know, just like launching satellites or whatever because that's what really successful rich people do. And I'm like, I mean, no, like that I'm doing this because I want to do it, right? It's like. Yeah. Well, let's talk about it. Yeah. A good segue, man. You stole my thunder. Look at this guy. Look at this guy. Look at this guy. So, okay, I can tell the audience right now that's not who you are, right? That's, that's easy to see. You know, your same dude on camera than you are off camera. They were sitting here. 100%. Yeah. And that's what I, that's what I really, really do love about you already. So, but, but, but, but, but, Talk to me about this. What is the galactic brain?

The galactic brain, yes. I love that name. I do too. I read it. I'm like, what the hell? Yeah, so I, a little bit of backdrop. So I left Robin Hood full-time year and a half ago. You're bored, right?

You're on board now. Yeah, yeah, very much so. Still actively involved. But I'd stopped working on it full-time because I'd had this dream of wanting to build a space company. And like, this is not a new thing. Like this is something that I'd wanted to do probably my whole life. Because again, like when I was growing up, my dad was a research scientist at Langley Research Center in Southern Virginia. He was working with NASA.

He was doing atmospheric science. And I remember, you know, like we didn't have a lot. But I remember when my dad would go to work, it just felt like he's doing very important things. And you get to see like the big buildings and kind of all the machinery behind the science. So I'm like, if I ever get a chance to do this at some point in my life, I want to be a part of the space industry. And especially in the 2010s, like, being like, oh, there's people building rockets. Like, that's cool to watch. And then kind of realizing it's like, oh, this concept of reusable rocketry is actually the fundamental gating factor for humans to be able to do a lot of stuff in space.

Because you can't, if you were to blow up a, you know, every time you're going to be able to, you know, every time. you flew from New York to San Francisco, you scrapped the plane, you wouldn't do it very much. Right, exactly. Right. That's kind of the core idea behind it. And I remember thinking of myself, if I ever get a chance to do this in my lifetime, I need to take that opportunity. So I did that a year and a half ago and started a company called Atherflux with a mission to build power grid and space. Inless energy and endless energy and power up there.

And that was kind of the core idea is we wanted to stand up another industrial use case for outer space. This is where the dots connect between this idea and Robin Hood. Like we started Robin Hood because we wanted to sort of create a native financial platform in mobile, right? Here the analogy is we want to build an energy company on the platform that is low earth orbit or space. because it doesn't really exist. Like nobody, there's not a lot of people out there that are building energy companies in space, I guess up until maybe like a month ago

where now everybody's doing it. But the core idea behind this was to build an energy grid in space. Why? Because there's a lot of really unique advantages to collecting power in space. We can get into that a little bit more, but maybe zooming a little bit in on this idea of the galactic brain is we announced this week, that we're launching, we're targeting 2027 for the first version of a solar-powered AI

data center satellite. So kind of, if you kind of look at energy as an industry and as a problem space, this is probably the most interesting the energy industry has been in our lifetime. Yeah, I'm locked in on this, man. Right? Because we're, the amount of energy that is going to be required for scaling artificial intelligence is like it it's kind of difficult to fathom right the numbers that I've heard are there's something like a 44 gigawatt power gap between in the next like five years or even less between what's planned to be built and what people actually need to do AI and the in the issue too and forgive me for wrong I did read it in in the press release there's there's a massive time frame like a you know eight to 10 years, it's like a decade to build a data center.

Yeah. So it would take 10 years to build something to support. Well, think about what that's, what we're talking about doing here, right? It's like we've got the path of technological progress, which is developing artificial intelligence, and it's being resolved down to the timeline of, like, digging dirt and constructing buildings and, like, getting permitting and putting power lines into these data centers. This is the problem that we're solving. from a practical perspective,

because our approach, kind of the thing that we see playing out here is that space is this abundant place for power, in particular in orbits that are still pretty close to the Earth so you can fly way more consumer-grade electronics, you can get near continuous illumination from the sun. So imagine if you're the sun, let's even get some props as an analogy in here.

imagine you're the sun and this is the Earth is actually perfect there are these orbits that go over sort of near the North Pole and South Pole not exactly but are kind of like if the Earth is rotating like this this half of the Earth is where there's sunrise

this half of the Earth is where there's sunset these satellites will kind of always going over sunrise and sunset the reason that's relevant is because those solar panels are always facing the sun meaning they're producing power darn near. 24-7. Exactly.

And also, there's a lot of space at there. Like there's no real limits to how much stuff we can put in space because it's so big. Right. And even this, we're just talking about like a little sliver right off the surface of the earth. Some coffee of them saying this. Yeah, drink from the earth right now. That's your earth. Yeah, it literally is.

So the idea is that this is actually a, a very natural place to build really power-hungry applications, and artificial intelligence is kind of the biggest one of them. So more specifically, the concept is we're going to build, we aim to build a constellation of satellites. Each one doesn't have to be this like monumentally large thing, can power a cluster of GPUs that are used for artificial intelligence. And you actually kind of start with that cluster of chips

and you build a satellite out from it. So you start with the chips and you say, what's the power requirement of it? And you size the power array based on that. And you say, okay, how much heat is this thing generating? You size out the radiator array that you need for it. And turns out the math on this point is something that's actually quite buildable. And at a normal size or size of satellites that are being built a la Starlink, you can build something really useful that will over time, we think,

substantially put a dent into this energy use problem for artificial intelligence. That's some wild stuff, dude. Yeah. That's wild. The galactic brain. It's cool. Yeah, it is. It's cool.

If you kind of fast forward in the future, like, what does this look like? This will look like rings around the Earth, like the rings around Saturn. Mm-hmm. And I kind of imagine like the artificial intelligence brain of humanity orbiting Earth. That's badass. That's pretty cool. That's freaking cool, dude. And you did it.

Well, I haven't done yet. We're going to. Well, you're going to. So I read something, too, and forgive me if I completely butcher this. The power source from space to here, there's a gap, right? There's a time period gap. I read it in the press release as something. It was like, what, four to eight years or something like that?

And these satellites cut this down because it's through like a laser. Yeah, there's a couple. So it's not like a complete jackass right now. I told you I was going to sound like one. No, no, no. So there's like, there's a four, there's, you know, it'll take however long, say, eight to ten years, if that's what it takes to build a data center on the ground. The difference here is, is that you can kind of take the chips for artificial intelligence and put them on an assembly line, right? Build satellites around them. And it's literally how quickly you can build a satellite. Wow.

How quickly can you build a car? Pretty darn quick, right? Like you can apply those same manufacturing techniques to building satellites. And then you kind of turn this problem that otherwise requires, you know, multiple years build out to build a new data center to just say, hey, we're going to take chips and turn them into satellites. You get stacks and stacks of them, put them on rockets that go to space. And rockets are launching multiple times a week. Yeah. Right? So you can kind of cut the time from when you buy the chips for artificial intelligence to get a

into working use to basically how quickly you can build the satellites. How long do you think it would take it to build a satellite? Good question. We're going to be scaling that up over the next couple of years. Okay. So I think we're going to have two satellites that go to space in 26, both of which are currently targeting doing a slightly different variation of this power grid and space concept, which I can talk about in a minute. But, you know, we're going to be targeting, let's say, roughly speaking, 10 to 20,

satellites the year after, you know, 50 to hundreds of satellites the year after that to thousands the year after that. Now, these are ambitious, right? We haven't done it yet. And no guarantees will do it. But like, if you don't set your goals at ambitious, you'll never hit them. You're going to fall. Like, it's crazy.

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

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

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

you know, kind of commerce. Sure, some type of SaaS software. Cool. Yeah, neat. Right? Like, that's not easy. Like, you're going to run into a bunch of roadblocks there too. There's like, let's say a 20% failure rate there.

Like 20% of the time is just not going to work. It's, you know, it might kind of be the same failure rate, but you just apply it to something much bigger, you'll end up with something much bigger. That's the one thing that I really want the audience to take home with them and really sit in it is set big, hairy-ass, audacious goals. Dreaming big is free. Being optimistic is free. Yeah, but then you also have to put in the work to get there, right?

So it's like if you don't do it, you're just a talker, right? But if you dream it up and you take action, you're a doer. And that's who wins. but I always like to say this is I want to make myself in my direct team, right, whether it's my publicist, my production team, my partners in my business, my wife, whomever we're working with, whoever we've contracted for this business, my agent over at CA, what doesn't matter, whoever. I want everybody to be so uncomfortable with my goal.

Like if they're not uncomfortable, right, then I'm not doing my job. And I mean that in a good way. Like, whoa. You're actually trying to do this. You want to freaking, what the fuck, Sean? What the fuck? Like, yeah, that's what I want.

That's exactly what I want. And that's the reaction I want. So now you know how important it is. Let's try to get it done. You know, because if we don't hit it, right, but we fall short, we are going to be so much better. And I think that's the thing. I really want people to give themselves permission to dream again.

Yeah. There's another thing too is like get your failures out of the way quickly. I kind of have this mantra where it's like whenever I do something new, which mind you, like, this has been the story of my whole fucking life. Like I've always been doing stuff where I didn't really know what I was doing. I entered the finance industry as a mathematician, physicist, 22 year old. college grad. Unreal. Like, I didn't know anything about that, and I spent a decade of my life,

like being a novice to that industry, right? Doing it again, 10 years, 15 years later, right? I kind of make this joke sometimes when I talk to people in the space industry because I'm building a space company right now. I'm like, you do realize, for all intents and purposes, like, I'm a finance bro. Like, I've been a finance bro for kind of a long time. Right. So just like, bear with me here, right?

Yeah, if you don't know how to do something, where does a badge of honor and like try to get good at it? You know, you gave me an interesting idea, a very interesting idea. I'm doing another TED Talk in March. Oh, cool. And the topic is lifelong learner. And being a lifelong learner and why is it important? And you give me a really good idea.

Because I want to start off with a nice story. Maybe the story is what you've done. Maybe the story is, you know, building Robin Hood. And like I said earlier, you could be home doing nothing right now. You don't have to be sitting on my keister. Totally good. Bro, you don't have to lift the finger the rest of your life. Very well aware of that.

Instead, you've chosen to learn another industry. It would be profoundly boring. It would be profoundly boring. I don't even, because you're so young, too, dude. Like that would be miserable I think there's a lot of truth to that And without getting too political here To quote our president, right?

I think President Trump's right on this It's like to retire is to expire Like as soon as you stop Well what's the true definition of retire To put out of use Yeah Are you ready to be put out of use? Hell no

Hell no man Fuck that Fuck that It's like What more can I do? I want to die tired and busy. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because you stay sharp.

You stay alive longer, right? You truly do. And you have that purpose and you're doing something. Like, you stay healthier longer. You're, you're, everything is still working, right? I mean, I always say, like, you know, someone's asking me is like, hey, what happens when you, when you get the big Spotify deal or the big deal from serious for hundreds of millions of dollars? I'm like, what do you mean what happens? Yeah.

I don't understand the question. I'm going to fulfill my contract and I'm going to kick ass but after that you're just going to walk away right I'm like where's the fun in that? Yeah. Like I do this because excuse me I do this because I love it

I don't do this for the potential payout I know that's going to come but like I can do this until I'm like 70 or 80 like I can sit in a chair and talk why would I ever stop? Why would I ever stop building? I have children to think about. There's also just I mean something

I'm acutely aware of, right? It's like, I have a pretty, I have a pretty hyperactive mind. Yeah. And I kind of like draw the distinction between real problems and fake problems, right? Like another way of saying it, like the, you know, the idle mind is the devil's playground. Like I would way rather have a big, healthy, steaming dose of real problems to deal with. Yeah. Because otherwise, your mind will just make stuff up for you to be equal.

fixated on, equally angry about or grumpy about, you know what I mean? Yeah. Like, well, the mind will find what you were looking for. The mind will find what you're looking for. So like, you might as well channel that and try to put it to use on some real problems. Yeah. Where you have stuff to work through and challenges, right? Like, right now I'm trying to figure out how to stand up manufacturing satellites, which is really fun.

And it is a very real problem. Yeah. Right. Real problem in that we need to solve it. Yeah. And you will, right? But it's being able to work through that, right? And give yourself the opportunity to struggle with something, I think is important, right?

You know, anything we do, we, you know, we've touched on health and fitness, right? You know, anything we do in, you know, in conditioning our body, it's going to hurt a little bit. It's going to hurt a lot. Yeah. If you want to get the real results, there's a lot of suffering that goes into it. right you need to you know feed your body and get rid of the noise that food makes you fat no it doesn't okay real food does not okay but you also have to go through like getting through the fact that or the thought process of like i don't like failure you better learn to love it if you want to be successful

you better learn to love failure and seek it early and often it's like so that's the the thing with weight training right they say the last three reps should be the hardest and there you should you there's times where you should go to failure why is it okay there but not okay in your life like why do you go to failure because you break your muscle all the way down and it goes to repair and it comes back stronger how is you failing

in a pretty good analogy any fucking different yeah it's a pretty good it makes you stronger it makes you better like fail like we failed a bunch of times during this show I mean like in creating this brand there's a lot of things I failed that

yeah I mean I think I think the version of for me, which I kind of was getting to a second ago, is like, get your failures out of the way quickly. Just assume you're going to fail and just be done with it quickly. Don't wait too long to fail. I think this is kind of like a related concept is a lot of the times, and I'm guilty of this as well, is you work on something and you're working on it and the idea is very precious in your head. Right. and you kind of, you're like, well, let me get a little further along before I really put it out into the world and like let the idea get tested.

What's going on there? It's an implicit fear of failure. Yeah. Where I kind of try to turn that on its head where I say, let's just like take whatever the first version is, get it out there, let it fail. Assume there's a good chance it'll fail the first time. Hopefully not. You never really want to fail. Like if you can avoid failure.

Sure. always want to avoid failure, but just like put yourself out there and try to get the failure out of the way quickly because you'll kind of, you'll kind of condition yourself not to be super precious with your ideas. Yeah. You know, it's funny. You mentioned that because a lot of people talk about it's not ready yet. Has to be perfect.

No, no, no. You're hesitating because you're worried. You're afraid to fail. You're afraid to put yourself out there publicly. And I always wonder why people define failure as something so bad. You know, what failure hurts? Failure sucks. Yeah.

It's like sunk cost, sunk time, you know. There's also something that's related to this, right? Which is like it, you put yourself out there as being different. Which for some reason our society puts very little value in that today, at least from my perspective. I feel like conformity is like the status quo. Yeah, I just, you know, I agree with you. you and I just think it's... Look at music, man. Like, music in the 80s and 90s

was like super fucking alternative and weird and different and strange at pushing the boundaries. Yeah. Yeah, like where is that today? Yeah, I don't know about music today, dude. There's only a few artists that I really like. There is good music,

but yeah, by and large, I feel like this is not this is not the most, one of the more compelling periods of music. What's your favorite genre? I love all kinds of music. I've had the last couple of years, I've had a profound love affair with 90s hip hop. You're my guy. A profound love affair of 90s hip hop in particular, Tupac.

Fucking love Tupac. Look, I grew up on that shit. I was listening to Tupac this morning, too. Oh, dude, he's so good. I listened to California Love on the way over here. Dude, rest in peace. Yeah, my guy, dude, my guy. Could you imagine if he were still around how, like,

you know, it always blows me away, but. The thing that I loved about Tupac, he was so deep he was a poet, right? Yeah, but he was an enigma. He was an enigma. Yeah, but if you cross him, he'd hose your ass and he'd hose you hard. Yeah. It was good, man. It's like you see echoes, I mean, I guess, but we'd have a whole podcast talking about Pac.

Yeah. But I think one of the interesting things is like you see echoes of that in society even today. Like even the, like I think about when Obama ran for president, right? And a lot of the messaging there on hope and change, I hear a lot of Tupac's lyrics in that. Yeah, the song changes. Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. That song, dude, I listen to that the end of the end. It was so prophetic. He was so good. Who do you think the best rapper ever to live? Oh, I think we'd just, you think it's, you think it's pot? For me, it's, I'll actually go a step further. It's Tupac, and then there's a huge gap, and then there's everybody else.

I think he is in a league of one. One billion percent. I also think, like, Eminem. Eminem's awesome. That dude, that dude's amazing. He's lyrically amazing. Yeah. Lyrically amazing.

Pock was just different, dude. He didn't, yeah, Eminem didn't cast the same shadow on society. Like even you think about like the beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar. Like that was in, from a certain point of view, that was about Tupac. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Because Drake put out that song where he was.

AI and Tupac, which I'm like, oh, dude, what are you doing? Do you know you're the greatest of all time when people still think you're alive? Yeah. Like I still make arguments like, that dude ain't dead. That ain't dead. Show me. Show me. It's because he had albums coming out for like 10 years after he passed away.

When Machiavelli came out, I'm like, I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. I know it. Oh, man. Sadly, I don't think he's actually. No, he's not. Sad, dude. That's sad. But, you know, it's crazy. So, so you've, you've had this new love for 90s hip hop.

Another part of it also, if I may, on this little point. Like, I'm Indian. My family were immigrants coming to America, right? Like, America is a complicated cultural society where there are these, like, massive cultural divides between, like, white society and black society. I just call it what it is. And as a kid, it was like, this shit's all. pretty complicated. I kind of understand white people and white society. Like, I don't like, just candidly, like, it's a little difficult for me to wrap my brain around all the challenges that black people have in American society. Like, I didn't say, said differently. Like, I didn't really get hip hop as a kid. Yeah. Like, it was, it was difficult enough kind of understanding like my relationship to, uh, sort of white society, I guess that, but I was always profoundly curious. Like, There are all these things as like an immigrant kid growing up in this country, right? Like, what the fuck is the point of wearing backwards baseball caps?

Like, I never really understood that as a kid. Or, like, tailgating. Like, what the fuck is happening when you tailgate? Hold on. Hold on. Hold the fuck on. Me and you are going to a college football game. I'd love to. I'm taking you to Baton Rouge next year when I take my family. You're coming.

You and your family are coming because I'm going to put you in Tiger Stadium parking lot and you'll be like, fuck. honey, I think we should move to Baton Rouge. I think we should move here. Tailgating is the best. I've since come to love tailgating. But as a kid, I'm like, this is an enigma. And so kind of with that in mind, you're like, well, there's this whole, like, you know, tension between these two factions of society.

Like, I'm having enough difficulty understanding this. But I was like, what is going on there? It's like, it's so. And now I'm talking about hip hop specifically, because obviously I'm like, you know, I'm talking more specifically about hip hop here. Like I never really understood that music until I was much older as an adult. And when I did, I was like, oh my God. This was, these were like the, this was the lyrical

backdrop of my childhood. This was that little piece of the puzzle that now fits in perfectly. I get it. And I get why this is so important. And I get why this music is so freaking resonant. I love that, dude. I love music. I love, I'm a big music. a guy too you know I will say I've always been a bigger hip hop guy than than anything um you know growing up in the San Francisco Bay you got E 40 40 Ruthless by law RBL posse which was it was more you know wasn't underground but you know never was massive like pock or more yeah big yeah um now I'm like you know hip hop artist today I'm like I don't know

I mean you know M&M still at it you know Kendrick Lamar is pretty dope Kendrick Lamar is super dope. So good. Super dope. Outside of that for me, dude, I'm listening to old school. I was talking to my son this morning. I was like, do people in school say this like 6-7 thing? Oh, Jesus, dude.

He's like, yeah. I'm like, do you know what that is? He's like, no. I'm like, and he kind of asked me what it is. I'm like, it's based on a song, which might be the single worst song ever recorded. it. Like, it should not have been recorded. It sounds awful. It's a god-awful song. It's a god-awful song.

And it's about terrible stuff too, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know who's saying. I don't like a real boomer. Yeah, boomer over here. But I will tell you. But that song fucking sucks. And so does the six-seven sang. It doesn't mean anything. It's ridiculous. Did you? Have you? Oh, my God. Okay. Hold on.

Did you see the there's these clips that are going around these reels on Instagram And it's like middle schoolers these day six seven and six seven and then it's like me in middle school and it's like the opening of hit him up from two pop That is game that right there is game on that is dead on yeah that is dead on because that's how I think I saw that reel this morning oh dude I died I sent it to my wife I'm like this is the difference like this is the difference like this is This is our kids and this is what I was like, right? Like, but it's just so funny. I mean, I saw that. I'm like, dude, like, it's so funny you bring that up. So funny.

Because my, my daughter still does it. Like, when we go to, we go buy, you know, dog food at Petsmart. You know, and it's like, hey, do you have a good number for us, you know, because we get rewards and we get a couple bucks off, you know, dog bags. And our dog food is expensive because it's the prescription one because my wife's extra. and love you baby our dog has all kinds of prescriptions yeah i just complicated being a dog in 2025 i mean seriously they should identify as humans and it'll be okay it'd be way easier but fuck why did i say because it's true um so we give the number right i go 305 you know and then i'm not going to give the rest but then and then the last

two digits are six, seven. And so my daughter, anytime she used to say a phone number or a, or a, or a, or a zip, six, seven. I'm like, what in the fuck is this? And so I flipped everybody on their heads on Halloween. And I, ridiculous. So dumb. I, um, I bought two Halloween shirts for one for my wife and one for me.

It was six and seven. And we walked around the neighborhood. and we were hits. Oh my God, we're seven. We're seven. I'm like, she's got her sweatshirt on. She's back there. She sucks.

I was walking around with six. It's cold. I'm like, babe, put the shirt on the outside then. Because you're defeating the purpose of the costume. Shortly after that, you know, got a little bit less. But yeah, six, seven, dude. Like, it's amazing. I can't believe we're talking about that on my show.

I can't believe we're talking about it. But I love it. I love it. We're both a little dumber for it. No, we are. We are. But, dude, I love having these types of conversations because it's so, relatable. You don't understand. Like, we're laughing at it, but there's a parent that's listening

right now. I'm going to like, oh, my God, my kid won't stop saying it. How about this? I'll come back to Miami and we'll just record an entire podcast on the history, the significance. We'll liken six, seven to something having to do with the Romans and like its relevance through like the, you know. Oh, that's hilarious. Let's do it. God, no. yeah so needless to say six seven i think is dying i think and i think we're i think we're good with that you know it's funny dude because i everybody's talking about it you know like whatever artist it was and then there was this basketball game and it's about this basketball player is six seven well you know little wayne did a song called six foot seven foot a long ass time ago yeah

little wayne's awesome dude that guy's badass dude that's bad ass he is he's he's he's he's I'm a different level. Different level. And I love when he does the clabs with Eminem. They're very good. Drop the world. Have you ever heard that one? I don't know if I have actually.

I'm going to send it to you. Yeah, send it to me. I'm going to text it to you. And then the Eminem verse is kind of how I feel. Like when I feel a certain way or when people count me out, like the underdog, that's that verse. So when you listen to it, when Eminem comes in and he's like, oh shit, Sean's on a different level. This is how he thinks. I think you'll probably relate to it.

Yeah. I think you'll relate to it. I'm going to send it to you. You know, look, man, I know we're running out of time and, you know, this has been such an amazing conversation and, you know, the beginning of a new good friendship. Yeah, I agree. Which is what I cherish most. I was telling Bruce and Giles that when you're, you know, snuck away for a second.

It was, you know, this doesn't happen very often, right? There's, there's a guess that it does happen. But when it happens so organically and I really cherish it. So my man, thank you. I'm looking forward to many more interactions with you and, you know, getting the families together eventually and all that good stuff. But this has been one of the better episodes ever recorded. And that makes me very happy because low-key, I was like, don't fuck this one up,

John. That's straight up. Like I, it was funny. I called my, my buddy Mike before, you know, on the way over here. We hadn't talked in a long time. We talked for an hour and 15 minutes. Okay. Just catching up, talking about the kids and good friends. Yeah. And he's like, what are you doing? Why are you still driving? It's, oh, I'm going to Miami. You know, I'm going to interview this gentleman named Bijou bot. He goes, hold on. Hold on. I'm like, dude, I'm driving. Like, what the fuck? I've got all the time of the world like what he goes you're interviewing bijou i was like yeah you you know who he is he's like yeah i use his shit all the time and and it was just it was a cool moment he goes he goes he goes hey dude don't fuck that one up i'm like you know it wasn't enough that i was already thinking

of this i got to talk about two different things that i'm not necessarily in the way we're talking about space we're talking about all this other stuff but but it's funny you know it it It turned into something that immediately I felt comfort with you and your friends. And, dude, it was just such a great show, man. One of the things I always talked to, I guess, about as we're, you know, landing the proverbial plane is I built this platform because I had something missing inside me. You know, I didn't understand, you know, I was successful. I was doing well in sales, but something felt empty. There was this gap.

and I couldn't figure out what it was until I did. And I just wanted to do something that's massive amounts of purpose, right? And the one thing that I felt was missing in society. And I still think, by at large today, it's still missing is people waking up determined, society waking up, waking up in a society that's determined to chase their dreams no matter how they feel emotionally at that time.

I think it's missing. And I wanted to build something that can inspire people to do so. And so that's my true definition of what determination means to me is chasing your dreams, no matter how you feel emotionally at that time. Yeah.

You just don't stop. What's your definition of determination? I think on a day-to-day basis, it's cutting the noise on and putting one foot in front of the other, right? Love it. It just is. Because you can always,

regardless of how existential things feel, and Lord knows things it felt that way for me many times over the years. Like you can always kind of plot the next one move, two moves, three moves, and those add up, right? Wow. Like those, they snowball. Like this is, yeah, being, again, kind of like being stubborn about your ideas and seeing them through also being systematic about like figuring out

whether it's the right idea or not like systematic. about getting feedback to validate or invalidate your thinking. For me, it's always thinking about things as hypotheses, right? Like, I believe this to be true. Like, how can I validate that this is true or false to the extent that I can, before which kind of have to do it? Yeah. But like, once you do, you're still just putting one foot in front of the other.

Like you're being determined about. about what your process is to go from A to B. And yeah, I think that's, that's pretty much it. I love that. It's very in line of how I feel and how I look at things, right? You have a process, but you also have standards. The standards are what you do no matter what, no matter how you feel, right?

It's like, I'm going to have four to five meals today. That's a standard. And they're gonna all be healthy. That's a standard. Right? I have to stick to that every day. I get to stick to that every day. Right. But the idea of moving forward no matter what is, is, I think, simpler than people really, truly think about it that it is. It's like, you know, I had somebody say on my show like Marcus Luttrell that he was Navy SEAL. He was a lone survivor. They made a movie about it. And I sat down with him and his brother about three weeks ago. And, you know, and my. my buddy's ranch in Mississippi, wing ranch. And so for people that are having a hard time to go into the gym, drive yourself to the gym, pick up the dumbbell, put it back on the rack and walk out.

You worked out. You went. And I think that determination is that. It's not these big, sexy moves every day. It's rarely that, guys. What it really is, is when you feel defeated and just broken, you still go for the walk. You still go lift the weight. You still make that.

phone call for your business, you still shoot the show. Because like, no bullshit, dude. Last night, I could barely move. It didn't feel good. I was just exhausted, man. I think I was, you know, I felt like I was getting sick, but I'm not clearly because I feel great. Yeah. It is, I looked at my wife. I'm like, I have one of the most important interviews tomorrow. I'm feeling like this. Like I was like, I got to get through this. I was like, so here's what I need. I was like, if you could support me in this. So I'm going to make dinner, I'm going to do everything that I normally would. I'm going to put the girls down as well. Isn't awesome having a partner that you love and trust?

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

Because I know you. Like, I know what you're going to do in this business. I know how this is going to end. Isn't that awesome when your wife says that to you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I wish, though?

I wish I would have taken it in more when she said it. Because I myself didn't think that. So she has seen things in me in different iterations and moments of our lives together and has never shifted belief in me. How long have you guys been to? together. Ten years. Ten years has never not believed in me. It's wild, right? And I was at my most broken point when I met her. I was going through divorce. I was broken. You know, like, everything. Like, I'm starting to talk more about this publicly. I never really said these things.

But I think it's important because I think it's relatable, right? And I think more people need to be Nobody's life is perfect. Everybody's life has adversities, right? Everybody makes mistakes along the way to err as human, right? But dude, that woman couldn't, there's no way. There's no way I could have done without her. It's kind of interesting you say that because when I was embarking on this journey to go from something that I definitely knew how to do to something that I definitely did not know how to do, my wife was like, you're going to crush it at this.

to succeed at this. And I'm like, why do you decide to care us? Like, are you just, is this like just a truism? Are you just saying this like, make me feel better? She's like, no, I've seen you over the years. Like, when you put your mind to something, like, you're not going to stop until you're successful. And so she's like, this is going to be just like that. And in those couple of moments early on, I was like, yeah, that's right. Yeah. I guess that's right. Yeah. I guess that is what's going to happen here. It's what I do. Yeah, it's what I do. You know, it's funny because when I heard about it right when we when we when we and when sarah and i started throwing this around yeah and talking about it and you finally got to the point where it was going to happen she goes okay this is what it is

right i'm like oh oh wow like we're going to talk about this like this is crazy but as i continued with the research and and looking at all the different components to me it was a no-brainer that you'd be successful because you already built something thing. Has it happened yet. We're working on it. You're going to be fine. I find another component that's very interesting of this. And you haven't mentioned it. And I don't know if it's true or not. But your dad was involved in this business. He was working for NASA doing important things. And now here you are years later. And you have this love for physics, love for space and you're doing something. Does any of that honor your dad? Absolutely. My dad loves it.

It's kind of funny. My dad is, my dad's a character. He's very, he's very disciplined in his thinking. I remember like the Thanksgiving after we took Robin Hood public. My dad's like, well,

you know, he's like, you should go and get your PhD. I'm like, what? Why? I'm like, dad,

I have like tons of PhDs that work for me at Robin. He's like, no, he's like, it's very important to go and get your PhD. Like, science is very important. It's like, Are you, are you, like, do you realize what's going on right now in my life? Yeah.

Do you realize what Robin it is? Like, I'm not going to go get a PhD right now. But that's kind of like one of the things that I think about often is like his, his love of science and his like love of physics and math are so pure. And I don't know if it's as pure for me. Like I went and started businesses. I would like to think I'm fairly practically minded. But here I am, like, doing something that I'm drawing. to purely out of like a deep sort of like, you know, I feel like it's a part of my life story

I want to do this. Sure, sure. And just like a deep love of it. Well, I can't wait to see how it turns out. I know how it's going to turn out, but I can't wait to see it. Well, we're going to have satellites going up to space this year. So we're targeting two launches this year. So we talked about this a little bit.

Maybe I can kind of... What quarter are we talking on Q2, Q3, Q1? Yeah, like summertime. Summertime in the fall. Okay. Perfect. Yeah. And these.

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

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

Damn. And the way you do is with lasers. Yes. Space lasers. Space lasers. More specifically. Wow, dude. So that's what's happening in June.

And it's complicated. There's a lot of stuff we have to get right, but assuming we do, knock on wood, I think that's going to be a pretty significant step forward in that it's a new, way of generating power on earth. Sure. Right?

And it sort of fundamentally addresses many of the limitations with putting solar panels on the ground. Yeah. It's kind of the alternative that we're against. Wow. Well, I'll be on the lookout for that, dude. That's going to be freaking rad. We should have you out for it. We're going to have a big demonstration party.

I would love to come. Yeah. We're going to consider it. California or? Probably in the desert of, in the deserts. Okay. I'm there. Yeah.

I'll be there. New Mexico, I think is what we're thinking. Oh, very cool. Very cool. Love it. Love it. Can't wait for that. Yeah, me too. It's going to be cool. It is. We've got a lot of work to do between now and then, but I think we can make it happen. Yeah.

You will. You will. Well, dude, thank you again. It's been an honor. And for the audience, man, is it atherflux.com? Mm-hmm. Okay, atherflux.com. Go check it out. And it's a great site. You know, really cool stuff. I mean, my, my dumb ass even understood kind of what was going on. So I'm, I'm sure you guys at home will be fine in researching it. But go check it out, support it. And, you know, you never know. Like this could really impact somebody in your life, like troops in the desert. And if you have a service member out there fighting for our country, this could really benefit them, right?

Or if you're in, if you've got family or you're in an area where there's not a whole lot of power or whatever, like, hey, man, this could really, they're probably not listening to the show if there's no power. But, you know. That concept is kind of, of like Starlink for power. Yeah. Yeah, of course. So go check them out. And please, guys, as always, I'm going to ask you to share this show this episode with

someone you know love and trust. And whether you listen to us on Spotify, Apple, please go leave a review. Like, tell us what you love about the show. Maybe even get suggestions of who you want me to interview. But stay steadfast in your journey for success, guys. Don't ever let up and don't let anybody ever tell you what your limits are. you set your limits and you push forward every day. And so until next time, guys, stay determined.