We The Builders

This is a special edition of We The Builders recorded at The Hill & Valley Forum 2026. Billy cofounded Regent, building all-electric Seaglider vessels for fast, safe, and low-cost coastal transportation. The company is backed by Founders Fund, Lockheed Martin, Mark Cuban, Caffeinated Capital, 8090 Industries and more.

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Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction 04:45 - Dual-Use Framework 08:45 - Strategizing for the Indo-Pacific 12:45 - Reinvigorating American Shipbuilding: Addressing the Competitiveness Gap 16:45 - Rhode Island's Maritime Hotbed: Proximity to Talent and Capital 20:45 - Hardware as a Durable Moat

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Intro

Seth Winterroth is a Partner at Eclipse where he has been investing in the physical world for over a decade. They now have fresh $1.3B in funds taking their AUM (Assets Under Management) to ~$10B to build and invest in critical technologies in the physical world.

His portfolio alone is collectively worth over $13B and includes:

* Wayve - valued at $8.6B as of their last round. Their global team is advancing AV2.0, a next-generation embodied AI system that can learn from real-world experience and large-scale data, and generalize across cities, vehicles, and driving conditions worldwide.

* True Anomaly - valued at $1.5B as of their last round. The only defense technology company focused exclusively on space defense. It designs and builds spacecraft, payloads and software for space superiority

* Mytra - reportedly valued at $2B. It is a software-defined automation platform built around three modular components: The bot, storage, and operator interface. All the intelligence lives in the bot and software layer; the storage structure is commodity steel. That architecture eliminates the lifts, cranes, and conveyors that make traditional automation systems rigid and prone to cascading failures, and replaces fixed workflows with a platform that can be configured and changed in software

* Forsight Robotics - reportedly valued at $500m. The company aims to bridge the worldwide gap in the accessibility to eye surgery and help over one billion people who suffer from preventable vision impairment.

* Ursa Major - reportedly valued at $600m. An aerospace and defense company delivering flight-proven capabilities for hypersonics, solid rocket motors, space mobility and launch.

*The company descriptions are sourced from Eclipsed website and the valuations are sourced from publicly available reporting.

In this conversation we cover:

* The talent density in frontier tech is growing, fueled by leaders and decision-makers trained at organizations like SpaceX, Tesla, and Rivian, alongside software builders “bored” of the “long tail of SaaS”.

* Eclipse’s investment framework prioritizes “market, market, market,” alongside a strong team and a differentiated technology-driven product.

* The firm focuses on taking engineering execution risk—following the Jeff Bezos adage that “hard is our moat”—while actively avoiding science risk or net new invention risk.

* Seth is excited about distributing large foundation models into physical world applications for multi-variable problems, but notes that hard engineering execution challenges must be solved to proliferate this capability.

* He defines Eclipse’s opportunity set as every problem that exists in the physical world, viewing the 80% of global GDP in that domain as an unbelievably large opportunity.

* A key insight for early-stage teams is the willingness to ship, knowing they will get “punched in the face” during the pilot phase. The most important factor for success is how teams incorporate those messy learnings into Gen 2 and attack the next phase with vigor.

* Seth’s most contrarian view is that “physical AI” is currently “a lot of hype,” and that humanoids and general-purpose models for robotics are “ninth-inning robotics,” suggesting the category will unfold through an iterative grind, not a sudden “ChatGPT moment”.

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Timestamps

00:00 - Introduction 02:14 - Breaking down techno-optimist Tech Twitter04:45 - Rediscovering Silicon in Silicon Valley 08:45 - The SpaceX and Tesla Training Grounds 12:45 - Hard is the Moat: Engineering Execution vs. Science Risk 16:45 - Institutionalizing a Thesis-Driven Culture 20:45 - Partnering with Highly Prepared Minds 24:45 - The Wave Series A Case Study 28:45 - The Willingness to Ship: Managing the "Gen 1" Failure 32:45 - Managing Design Partners and Expectations 36:45 - The Hard Reality of Defense Tech Go-To-Market 40:45 - The First Chapter of Company Formation 44:45 - The Mytra Thesis 48:45 - The Build-Co Strategy at Eclipse 52:45 - First Principles Thinking and Avoiding the Small Idea Trap 56:45 - Why General Purpose Robotics is a Ninth-Inning Game 1:00:45 - Breaking the Industrial Food Complex: A Decade-Long Opportunity 1:04:45 - Finding Value After the Hype 1:08:45 - The Rigor of Capital Allocation and Returns 1:12:45 - Reindustrialization: Market Dynamics and National Security 1:16:45 - Sustaining Long-Term Value and Discipline 1:20:45 - History, Podcasting, and the Next Generation of SaaS

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us

Intro

Cobi Blumenfeld-Gantz cofounded Chapter with Vivek Ramaswamy. This is his second appearance on the show and is a special format we recorded at the Hill & Valley Forum. The company is backed by Narya Capital, Generation (Al Gore), XYZ Capital, Addition (Lee Fixel), Peter Thiel, Kivu Ventures and more.

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Timestamps

00:00 - Introduction01:08 - The rise and fall of empires, and the arc of history04:38 - The “spin-off” to the British Empire06:44 - Stagnation 07:43 - Scientific advances vs. Systemic decline in the American health landscape09:01 - Why insurance carriers aren’t paid to keep you healthy?11:06 - Administrative bloat and the “jobs program” reality 13:21 - How Silicon Valley and D.C. began working together?14:15 - Why the government moves slowly by design?15:37 - The ongoing fight for private sector procurement17:24 - Addressing the societal implications of a growing senior population18:41 - The loss of learned wisdom from elders19:54 - Finding purpose without a job20:21 - Helping seniors navigate modern technology and finance21:06 - Closing thoughts

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us

Intro

Rob Leclerc is the Cofounder and General Partner of AgFunder which is $300m AUM venture fund focused on food and agriculture. He also started AgFunder News which has over 100,000 subscribers and is the largest publication and source of news for the world of venture and startups focused on food & ag.

In this conversation we discuss how media and venture have always gone together and how Rob was able to use that as a platform to build the venture business. We also dive into his personal story of why and how he got started in venture capital having no experience in the space.

What people might not know is that AgFunder actually started out as a crowdfunding platform for food & ag startups and was part of the 500 Global accelerator.

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Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction

01:55 - From being un-hirable to a PhD and starting a VC Fund

04:03 - The 2008 financial crisis and exposure to the Agriculture space

07:47 - Going from computer science and philosophy to food and bio

13:36 - The “Miserable Failure” of Rob’s first startup

16:40 - Building the TechCrunch for AgTech

22:28 - Going from media to venture and finding your own voice

27:44 - 500 Global and the million-dollar demo day

31:19 - Transitioning from Broker to Principal

37:50 - “Trust can’t be rushed”, how that applies to fundraising

42:21 - AgFunder’s business model and keeping storytelling alive

51:35 - The evolution of AgFunder’s thesis

1:00:26 - Managing customer relationships

1:04:55 - What builds founder resilience

1:08:58 - The true definition of agency and how do you inculcate that in kids

1:13:48 - What’s more important agency or intelligence?

1:14:56 - Rob’s vision for 2050

1:21:42 - Humanoid Robotics and the “Specialized vs. General” debate

1:26:08 - Rob’s lessons in storytelling

1:30:51 - Reputation through Reps: The intentional practice of the pitch

1:38:04 - Closing questions, how does Rob build relationships

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us

Intro:

Leland Miller is the Cofounder of China Beige Book, which according to some media reports has been labelled as a firm having more data on China than even the CIA. He is also a Commissioner on the U.S.-China Economic & Security Review Commission. He has advised Fortune 50 CEOs and top government officials including the Congress on China.

In this conversation we talk about:

—> The espionage in the tech industry from universities to companies

—> Why China has long-term strategy for Taiwan where they expect the West to self-implode

—> How U.S banks including JP Morgan were partially responsible for covering up China’s real economic condition

—> How China fabricated their GDP

—> What happened to the great China opportunity?

—> China’s military readiness

And more. Full episode now available wherever you get your podcasts.

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Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction01:26 - China 101: The death of the “China Dream” 09:26 - Surveillance, residency permits, and the reality of internal environment 11:04 - Supply chain leverage: Why critical minerals are national security 13:50 - The pharmaceutical threat: Chinese control of U.S. medication supply chains 16:34 - Strategic decoupling: Reshoring and friendshoring national security nexuses 19:45 - Dependence on Chinese foundational materials 24:21 - The military balance in the Pacific: Why everyone thinks they would lose 27:56 - Command readiness: Xi Jinping’s military purges and wartime memory loss 31:13 - Geostrategy in the neighborhood: Japan, Philippines, and missile distance 35:20 - Made in China 2025: The fourth industrial revolution playbook 37:46 - Reindustrialization hurdles: Shipbuilding, chips, and bipartisan focus 39:50 - Breaking the rare earth processing monopoly 43:54 - An Economic Security Strategy: A 5-point master plan for the US 49:19 - IP theft and clones: The deep-rooted issue of technological espionage 52:01 - The STEM dilemma: Training talent in the U.S. and letting them go back55:27 - China’s compute disadvantage and U.S incentives 01:00:23 - The Food and Energy problem01:06:12 - Xi Jinping’s psyche: Paranoia, time horizons, and the Taiwan ticking clock 01:10:56 - Economic sensibilities: Global frustration with the imbalanced trade model 01:16:35 - Why China doesn’t drive global growth 01:19:02 - GDP Fabrication: Trillon-Yuan exaggeration 01:28:41 - Tracking credit and stimulus in a “non-commercial” system 01:33:59 - AI, Quantum, and Biotech integration 01:45:18 - Counterbalancing industrial policy01:58:19 - Why China uses 12x more robots than prediction 02:08:52 - Why Xi doesn’t care about consumers 02:14:35 - Closing thoughts

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us

Special conversation with Shahin Farshchi at Hill & Valley Forum 2026 now available wherever you get your podcasts. Lux Capital has deployed over $7B in deeptech and have been accelerating us towards SciFi future for over 20 years.

Shahin has invested in companies manufacturing in space (Varda), building autonomous transportation systems (Zoox), providing robots as a service (Formic), automating industries (Covariant), using space to revolutionize the Earth observation industry (Planet), 3D printing rockets (Relativity Space) and many more.

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us

WTB Intro

Narya keeps a low profile so perhaps you might not see them pop up on your Twitter or Linkedin but they have quietly worked their way to having what is probably the best unicorn hit rate of any active fund that I know of since 2020. Now, I haven’t checked with the firm but from our last conversation I know they make 2-3 investments a year, if you go and check out their website and see the list of featured companies, a simple Google search on those companies and their publicly reported valuations reveals that at least 7 of them are likely unicorns, i.e have at least or close to a $1 billion valuation or have achieved a billion dollar market cap at least once if public. Some of this is based on public reporting and the rest is an estimate based on funding rounds.

Lets say they averaged 3 investments a year since founding in 2020 and maybe went over the average in a couple of years, assuming they have made around 18-20 investments, that is an insane ~35% unicorn hit rate. It is hard to know without knowing the total amount of investments made and private valuations are hardly reported on with the exception of any press releases from the company itself or a credible source like TechCrunch officially reporting on a round but based on publicly available information, it is safe to assume it is somewhere around that mark.

These companies include:

* Chapter

* Kriya Therapeutics

* True Anomaly

* Branch Insurance

* Hallow

* Strive Asset Management (public)

* Rumble (public)

For reference check out this graph below that Ilya Strebulaev posted 7 months ago on unicorn hit rates of venture firms since 2020, this is based on research from Stanford GSB (Link here). This graph only counts pre-unicorn investments in unicorns. Firebolt Ventures had the best hit rate at 10% (13 unicorns in 129 investments), Greenoaks is at number two with a hit rate of 9.4% (11 unicorns in 117 investments), IVP is number 3 with 9.2% (11 in 120 investments).

Narya is notably not in the list but it is perhaps because they lay low and quietly go about funding the next best companies. Perhaps why Colin had not done a long form podcast before I got him on the show last year but I am convinced other firms, LPs and founders can learn from their strategy and way of doing business.

This episode is a deep dive into topics I wanted to cover more from Episode 9 of We The Builders where he gave a masterclass on Thesis Driven Investing. Narya is unique in the sense that it is very concentrated for an early stage fund, their focus is Seed to Series A, they only do 2-3 high conviction investments in a year.

Colin brought up in our last conversation that the most interesting ideas die because of lack of business model innovation. In this episode we cover some examples of business model innovation and how the firm supports on that front, we cover framework for effective private company board meetings, what competent founders look like, Narya’s masterplan and more.

They are relatively new, with what is an elite team (easy to say in hindsight) but at the time it was a group of people making contrarian unpopular bets of their era. Whether that is investing outside Silicon Valley, betting on reindustrialization as a category in 2021, investing in religion as category when it was taboo, going against ESG before Blackrock followed or betting on a new free speech social platform before the Twitter acquisition by Elon. Narya has been what friend of the show Mike Maples would describe as contrarian and right.

In case you didn’t check out our last episode, I will do a reintroduction. Colin Greenspon cofounded Narya with JD Vance, now Vice President of the United States. The firm was founded with the thesis of addressing America’s most acute problems by investing in the frontiers of science & technology solving for the future. He now runs the firm with Falon Donohue (Cofounder of Reindustrialize) and Peter Thiel.

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Timestamps:

Timestamps:00:00 - Introduction02:58 - Mimeticism in venture05:05 - Why Narya stays lean and nimble08:26 - The apprenticeship model and changing team dynamics13:32 - The best founders figure it out16:35 - Diversity of thought on the cap table24:19 - The true purpose of a board seat27:18 - Conviction-based capital allocation31:02 - Business model innovation36:16 - Bespoke customer engagement42:51 - How design partners prove product-market fit47:42 - Discovering the exact problem53:10 - Why showing up in person still matters55:35 - Investing in need-to-solve problems01:01:30 - The holding company structure 01:04:47 - Defining ambition01:10:37 - Identifying competent founders01:19:57 - True business leadership01:29:11 - Building in public 01:35:20 - The right way to run a productive board meeting01:52:49 - Network effects in enterprise02:01:08 - The Narya Master Plan

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us

Special episode from Hill & Valley Forum 2026: A conversation with Dmitri Alperovitch Cofounder of CrowdStrike (a $100B company), Silverado Policy Accelerator and Author of World on the Brink

Dmitri has correctly predicted three wars including the Russia-Ukraine war and has a prediction for China going after Taiwan.

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Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction00:53 - The mission of Silverado Policy Accelerator 02:00 - Predictions of war and the state of Ukraine - Russia conflict02:31 - Timeline for conflict in Taiwan and the 2028 elections04:15 - Operation Causeway: Why Taiwan is a complex military feat 06:40 - High stakes of failure for Xi Jinping08:21 - The evolving relationship between Silicon “Valley” and “Hill” 09:19 - Building in defense tech 10:56 - Military-grade vs. Consumer-grade12:38 - System integration over “widgets”: Lessons from the front 15:03 - New Defense Tech and Old Primes 16:44 - Mapping the Next American Century and neutralizing threats 19:40 - The American industrial base compared to Russia22:50 - The need to reindustrialize America24:39 - Advice to founders

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us

Special Episode of We The Builders from Hill & Valley Forum 2026: Conversation with David Friedberg on rise and fall of empires, the state of US economy, robots as an economic platform, what has changed since the Winning AI Race Summit featuring President Trump, reindustrialization, the end of institutional education and of course the California bankruptcy.

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Timestamps:

01:21 - Shifting landscape between Silicon Valley and DC

02:51 - AI has become a political attack vector

04:46 - Late-stage empires and the impact of national debt

07:03 - Potential for AI to rewrite the story of US economy

08:26 - AI’s recent performance and productivity gains

10:03 - Bullish outlook on humanoid robots

11:16 - Robots as a platform for economic mobility

13:41 - Reindustrialization and energy production challenges

15:15 - The “functionally bankrupt” status of California

16:50 - The declining value of institutional education

18:46 - Personalized AI-driven tutoring as the future

20:01 - Emerging private sector models for education

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us

Intro

New SciFi writing and film started declining at the end of the 20th century and we have seen a continued decline in the first quarter of the 21st century. Sci-fi is and always has been the source of inspiration for a better future. It is where the greatest builders of our time got inspired to work on the hardest problems of their era. Whether it was Star Trek, Star Wars or the Foundation Series, if you talk to entrepreneurs building frontier technologies or products; people like Elon Musk, Brett Adcock, Peter Beck, Blake Scholl, Sam Altman, you will likely hear about one of these series as a childhood inspiration.

Friend of the show, Packy McCormick (Episode 14) did a post called the SciFi Idea Bank which lists about 3,000 ideas that haven’t been brought to life. I think one of the biggest reasons nobody is talking about those ideas or listing them as inspiration is because they haven’t become part of the culture. Series like Harry Potter or Star Wars became cultural movements for generations, something people from different age groups could connect on. It has been 49 years since the first Star Wars movie came out. Half a century later, over Christmas break or summer holidays, I know of families who still binge watch the entire series together as an activity. It has been 25 years since the first Harry Potter movie came out, it has had a similar impact on culture.

We are living in the age of shorts and reels. Majority of the new creators have flocked to engagement baiting reels that are usually under five minutes. The purpose is getting eyeballs for advertisers. I am probably guilty of this, that is one of the ways we promote our podcast. Taking out the time to write the script for a film, recruiting a cast, iterating through the creative process, discarding hundreds of ideas, finding a way to finance it with your own money or from your profits would be kind of the antithesis of what you would do as a revenue strategy. Well, not if you have the right masterplan.

Jason has been doing film and media for 15 years. This is his life’s work. He is one of the most long-term oriented, focused and mission driven entrepreneurs I have met. Before this he was Head of Content Strategy at Astranis where he got to see the science make story real. He has a deep understanding and realization of the depth of the crisis we are in when it comes to SciFi film and television and the role it plays in inspiring the future generation.

You can see the decline of new SciFi ideas in the chart below:

Someone had to raise their hand and say I am going to change this. That is how we got every great invention in the history of science, tech and culture.

Jason is leading the SciFi renaissance and is on a mission to make SciFi great again. Hope you enjoy the episode as much as I did recording it. Their 2nd SciFi film, The Greatest Lie is going to be in theatre April 2nd. You can get your tickets here.

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Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction02:15 - The making of "Planet" and relearning fiction 06:53 - Why good stories start with novel prose 11:31 - How Astranis gave Jason permission to build a sci-fi studio 15:18 - Why sci-fi writing dropped in the 1970s and why we need it back 21:15 - Sci-fi as the 21st century's latest addition to human philosophy 25:19 - Creation of safeguards for a spacefaring civilization 29:58 - Space Warfare and realistic combat rabbit hole 34:04 - Why bureaucracies fail and the magic of Bell Labs 41:05 - Lessons in leadership46:58 - The biggest risk of hiring all your friends 52:02 - Bootstrapping the company and using the profits to fund movies59:39 - Inspiring the next generation through sci-fi books 1:05:11 - YouTube Strategy1:11:36 - Lessons on marketing1:15:34 - The launch video bubble1:22:15 - Closing thoughts

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us