Ventures

This is my first conversation with Mike Grace, co-founder and CEO of Longshot.

Longshot is building giant space guns.

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Technological inertia
(00:02:07) Why rockets won
(00:04:36) The V3 cannon
(00:07:48) Von Braun and the space race
(00:09:53) Why a better rocket isn't enough
(00:16:48) Survive until you're lucky
(00:18:21) Making a dent in history
(00:20:10) A thousand new Americas
(00:26:26) Why wealthy societies resist new things
(00:35:07) Going bankrupt
(00:37:41) Making every kilo count
(00:40:48) Companies become their incentives
(00:45:00) SpaceX dominance
(00:48:28) Reputation matters
(00:50:38) Capital as a moat
(00:52:42) Making the gun cheaper
(00:55:11) Real estate requirement
(01:03:21) The path to orbit
(01:06:55) Spend money to save time
(01:15:22) Mike's hardest decision

This is my first conversation with Laurence Allen, co-founder and CEO of Terranova.

Terranova builds robots that raise land by autonomously injecting wood chips underground. The company is preparing to expand its facility to 26,000 square feet and put its machines in the hands of construction contractors.

The ambition is to protect cities from flooding and expand entire countries' coastlines.

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Increasing Injections

(00:01:47) Why wood chips

(00:06:31) Building robots from steel

(00:10:16) Economics of Terraforming

(00:13:02) Direct air capture economics

(00:16:39) Constraints

(00:19:06) Owning your own destiny

(00:22:33) The hardware J curve

(00:26:22) Expanding Terranova's factory

(00:27:36) Construction is the bottleneck

(00:30:18) Winning with your friends

(00:34:49) Printing land

(00:38:22) Land arbitrage at scale

(00:40:49) Scaling Terranova

(00:42:58) Building a generational company

(00:47:17) The cost of hiring fast

(00:51:18) Laurence’s hardest decision

This is my first conversation with Akhil Voorakkara, co-founder and CEO of Ulysses.

Ulysses is building the ocean company.

Timestamps

(00:00:00) An engineering family

(00:04:58) Independent thinking

(00:10:03) Ruthless prioritisation

(00:13:27) Put the fries in the bag

(00:23:09) Scaling speed and ownership

(00:31:25) Building the ocean company

(00:32:36) True vertical Integration

(00:36:12) Be your own biggest customer

(00:37:45) Role of a CEO

(00:39:49) Building Ulysses HQ2

(00:46:35) The blue wall

(00:50:25) The Ulysses subscription

(00:53:51) Scaling the fleet

(00:57:05) Opening the ocean to civilisation

(00:58:02) Akhil's hardest decision

This is my first conversation with Robin Renz, co-founder and CEO of Hyperdrives.

Hyperdrives is manufacturing super-efficient, highly power-dense, low-cost electric motors by solving their cooling problem. Their new engineering facility enables the company to iterate on the production line for the first time, in pursuit of manufacturing millions of motors.

Timestamps:

(00:00:00) Hyperdrives

(00:03:35) Ambition exceeding comfort

(00:06:02) Growing up in a car workshop

(00:07:37) Making electric motors smaller and cheaper

(00:10:41) Innovation in electric motors

(00:12:05) The heat constraint

(00:17:54) Building for the masses

(00:21:30) Electric vs combustion

(00:24:05) Products vs licensing

(00:27:03) Working with automotive OEMs

(00:34:18) Electrifying mines, ships and aircraft

(00:40:05) Chinese urgency

(00:49:40) Faster iteration wins

(00:51:55) Feedback as a founder

(00:54:22) Choosing the right partner

(00:57:54) Scaling production and the team

(01:00:55) Hire for attitude. Train for skill.

(01:03:30) Radical ownership

(01:08:55) Reindustrialising Europe

(01:11:23) Robin's hardest decision

This is my first conversation with Mollie Claypool, co-founder and CEO of AUAR.

AUAR builds and operates microfactories that produce timber panels for homebuilding. The team is preparing its first V3 deployments from its 11,000-square-foot facility in London, working toward deploying 1,000 microfactories by 2030.

Timestamps:

(00:00:00) Why the West has a housing shortage

(00:03:55) Timber and microfactories

(00:07:50) Prove by doing

(00:10:12) The Capex problem

(00:12:49) What homebuilders care about

(00:14:37) MasterBuilder

(00:19:37) Winning over builders and site managers

(00:21:42) Redesigning the team for scale

(00:24:27) Building the factory that builds factories

(00:30:06) Filtering for ownership

(00:37:39) Necessity of good design

(00:39:05) Renovating homes and old warehouses

(00:43:44) Biggest unexpected problems

(00:46:50) Deciding what needs her attention

(00:50:28) Being a one-two punch

(00:53:29) Thinking in parts and systems

(00:57:40) Not being the hero

(00:59:32) Scaling to 1,000 microfactories by 2030

(01:03:23) Rabid Urgency

(01:06:12) Her mother’s only advice

My first conversation with Julian Rothenbuchner, co-founder and CEO of Tumbleweed.

In June 2026, Tumbleweed became the first Austrian commercial satellite, building and launching Oasis Alpha in under nine months, as they scale to industrialising microgravity.

Timestamps

(00:00:00) The anti-gravity machine

(00:02:49) Enduring pain and complexity for simplicity

(00:08:41) Building a satellite in nine months

(00:13:07) Gradient descent and highly capable people plus attritional environments

(00:15:52) Oasis Alpha Pre-sales

(00:17:43) Pre-certification

(00:20:14) Convincing SpaceX

(00:22:53) Integration hell

(00:24:22) Antigravity as an industrial resource

(00:28:57) Not becoming a pharma company

(00:33:28) Filtering for scary

(00:36:36) Gradient descent to Mars

(00:44:48) Accelerating cycle time

(00:50:27) Scaling to larger projects

(00:56:30) Irreverence for the impossible

(01:04:23) Delete before optimising

(01:06:45) Failure is tutition

My first conversation with Marnix Meersman, co-founder and CEO of Arqus Aerospace.

Arqus is developing lasers to dazzle and destroy spacecraft

Timestamps

(00:00:00) Modern warfare's evolution

(00:05:35) Becoming an aerospace company

(00:06:45) Lindbergh

(00:09:31) Using anger to move faster

(00:10:55) How satellites are attacked

(00:18:48) A 1% hit rate is enough

(00:23:09) Why blind drones cannot return home

(00:25:12) Making the laser small enough to carry

(00:27:19) Bullshit radar

(00:39:17) Packing the company into a Tesla

(00:42:27) Bringing space qualification in-house

(00:44:29) Building a clean room in six days

(00:46:48) Manufacturing terrestrial lasers

(00:51:43) Space-Weapons

(00:57:06) Leaving the European Space Agency (ESA)

(00:58:24) Optimising for cool

(01:00:04) Space Police

(01:05:43) Building Earth's suit of armour

(01:11:45) The space-weapons arms race

(01:15:11) R&D on Supercontinuum lasers

My First Conversation with Ali Mitchell, Odyssey Ventures

Timestamps

00:00:00 Work is life

00:02:23 Building the Ninian oil platform

00:09:10 The big red bus theory

00:11:47 Learning human clock speed at dunnhumby

00:16:22 Betting everything on Huddle.com

00:20:21 Mortgaging the house for Flow

00:23:01 Garrett Lord’s extreme grit

00:25:46 Slaughtering sacred cows

00:35:08 Booting up Silicon Roundabout

00:39:14 Bringing Silicon Valley back to London

00:42:38 The era of the PhD founder

00:44:55 Backing founders, not technology

00:47:39 Turning a farm into a deep-tech laboratory

00:49:40 Running on startups & adrenaline

00:51:49 The body is a battery

00:53:43 Buying back the Handshake bet

00:56:22 Putting founders before the fund

00:58:00 Staying the underdog

00:59:26 Global on day one

01:01:17 The never-ending game

My First Conversation with Mark Stokes, Co-founder & CEO of Magdrive

Timestamps

00:00:00 Studying classics

00:02:14 Meeting Dr Thomas Clayson

00:05:07 Why satellite propulsion stopped evolving

00:07:01 Turning metal into plasma with pulsed power

00:11:28 The Battle of Salamis

00:13:27 Building the shipping company for space

00:16:08 Building gas stations at Lagrange points

00:18:00 Science fiction that inspired Magdrive

00:19:09 Iain M. Banks & post-scarcity abundance

00:21:41 Why humans should live in orbital habitats

00:24:38 Catalan independence & the Spanish Civil War

00:31:10 Moving entire cities through space

00:38:19 Scaling from physics to manufacturing

00:41:15 Go Rogue mission

00:44:29 Shrinking production from six months to six weeks

00:47:21 Powering space construction with nuclear reactors

00:48:15 Hiring Oxford’s nuclear fusion engineers

00:52:17 Radical independence

00:55:21 Saying yes, then figuring it out

00:56:47 Testing every engineering brainwave

00:58:13 Giving engineers autonomy

00:59:49 Art as an antidote to stagnation

My first conversation with co-founders Fran Infante Aguirre & Tom Hubregtsen of Voltrac.

Timestamps

00:00:00 The Farming Labour Crisis

00:01:49 Farming as a Service

00:03:27 Leaving the family business

00:04:57 Building the first chassis in the family shed

00:08:02 Hardware at software speed

00:13:25 Rebuilding the tractor from first principles

00:16:47 Building Thor in ten months

00:19:56 Raising €7 million with a broken shoulder

00:29:55 Breaking hard problems into small steps

00:34:08 Negotiating with kidnappers

00:40:15 Stress testing the vehicle

00:41:27 One vehicle for farms & front lines

00:46:10 Putting Thor on Mars

00:50:02 Road to 100

00:52:43 Learning manufacturing from Grandad

00:56:12 The dog years

01:01:54 A Language of Their Own

01:08:15 The Limits of Velocity

01:10:31 Killing John Deere

Links

Voltrac: https://voltrac.eu/

Fran Infante Aguirre: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fran-infante-aguirre/

Tom Hubregtsen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thubregtsen/