This Week in Startups - US space innovation, defense tech challenges, and more with True Anomaly’s Even Rogers | E1982

Episode Date: July 19, 2024

This Week in Startups is brought to you by… Vanta. Compliance and security shouldn't be a deal-breaker for startups to win new business. Vanta makes it easy for companies to get a SOC 2 report fast. TWiST listeners can get $1,000 off for a limited time at https://vanta.com/twist .Tech Domains. Don’t miss our “Jam with JCal” contest! To apply and get more details go to https://www.jamwithjcal.tech brought to you by .tech domains. DevSquad. DevSquad helps startups design better products. If you need UI and UX expertise and don’t want to hire an entire design team, head to https://www.devsquad.com/startups and book a call. Mention that you are coming from TWiST to get 10% off. * Todays show: True Anomaly’s Even Rogers joins Jason to discuss US competitiveness and innovation space and defense tech (8:53). They also dive into True Anomaly’s innovations (26:41), securing government contracts (31:41), and more! * Timestamps: (0:00) True Anomaly’s Even Rogers joins Jason (4:35) Space innovations and True Anomaly's tech (8:01) Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at https://vanta.com/twist (8:53) Space defense, treaties, and infrastructure resilience (17:01) Space warfare challenges and scenarios (22:24) .Tech Domains - Apply for the Jam Session with JCal contest today at https://www.jamwithjcal.tech (23:41) Securing government contracts for space and defense startups (26:41) True Anomaly’s Jackal deployment (31:41) Defense contracting: cost-plus vs. fixed price models (34:19) International sales of defense technology and regulations on defense tech exports (36:28) DevSquad - Visit https://www.devsquad.com/startups, book a call, and mention TWIST for 10% off! (37:57) Defense industry's role in capitalism and global politics (43:19) Taiwan-China conflict and its global impact (46:49) The major concern with new weapons technology (50:29) Jam With JCal contest winner Ana Malhotra from Rome joins Jason (54:24) Jason’s feedback for Rome * Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com/ Check out the TWIST500: twist500.com * Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp * Follow Even: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanst-aafl Check out: https://www.trueanomaly.space * Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis * Thank you to our partners: (8:01) Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at https://vanta.com/twist (22:24) .Tech Domains - Apply for the Jam Session with JCal contest today at https://www.jamwithjcal.tech (36:28) DevSquad - Visit https://www.devsquad.com/startups, book a call, and mention TWIST for 10% off! * Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland * Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis * Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com * Subscribe to the Founder University Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@founderuniversity1916

Really, the innovation engine that exists between private capital allocators and government buyers is the source of U.S. competitiveness in a lot of ways. The relationship between financial leverage and operational leverage, that positive feedback loop can provide is pretty astounding. The source of that thesis as a credible thesis for venture investors to engage in, started with Palantir, and then really picked up a lot of momentum with companies like Andrewle, that showed that these are worthwhile investments to make. And as soon as you can make that argument that there is a financial return and that's a

meaningful financial return with the venture scale, then a lot of investors come out of the woodworks. This week in startups is brought to you by Vanta. Compliance and security shouldn't be a deal breaker for startups to win new business. Vanta makes it easy for companies to get a sock to report fast. Twist listeners can get $1,000 off for a limited time at Vantam. dot-com slash twist. Dot Tech Domains. Don't miss our Jam With JCal contest. To apply and get more details, go to jam withjicel.com. Brought to you by dot tech domains. And DevSquad. Dev Squad helps

startups design better products. If you need UI and UX expertise and don't want to hire an entire design team, head to devsquod.com slash startups and book a call. Mention that you're coming from twist to get 10% off. All right, everybody, welcome back to this week in startups over the last couple of years. We've seen a lot of fundraising go to AI. Obviously, you're seeing that everywhere. And of course, since SpaceX has become such a huge hit, we're seeing a ton of people investing in space-related startups in the venture community. Finally, in a multipolar world with advanced technology, dare I say, guerrilla tactics affecting the battlefield. We're seeing a lot of defense tech here in Silicon Valley. Evan Rogers is the CEO and co-founder

of True Anomily. And he's joining us today on the podcast. And he's working in all three. Welcome to the program, Evan. Thanks for having me. So just briefly, if you could, who are you? And what are you building? So my name is Evan Rogers. I'm the CEO and one of the co-founders of True Anomily. And True Anomley is a defense tech company focused on protecting and defending the space domain. So we build the technologies, the software, and the hardware that's required the United States and its allies to build the defensive infrastructure and the space domain awareness infrastructure that's necessary to defend the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of assets that we put

in space over the last few decades. You're building defensive systems, I would say like Iron Dome, for space to protect our satellites from adversaries. Am I correct in my description there? Well, right now we're pretty focused on making sure we understand what's happening in the space domain. So, no, we're not building the active defense systems today. What we're focused on is really closing the knowledge gap of the United States has relative to adversaries like Russia and China.

The number of assets on orbit have increased almost exponentially since 2015, a little bit before that. Russia and China are using the space domain in ways that they have never before. and they've studied the Western way of conflict and our dependence on space. And so they're incentivized to deploy their own capabilities to exploit the space domain, but also hold U.S. and allied capabilities at risk at scale. And we really don't have a strong understanding as a nation of the kinds of technologies they're deploying and what risk and threat that poses to the U.S.

So we need to understand that first. Got it. So this is a two-phased approach is what I'm hearing. Step one, we need to know what the heck they're doing. And step two, eventually we're going to need, after we figure out what they're doing up there, our adversaries, how to defend against countermeasures. Do I have that correct? That's exactly right. And I would actually add another phase to that, which is we need to be able to train our operators to orient themselves to the complexity of space conflict and defense and then to be able to take action at scale.

and that we need to be able to understand what our capabilities are relative to the adversary's capabilities. So these are processes that are mature in other domains, but we've never had a really real need for it in the space domain until Russia and China started weaponizing the domain. So it's really threefold. It's understand what's happening, build the capabilities necessary to defend infrastructure, and train to use those systems in a contested operating environment. All right. You've raised over $150 million. You just said $100 million series B. led by Rye Adventures. And so you are well funded to do this. The startup, though, is only a year old. You got about close to 100 people there, I understand.

We're about two years old. So we started, first day of engineering was in June of 2022, and we've been 120 folks a day, yeah, and growing fast. Wow. So about two-year-old company, got 120 people, raised 150, over 150 million. Have you put any satellites in space or device? in space yet and when does that happen?

Yeah, we have. We just initiated our flight test campaign for our first set of space vehicles that we call Jackal. We can talk more about that later. That's a heck of a name. That's Jackal. You came up at that? Yeah, we did it.

I can't tell you the full reasons, but it comes from my military background and a couple of programs that we worked on. Oh. Yeah, so Jackal, we launched the first two Jackals in March and we're executing an iterative flight test campaign. So we're launching spacecraft, we're testing them, and then we're learning and iterating on their design so that we can maximize the performance over time. Great political thriller. Day of the Jackal.

I'll just give it a shout out right there. This is before most people's time. All right. So that's the Jackal. I assume that's figuring out what's going on up there. Let's pause for a second. In that third part of the three-step phase, we need to train people up. Evan, we heard Trump talk about Space Force, and he will.

was going to, you know, start this, I guess, fifth branch of our military. Is that who's going to coordinate all this and who you're going to work with? As we, you know, as you said, the third part of this is to kind of train our people up. Our soldiers? Are there going to be soldiers? Are we just going to have people in front of, you know, like sort of drone style equipment, flying it through space? What's this going to look like in then coming years?

Yes. The Space Force is a really interesting branch of the, service, and it's pretty misunderstood. The space force actually really was initiated by Congressman Rogers in the Obama administration. And the service wouldn't exist, certainly without Trump's force of personality and executing, really implementing the plans to stand it up, but it really started in the Obama administration after pretty significant observations about Russian and Chinese counter space capability buildup. And the reason that a force like the space force is required is that protecting the domain and protecting the joint force from

space enabled attack requires a set of capabilities and a specialized set of skills that necessitates a force that lives and breathes that every single day. And so you really needed an organization that wasn't trying to to battle other organizations internally for budget and to be able to have kind of chart its own destiny relative to the joint forces requirement. So the force is responsible for organizing, training, and equipping military forces so that they can provide these capabilities to the rest of the combatant commands who then provide these capabilities to the rest of the joint force in combat. Listen, a strong sales team can make all the difference for a B2 startup. But if you're going to hire sharks, you need to let them hunt and you can't slow them down with compliance hurdles like SOC2. What is SOC2?

Well, any company that stores customer data in the cloud needs to be SOC2 compliant. If you don't have your sock too tight, your sales team can't close major deals. It's that simple. But thankfully, Vanta makes it really easy to get and renew your SOC2 compliance. On average, Vanta customers are compliant in just two to four weeks. Without Vanta, it takes three to five months. Vanta can save you hundreds of hours of work and up to 85% on compliance. And Vanta does more than just SOC2. They also automate up to 90% compliance for GDPR, HIPAA, and more. So here's your call to action. Stop slowing your sales team down and use Vanta. Get $1,000 off at Vantta. Vanta.com slash twist. That's vanta.com slash twist for $1,000 off your sock, too. So let's be candid here. Have there been any military-like activities in space in the last year or two by our adversaries? What's the latest reporting on that? There's been a lot of reporting about this recently. It's really picked up in the last three to four years as classification reform has allowed folks in positions of power in the Pentagon, but also the Hill

and the executive branch to talk more openly about this, China and Russia have flat out begun weaponizing the space domain. And they've also built a set of capabilities that allow them to use the space domain to target terrestrial forces with missiles and electronic warfare systems that really hold human life at risk, is particularly in the maritime and the aerial domain. And so the body of intelligence, and all of this is open source and unclassified now, is really pointing to a pretty significant buildup of kinetic capabilities. So satellites that are designed to attack other satellites with kinetic means. Are those called ASATs? Is that the category?

Yeah, that's right. ASATs are a class of system that are designed to target satellites, right? But it also includes electronic warfare capabilities. Just recently, there's been some reporting around the massive amount of investment that China has really made in electronic warfare. It's going to be very tough to operate in. the Indo-PACOM region without, in an EM-contested environment. And then I think what's hit the press really most recently is this plan for a Russian nuclear

anti-satellite weapon. So a system that detonates a nuclear weapon on orbit and then dumps a bunch of charged particles into the ionosphere, which ends up having a cascading effect on other low Earth orbit satellites. Whoa. So let's unpack that last one. it's a dirty bomb for space. You get to orbit, you blow this up, it interferes with all the low Earth orbit satellites that are out there, in other words, Starlink, etc.

Yeah, I wouldn't say it's a dirty bomb. A dirty bomb has sort of a different engagement mechanism that requires it to be in the atmosphere, but it's a small tactical nuclear weapon that's detonated in the space domain, and that energy ends up propagating through the electromagnetic field that surrounds the Earth, and that charges up,

other spacecraft and ultimately can affect electronics destructively, not just sort of momentary disruption, but can end the life of spacecraft, that's right. Wow. And now, what weapons work in space? We're talking about kinetic, things that go boom, things that blow up, and then you have nuclear. What else is working in space?

We hear a lot about hypersonics, you know, things that fly very low but very fast. off the surface of, you know, a land or the sea. What are the military paradigms in terms of weaponry in space? What works? What's going to be effective? Yeah, so there's a couple of classifications of weapons and phenomenologies of weapons. The first way to parse this is really to think about it in terms of space to ground weapons,

ground to space weapons, and space to space weapons. So in the domain and then crossing boundaries of domains. And there's analogies for this in other domains. You have air to ground weapons, you have air to air weapons and surface to air weapons, right? So all the same sort of phenomenologies apply in the space domain. The next way to parse this is really destructive and non-destructive means or reversible and non-reversible means. And there's a lot of different weapons that kind of apply across that spectrum.

Everything from missiles that target satellites that are launched from the surface to the earth called direct descent ASATs or surface-to-orbit missiles, those tend to be destructive sort of or non-reversible. And then on the other side of the spectrum, you have ground-based jammers, right? So just dishes that can pump out electromagnetic energy and disrupt the signals that are coming through the space environment or from the space environment. And any of those capabilities can be launched or leverage from the surface of the Earth to space in the space domain or from the space domain to the ground.

So there's a lot at stake here. It doesn't take a genius to figure out. that the treaties that have been signed, I think the major one was that Outer Space Treaty in 1967 that I researched a bit before coming on the program. You know, a bunch of people sign these things, but it wouldn't be the first time that a dictatorship of authoritarian country signed a document and maybe didn't follow it to the letter of the law. So we can assume some amount of these measures are already up in space, yeah, by some actors? Well, one of the common misconceptions of the Outer Space Treaty is, is actually that it doesn't govern or prevent

the employment and deployment of conventional weapons in space. It only talks, it only speaks to nuclear weapons. You can't base nuclear weapons in space. Certainly if Russia executes what they might, that would be a violation of that treaty. However, the Outer Space Treaty allows for the deployment of missiles and electronic warfare systems and directed energy systems in space. Got it. So that's fair game, which means it's up there. And it's, it's in all likelihood. We have stuff up there. And I'm sure they have stuff up there already.

You would agree with that general thesis. Russian China certainly do. Yeah, that's right. Got it. And if we were to look at different satellites, would you describe these as fragile or resilient, you know, on the spectrum in terms of how easy they would be to knock out? You know, you have thousands of, let's say, Starlink's up there.

If somebody sends up, you know, some sort of device. to destroy all of them or the majority of them. Would this be de minimis and easy for somebody like Russia, China, or the U.S. to do? Is it easy to go up there, send a fleet of satellites, and have them go find all the other satellites, knock them off course, and just essentially push them back down to Earth? In theory, yes and no, conventional space weapons, you need to have some ability to track satellites in orbit, and you need to generally have a space launch capability. there's only a few countries that have the ability to do that, right? Okay, so first of all, you have to be able to get stuff to space. That's right.

That's a limited cohort of people. And it looks like the U.S. has, you know, run the table on that with SpaceX, I guess, in terms of carriage to space. And then you have to get those weapons. Once you get the weapons up there, you have to have the capability. You have to go to operate them. That's right. So you have to be able to send instructions to those satellites and then you have to be able to, if you're employing a weapon, you have to, to be able to select a target out of the many satellites that are in space and then you

have to be able to do something, send instructions to engage that target. There's all sorts of complications to that and challenges that the domain presents clutter and vast distances and latency and the thermal environment, the vacuum environment can make all of that quite challenging. In general, we've used, the United States has used the space domain largely for collection of information about what's happening on the surface the Europe, either for intelligence purposes, intelligence purposes supporting the military, providing communications to the military, or sending information and signals back down to the surface the earth. But that dependency has really created a vulnerability, right? And part of the vulnerability speaks to the first part of your

question, which is satellites are very sensitive. They're not built for a contested environment. They're not really warfighting systems. They're not tanks. They're not Humvees. They don't have They're floating computers, right? They're with sensitive electronics. Yeah, these are like, if you had no shell around the innards of a Humveyor tank, like if it literally had no protection, that's what you're putting up in space, because every ounce, every kilogram matters, right? It's expensive to put stuff up there.

So we put up raw, naked equipment, essentially. That's right. And there was no threat until really 2007. And even in 2007, the threats that were posed by. China, we're still in this kind of research and development, science, technology development type phase. It only is until recently that we've hit that inflection point of growth of what are called, again, space weapons are in a more polite company called counter space capabilities. So all of the infrastructure was built and designed before space was really designated a contested environment,

before we said, before the United States said, space is a warfighting domain. Offensive and defensive things happen there. It's important that we protect them. All of those systems are basically left undefended, right? And none of the infrastructure to defend those systems, the supporting infrastructure, let alone the capabilities to actually pose an active defense or avoid a threat existed either. Okay, so we're starting getting into like imagining Star Wars

up there in space. It's like the scene in return of the Jedi when Luke, Darth Vader, and the empire are like looking out from the Death Star at like this chaos occurring in space. Because what you just described to me, as I think about it, is, a bunch of sensitive

equipment. And the current systems are just hit to kill, right? You just bump into

these things. You don't need to keep your offensive weapon. You just smash into them. It's like

a kamikaze essentially. That's, but you do have to travel a large amount of distance to

take one of these out. So if you're going to take out a hundred satellites, and you might have to send up

200 of these hit to kill type kamakazi, I'll call them, uh, devices. And then

they have to travel some inordinate amount of distance, which requires some amount of propulsion, locking onto the target and then hitting it. Is this possible today to send up 200 hit-to-kill vehicles and wipe out an entire satellite array? Is that possible, probable? Where do you put that? The physics and the technology certainly allow that kind of deployment at scale, and that's, that is an engagement modality that I think we're concerned about from Russia and China in particular. But most of China's that's hit to kill is one of them, but it's certainly not one of the first and most dangerous courses of action that China could take against on orbit infrastructure, against satellites. Really, it's going to start left of kinetics. What you're describing, what class of capabilities we call kinetics, electronic warfare is one of the earliest threats.

And we've seen this already, even against commercial operators, and I think this is an important part of the conversation to Jason is the People's Republic and China, of China and Russia don't make a very clear distinction between U.S. military or intelligence systems and commercial systems supporting the fight. And what we saw in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, I think on day zero of the fight, a cyber weapon was used to wipe out about 10,000 Vyazat terminals and clear communications across all of Europe. It wasn't just in Ukraine. It wasn't just a Vyazat terminal supporting communications for the military in Ukraine. It actually had a much broader effect. And that's an important aspect of space warfare is very difficult.

It can be very difficult to have your effects be localized and targeted, right, and not have a massive amount of collateral damage. So nobody wants a fight that extends into space, right? It's actually quite dangerous. You want to prevent that fight from happening in the first place. What's the worst case scenario? Let's say that actor, you know, really dicey situation. Russia decides, hey, we're going for it, we're going to do a dozen of these tactical nukes,

we're taking everything out. And it's no surprise to me that they don't see a difference between the government and the private sector because it's the same thing in both of those countries, the private sector and the government. You know, TikTok is a, is a Chinese government asset, a CCP asset, as much as it's a publicly or will be a publicly traded asset. So there is no line for them. Worst case scenario, they go up there and they start wiping out swats of stuff. what happens here on Earth? Do we lose our GPS and it's a bummer because we can't use Google Maps? Do we lose large swaths of infrastructure and the ability to do Zoom calls because of space, you know, internet connectivity or life continues on no problem or a plane's going to fall out of sky? What's that, what's the doomsday scenario here?

Yeah, the infrastructure that is at risk here that is kind of most important to the contemporary way of life are things. like communications and GPS. And really a lot of systems support all of that. And the timing signal from GPS is used in a variety of different industries. It is the standard for timing for communications for the internet, for banking, or a lot of electronic transactions, and for communications. So you lose that timing signal. You don't just lose positions. So you can't just navigate, you know, to start, the difficulty navigating and finding Starbucks. It is also the degradation of that timing signal over time that will result in inability to do banking, inability to do communications will disrupt internet traffic, etc.

So all navigation communications, you know, just become chaotic on Planetter and we're all pulling out maps and trying to figure out what our bank balances are. It could get pretty hairy. It could get pretty ugly. Yeah. Founders, these jam sessions with JCal we've been doing are a huge success. so far. We've seen so many great submissions. We picked two winners so far and we interviewed them on the show and we're still looking for three more amazing founders. Here's all you need. If you want to come on this program this week in startups and jam with J-Cal, where you pitch me your company and I give you a bunch of feedback. Just two qualifiers. We want you to have less than $2 million in funding,

so we want it to be a new startup, you know, one that needs help. And we want you to have an awesome. Dot Tech domain name. So head to Jam with J-Cal.com. Jam. J-A-M with J-Cal. Tech. It's so much fun. The winners come on the podcast. I have to tell you, this is the greatest editorial segment on the pod for me. I love doing it because you pitch me what you're working on. I give you some unfiltered feedback. We do it in real time. We ping pong back and forth.

We pickleball. I ask you a question. You give me a response. You ask me another question. And you know what? We both get smarter and we understand your vision for your startup. And hey, it never hurts to get your company on the number one startup podcast in the world. And we're working with our friends at dot tech.

Because it's super cool to have a dot tech. Rabbit. Dot tech. Aurora. Tech, 1X. Tech. Everybody's using them. Heck, I use it for Founder Fridays.com. So here's your call to action. Tell me about your awesome.com. Domain and startup and apply for the Jam session with JCal contest today. At Jam with Jal.com. We're picking those last three winners soon. All right. So let's talk about running a startup, getting government contracts. Where are you out with that? Because, you know, it does seem like we are in a renaissance right now and that the United States has a unique

infrastructure plus capitalistic advantage. And I know there's a lot of you know, I'm trying to use a delicate word here. There's a lot of hippie-dippies who, you know, in Silicon Valley don't want to back the military or back, you know, weapons systems. But the fact is some percentage, 20%, 30% have chosen to do this over the last decade and now we're seeing the fruits of that labor. How big is our advantage right now? Because venture capitalists and entrepreneurs are able to get stuff in space.

Shout out to Elon and SpaceX team. Are we running the table on space or, you know, and is China, is there a podcast going on in China or a discussion going on in Russia of, oh my God, the Americans have run away with this? I think there have been some really interesting companies come out of China that are focused on space that are trying to keep PRCs,

competitiveness with the United States, particularly with respect to space launch, because that really is the infrastructure that has to exist for a burgeoning space economy. Really, the innovation engine that exists between private capital allocators and government buyers is the source of U.S. competitiveness in a lot of ways. The relationship between financial leverage and operational leverage that positive feedback loop can provide is pretty astounding. And Trunlemy is one of several companies in this ecosystem, but really the source of that thesis as a credible thesis for venture investors to engage in, started with Palantir, and then had really picked up a lot of momentum with companies like Andrewl that showed that these are worthwhile investments to make.

And as soon as sort of you can make that argument that there is a financial return and that's a meaningful financial return with the venture scale, then a lot of investors come out of the woodworks. And what we're starting to see is a lot of interest in the defense space, not just from early stage venture investors, but from crossover investors. And that capacity for capital allocation is really what's required for long-term competitiveness and the viability of these companies. And that's, that has been the next, that has been the inflection point in the last, I would say probably two to three years in particular as the understanding by growth stage investors and cross-over investors of the importance and viability of this. kind of not only this market, but this thesis. And we've certainly benefited from that. Although when we were fundraising, there were, when we fundraised, we've funded several times, obviously, as you know, it's very clear that only a few venture teams really have a strong thesis and many are trying to play catch up, I think, at this point. Here's a video that will play of the Jackal deployment.

This is your Jackal X 1-0-0-0-0-0-2. deployed. I'm assuming you went up with SpaceX or was it another? That's right. That's the Transporter 10 Falcon 9 upper stage right there. There goes Jackal 2. And what does that cost to make a jackal 2? What did it cost you to get that first one out there? O-O-1 and O-O-O-2 cost. Yeah, less than $5 million apiece. Less than $5 million a piece. When you make a hundred of these or you get to, you know, jackal 100, what's the cost going to be on these? I think we can get the cost down between one and two million. Got it.

And these are studying what's going on in space. These aren't offensive weapons. They're not defensive weapons. These are your study. Try to figure out what's going on in space, correct? Yeah. The way to think about Jackal is that it's really a platform for a variety of different mission sets.

What it's really good at and what we designed it for is to conduct a rendezvous and proximity operations against very agile objects. And rendezvous and proximity operations isn't, new. We've been doing it since the Gemini program. It's how we demonstrated that we could do docking post a lunar mission, but also post a Saturn 5 launch. It's what happens every single time at Dragon spacecraft docks at the International Space Station, but it has some really important military applications. And the gap has been to be able to do rendezvous and proximity operations, to take a picture of an object that is actively trying to prevent you from doing that.

And to do that with a low-cost system is very, very difficult. That's really the breakthrough that we've achieved with Jackal. Okay. So these are recognizance droids that you're sending out into the universe and go back to Star Wars, like when they sent them to Haw to go find the rebellion. You're sending these things out. They can, I assume, quickly get to a location in space, figure out what's going on over there, take a couple of pictures.

This is eyes in the sky, right? This is like a drone for a bunch of... of Green Berets, you know, Navy sales, pick your elite force. This is their eyes in the skies. Your eyes in the skies now to figure out what's going on

if you see, if the military sees something odd up there, they can send you the jack and go take a peek. That's exactly. And they're inexpensive enough that the DOD can buy

dozens or hundreds of them instead of just buying one or two. All right. So you've made the probe droid. The next piece is going to be this thing. is going to need some countermeasures, I would assume, because once a bad guy see that you got the jackal out there with eyes on them, they're going to want to take the jackal out. So what are you

thinking in terms of countermeasures or how to protect these assets when they're up there? Or do you just think of them as, hey, they're probe droids. You want to knock them out? Have that it. We've got two or three or three hundred of them up here. We'll send another one. There's three more coming to your location. I would say they probably look a little bit more like tie fighters. They're really designed to be attributable. So certainly we can evade an adversary or we will demonstrate that over the next year

in particular. But one of the dominant trends in warfare is moving towards low cost heterogeneous or dislike systems. And what we're trying to achieve with Jackal is the ability to maneuver and operate without regret, which means if I lose one of these either because of some system failure

or because of adversary action, it doesn't affect my overall ability to accomplish my mission. And so I think the more cost effective approach is actually just to drive the cost, the per unit cost down as low as possible without putting a bunch of defensive capabilities on board

that might increase the cost significantly and then cause regret if you do lose it. But we'll see. I mean, we'll conduct those studies over the next year here. Reminds me of like a swarm, right? You can swarm these things and yeah, you have that it. You want to take a couple

out, you know, it's better we put an incremental 10 more of these up there and you're going to be have a heck of a time getting them all out of the sky than us putting, you know, three times the armament on it or countermeasures on it, yeah? Yeah, that's exactly right. And by building in that way, you have the ability to iterate pretty quickly. So you're not, you don't have the capital requirement to be able to iterate a very, very large system that's very, very expensive. If you have low-cost systems and you're using commercial off-the-shelf components and focusing on hardening the systems that really matter like avionics, that means that you can, the pace of your iteration is economically viable, and it also allows you to set the pace for iterating vis-a-vis another, an adversary, right?

So we should expect our adversaries to change the way they operate in the environment, the kinds of systems that they're building. And we want to, at the very least, keep pace with that, if not accelerate past it. So one of the things Palmer Lucky, a friend of the pod and other folks have talked about, a bunch is cost plus. The government does some sort of contract. You do an overrun. You take more time. You race up the price. They're going to give you plus whatever.

I don't know if it's 10% or 20% on average, whatever you do. And that's kind of the counter of everything we do in Silicon Valley or in just capitalism in general. If you can make the car, the phone, whatever it is. is, the monitor, the laptop, cheaper, that's what you want to do. You want to drive the cost down while increasing the feature set and the capabilities of the device. Cost Plus kind of goes, lies in the face of that. So what's happening in the industry in private discussions between the government and this new cohort of companies, Andrew and yours and SpaceX, about this weird, non-capitalistic, bizarre pricing schema.

It doesn't make sense to anybody who's in capitalism to do cost plus. It feels like a Soviet communist approach to, you know, building products and companies. It's very inefficient. It's an important approach. It's a tool like any other. You actually do want that type of approach if you're building one-off, very, very exquisite systems where you have uncertainty about, um, when you're trying to do something very, very different, right?

You have to, you have some new set of technologies to develop that have never been built before. But it's inefficient in a world in which most electronic components, autonomy and software is relatively commodified, and you can generate a lot of capability with what already exists. And so that lends itself to firm fixed price contracts, where you can actually establish a viable margin that allows you to have the capital necessary to invest as a company to invest in the next set of products. I think the DoD is really starting to understand that at the end of the day, the way that they choose to transact with companies like Trinomley, Anderil, and others

is the primary driver of innovation and the capacity to innovate. I mean, in their minds, if there's enough companies out there competing for the same dollars, what difference does it make? If you get your $5 million satellite to $2 million and you have an 80% margin on it, better for the government than it's staying a $5 million and you having a 20% margin on it. It just makes more sense. They can buy two or three times as many of these probe droids you're making, huh? That's right. Even more importantly, that profit will drive the next generation of capabilities. It will drive investment in competitive systems. Have you started and At what point does a company like yours go from using venture dollars to make very unique products in the world to looking at the needs of the government and maybe doing an RFP with them?

Or are you saying, hey, look, we made something here. We think you're going to love it. And you pull the Tony Stark, you know, sheet off of the beautiful Jacqueline say, hey, look at this. Might I interest you in a couple hundred of these? How is it working now? Did they tell you they want a faster horse or do you come to them with a car? It's both. Okay.

Explain both. Yeah. And that tends to be very productive. And so what we designed and built Jackal, both Jackal and Mosaic, the operating system that both flies Jackal, but also does command and control for other systems. We looked across the operational problems that the Space Force and the intelligence community would have for space security and space domain awareness and training. We said, what are the platforms that are going to enable the DoD to solve those problems as quickly. possible and where are we going to be able to make the biggest difference in biggest technological intervention? And that ultimately is where Jacqueline Mosaic came from. It was a sort of

then diagram of operational requirements and technical competence at True and Online. And so as we designed and built those, we involved a couple of program offices in that process and the operational community and got their feedback early on in the design process, even informally, that allowed us to prioritize certain features or capabilities over others. And so when the RFPs eventually do come out, we've ideally built a system that's well-suited and very competitive for that RFB. Now, we don't have the capacity to do that for every program. So we do make some adjustments to the jackal and the mosaic baseline design

to meet emerging requirements that maybe we weren't involved in helping shape or that are broadly unknown to industry until they come out. Hey, startups. Does your product interface lift? Well, a lot of companies get up and running quickly and that's part of the idea here in Silicon Valley

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medium product market fit, or strong product. market fit. Well, here's the good news. Dev Squad's asynchronous design squad is here to help you. Our long-term partner, DevSquad, built this service specifically for startups like ours. That means you don't have to worry about winging it yourself, and you don't have to buy a subscription to an unlimited design service and have them under-delivered. No, thanks to DevSquod, you can buy hours from expert designers who will handle everything for you, from UX audits to very sophisticated UI design and the result is going to be an improved user experience and ultimately happier

customers in a more successful business. So if you need to map your user flows, maybe you need to craft some interactive prototypes, or maybe you need to conduct a rigorous usability test, DevSquod has you covered. So if you are ready to transform your startup's UI without the painful overhead of having to hire an in-house design team, just head to DevSquod.com startups and book a call. That's right, devsquad.com slash startups. Mention you heard about the service here on this week in startups, you get 10% off. What are the rules around you selling this technology to other countries? How does that work?

And are your customers, Israel, France, Germany, and other India, other democracies in the world? And how does all that work? Yeah, it's very important that we sell our capabilities internationally. one of the most important aspects of U.S. power projection is we tend to do that with our allies, and interoperable weapons systems underpin that. And so if we can't, if our fighters can't talk to each other and we don't have the same communication standards and infrastructure, it can actually create friction in operations that ends up putting the operation at risk. So having jackal like the F-35, like the F-22, not so much the F-202, the F-18, etc., that have been part of FMS,

programs more broadly to our allies, ends up creating the ability to project power more efficiently and safely. And we see this with NATO. If you join NATO, you buy the NATO collection of standardized products. So if NATO troops have a tank from Germany or France or the U.S., they're going to be using the same treads, the same equipment, generally speaking, it makes for a more efficient approach there. have you started to talk to other governments yet or you just have the U.S. as, you know, the customer for the first couple of years?

We have had some really conversations, but the focus has largely been on the United States Department of Defense. You spent a lot of time in our, you were in the Air Force, I believe. That's right. Yeah, and you spent a decade or so working there. Thank you for your service. There's a lot of talk of the military industrial complex. hey, are we starting wars in order to move product? And here we have capitalism coming in.

And again, back to Iron Man and Tony Stark. You know, the arc there is like, are we, you know, propagating war because we make all these great tools to be in war? Or are we just trying to take a defensive stance? And, you know, there's been a lot of criticism of the Ukraine and Russia and us arming the world. You've been inside. And now you're on the capitalist side. you were inside, you were the customer, now you're the seller of these technologies. What do we misunderstand and what do we get right about the military industrial complex

and the concerns we should have about its impact on how we decide to go to war, if we should be going to war, or is this all a hallucination and a conspiracy theory? Well, everything is just a hallucination, right? Yeah, apparently at this point it is. We're all in a simulation. Let's just call it what it is. Yeah, that's it. You're just playing the video,

you're just playing the video game at the highest level right now. It's like, there's a side quest. You can go to space. I'm just a brain in a van. I think that's clear. Absolutely, yes. I think it's deeply naive to believe that conflict is not a part of human existence. And the United States is in obviously a privileged global position for a lot of,

I think, very good reasons, but also we've had a complicated, in some ways, very dark history. but I think it's very clear that it is not a rational view to believe that the United States should not have a meaningful, if not dominant position on the geopolitical stage. And in order to do that, you have to have the capability to defend yourself and project power, use all of the instruments of power, not just the military instrument of power. And that requires a very robust defense industrial base that rapidly innovates. And if we don't do it, our adversaries will do it do it. And they've demonstrated an ability to do that at a scale that puts the United States at risk. The reason that a company, the reason that I left the military to start Trinonly with my co-founders is that the defense industrial base did not appear to have the capacity to meet the demands

of a contested space environment. We had just, Russia and China had just outpaced the way that we were buying capabilities, the way that we were testing capabilities, and even just the idea is that the base, the base baseline ideas that were being considered for the defense of that on-orbit infrastructure. They just were not good ideas. Or they were incomplete or they didn't scale. And so if you believe in global competition as a real dynamic of human politics, then you're incentivized, if not responsible for generating that competitiveness and

contributing it so that we can maintain the gar way of life. Until dictators are gone and stop invading other countries, probably a good idea for the free countries to have some weapons available when they decide, we're going to take our neighbor's country sovereignty. Not a bad idea. There are bad people in the world. Yeah. Shocking. Evil exists.

I mean, I don't know the naivete that some people have that they just think evil people don't exist. Like, just watch a serial killer documentary. that imagine that person is the president of their country, the dictator of their country. Like, evil mindset plus power, plus resources, not a good situation. How much of the military industrial complexes and what's going on in your industry

is now Taiwan and the China conflict, the keystone around? It seems like this discussion about protecting Taiwan and how an invasion might occur has taken, you know, everybody's attention. And we're watching the buildup of a lot of small ships. You know, they don't have the tonnage, China that maybe the West has as a group. They got a lot of small ships. And they seem like they really are starting to understand what we talked about earlier.

You know, hey, here's a fleet of drones. Here's what it's going to do to an aircraft carrier. You know, here's hypersonics, et cetera. So how much of the industry is now indexing around the potential of that conflict? And is that conflict in your mind inevitable? That is the generation-defining conflict, or age-defining conflict, no question. The objective here is to avoid that conflict, is to deterrent, right? And the United States build systems for deterrence and effectiveness in combat.

Right, we do, we do, there's types of operations that are purely to demonstrate combat power, freedom of navigation operations, et cetera. So that's the important thing. Nobody reasonable wants to go to war with an adversary like the People's Republic of China. The second thing that's important here is that the People's Republic of China has created a very dangerous arsenal of conventional weapons. So it's not as if they're just building small autonomous surface vessels. they're building long-range air-to-air missiles, long-range anti-ship missiles that outstick most of our capabilities. And some of that has to do with, I think, a narrative around that we've lost a little bit of focus with the counterinsurgency operations.

It's very difficult to fight a two front war, one against a strategic adversary and one against an insurgent force, a grower force. and so we should not fool ourselves that China poses that it is a benign operator in that region, nor are they benign from a technological standpoint. They have a vast set of resources, very active R&D programs on a variety of different fronts that have generated dangerous weapons that hold our most important power projection capabilities at risk. So I don't think that conflict is inevitable. I think at detente as possible. And I think a peaceful solution is possible.

But in order for us to come to the table with a reasonable set of bargaining chips, you do need to have a big stick. And that's basically what's happening now. That's part of this negotiation is, hey, here's a bunch of ships. New Zealand, Korea, Japan, Singapore, France, you know, Germany, US, all Canada, you know, making some trips around Taiwan and they're doing the same. Let's end on this. If that war does happen, there's been talk of super weapons, let's call them.

You know, obviously hypersonics are part of this. And cyber war is obviously a big part of it. Lasers, EMPs, all this kind of stuff. What is the major concern in terms of new weapons technology out there that maybe China's developing? We've been hearing some people buzzing about this. Like maybe they've got some new things that we're going to face for the first time, potentially. Hypersonic weapons at scale are one of the most dangerous, for sure, cyber weapons, and then space weapons, space control capabilities.

Explain hypersonic weapons to the audience and why this is so much talk and buzz has started about these. Hypersonic weapons are a class of weapons that travel through the air, Some of them travel through near space or pierce that boundary line that go generally above Mach 6. Some of them can be Mach 4. It sort of depends. So five times the speed of sound is what we're saying here. This is extremely, extremely fast. Yep.

That's right. And by virtue of their speed, they tend to be very, very difficult to track. and even if you could track them, it's difficult to track them sufficiently to be able to deploy a countermeasure against them, to be able to have another hypersonic capability or defensive countermeasure system that has the ability to engage that kinetically.

And so I think there are some really interesting ideas about ways to defend against them, but the first thing that we need to figure out is tracking. And so hypersonic weapons can be launched from air platforms, from surface vessels, or from the ground, and target a variety of different platforms, whether they're air, their surface vessels or the ground.

So there is, they could even be launched from space. One of the things that General Saltzman has identified, who's the chief of space operations for the United States Space Force has identified recently as China's test of a fractional orbital bombardment system, which is a vehicle that's launched into space that orbits the Earth and then strikes assets on the ground from space. And this is where like a,

a moon base, we start to get into moonwreck, James Bond, but just more permanent installations in space are going to become important. But these things can travel so fast, and they're maneuverable, you know, they're not just like dumb missiles. You could actually steer them from what I understand or retarget them or use AI,

so, you know, they might be able to maneuver around countermeasures at Mach 3, 4, 5, 6, you know, like, these are, I think these ensure a massive amount of damage and a small chance of interception is I think what I'm hearing. And they have so much kinetic energy, you actually don't necessarily need a warhead. So they're moving so fast that if they hit the deck of a,

one of these things hits the deck of an aircraft carrier, God forbid, at Mach 5, it's going to split the thing in half, it's going to go right through it and... Do a lot of damage. Listen, it's a brave new world. I'm glad you're working on this stuff, Evan and the team over there. We wish you continued success in defending the world against adversaries.

Let's hope democracy starts to grow again. You know, this is the one thing that's stagnant. You read any Stephen Pinker or anybody who's an optimist, they're optimistic about so many things in the world. The one thing that is not only not increasing, but in fact declining due to population growth is people living in a democracy. And that's something we really got to work on. And I think for me,

worth fighting for. Call me crazy, but worth fighting for. And I'm glad you guys are on the team. I wish you continued success. And we'll see you all next time on this week in startups. All right, everybody, welcome back to Jam with JCal. What is Jam with JCal? Very simple concept.

I am an investor here in Silicon Valley. I invest in my firm launch, invest in 100 companies a year. Always looking to meet new entrepreneurs. So we decided we do a jam session. What's a jam session? It's where a couple of entrepreneurs, investors get together and talk about, you know,

a startup and try to jam on how to make it more successful. With me today, Anna Molhotra, I got your last name correct, yes? Perfect. I'm good with Indian names. You know, Sri Lankan names.

My friend, Chamacali Hopatia, I teach all of our friends how to say his last name. For some reason, I'm just good with those names. Okay, you understand the premise here, our friends at Doc Tech.

a great. Tech domain name, which is the roam app. dot tech. Everybody can go check that out. I'm going to give you like two or three minutes to pitch me on your startup, and then you tell me what your challenges are, your ideas, and then I'll give you some ideas

and maybe we'll grind out some good ideas and strategies for you to make your Rome app even more successful. Three, two, go. Perfect. Thanks so much for having me, J.Kall. I'm Anna, co-founder, and CEO of Rome and we're working on yard sharing built for dogs. I'm actually not going to pitch you today.

I'm going to go right to our problem. But I will start with a bit of an intro of the product. So meet Rome, the dog. He's a good boy and he loves humans and he's a husky. So he has a lot of energy that he needs to let out every single day. So he's not a menace to society. But because he doesn't get along with other dogs, public dog parks are just not an option for him, which is true for about 70% of dogs, even if the humans don't know it. And unfortunately, his humans live in an apartment and don't have a yard of their own to let Rome play off leash safely. And Rome's humans are part of the growing rate of apartment-dwelling pet owners. And you probably guessed it, but Rome is mine and my co-founder's dog,

and he's the inspiration behind what we're working on, which is yard sharing built for dogs. With Rome, dog owners book a yard near them, and neighbors can rent out their outdoor space and earn with every booking. Simply put, we're a two-sided yardship marketplace. So the challenge we wanted to present to you today, J-Cal, is supply acquisition, specifically. We knew going in that demand will, come really quickly, but we knew that if they go onto the app and they don't see a yard that they

like, they won't have a good experience. And so at Rome, liquidity is mostly based off of what dog owners are looking for in a yard. It comes down to three things. First, is the yard safe for their dog. Next, the yard should be close by. And finally, it's at least big enough for their dog to run around it. And so all of these things determine what makes a good yard for a guest. And so we focused on building as much of this good supply as we could before starting our demand acquisition. And so we we've spent about six months of dedicated effort to grow our supply. We've had only about 20 years to show interest, but we have seven yards in Seattle.

Two of them are too far. One is too small, and one honestly is just mine. We just bought a house. One, however, is a local private dog park business that we just onboarded. And we plan to lean into this a bit more. But I think to build true liquidity and give our demand the options they need, we need to scale our numbers of good yards through consumers and not just businesses. And so some of the strategies we've already tried is reaching out to personal network,

posting on Craigslist and Next Door, all of those have been successful. But direct mail door to door and reaching out to Rover Sitters has not. And of course, we successfully onboarded that one business. And so before I open up to feedback and questions, JCal, I just want to put this challenge in perspective. Our supply growth is in green and you can see that it's fairly low and flat since the beginning of the year. But our demand growth in pink has more of an exponential curve coming up. And much of this is because we onboarded that local business. And as of last week, I'm finally full time on Rome, and I think to be successful, this is a time to just be heads down on growing supply.

We have all this demand coming in, and we want to be able to provide at least one good yard, and we need to do that quickly. So, J-Cal, you know, I know you have experience with marketplaces, you know, perhaps riders, drivers, drivers. So this is my question for you. How to get good yards. This is a great question, and it's one I'm uniquely qualified to answer because we specialize in investing in marketplace. We have Stone Algo, which is a marketplace of diamond sellers and buyers. We have MeowTel, which is a cat sitting, which is very different than dog sitting, and obviously Uber and Thumbtack. We love a great marketplace.

And building supply is really important. And you've heard, you've got Airbnb here for dog runs, brilliant idea. There's a very simple way you buy the supply with minimums, and you have this great benefit that some number of people are already Airbnb owners or VRBO. So what you're going to do is, I want, and we also have Gigster, which rent space as well. Now, they're potentially a competitor because they rent space for a lot of different uses. I have never seen Dog Parker on there.

I think that's kind of niche, and there's some insurance issues or whatever, but generally speaking, I think going to an existing marketplace, that already does Airbnb. and you go and you check out an Airbnb and you look at the Airbnb and you say to yourself, hey, this is interesting. This Airbnb has, you know, a yard and a yard on the side.

They could very easily cut out this yard, fence it in or just put a gate on it, and they can still rent their Airbnb and they can incrementally do this and they know how to manage people, they know how to market, they know how to take pictures. And so you could draft on Airbnb and VRBO's

existing network. That could be such a simple, unlock and when you talk to them you could say hey we're a startup like Airbnb except we're doing this people love meeting founders and they love startups people love entrepreneurs i mean i love you you came on here you got a beautiful idea and the pitch was so crisp and uh the design was so good and you understand your market the charming story of it's your husband and your your dog love it all and so that's what i would do and then what uber did was they cold called drivers.

They went to Google. People don't know these stories I do. They went to Google. They found livery companies, Lincoln Town cars, what they used to call black cars, and they just ground it out. Boom.

And sometimes I think they even took rides and said, hey, I'm with a company Uber. Here's how it works. Can I show you the app? And I think they bought that inventory. They said, hey, we'll give you a minimum of $500 a month

for five rides, guaranteed and we'll pay it to you, you know, for just having the app on. And if you keep the app on for 10 days in a row. Every day we're going to send you, you have it on,

we'll send you 50 bucks, whatever it is. So you can just say to them, like, listen, I want to do this for the month. I'll give you 500 bucks for the month. And if we make above 500, you know,

we'll give you some. And if we don't, we're going to take 30%, you know, we'll just eat the 500. That's the way I would do it. And I think it'll work really well. Have you thought of this strategy? And do you think it will work?

I, so I reached out to Rover Sitters through the Rover app. And we actually got kicked off because, you know, obviously we weren't following the terms of service. Any suggestions on how to reach these Airbnb hosts outside of the platform?

Yeah, many of them, well, two ways. Many of them have their own dedicated websites because they want to route around the fees of Airbnb. Other ones just, they're happy to pay the Airbnb fees, but a lot of times you'll find clues

in their descriptions and they'll call it, Like, you know, if they were in Austin, they'll call it like, I don't know, South of Congress retreat. And you Google South of Congress retreat and you find them on Yelp, you find them in other places, right? So I think there are ways to do that. And then you can just keep opening accounts and doing the thing where you talk to them and just say, you know, hey, I would love to talk to you. here's my number, and then when you talk to them, you know, you're just going to have to deal with that.

The other thing to do is to go to Reddit. And Reddit has a lot of sub-forums, and you could find the one, if you're in Seattle or Austin or Brooklyn, or even like Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. And then you say, hey, I'm looking for a place to run my dog. And I started, and then in the details, like, you know, you kind of float the idea,

start getting people talking about it. And so, you know, it's a little gray, market, you understand the concept of like there's white hat, black hat, gray, black illegal, white hat, legal, gray. Yeah, you're bending the rules a little bit. You can get a little rule bending here and maybe start some conversations on forums and see if you can get, you know, inventory that way. So I think online forums are pretty good for that.

Obviously, next door you tried. I bet you next door worked to a certain extent, maybe. It did. We just need to lean into it a little more. Lean into it. I also think dog walkers could be very interesting for you. And so getting a couple of, of these weirdos, you know what I'm talking about?

Like, these people who love dogs, like, so much, and they get on the ground with, like, six of them, and you see them walking to the dog park with six of them. You know, you might be able to get a dog walker and say, hey, to the dog walker, if I had a dog run here, and there was a staff member there, and there was lemonade and it had four sections, and you could put four dogs in four different sections, man, and this is what a jam session is about, Anna. I'm thinking about this. I'm wondering if you should just find a plot of land

and build 10 pens in it, start selling fucking coffee there, let's go, have some coal brew there, you know, and just sit there all day and let people come into it, and you kind of hack it like that, right? That's another possibility for you. Absolutely.

If you could do a short-term rental, what neighborhood are you doing, Roman? We're in Seattle. Perfect. Yep. Is there a specific area like in Seattle? The neighborhoods we want to target is Queen Anne, if you've heard of it. I haven't.

What is the average home price there? I wonder. One to two million. Okay, perfect. There's a really crummy house that's for rent in that area. That's a dog of a house. Got weird bathrooms and like falling apart. And nobody wants to put their family in there.

And they would only rent it if they really had to because I want to get their kid to the school system. And that person can't rent it. I would go to that person and say, hey, listen, I'm an entrepreneur. Here's what I'm doing. I want to do this business. Would you mind if I rented it for three months and tried

and I'll have insurance and everything? It's nothing for you to worry about. And I'm not going to damage the lawn or anything. And if I do, you know, you got my deposit, you can keep it. And I would actually try doing this in the most central place you could rent, because what is rent of a house there? 5K a month, 4K a month? Yeah, sounds about right.

4 to 5. Okay, let's say it's 5K all in. And then the backyard, you set up pens. How much could that cost to set up a pen? 500 bucks each with some gates you order on Amazon or something. Holy cow, you set up 20 pens there. And then you tell people, hey, I got this place for dogs. And oh, by the way, we also have an upsell.

We have grooming on site and we got an upsell for you for. Because you mentioned somebody had this as a business already, right? There was somebody doing a private for rent dog bar. Correct. So they're a bar slash dog park. Okay, so somebody else had this idea. So we've taken their outdoor, we've taken up their outdoor space for private bookings. Love it.

So here, now, see, now we're starting, this is what a jam session's about. I like doing it. There's something here. You know this concept, third space? You ever hear about that? Third space? I have not. Okay.

There's your house. There's your work. That's one space. That's a second space. Describe for me a third space you could go today. that's not one of those two. If you needed to not be a coffee shop, you got it, you nailed it. Starbucks isn't selling coffee in many cases.

A lot of what Starbucks is selling is a third space. I don't want to be home. I've been cooped up. I hate my boss. He's a complete jerk. He makes me say yes chef to him. He's just overbearing. He talks to me about my career.

He's annoying. Where else can I go? Well, fuck it. I can go to a third space. I get a Starbucks. Put my headphones on. I just jam out there. It's air condition, beautiful fur.

nature with nice room. What's another third space? Give me another third space. Um, the gym. The gym. You got it. Give me another third space. Um, a private dog park where I can get coffee and drinks. Okay. Now we're talking. Now we're talking. So this is like a really interesting business. Also, there are lots that are available. So, you know, somebody's got a parking lot and they're making a thousand bucks a month or two thousand bucks a month on some crummy parking lot. Now, Seattle, I think,'s got a lot of regulations. Is that like a regulation-heavy place? I believe so.

But I do think I have looked at Zillow for just small pots of land, just put a fence up, make it a yard. But it's capital intensive. So that's been the only setback there. So, you know, have you raised money for this idea yet? We have not. We have bootstrapped so far. Okay.

So one of the things about these ideas is, you know, you get into a jam session with an investor like we did here today. We start doing it. Now you can say, hey, you know what? J-Cal kind of pitched me on this. sounds like I could do this for 5K a month why don't I just ask them for 10K a month that's 125K guess what

that's what we give people in our accelerators 125k so you know have you put money into this business yet just a little bit only three to five thousand dollars just cash here and there perfect love it

so and you're a nepo baby you've got a trust fund you're independently wealthy I am not no you want to be rich you want to be powerful absolutely be a legend okay great come with me So my point is, this is why accelerators exist in the world, launch accelerator, tech stars, Y Combinator, etc. The reason they exist is because, you know, people like you have, you know, unbelievable amounts of energy and ideas. And this is a crazy outlier idea.

And we'll, you know, like you got to get started and learn. And so you came to me with that problem of the demand. But as we went back and forth and we volleyed, like playing pickleball, ping pong. tennis I always tell people, man, you know, maybe there's a bigger idea here, which is third space. Maybe where the Starbucks

of dog runs. And the dog who's antisocial is what got us here, just like the couch surfing is what got Airbnb going, but that wedge, maybe we open that up.

And maybe we'll make as much money from the concession and the secondary services this dog training, hey man, if this dog is bad behaved and that's why you're coming here,

well, maybe we have a dog trainer here who's 50 bucks an hour. Okay, man, we've got a lot we can unpack here, grooming, et cetera. Really great idea.

Really great presentation. I like the design. I like the pitch. I like everything about it. Congratulations. Great job. Jamming with J-Cal. Right on a scale of 1 to 10

how helpful this was. Am I allowed to say 11? I mean, I can't tell you what to say. I think the Airbnb thing is going to work. I really think it's going to work. So I want to give it 11. Okay.

I'm going to let you give it 11. It's not for me to judge. I can't imagine coming here and talking to a legendary angel investor who could change your entire life and giving anything less than a 10. But you gave 11, which I give you credit for. You know, last time I did this, the guy was like, oh, I give it a 10. You came out and I'm like, huh? I put one more than 10, right?

Now we're talking. Now we're really jamming. Great job. And you know who else does a great job? My friends at dot tech domains. Can't get a dot com. listen, you're putting $3,000, $5,000 into this, Rome.com, it's not built in a day.

I think about Rome all the time. Roman Empire. Rome.com is a $10 million dollar domain, $5 million domain, four letters in the dictionary, destination, great destination. So, hey, the Rome app.com, great domain. Fantastic.

Dottec.com. That tech also, that signals to me that you get it. The technology does change the world. So shout out to my friends. and we will see you all on the next jamming with jay cow