Village Global's Solarpunk

Mo Islam (@itsmoislam), co-founder of Payload Space, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways:

- There is no doubt that we are in the early stages of the space economy, Mo says.

- The cost to go to Mars will be paid many times over by the young engineers who will be inspired by the mission.

- There are three main buckets in the space economy: space for earth (companies creating products for humans on earth via their space endeavors), space for space (companies serving other companies in space) and beyond earth (“science fiction”-type activities like colonization, mining, and exploration).

- The International Space Station cost $100B to build.

- SpaceX built the Falcon 9 at 1/10th the cost that NASA estimated.

- In the 1960s there were only two space programs but now there are 80+ and they are all trying to get an economic return on investment.

- Mo’s contrarian take is that launch is actually underhyped. Very few companies have a launch vehicle that has made it to orbit with a significant payload capacity.

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Ari Schuler, CEO of goTenna, and Andrea Garrity, Chief Growth Officer of goTenna, join Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon join us on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways:

- goTenna was founded after Hurricane Sandy when a brother and sister didn’t know if the other was safe because the cell network weren’t working. It has since grown into the company that it is today, selling to government as well as consumers.

- Ari and Andrea suggest that startups refrain from complaining or dwelling on how tough the procurement system is to navigate in the US government. They say “pass the test, don’t fight the test.”

- Andrea says that much of innovation is personality driven — finding the right people who will run through walls when everyone else gives up.

- There is plenty that they would change about the government procurement system. If one agency has found a tech useful, other agencies should be able to also use that tech without going through all the paperwork and bureaucracy over again.

- The fact that US doesn’t manufacture much at home and would be stranded if a major war started tomorrow is of concern to them.

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Ian Cinnamon (@iancinnamon), co-founder and CEO of Apex Space, and Max Benassi (@mxbenassi), co-founder and CTO, join Lucas Bagno on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways:

- The cost per kilogram to get things into space has gone down dramatically over the last several years.

- Satellites have two parts: a payload and a bus. The bus is the actual structure of the satellite and despite all the hundreds of billions of dollars invested in launch companies, basically no venture money has gone into satellite bus manufacturing.

- Satellite buses are currently designed from the ground up and assembled by hand in small volumes.

- Apex (apexspace.com) is working on building scalable and reliable satellite buses.

- The founders fundamentally believe that humans will be a multi-planetary species and that in the future all these spacecraft that will be carrying people around the solar system will not be made by hand.

- Despite the economic downturn, there has never been a better time to be a founder.

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Ben Van Roo (@DavidNorthStar), co-founder and CEO of Yurts AI, joins Lucas Bagno on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways:

- The Small Business Innovation Research program was originally developed as a grant program to allow small companies do innovative research. The gene for cystic fibrosis was discovered from the program.

- If you’re a small company and you get an SBIR contract, you should not count on getting a government contract.

- It has been very difficult for software companies to get a program of record contract because that has not been the typical model of defense in the past.

- The nature of war is shifting away from large platforms and big garrison-style bases.

- There have been 20-30 “SBIR mills” that have taken $3.5B combined in phase 1 and 2 contracts. Ben would put hard caps on the amounts that companies can get from the program and the types of companies that can apply to the SBIR program.

- Commercial technology has outpaced the defense industry by far.

- It’s very difficult for small companies to even fill out the forms required for the SBIR program. Making it more friendly for newcomers would make a big difference to the program.

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Christian Brose (@cdbrose), Chief Strategy Officer at Anduril and author of The Kill Chain joins Lucas Bagno on this episode. Takeaways:

- The US military and its procurement system has been built for equipment that is big, heavy, and hard to replace — things like ships and aircraft carriers and tanks.

- Commercial technologies can contribute to a military with equipment that is more agile, lower cost, and easier to replace.

- People in the government are, in 2022, trying to figure out what the military is going to need in 2032. This eliminates incentives for disruption and surprise. The military gets what it wanted, even if what it wanted doesn’t solve the problem.

- It would be ideal to bring capitalism into the procurement process so that there are new incentives and real competition.

- China has been using a systematic, methodical strategy since the 1990s with the aim of displacing the US.

- There has never been a competitor to the US with the scale that China has in more than a century.

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Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT), New York Times columnist and author of The Decadent Society, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways:

- Since the moon landing, we have entered a period of stagnation. Confidence and optimism have declined and culture has entered a repetitive spiral where patterns from the 60s/70s have been repeating themselves.

- Government has become less effective and more gridlocked over time.

- The world’s richest societies are dealing with a population problem. They are not reproducing themselves, which has led to aging societies that are “stable but stuck” because they are resistant to change.

- The internet has been more of a conduit to cultural repetition than people think — old music is often most popular music on streaming services.

- The traditional story of science has been that it triumphed over religion but science emerged from an extremely religious society and it would be no surprise to Ross if as religion decays scientific progress might as well.

- Ross says that we need a renaissance to get ourselves out of the age of decadence — a reaching back into the past while synthesizing all the advancements that have come about in the meantime.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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Raj Shah, Managing Partner at Shield Capital, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways:

- Raj and Shield don’t care whether a founding team has experience selling to government, because the firm can help with that. They evaluate the team, the market and the tech when they’re looking at an investment.

- Ash Carter was the first sitting Secretary of Defense to come to Silicon Valley in decades when he visited to jumpstart new initiatives to encourage startups working with government.

- Raj recommends that startups work with organizations within the government that have a mandate to move quickly.

- If a company decides to work with consultants, ensure that incentives are aligned such that the consultant benefits when the company benefits, rather than the consultant receiving a large payment regardless of the outcome.

- Many more generalist investors have been investing in defense, but it’s a very difficult space to invest in. It takes time for investors to learn the jargon and the players.

- When a company is evaluating and investor, it should ask two primary questions: 1) Does this investor truly understand the customer set? 2) Can this investor be helpful in company building in the boardroom?

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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Mike Brown, former director of the Defense Innovation Unit, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways:

- It can easily take 10-20 years for tech to make its way into the Department of Defense. The Defense Innovation Unit helped speed that process up dramatically.

- Some of the most important technologies being used in the war in Ukraine are commercial technologies. Mike thinks that the Department of Defense should be focusing on commercial technology much more often.

- Many founders don’t realize that government dollars are allocated for specific uses, i.e. marketing, or research and development, and those dollars can’t be used in another area, even within their company.

- Commercial synthetic aperture radar technology used in satellites made a big difference in Ukraine. The US played a large role in developing that game-changing technology and Mike wants to keep it that way.

- It’s estimated that there will be 1000 commercial satellites for every government satellite in the future.

- Defense primes are great at integrating several technologies into a single solution.

- Mike says that CIFEAS should be harmonized with our allies so that China and other countries can’t go to a different country and find the same tech.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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Alex Moore (@AustinGiraffe), investor at 8VC and board member at Palantir, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways:

- Alex was one of the original team members at Palantir. He says that helping build the company helps him pattern match today to find the best founders.

- Defense investing is not like normal VC investing. The usual model of investing $2M, then $10M, then $30M to give a company momentum doesn’t work when you have to deal with budget cycles, lobbying, and politics.

- It typically requires $1B to get a defense company to IPO.

- Alex would like to see procurement officers in the US government be allowed to be more entrepreneurial and for the government itself to move away from rigid line item budgeting, so that it wouldn’t take 2-3 years for high priority items to make it into the budget.

- He would like to radically expand the SBIR program so that more contracts go to startups.

- Governments should be picking winners, in his opinion. The best tech should win the whole market and the government should invest in the one big startup that will deliver massive scaled solutions.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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Nathan Picarsic, co-founder of Horizon Advisory, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways:

- There are 17 rare earth metals that are of immense strategic importance. They are used in a vast array of everyday products like consumer electronics, medical devices, electric vehicles, and more.

- China has a strong influence in this space. They have many mines but are even more dominant downstream — they control much of the processing of these metals and the manufacturing of products from them.

- Nathan says there should be more awareness of the geopolitical risks associated with rare earth metals, there should be more investment in the space within the US, and the US should work with its partners and allies to help secure the supply chain.

- China’s ambitions to control rare earth metals intersect with their Belt and Road initiative and their Made in China 2025 strategies.

- Nathan says that the US needs policy changes to combat this threat, including changes to the tax code to incentivize investment, encouraging more domestic and allied materials in the supply chain, using the Defense Production Act, and monitoring market manipulation by China.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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