Unreasonable

Pádraic Flood isn’t your typical start-up founder, but neither is Aardaia your typical start-up. An Irishman based in Wageningen, the Netherlands, Padraic is a Phd holding plant scientist, domesticating previously wild crops to protect the world’s increasingly fragile protein supply. 

His background is as unusual as it is fascinating, spending the majority of his career in academia and the Max Planck institute, then making the jump into start-ups first at short-lived vertical farming Infarm, before finally founding his own company with co-founder Mike.

Pádraic is potentially the most passionate person I’ve ever met (a feat given the number of founders I spend time with each year), incapable of staying off the topic of plants for more than a few minutes, combining a mellifluous Irish brogue with a wonderful capacity to tell stories, weave in his deep and wide knowledge of everything from ancient history to climate science, and inspire action in the process. 

Aardaia’s focus is replacing the starch and water heavy potato with the nutrient dense, protein rich aardaker - a tuber once enjoyed by Renaissance European populations. From here, who knows where they go, but the journey is already a fascinating one and worthy of a wider audience.

I had the pleasure to meet him back in 2025, going deep on the company before eventually making a small angel investment and I can honestly say I’ve thought about the business at least weekly ever since. As such, Pádraic was a no brainer to interview as our fifth guest on Unreasonable.

In a greenhouse in rainy Wageningen, we covered:

• Why we eat the crops we do, and how our grain obsession is largely down to taxation

• The importance of consistent protein supply in a rapidly changing climate

• What is an aardaker - the forgotten but protein rich tuber that makes its own fertiliser

• What domesticating a wild crop actually requires, and how novel technology can massively speed this up vs. legacy techniques

• His backstory: a pet pig that never was in suburban Dublin, via Germany, trips up African and Eurasian mountains, to the fields of Wageningen

• Why seeds are the closest thing agtech has to software, and why big seed companies wait for startups to prove new crops

• How head and heart interact in his decision making

• Failure as a feature, and why failing fields are exactly what a breeding programme needs

• The hope that comes through re-introducing a crop that could still be eaten in 10,000 years

Timestamps:

• 00:00 — Who is Pádraic Flood?

• 00:53 — Why we eat the crops we do: beer, bread and taxation

• 06:29 — Food systems: victim and villain

• 08:35 — The Green Revolution and the time it bought us

• 11:29 — Meet the aardaker: a forgotten tuber that makes its own fertiliser

• 14:43 — Five times the protein of soy

• 15:55 — Speed-running 10,000 years of domestication

• 21:00 — Why farmers, chefs and markets care

• 26:39 — Why aardaker protein beats soy

• 28:44 — Why big seed companies haven’t done this

• 31:08 — The crops of the future

• 31:38 — New crops or better old ones? 400 million years of untapped evolution

• 35:36 — Growing up in Dublin: trees, botanic gardens and clothes shopping

• 36:41 — The pet pig that never was

• 38:42 — A family of tradespeople: “you’re always self-employed”

• 39:35 — Getting your hands dirty: lab, field and screen

• 42:27 — Botany, Max Planck and the mountains of Africa

• 45:40 — COVID, two toddlers and a change of course

• 49:20 — Lessons from a €600M vertical farming startup

• 51:34 — Head and heart: how he makes decisions

• 54:18 — Failure, doubt and risk tolerance

• 57:06 — When others don’t share your passion

• 1:00:20 — Finding great people in agtech

• 1:03:10 — Why failing fields are good news

• 1:05:45 — Seeing what others miss

• 1:07:57 — Staying hopeful: bailing water on a sinking boat

• 1:10:27 — What success looks like: a crop to last 10,000 years

With a CV that reads like an engineering honour roll, Martin Kubie is a proud Scot with an effervescent and uniquely West Coast US take on ambition and optimism.

He's a co-founder of one of the world's best funded nuclear fusion companies, Proxima Fusion, where he's building on a decade of engineering best practice learned across Cambridge University, McLaren F1, Google X and Wing to develop a totally new stellarator reactor design - arguably one of the most complex engineering challenges currently facing mankind.

He's a lover of life, systems thinker, cycling nut, philosopher engineer, deeply passionate European, and no nonsense leader.

Having watched his incredible trajectory over the last few years, and been consistently fascinated by every conversation I've had with him - it was a no brainer to get him on the podcast.

Over a few beers in London this August, we dug into:

• What the hell nuclear fusion is, and why Proxima is betting on the twisted pretzel stellarator approach
• How AI has supercharged the development of complicated engineering projects
• Why engineering is actually all about communication
• His backstory - from Edinburgh, to London, to San Francisco, and back again
• How engineering and beauty interact with one another

• How to build (and hire for) a high performing, fast iterating culture
• Where Europe can be competitive in the hard tech & energy supremacy races
• The sheer, unbridled joy of working on problems you care about with people you love
• Facing fears and diving off bridges

Timestamps:

• 00:00 — Who is Martin Kubie?
• 01:06 — A €411M funding round: what Proxima actually does
• 01:56 — Stellarator vs tokamak: fusion's religious war
• 04:40 — W7X: the €2bn machine that changed the game
• 07:04 — Alpha and the road to net energy gain
• 07:55 — How do you iterate on a machine you only build once?
• 13:40 — The best AI-utilising hardware company in the world
• 16:50 — Edinburgh, Renishaw, and the leap into engineering
• 19:50 — Mrs Brown, Cambridge, and failing mocks
• 21:15 — McLaren: the dream job
• 22:30 — California, Google X, and betting on a junior Brit
• 24:50 — The linear path ends: saying no to NVIDIA
• 28:10 — The wedding: two days in the corner with a friend
• 30:20 — The hot air balloon: engineering and beauty
• 31:58 — Dyson hand dryers and why version one is always wrong
• 34:30 — Make the car go faster: lessons from F1
• 35:55 — The talking monkey: focus on the hard bit
• 37:30 — "If it's not used, it's worthless"
• 38:22 — Engineering is a communication problem
• 39:24 — Bricks and skyscrapers
• 41:06 — Blunt but safe: from confrontation to curiosity
• 43:04 — Telling good from great: how Proxima hires
• 47:02 — Culture, blameless reviews, and leading from the front
• 50:12 — The European flag: why he came home
• 52:20 — Competing with Boston and Shenzhen on European terms
• 55:21 — What actually scares him
• 56:45 — The bridge in Zurich
• 58:30 — Quick-fire: cheese, McLaren, Lego, and what comes after fusion

Six time founder (2x unicorns), 150x angel, 20x LP, +10x advisor, 2x Dad, 1x husband and infinite times deeply kind, authentic, and hilarious human being - Maex Ament is one in a million.

He’s built massive companies like Taulia and Centrifuge in the fintech space, backed dozens of start-ups in everything from geo-engineering to AI-image generation, and has remained not just deeply passionate about technology, but joyous in everything he does through the few ups and many downs of a +30 year career in start-ups and technology. So much so that he’s decided to go again, raising another $10m pre-seed for Causa Prima at the age of 51.

Having worked with him for a year building a (now extinct) fund, Max could think of no better a guest to add some grey hair, hilarity and bearded wisdom to our so far relatively young roster of guests.

In sunny Madrid, we dug into:

• How he’s gone at +150 angel investments, 6 companies and 1 fund with the same irrepressible energy each time
• How he stays motivated in his 50s with financial security and external validation locked down
• What failure looks and feels like and how he bounces back
• How he’s become the truly authentic version of himself, and the work requited to get there
• How he looks for co-founders and new ideas for companies
• The importance of taking genuine stances, even with B2B marketing
• Why being a carpenter was a necessary side quest between start-ups
• How each business has required finding different internal and external motivation
• The arbitrage of building global businesses from lesser ecosystems

Timestamps:

• 00:00 Cold open: who is Maex Ament?
• 01:03 Kaiserslautern, an Atari, and building video-games at 12
• 02:35 Six companies and a through-line of invoices
• 05:19 How to stay excited about "boring" for 25 years
• 06:44 Building something that lasts
• 08:49 The skills, and learning to sell in America
• 12:51 Failure, and how he bounces back
• 14:43 Slowing down vs doubling down
• 15:21 The carpenter who became a crypto founder
• 17:48 Why he can't build alone
• 19:16 Why all his friends come through work
• 20:00 Finding an idea: the Madrid penthouse method
• 22:11 Falling down the geo-engineering rabbit hole
• 25:02 The Stardust story
• 27:17 The day we met, and being unmistakably yourself
• 30:35 Why you want 50% of people to hate whatever you do
• 31:29 The most interesting man in accounts payable
• 36:33 Building a team and hiring for excellence
• 38:18 How company-building has changed for the fourth time
• 41:35 When experience becomes a commodity
• 45:10 A global business that happens to be in Spain
• 47:03 Faster at 51 than ever
• 47:36 On age, and the fear of settling
• 48:50 What he's still chasing
• 49:50 The chip on the shoulder, company by company
• 52:12 Work, family, and the sacrifice myth
• 54:46 Quickfire

There are very few people out there like Nantte and Ernesti. University dropouts, wise beyond their (limited) years, and building what could well be the next big Nordic tech sensation, as well as a model for where higher education goes in the AI era.

FR8 is a shifting, mercurial beast - separately described as a hacker hotel, a finishing school for precocious young builders, Hogwarts for hyper ambitious young people, and a place where you can find your personal religion.

What is clear however is the cult-like status is has picked up in an incredibly brief period, the passion the two founders bring to the table, and the unbelievable talent magnet it has become.

As such, we could think of no better two people for our second outing as Unreasonable. We spent an hour with the guys in the magnificent board room of their Helsinki palace (no joke) talking meaning, purpose, reframing ambition and what the future of education could look like. Marvellous fun all round and we hope an equally enjoyable listen or watch.

We covered:

* Almost getting killed by presidential bodyguards at Davos

* Negotiating a 12,000 square metre palace in central Helsinki for a fraction of what anyone reasonable would have paid

* Why “the best people don’t need help” - and what that means for how they run cohorts

* The asymmetry that makes unreasonable bets rational - why the odds don’t change but the outcomes do

* Why manifestation isn’t some mystical idea - and more a rigorous observation about how ambition actually moves resources

* How to Americanise Europeans (on sales) while keeping the values and integrity

* Creating community and meaning and how this enables people to do their best work

Timestamps:

* 00:00 Cold open: who are Nantte & Ernesti?

* 03:18 What is FR8? Hogwarts for the hyper-ambitious

* 04:29 Why Nantte said yes: visiting the stars

* 06:57 A new model for education in the AI era

* 09:29 Walking into fundraising rooms with no track record

* 11:23 Turning crazy vision into daily action

* 15:25 Speed-running ambition: can you skip the levels?

* 18:07 Inside a FR8 cohort: 30 people, 3 months, no rules

* 21:05 Selecting a FR8 Maverick

* 23:39 A home for outcasts

* 26:34 Why FR8 only takes the young

* 32:48 Unbundling the university

* 35:11 From mansion to hotel to 12,000m² palace

* 38:46 What manifestation actually means

* 41:24 When belief breaks: the dark days

* 43:23 "You can always send me an email"

* 44:26 Owing it to humanity

* 45:52 European bureaucracy and getting through walls

* 47:09 The Davos story

* 51:34 Why build in Finland

* 54:29 The European emigration question

* 58:43 Quickfire

Welcome to Unreasonable - a podcast about ambition.

In our first episode, we chat to the inimitable Harvey Hodd of Rivan Industries - a company building modular solar powered direct air capture-> e-fuels systems to tackle carbon, reliance on dirty natural gas and energy security.

Harvey is a third time founder, ex-professional footballer, next level autodidact and thoroughly good human being. He's raised +£40m to date for Rivan from top tier investors including Plural (Wise Founders), the Collison Brothers (Stripe), Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, IQ Capital and more.

He's also the perfect introductory guest for Unreasonable - someone who pursues utterly unreasonable goals in a genuinely unreasonable manner. Inspiration for anyone doing anything, anywhere.

We covered:

• Why Harvey spent 18 months alone in a factory before hiring anyone
• Why Rivan doesn't hire from elite universities — and what they ask instead
• The kettle, the go-kart, and the Olympic swimmers: what "does it make the boat go faster" actually looks like in practice
• Why aiming for 70% right is better than 100%
• "No miracles required" — why synthetic fuels can work today

Timestamps:

• 00:00 Introduction
• 00:35 How to choose a good quest
• 04:22 Making the complex, simple and starting from base principles
• 07:11 Learning how to think
• 08:33 The reality of learning through failure
• 09:09 Hiring for attitude, not CV
• 10:50 Reframing getting stuck
• 14:01 From driven to RIVAN
• 16:05 Sustaining performance at a consistently high level
• 18:17 Optimising for chaos
• 19:58 Being fast vs being right
• 21:38 The kettle and the go-kart
• 23:37 Translating a very big vision into something people can understand
• 26:17 Clarity of communication as a key founder skillset
• 27:44 Vertical Integration: A Strategic Necessity
• 27:44 Setting a standard for excellence without external input
• 29:29 The false dichotomy of perfection vs. momentum
• 31:00 Using proof of work to attract top talent
• 33:02 How every new hire needs to add to cultural density
• 35:08 Surrounding oneself with great people
• 36:44 Work-life balance
• 39:04 Delegating decision making and removing key man risk
• 39:57 Learning and Adapting in Complex Environments
• 39:58 (Not) thinking about failure
• 41:42 The RIVAN system explained
• 45:28 Having one clear KPI for the business
• 47:39 Making synthetic fuels ubiquitous
• 49:26 Announcing the round and broader fundraising strategy
• 52:41 Quick fire finish