The Drone Ultimatum · 2026-06-30 · 58 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
48 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Yadin Soffer founded Traysar Industries to address a fundamental shift in modern warfare: as surface and air domains become increasingly contested, militaries worldwide are moving operations underground. Drawing lessons from the Ukraine-Russia conflict, where forces fight trench-to-trench, and Hamas tunnel networks in Gaza, Soffer argues that subterranean warfare represents an entirely new battlefield requiring dedicated technology and doctrine. Traysar is building autonomous systems in two categories - lethality (inserting and detonating explosives underground without aerial delivery) and survivability (rapidly creating underground infrastructure with minimal logistical footprint). The company raised $25 million from top-tier defense investors including Jackson Venture, Craft Ventures, and Lux Capital. Soffer's co-founders include his father-in-law (formerly a senior Israeli government advisor) and Asher, who led the Israeli Army's Lab for Tunnel Detection. The challenge isn't engineering alone - tunneling is harder than rocket science because subsurface unknowns vastly exceed those in aerospace. The bigger lift is creating demand through congressional engagement and prototype contracts, as this category barely exists in the Defense Department's budget.
Instead of dropping penetrating bombs from aircraft, Traysar uses horizontal directional drilling from ground level to insert explosives into target locations underground, then detonates them to collapse structures - offering better target confirmation and damage assessment than aerial strikes.
Subsurface geology is fundamentally unpredictable with unknown unknowns, making underground robotics exponentially harder than rocket science where forces are known; even engineers from SpaceX and Boring Company report constant unexpected failures.
Most drone and missile companies capture existing programs of record, but Traysar must create entirely new programs of record and prototyping contracts that don't yet exist in DoD budgets, requiring simultaneous bottom-up military and top-down congressional engagement.
After gaining venture credibility from Jackson Venture's cold DM, Soffer deployed prototypes in Gaza within 60 days using friends-and-family funding, then shared results on X (formerly Twitter) to prove the concept worked despite initial skepticism from VCs.
One co-founder served as senior advisor in the Israeli government with foreign policy channels, handling government relations; another led Israel's tunnel detection unit in Gaza and serves as COO/field operator; Soffer's wife works alongside him, combining fintech and defense expertise.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
The episode contains genuinely interesting strategic claims - the contested-airspace-drives-underground thesis, the BDA problem with bunker busters, non-kinetic horizontal drilling munitions, and the Gaza reconstruction-tunnel-clearance dependency - but roughly half the runtime is consumed by banter about New York apartments, a proposed TV show, golf ball marketing, the Rothschild weather-control TikTok, and celebrity casting.
We're getting to a point where everything above ground is contested. So asymmetric warfare goes underground. So our whole thesis is whoever controls the crust of the earth wins wars.
it's not only that we figured out that we can't. This is, you know, also credit to Asher for sort of saying this all along. He said we don't know what we're hitting... We're demolishing infrastructure and we don't have a clear bda, a battle damage assessment.
The core thesis - that fully contested airspace makes underground maneuvering the decisive military domain - is a coherent and non-obvious strategic frame, and the multi-product horizontal TRL 4-5 approach for domain-building is genuinely contrarian to the 'one starship' startup model; however, the fundraising narrative, category-creation marketing riffs, and DC lobbying talk are entirely standard defense-tech startup content.
you get six to eight products. It's multi product at a TRL 45. Yeah. And then eventually when everything consolidates into one, maybe you put the effort on it.
we are here to create programs of record that don't exist. And even more than that, prototyping programs that don't exist.
Soffer is a legitimate practitioner - he deployed prototype hardware in Gaza within 60 days of founding, holds a sole-source designation for autonomous tunnel demolition, and has a real fintech exit - but he is one year into a pre-revenue defense company with a desk-job military background, so the depth of operational experience is bounded by the company's early stage.
we were able to deploy in Gaza relatively early. Even like on our. Kind of on our side, right on the border, like some prototype stuff.
we got a sole source designation that I'm very happy with. It literally says, the only SOL for mechanical demolition of tunnels.
There are some concrete anchors - the 2016 tunnel detection unit, DARPA's recent RFI for non-kinetic penetration munitions, Elbit's acquisition of Blue White for excavator autonomy, the 10-year rubble-clearing estimate for Gaza - but key claims are hedged ('reported to be,' 'I assume') and no product performance metrics, program dollar figures, or named contracts are disclosed.
Russians were reported to be using, uh, gas pipes to breach Ukrainian front lines.
there's an interesting US company as well that's doing some automation and uh, clearing out the rubble. They say it's a 10 year project if they work 247 to clear out the rubble in Gaza.
The host rarely follows up on technical claims, does not challenge feasibility or timelines, and repeatedly derails the conversation into a proposed TV show, golf ball marketing tactics, weather-control TikToks, and celebrity casting discussions; the few substantive questions (Ukraine, ITAR, Israel vs. US focus) are competent but never pressed for evidence or precision.
I want to get, like, really nice inside there too.
one of my friends, she was just letting me know last night this is actually pretty relevant for you, that the Rothschilds can no longer control the weather.
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
Yadin Soffer, co-founder and CEO of Traysar Industries, joins Steve to discuss why the future of warfare may be shifting beneath the surface. Yadin on X: Yadin on Linkedin: Traysar: Steve on X: Steve on LinkedIn: Follow the show! Spotify: Apple Podcasts:
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Speaker A: The end state is a contested battle space. Ukrainian special forces start to fight trench by trench. It's an environment where humans cannot operate.
Speaker B: It is going underground.
Speaker A: We're getting to a point where everything above ground is contested. So asymmetric warfare goes underground. So our whole thesis is whoever controls the crust of the earth wins wars. That's how wars are won. It's through maneuvering in a new battle space that's in breaching the enemy front lines, getting to your targets. But you can't do it above ground.
Speaker B: Yadin Sofer is the co founder and CEO of Trazar Industries, a defense technology company building autonomous underground systems for strike and defense.
Speaker A: Russians were reported to be using, uh, gas pipes to breach Ukrainian front lines. And, uh, Russians are using these, like, decommissioned mines in order to build up, you know, their supply. It went back to trench warfare. Everyone is fighting in trenches.
Speaker B: It's World War I over there.
Speaker A: It's World War I. But what if you could just, like, literally drill a hole and send everything you need there and let me take this a step forward and this is where we want to go eventually.
Speaker B: It's just crazy.
Speaker A: China's doing it. Why aren't we protecting our critical infrastructure underground?
Speaker B: Yadin, welcome. Welcome to the pod. Are you Austin based?
Speaker A: Well, soon to be. Have been living in New York for the past eight years, but it's my last month.
Speaker B: Where in New York?
Speaker A: Uh, downtown now. I've been all over.
Speaker B: You've been all over? I used to live in Astoria.
Speaker A: Astoria?
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: I started. I mean, all over Manhattan.
Speaker B: I'll say.
Speaker A: Not all over New York. I started in, like, Upper East. I was in Columbus Circle area downtown.
Speaker B: Are you married?
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: Married. Okay.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: I was gonna say New York's great when you're single.
Speaker A: I mean, look, it's also. I think it's great in your 20s in general. Like, it's such a good time to build your life. Call it.
Speaker B: It's awesome. Yeah. What did you do? So before, what were you doing? Take me back, bro.
Speaker A: Born and raised in Israel. Moved, uh, to New York, uh, to start a company called Experity fintech. Actually, um. And that's it. I mean, we were acquired by a company called Ipsos. I spent some time there during the earnout period. And, uh.
Speaker B: And now you're in defense.
Speaker A: And now I'm in defense.
Speaker B: You're just like me, bro.
Speaker A: I have, like a. I know, I know. I love it. It's good. It's good not to be alone. And by the way, I think there's a lot In. There's a lot of founders like that now, which is great for the country, I think.
Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I started my career in the Navy, but I didn't really ever. When I left, I also. Military. Yeah, well, you had to be, obviously. But I thought, like, I was done with the military and government when I left. Uh, and I was happy to move to San Francisco and get into, like, non government affairs stuff.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: But here we're back now we're back. I mean, we need it. We have to. I mean, you're doing something very interesting, like, new domain, right. Subterra.
Speaker A: Why is it.
Speaker B: Why is it subterranean?
Speaker A: Thank you for subterranean using our domain. Because no one wants to say subterranean.
Speaker B: I like subterranean.
Speaker A: The real reason, at the end of the day, is that one of my personal objectives is for Trump to go some, you know, someday in the next 12 months and say, air, land, sea, space, subterra.
Speaker B: Yeah, he'll do it.
Speaker A: And so, you know, we said, he's never gonna say subterranean. No one's gonna say that. It's too long.
Speaker B: Yeah, no, he'll say it. He'll actually make up some other word for it. I'm sure he'll definitely.
Speaker A: We worked for, you know, 18 months on, like, branding a category, and then Trump will just.
Speaker B: Oh, yeah, Brandon, category creation is what it's all about, bro. It's all about category creation and then making yourself the number one company in that category.
Speaker A: Yeah, that's. And look, I think. I think it's rare. I mean, it's. I didn't think I was going to have that opportunity. Like, I've. I said, that's what I want to do someday. But you know when you say something and, like, in the back of your mind, you're like, yeah, but maybe that's not achievable. And then somehow it happened.
Speaker B: Yeah. Okay, let's talk. Wait. So I played a lot of Command and conquer as a kid. Is it. Is this. Is it these things? Like, have you ever seen these?
Speaker A: I have seen them. There's those, and then there's the mole from back. There's a lot of great examples in gaming.
Speaker B: Uh, so are we, like, are we tunneling? What are we doing?
Speaker A: We're also tunneling.
Speaker B: I'm saying, what's the first product? I guess.
Speaker A: Well, so the way we split it, um, and I kind of spoke about this in our, uh, launch last week at Reindustrialize, it was around two broad categories. Right. So one is survivability and one is lethality.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: Lethality is our ability to strike Underground. So that's typically call it smaller diameter as a rule of thumb. Right. You want to insert explosives into uh, an area and then detonate.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: Um, or you want to penetrate a specific area underground.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker A: Um, but then the other category is survivability.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: And those things that you showed, I would say fit more into survivability. Right. Because that is your ability to rapidly create underground infrastructure expeditionary or at home. But we care more about expedition.
Speaker B: Yeah, you're trying to burrow.
Speaker A: Yeah, we want to do it quick and we want to do it with low logistical signature. And there's a lot of things that the military needs for borrowing.
Speaker B: So you're hiring people from the boring company.
Speaker A: Yeah, it's the best engineers in the world. And I think thankfully most of the people in the boring company have also worked at SpaceX. So you get like two of the best engineering orgs in the world.
Speaker B: Yeah, Boring company is sweet. I actually know one of the lead engineers there. He's been there for like six years. Oh yeah, He's a friend of mine and he said doing these robots is hard as fuck because the underground is full of like, like when they're tunneling, it always breaks the robot.
Speaker A: Yeah. And it's just unexpected. I think, you know, the guys at SpaceX, they say this nicely. The ones who have worked in both, they're like, everyone thinks rocket science is rocket science. But like in rocket science you're dealing with only call it one form of uh, uh, friction. And you know what it is. Right. Or several. But you know what they are.
Speaker B: You know, all the forces.
Speaker A: Problem is in the underground you don't know the unknown. Ah, unknowns.
Speaker B: And so that's a tough product to build.
Speaker A: It's a very tough product to build. Yeah.
Speaker B: Um, but. Okay, that's exciting. Okay. So Austin base. Why, why Austin?
Speaker A: Um, well, it's a boring company. Yeah, we didn't have, we didn't have a lot of solutions. You know, it is, I mean in startups a lot of time, like especially like ours, when you have a very specific set of critical talent, you just build a company where the critical talent is. That's all you can do.
Speaker B: I agree. It's tough, you know, like uh, I guess the talent hubs for. I guess you don't. You probably don't need much like computer vision and stuff because I feel that's better in the bay.
Speaker A: No, you don't need at all. I mean you do need a different form of vision.
Speaker B: Yeah, uh, it's like different.
Speaker A: You call it. It's it's on a computer and it's vision but it's not how you would imagine, you know, it's not how drones see the world.
Speaker B: Well, how did you meet? So you have how many co founders?
Speaker A: Two co founders.
Speaker B: Two co founders, yeah. Where'd you meet them? Fintech? Well, Israeli army.
Speaker A: So different. One of them is my father in law. Oh, um, daddy.
Speaker B: It's a family business.
Speaker A: It's a family business.
Speaker B: Oh my God, I love family businesses.
Speaker A: Dude.
Speaker B: I want my dad to join acs.
Speaker A: It's funny because everyone says like, yeah, can you work a few family? Is it hard to work with family? I've been working with family my whole life. Yeah, um, I met my wife in high school actually and we've been working together always, like on a lot of different things. Um, I've worked with her whole family. I've worked with my family. It's always been a great outcome. Way to go.
Speaker B: That's mafia. The best thing.
Speaker A: Friends and family. Yeah, work with your best friends, work with family. Um, so he, he was um, he was in Israeli media for uh, decades and then he became ah, a senior advisor in the Israeli government and you know, by channels also to different foreign governments around us. And so when we realized that we're going to need to have a lot of influence and lobby, Gilad was the first person I went to. Um, and then Asher, Asher is uh, one of my best friends from New York City. Uh, you could say we just talked about this a few days ago. He's like cto, cpo, coo. That's too many somewhere in the bundle. But no, by definition is coo.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker A: Asher is the one who gets his hands dirty. He's really the field guy. Um, but he, you know, like literally on October 7th he was in New York. By October 8th he was in Gaza. Like got on a flight, went back to reserves. Um, and he was one of the first people in a unit called. This is all publicly available information. It's called the Lab for tunnel Detection. It was a unit that was founded in um, 2016 to identify and shut down the tunnels crossing into Israel from Gaza. So there was this horrible time where, you know, terrorists would pop up in food course. And so Asher's unit's job was just to aggregate the best talent from many different units and to solve those problems. And so when I called him, I was, you know, in New York just scrambling to do something to help, you know, post October 7th. And he said, look man, if you can get me someone who built a TBM that would be helpful.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: That was like the genesis of the company.
Speaker B: And that's cool. Uh, let's talk lethality first with underground.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: What's that big ass bomb we dropped that tries to go bunker busters. What is that one?
Speaker A: Yeah, Moabs. 30,000 pound penetrators.
Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So these go. How deep do these go? How can these can't penetrate the missile factories of Iran, Right?
Speaker A: Unfortunately, they can't. We thought, you know, I think there was the Moab. I think there was a misassessment that we could and we figured out. It's not only that we figured out that we can't. This is, you know, also credit to Asher for sort of saying this all along. He said we don't know what we're hitting. Said we have the same issue in uh, in Israel with the Gaza, with the Hamas tunnels. We're demolishing infrastructure and we don't have a clear bda, a battle damage assessment. So that was a major issue. And that is, I think, the bigger issue with the Moabs. You're just like bombing, as Trump says, bombing the shit out of them.
Speaker B: Bombing the shit out of them.
Speaker A: But you don't know what's happening. So, like, it's not just about your ability to penetrate deeply buried facilities. It's your ability to send back some form of bda.
Speaker B: Yeah. So for lethality though, you guys, you're not doing bombs like that, you're doing a different approach, right?
Speaker A: We're doing. Yeah. So as the, you know, the, as sort of DARPA's coin, this, um, term, I would say, um, non kinetic penetration munitions.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker A: Which means we're not dropping them from a plane.
Speaker B: I see, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A: Um, we are doing, I mean, this is one of our products that we spoke about. We're essentially doing insertions using more of like a horizontal directional drilling method and then inserting explosives into it and then inducing, ah, detonation and collapse of the underground structure.
Speaker B: So do you have to, you have to kind of be in position to do that though?
Speaker A: We do. We have boots on the. We have, we have to have boots on the ground. And that's one of the things I say, like, look, boots on the ground in Iran. And I'm not talking about, you know, boots on the ground, like massive forces. I'm talking about special ops. Yeah, that's not our problem. Yeah, right. That's not the issue. If you have something very specific that you need to get deployed in Iran, you have the methods to deploy it in Iran.
Speaker B: Yeah, I see what you mean? Yeah. So these. Okay, so these are products that the
Speaker A: soldiers will use, correct?
Speaker B: Yeah, correct. Not like, not like fully autonomous robot war. Like, these are products like.
Speaker A: Well, I mean, you know, you could make the case that one day you drop a, um, whatever, a container from a plane and it parachutes down and comes out. You can go the full, you know, 10 year sci fi. Yeah, it'll happen.
Speaker B: I mean, you got the vision.
Speaker A: We'll get there. Yeah.
Speaker B: Okay, so when, um, I guess when was it found? When was the company founded?
Speaker A: Last year.
Speaker B: Last year.
Speaker A: This time last year.
Speaker B: Tell me about the fundraise process.
Speaker A: Wow, man, it was a. It was a journey. Like, you know, you, my boy Jackson, right? Jackson's awesome. I mean, you know, you, you, you probably know this.
Speaker B: He came on the podcast once.
Speaker A: Oh, he did?
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: Awesome. I didn't see that. I'll see that. That's nice. So, I mean, Jackson's amazing. Look, I, I think for us, for me, I had this, like, naive assumption when we had. When we, like, established, like, this is going to be a huge thing. This is the category that I'm just going to go out to, you know, my venture capital buddies from the previous company and be like, hey, we're doing something huge. Hop on in. People didn't want to talk to us. They're like, there's no line items in the Dow for this category. All right. The technologies are like super sci fi. They're barely there. You know, no one of the big primes are doing it. Why, like, who are you guys? How do you think you guys are going to do this? And there was such a critical moment where we were like, man, we. The only way to do this is to actually show them what we mean. And so we put together some, you know, friends and family capital. Really, like, literally nothing for a hardware company. And we went to market, we got some connections and, you know, in the Israeli military, and we were able to deploy in Gaza relatively early. Even like on our. Kind of on our side, right on
Speaker B: the border, like some prototype stuff. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A: Um, and I had like 200 followers on X, but I started sharing that and that was literally a pivotal moment because suddenly it went from, these guys are crazy, they have all these wild ideas to they're actually fielding stuff with no money in like 60 days from the crazy idea.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: Um, and then everything changed basically when Jackson DM'd me cold on X. Um, and that, you know, that got the ball moving because I think all we needed all along was like one piece of, call it venture Credibility.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: Um, like, you know, as Mark Andreessen says, like, they lend the brand to the company. Initially.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: We needed that so badly early on because the idea was so crazy, but once we had that, we had, like, you know, more demand than we could handle for the fundraiser.
Speaker B: Hell, yeah. And what, um, Craft was in.
Speaker A: Craft was in. Yeah.
Speaker B: Yeah. Nice. My boys. Yeah. Which one, partner? Brian. Brian Beamer. Beamer's your boy. He's. We're both 1986 kids. We share a special 1986 bond.
Speaker A: Okay.
Speaker B: Anyone born in 1986? We have a special bond. Dan, Maggie from Firestorm.
Speaker A: Cool. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B: We're all 86 kids.
Speaker A: Oh, yeah. It's okay. I'm M94, so it's a whole thing.
Speaker B: Like, it's like we came up in a very special time. You know, we saw. We saw the evolution of the Internet at different. At the. At the really early stages and then, you know.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: All the way through the iPhone and now today. So when you're born, it's that cohort.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: Yeah. I'm sure you have a similar with the 94 kids.
Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Everything seems nostalgic. Everything seems perfect in the past.
Speaker B: Yeah. The, um. Okay, so, yeah, Beamer, uh, there's obviously. They're a good team of that. I don't know if, you know, I worked with them since Bebop, my last company.
Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Right. Brian introduced us. Yeah. And then Jackson introduced us.
Speaker B: Yeah, I forgot.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: Yeah. Scatterbrained.
Speaker A: Yeah. I get a little. So, yeah, I mean, look, we got. I mean, Jackson joined and then, you know, um, we got, uh, Craft, who joined Lux, joined as well. Um, we got some of the founders of Anduril and Erebor. So it's like, we're good. We're in the right circles to pull this off now.
Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's great. And then. So what's the first, I guess, plan? So 25 million, right?
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: What's the plan?
Speaker A: Well, you know, everyone's like, all right, time, um, to bring a ton of engineers, like, scale up R and D. And I'm like, that's what we did the last 12 months on, like, very little capital. And we're going to, you know, scale R and D. But that's not the lift here.
Speaker B: Yeah. The lift here is about to give them some raises.
Speaker A: Sales and marketing, maybe give them m. Some raises. It's crazy. Look, at the end of the day,
Speaker B: no, sales and marketing is important. It's.
Speaker A: It's critical. But in a category like ours is, I think 10 times more. It's not like, you know, you see these drone companies and these missile companies, at the end of the day, they're doing an amazing job, but they're capturing existing programs of record. You. We are here to create programs of record that don't exist. And even more than that, prototyping programs that don't exist. Like you would expect prototyping programs to be out there. Subterranean warfare is so early right now.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: That it's still at the stage where, like, you got a good crowd of people who are high up, call it in the Dow or in the military, wherever, who say we want this and yet they don't have money to procure it.
Speaker B: Do some congressional work.
Speaker A: We're going to do Congress, we're going to do congressional work. We're doing both bottom up and top down approach at the same time. You got to get the, you know, program executives to say, yes, I want this. You got to match, you know, DIU to it. You got to look at all the contract.
Speaker B: So you must be busy right now in this approach cycle.
Speaker A: Yeah, this is the cycle. Uh, not. Not yet. We didn't catch this.
Speaker B: You're going to do next. Yeah, yeah. Because it is a site. You have to catch it kind of. You got to catch it November.
Speaker A: Yeah. And I would say it's even most of our focus now. And this is as, as we go to the next appropriation cycle, that's gonna be our focus. But a lot of our focus right now is just on the prototyping contracts. Right. Like, yeah, these contracts, as, you know, like, they grow pretty big. Like.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: You know, you get $100 million plus prototyping contract. So for us, for me personally, my goal is to, like, bring that into existence in the subterranean domain in the categories of lethality and survivability. And by the way, you do see slivers of interest. For example, uh, just last month, DARPA issued an rfi. Right. Request for information around non, um, kinetic penetration munitions or new.
Speaker B: So it's starting to come like, you're right.
Speaker A: New shockwave methods. Yeah. To induce collapse of underground facilities. We're like, hey, that's what we said for the past year. So finally, you know, we're getting that recognition, call it from the military.
Speaker B: So are you gonna spend. I mean, obviously you're in the US you're gonna do like, US approved cycle. It's gonna be pretty. It's gonna be a pretty crazy one coming up next time because it's gonna be Democrats. So you got to take the strategy you know what I'm talking about?
Speaker A: Yeah. 100.
Speaker B: They're about to. They're probably going to win the house.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: So you got to, like, plan accordingly.
Speaker A: 100. And that's why, uh, we talk more about survivability than lethality.
Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Survivability.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: I don't know. I don't know. I think both parties like to.
Speaker A: Yeah. It's kind of bipartisan. At the end of the day, winning wars is bipartisan. And no one likes the fact that we're dragging out this war in Iran. No one likes the fact that at the end of the day, it looks like we lost the war. So.
Speaker B: Yeah. Uh, it's not like a great situation right now. Not at all. Not at all.
Speaker A: I think it's also like, it sucks that it was like a capability demonstration to the world that we can't hit these deeply buried facilities. Right. It was better when it was still like, oh, the US has these massive bombs. If we want, we can strike underground. Now we're like, uh.
Speaker B: Didn't I see you say something? I think I watched your re. Industrialized feature. I don't. Someone said something about China's doing underground, like some. Yeah, well, submarine facilities.
Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's crazy. I mean, China are. They literally have submarine bases, uh, protected by mountains. They're going straight out of the mountain, you know, into the water.
Speaker B: That's some Dr. Evil shit.
Speaker A: It is. It is. It's. It's the. It's the layers. Right?
Speaker B: I mean, it is. Okay, I do get. I mean, I see the vision. Like, it is going underground.
Speaker A: It is. Everyone is. And we need to have capabilities not only to, you know, strike, but also to do it ourselves. Like, if China's doing it, why. Why aren't we protecting our critical infrastructure underground?
Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, there are. Yeah. I mean, I don't. I guess we don't do that much here in the U.S. no, we don't. We don't put stuff underground.
Speaker A: Well, in the US it's because I think the big oceans, it's also a matter of, like, you know, feel like we're an island. No one's going to strike us here. We're protected, which is valid. But what I'm more concerned about is things you get. Like, you know, with a ship that goes suddenly by mistake off course and hits a bridge. Like, how do those things happen? Right. Uh, was it, you know, mistake was an attack. But I think the bottom line is you want to protect your critical infrastructure because you never know how or when you're going to get hit for sure.
Speaker B: For sure. What do you. So you've been, have you been following since you started this over a year ago at this point, right?
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: Have you been following, um, just like the overall defense tech trends?
Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
Speaker B: Well versed, very well versed.
Speaker A: You got to know what everyone's doing, you know.
Speaker B: Yeah. What, what's your, like, uh, what's your take on, like, autonomous vehicles, ground vehicles, USVs? Like, what's that?
Speaker A: How's your space future? It's going there, I think. Look at the end, um, the end of the day. Our take, my take. And I think, you know, the take that sort of represents, uh, I would say the company or our reason for existence is that the end state for all this investment in air, land, call it in space and also sea, but let's put that aside. But the end state is a contested battle space. It's an environment where humans cannot operate. That's it. If you're a person with a rifle, you can't run across open space because either you get, you know, an autonomous land system shoot you, or a drone or a missile or, or a, I don't know, laser beam from space. I don't know. We're getting to a point where everything above ground is contested. So asymmetric warfare goes underground. So our whole thesis is whoever controls the crust of the earth wins wars. That's how wars are won. It's through maneuvering in a new battle space and breaching the enemy front lines, getting to your targets. But you can't do it above ground.
Speaker B: Yeah, this is cool. I mean, it's a pretty tough space to tackle. You're going to need a lot more capital probably, but obviously your beautiful face, you know, fundraise, no problem.
Speaker A: See, we have X. That's a secret weapon.
Speaker B: It's hard for me to fundraise, you know, because I don't have like a. I don't have a chain.
Speaker A: No, you have. You got. You got it all. You got the hair, man.
Speaker B: You don't have the fundraise vibe. No, actually at B Bot, I grew my. I was like, I don't. No one's giving me money for this dumb restaurant tech company. And I started growing out my hair real long.
Speaker A: That's the only way.
Speaker B: And getting crazier. And I was like, I'm gonna change the whole industry, bro.
Speaker A: The more hair you have.
Speaker B: I was trying to, like. I was trying to, like, play some angle. I was like, I was. I need, I need a new angle.
Speaker A: But, you know, they say the other Thing. I mean, if you're not. If you're not balding, it means you're not working hard.
Speaker B: That's true. Let's check out a little bit going on. But the, um. That was really hard industry to raise money in because there's so many competitors.
Speaker A: Yeah, man.
Speaker B: I mean, the defense. Actually, there aren't that many companies in defense.
Speaker A: I agree. But, you know, I just had this conversation with a friend this morning. He sends me an article, like, whatever, billion dollars. I think like, $13 billion in defense. When whatever timeline, he's like, oh, look how good for you guys. Like, And I sent him, you know, this, like, Bart Simpson m. Mem, where he writes something on the chalkboard a million times. And I wrote, like, statistics do not matter to the individual. I know because, like, dude, my friends keep sending me these things. They sent it back to me in 2021 when I was raising for my previous company. I went through hell. We couldn't raise anything, and they were sending me these things. I like guys. No, doesn't matter to me. It's like, I have my own unique set of problems, and it might be easy and it might be hard, but it has nothing to do with the macro environment.
Speaker B: Yeah. One of my favorite things investors do is, like, send you competitors. Like, in restaurant tech, I had, like, 90 competitors. Like, 90. And so I was getting these texts like, every day.
Speaker A: Have you seen, uh.
Speaker B: Hey, have you seen this?
Speaker A: Then you launched the new fundraiser.
Speaker B: And I'm like, yes, I've seen everything. I work in this space, like, stop. But again, defense. That only happens once every four months with me now. It's like, there's only like, three or four other.
Speaker A: Like, thankfully, in our category, it doesn't happen. It'll.
Speaker B: It'll happen in, like, it'll happen, like, obviously, hopefully.
Speaker A: Yeah. You know, I was calling on stage for more defense tech companies in, uh, Terra.
Speaker B: Yeah, there's very few. Yeah, I saw that. Yeah, there's very few. Like, it's just like. There's just not as. It's not as dense as, like, restaurant software because the barrier to entry here is higher. It takes a little bit more capital skill. So, like, you just get fewer companies in general.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: Um, but it's just fun. Investors are so funny like that. Hey, have you seen. Have you seen this? Like, yeah, bro, I've seen nine mothers. Like, I got it. I see it. They're here.
Speaker A: It is what it is.
Speaker B: I was like. I was like, don't you. Don't you see that I, like, work in this industry? Every day. Of course I've seen anything you see. I've seen it, uh, six months before you.
Speaker A: 100. 100.
Speaker B: And they're like, I'm just trying to be helpful, bro.
Speaker A: I like that you respond, though. Everything I've seen, uh, you've seen, I've seen. Six months.
Speaker B: Yeah. It's like. Yeah. Like if you saw it on Twitter. I operate like two years ahead of Twitter.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: Things that come out on Twitter.
Speaker A: That's true.
Speaker B: I'm two years ahead of Twitter.
Speaker A: Like, I love that. That's true. Yeah.
Speaker B: Like, Twitter is like the last thing. That's what you guess when you get your news.
Speaker A: It goes, it goes Reddit, Twitter, LinkedIn.
Speaker B: Yeah. Now it goes like TikTok first, you know.
Speaker A: Oh, uh, wow. Not first. No way.
Speaker B: Well, it depends on what kind of content.
Speaker A: Okay.
Speaker B: Uh, one of my friends, she was just letting me know last night this is actually pretty relevant for you, that the Rothschilds can no longer control the weather.
Speaker A: No way.
Speaker B: Saw that on TikTok.
Speaker A: Oh, man, that's so cool.
Speaker B: And she's been telling me that she's been noticing.
Speaker A: So that's why the weather's fucked up.
Speaker B: No, it's good. Now, the cloud, she was saying last night she's been noticing the clouds have been taking more normal shape now.
Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, so happy to hear. Happy to hear.
Speaker B: Yeah. So I guess Rainmaker is now trying to control the weather, but. Nice, that's good to control the weather.
Speaker A: I mean, uh, look, I mean, the Rainmaker guys are great for us because they're taking some of the focus out of, you know, Jews controlling the weather to like, controlling the weather. So I'm all for it. Take some of the heat.
Speaker B: No. Okay, wait. My parents, my parents live in a lake house in Tennessee, which I go to for the fourth every year. Yeah, it's very American to go to the Smoky Mountains for the fourth.
Speaker A: Take it.
Speaker B: More American than that. Yeah, but the wet, the lake is like, it's like in a drought this year. It's not up, uh, high enough for our boat to dock. And I was like, we need a Rainmaker out there. I was like, guys, I got the guy. My friend Augustus, we're gonna have him make it rain.
Speaker A: Gotta do it, man. I mean, it's such incredible technology. I love it so much.
Speaker B: I think crowd seeding. Yeah. I feel like it's funny that it's like a venture backed startup, but like, I feel like government should just do it.
Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, I mean, look, the technology has been around forever, but I guess like with A lot of things also for us, like, you know, drilling technologies, boring technologies. We always say this. They've been around forever. People will, like, sometimes, you know, push back and be like, yeah, but we have this in civilian markets. I'm, like, perfect. Like, uh, 95% of what I can take, I want to take. Give me. No, like, actually using existing products. Right. Just let me innovate on the last 5%. I don't need to reinvent.
Speaker B: Why not?
Speaker A: Just boring technology.
Speaker B: Can you license something? And then we can.
Speaker A: We will when we need to. I mean, in our first product, remember, I said, like, what actually brought us. Brought us to market was our ability to get a device right, strap some cameras on it, and get it in a real Hamas tunnel. And that's what we did early on. That's what enabled us to get, like, call it the credibility. Then after we operated in the Hamas tunnel for a couple months, we realized, together with the military defining the spec, that in order to get to the military achievements, we need to develop a clean sheet build. And only at that point, we said, all right, let's do a clean sheet build. No more system integrations. But, like, I have no, you know, special need or want to develop things from scratch.
Speaker B: Yeah. What's it like being in the Israeli military? What'd you do in there?
Speaker A: I don't know. What's the. I didn't do something too interesting. I was in technology logistics.
Speaker B: Yeah, I was in a pretty boring desk job in the navy.
Speaker A: Yeah, I was in a desk job, too.
Speaker B: I worked at naval reactors, which is like nuclear navy headquarters.
Speaker A: That sounds interesting. That doesn't sound like a boring desk job. Mine was really a boring desk job.
Speaker B: The nuclear navy is very. Got safety first, you know, so it's like a very. Like, we're watching over everything. Paper, a lot of paperwork.
Speaker A: Okay, yeah, that is boring. But it's a little boring.
Speaker B: But, you know.
Speaker A: But I guess you're working on something important for me.
Speaker B: A job. It's an important job, but it's definitely, like, a pretty bureaucratic job because it's nuclear power in the navy.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: And we operate. I don't know. We've never had a reactor accident. No fission products have ever broken containment.
Speaker A: No. But, uh. So at least it feels like you're doing something that matters, you know, the problem. I think. I think, you know, I don't know problem or not, but, like, there's mandatory military service in Israel at the end of the day, and if you don't come to it with a specific mindset that I didn't have back in the day. Then you may end up wasting your time. Like, you could, um, do something so much better even in, you know, not in the military, but you have to do the service. So sometimes, like, you just find yourself doing something that I would say is not helping the country as much as you can. And so I don't know what the solution to that is. But, uh. But you, uh, know, I wish I would have given more during that time. And that's part of the reason for, for the existence of this company now.
Speaker B: It's kind of like a nationwide mandatory draft, basically.
Speaker A: It is.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: It is 100. And it's so ingrained into the culture. Right. Like you meet in Israeli, one of the first questions they typically ask you is, what did you do in the army? Like. Like it's a big part of culture.
Speaker B: A big part of culture. Yeah. I've never been to Israel.
Speaker A: Yeah. Wow. You should. It's fun.
Speaker B: I know. I want to go. I haven't. I haven't really traveled that much the world because I was mostly working my ass off on startups for like the last.
Speaker A: By the way. Me neither.
Speaker B: It's, uh, grinding.
Speaker A: I think it's overrated, by the way. I don't know. I don't. At some point, like, I have seen the world and I guess at some point it's like, okay, another place. I don't know. Like, I don't fall for the, like, romanticizing. See the world.
Speaker B: No, I. Yeah, I. I'm having fun here. I don't need to see times. I, like, travel and I'm like, I need to get home, you know, all the time.
Speaker A: All the time.
Speaker B: But. Yeah, but like.
Speaker A: And, uh, luckily, I mean, my wife is like that too. So it's funny. We go on vacation, then we get bored together.
Speaker B: Social media culture. A lot of people want to like, post that they're in, like, oh, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got to post that. You're about to push. You're doing cool shit.
Speaker A: Yeah, obviously. I saw someone write this. It's like a generation of anticipated memories. And I like that sentence that's like, you're not living the moment, you're living the anticipated memory. Like the moment you're waiting for the moment you look back on the photo and are like, wow, I had such a good time there.
Speaker B: Yeah. So we're going to put the office down here.
Speaker A: Where. Yeah, well, we're doing, uh, Boring.
Speaker B: Company is a little out.
Speaker A: Bastrop. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're starting out in Proto Town for A couple months. Unlike. We'll see how.
Speaker B: Yeah. Who's the Prototown guy? What's his name?
Speaker A: Merlin. Merle. Merle.
Speaker B: Prototown is pretty cool.
Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, prototype's awesome. I mean, you go there, it's like. It's a whole culture, you know, it's. It's incredible to see. Um, yeah, you know, most of our talent is coming from Bastrop era, from boring company area. So we're looking for a larger facility between Austin and Bastrop now.
Speaker B: So you're kind of. So you're the underground expert now. So, like, can you. I'm gonna. I was thinking about making like, a sweet, like, bunker, like, have for the
Speaker A: boys, you know, Survivability.
Speaker B: Yeah, Just like. I want to get, like, really nice inside there too.
Speaker A: Nuclear bunker, though, or.
Speaker B: I don't know. I don't know. Well, you can help me with the design, but I feel like we should put it somewhere sweet in the country where we can go hang out.
Speaker A: That, uh, sounds like.
Speaker B: And they have a lot of great, like, TVs and comfort, so you can watch all of our bullfrogs, you know, around the world from our bunke, but
Speaker A: you don't get sunlight in there, so.
Speaker B: Yeah, that's true. I just want to watch the feeds. Yeah.
Speaker A: Love it.
Speaker B: That's my next idea is, uh, you know, all these robots have cameras on them now.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: So then I wanted to do, like, Twitch for war.
Speaker A: Oh, wow.
Speaker B: So, like, all war will be televised. I think actually all war will be televised in the future.
Speaker A: I don't know. Not. Not the front lines. I think. You think the front lines. I don't know what your individual soldier. Because it's a massive, like, security breach. Operate like that if everyone knows where you are.
Speaker B: I can kind of see, like, um, like, not. Maybe not in the US because we have too much money and we. And the government pays money for the product. But, like, I can see, like, some countries being like, listen, if you give this to me for free, I'll, like, send you the video data.
Speaker A: Yeah, you know, it could be. I mean, look, um, that's kind of crazy. Post October 7th, we actually had a really big problem where there's too much civilian tech, uh, flooding the market. I think kind of similar with Ukraine, um, where you got, like, soldiers with GoPros and you have drones in the air. And these are things that, like, have not went through the process. Right. So we don't even have, like, a. Of bunch. Whatever a barcode, a scoo. For them. No one knows, like, that they exist. And so, one, in some cases, like, you don't know if it's an enemy drone or your own, which is a whole other shit show. But like, two, you have all of these camera and cameras and recording devices, and there's no, like, you know, unifying method to see what's going on. So you would imagine actually that, like, you know, some guy would be sitting in a bunker running the war and being like, all right, this is my feed from everything that's happening. They don't even have that in the military. So that's why I say, like, getting to a twitch level. It's like, dude, first they need to get to a level where someone like a general can actually see what's going on. The generals don't know what's going on. That's a good problem.
Speaker B: That's a good point. It's good counterfactual, actually. Other counterfactual is if you watch the Iran conflict now, like, no one knows what's going on. Like, you can't get any information from Twitter, really. I mean, you can read what's on Twitter, but, like, it could be all fake.
Speaker A: And as I said, the military don't know what's going on.
Speaker B: There's like a thick fog of war. Yeah, like, there's a. There's a pretty thick fog, by the way.
Speaker A: But, but, but it is because the, the. Even the people themselves, the pilots, the B2 pilots, don't know how deep they hit, don't know if the infrastructure is destroyed. They're not getting a bda. It's a huge part of this subterranean problem.
Speaker B: Yeah, what about just, like, instead of getting the enemy subterranean, just doing, like, like what Trump's talking about, just like bombing the power plants. They're above ground.
Speaker A: Oh, that's a method, but it depends what your goal is. You can bomb the power plants and create a lot of damage. Right. But they're still enriching uranium. They get to a nuclear bomb and they bomb us back. Like, at the end of the day, they. And, you know, you'll bomb the power plants and maybe they'll figure out a way, you know, to take some, um, of that underground. It's all. That's all part of it. They're taking critical, uh, infrastructure underground, by the way. I'm sure this, I hope, doesn't get to that. But if they get money to rebuild. Rebuild Iran, right. $300 billion or whatever, it goes there, at the end of the day, they're going to spend it on taking critical infrastructure underground, probably partially because they saw what a good method it is. You and I would do the same.
Speaker B: Like man, aliens visiting our planet 100 years from now, everything's going to be underground.
Speaker A: Yeah. They're not going to see anything.
Speaker B: I mean, can't we all just get along, bro? Uh, I wish we all just get along.
Speaker A: I wish. Uh, it feels like a movie, dude.
Speaker B: Yeah. So I mean why don't we just do the stuck snap thing again?
Speaker A: Yeah, that, that, that worked well.
Speaker B: That worked.
Speaker A: I'm a big fan of cyber. Like cyber is the way to go, obviously.
Speaker B: What's uh, that new Cyber prime that just raised 20.
Speaker A: Oh, I saw that 20. What? Oh, what's their name?
Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's called 20.
Speaker A: It was like the first offensive cyber. I think it was like 100 something. You know, but we're really the first.
Speaker B: There's like. Well, I don't know if investors know this but I can teach them. Right now is like there are so many 50 to $100 million revenue private equity backed cyber firms in the country.
Speaker A: Like I didn't know that.
Speaker B: Oh, there's so many. A lot of. In Ohio.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: Um, but there's.
Speaker A: I know there's a lot of. I know.
Speaker B: So like when he comes out he's like, we just raised 100 million for the first cyber.
Speaker A: Cyber venture.
Speaker B: First venture backed cyber. Which is funny because he segmented it so fast like into. Yeah. Venture back.
Speaker A: Yeah, of course.
Speaker B: He's the first venture backed cyber. But like these, A lot of these firms, I know the, I know the founders and CEOs of these firms. Like because my dad used to work at Northrop grumman for like 30 years. So I know a lot of the industry from that side. There are just so many, so many cyber companies like the VCs investing in this don't understand the competitive landscape of this.
Speaker A: Yeah, like, I mean there's, there's that Israeli one that didn't agree to hack the phone for ah, Apple. Remember the iPhone back then?
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: There's at least NSO I think NSO Group.
Speaker B: Yeah. There's at least 50, I bet you 50 firms that are doing over 100 million in revenue in cyber in like and not didn't take a single dollar.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: And they, the owners own all of the company. So it's like pretty funny to be
Speaker A: like, to pitch it, pitch it as a new category. Like cyber has been around forever.
Speaker B: Yeah. It's like. And all of them every like it's actually another one that's funny is when people are like, we're going to be the. I've seen that pitch decks of like, we're going to be the electronic warfare prime. It's like no 50 companies do electronic warfare. Like every, literally every prime has a massive electronic warfare.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: Look at electronic warfare.
Speaker A: That's why I like to be, you know, where we ah at. Because I feel like you can't say that. I don't think anyone is able to say that.
Speaker B: This is textbook marketing genius. I learned this when I used to work at Marketo, this marketing automation company. I was a salesperson there. Sales engineer.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: And the founders taught me. Like they said, it's. They created the category marketing automation. So like before that there was like mailchimp. Email blast. Email marketing. Yeah, they call it. They coined marketing automation and then they just got the other two competitors to also say it. So the three competitors got together and
Speaker A: said this becomes, um, a word.
Speaker B: This is the category and we're in the top three.
Speaker A: There's like a sentence like, uh, those who name it or something.
Speaker B: Yeah. So like when you create the category.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: And then you just put yourself in there as the leader. That's actually a really good way to do business. And Phil Fernandez, uh, he was the CEO of Marketo. He taught me that when I was younger. He was like, that's how you gotta do it in tech.
Speaker A: Yeah. No, I mean it makes it when you have the opportunity. I think it's just like such a rare opportunity to have. So when you haven't got a season.
Speaker B: I like your personality. You could be in the moc. We're doing a Maku series in this industry. You want to be in on it?
Speaker A: Yeah. Hell yeah.
Speaker B: We're going to produce some TV show.
Speaker A: Oh, shit.
Speaker B: It's going to be called American Dynamism. It was great. Yeah. And it's like kind of like the Office, but for defense tech.
Speaker A: Really?
Speaker B: Yeah. It's gonna be great, dude. You want to be in on it. You could be one of the characters in the show.
Speaker A: No way.
Speaker B: It's a scripted drama.
Speaker A: I don't know how to act well. No, no, no, no.
Speaker B: What actor should play you? He kind of looks like, um, um, Orlando Bloom.
Speaker A: Oh, it's a script. Wow.
Speaker B: No, we're.
Speaker A: That's a huge. Yeah, that's a huge compliment, dude.
Speaker B: Yeah. Wait, I feel like there was another episode of the podcast where I had. Wait, what was that movie?
Speaker A: Google. Orlando Blue Bloom, shirtless.
Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Dude, he's playing you, bro.
Speaker A: That's funny.
Speaker B: Okay, we got Orlando Bloom.
Speaker A: Wow.
Speaker B: So, okay, it's gonna be like this. It's kind of like just office style. Like, we got all the characters.
Speaker A: Dude, that's awesome.
Speaker B: Andrew is going to be hooly.
Speaker A: Wow.
Speaker B: Yes. Genius.
Speaker A: Dude, they need to reboot Silicon Valley like that.
Speaker B: Yeah, no, Silicon Valley. It'll be like Silicon Valley meets the Office.
Speaker A: But, wow.
Speaker B: But for. Yeah, we're going to do this. Like, that's fine. That's my project.
Speaker A: I'm going to be the biggest fan, dude.
Speaker B: I mean, you're going to. Your company's going to be in it. You're gonna be the underground tunneling company and shit.
Speaker A: Uh, yeah. Let's go.
Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. So that's, like, my big project this year. You can tell. You can tell. I do a lot of work here at acs.
Speaker A: Oh, man. It's the most important work at the end of the day. It's the fun stuff.
Speaker B: Yeah. The marketing stuff. I actually really do, like, as a founder, I enjoy more of, like, the marketing, say, recruiting and marketing and fundraising more so than, like, actually making bullfrog, which is really hard. That's what Luke does. That's why we named the company after Luke, not me. Luke Allen makes the bullfrog with the team.
Speaker A: I mean, it's, uh, you know, getting into the details, looking at the small stuff. There's people who love, I think, obsessing over the technicals, and that's what makes a great deal.
Speaker B: That's my favorite thing in this industry, is everyone's like, I went. We went from clean sheet, clean sheet, built to production in 60 days. I'm like, dude, we've been making this for three years. I was like, whoa, this took three years to make? Yeah, like 60 days. That's crazy.
Speaker A: It's crazy. It depends on what you're working on. It depends on form factor. It depends on, you know, how novel it is, what you're doing.
Speaker B: I mean, there's just so much that goes into a weapon station that I didn't have an appreciation for when we started. But, yeah, just like, it's so funny when they're like. Like, Mach always does this. They're always like, 71 days to build the spider jet.
Speaker A: Like, uh.
Speaker B: I was like, I don't know if that's the moat you think it is. Like, you want to. You wanted to take a long time
Speaker A: to make it complicated.
Speaker B: You want to have, like, an R and D tech mode. I think when investors read that, they're like, oh, they're moving fast. But when I read it, because I'm like, on the other side of the table, I'M thinking, wow, that can't be that good of a product. It should take years to build.
Speaker A: Well, I guess it depends. I mean, I can tell you from our category, like, as I said, I don't want to innovate on the hundred percent. Like I want to innovate on the last 5%. And sometimes that means going to market sooner. And I think there's other moats. Like, you know, we're, um, as the category leader here, like a lot of our work and as you know, as I mentioned earlier, a lot of the capital is going to go towards lobby, towards sales, towards marketing, towards like building this out and helping, I would say even the US establish like the doctrine for subterranean warfare. Right. Like, um, how we capture this critical domain over the next 10 years. I see that as our moat more than the technology.
Speaker B: You should at least get in the NDAA this year. Then you don't need to get a probes.
Speaker A: But we might.
Speaker B: Yeah, you can just get a paragraph in there.
Speaker A: Yeah, easy. Yeah.
Speaker B: Come on. Yeah, no problem. To dc. I have a place in dc. You can stay at it when you need.
Speaker A: Yeah, but I. Yeah, no, we're, we're often in dc. We've been, we've been cranking up our work there. We might.
Speaker B: When you're there, let's hang. We can go to Army Navy Country Club, do some B. I was there.
Speaker A: I met with someone. Right.
Speaker B: I belong there as a member.
Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
Speaker B: We can do our BD there. That's why you want bd.
Speaker A: Cool.
Speaker B: Yeah, I'm actually, I'm actually going to sponsor the, um. I'm giving you all my secrets. I'm going to sponsor the golf balls at the driving range there.
Speaker A: Oh, wow.
Speaker B: Think about it. Just put ACS, bullfrog everywhere.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: That's the best 20 grand of marketing you could ever spend. Yeah, that's not a lot of no 20 grand. And then like literally everyone in the whole, in the whole city that matters is going to be hitting those golf balls. Wow. In the next like six maybe.
Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, maybe even take them home.
Speaker B: I'm going to change it from their callaway. They suck. I'm going to change it to per V ones too then, because you can thank ACS. Now you're hitting Pro V1s on the range.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: That's good.
Speaker A: See, I don't know enough golf about. I don't know enough about golf.
Speaker B: You're not a golfer.
Speaker A: No, not yet.
Speaker B: That's why you do your deals in defense.
Speaker A: Yeah, but like conduct business maybe to the next Level for me, it's the next stage.
Speaker B: Yeah, you'll get there. You'll get there.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: So, okay, so you had. It was your first exit pretty good, financially speaking?
Speaker A: Fine.
Speaker B: Okay. You're comfortable. But you needed more.
Speaker A: Not like you. Not as much as you.
Speaker B: Well, uh. But then you needed to go bigger.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: Yeah, I felt like I wanted to go bigger after, like, some people, like, retire after it. Like, I could have, I guess, but no, I couldn't. I like the drive. I got even more aggressive at working, I think.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: Like, it made me. Made me more, like, crazy about, like, working.
Speaker A: Yeah. You know, I think, you know, it is the drive, but for me. And also, I couldn't retire from it, so it was also about, like, really doing something that I care about.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: Um, and that I think has an impact on the world and that I'll be interested to work on every day. Um, but also, like, the second time around, you do have, like, some. You're a little bit comfortable. So you have, I would say, kind of the luxury of choice.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: Where first time around as a founder, like, at least for me, I don't know, I was, like, pushed in every direction. So I got pushed. I got pushed to do it.
Speaker B: Like, I was back against the wall first time.
Speaker A: Yeah, it just did. It just happens. You're opportunistic. Like, I've always. I've never worked at a company my whole life. Like, I've always found a thing since I was, like, 14 years old. So I've always done my own thing. Um, and then just, you know, naturally I find myself m doing my own thing in the venture world. Right. And someone put the first check and it turned into a company, and I had absolutely no idea what I'm doing.
Speaker B: Do you remember your first ever investor check?
Speaker A: Oh, yeah, of course I remember the guy because he was with me all the way to the end.
Speaker B: I have a picture of mine. Mine was. Yeah. Ah, I got it. It was, um, in Takuman in Long Island City Restaurant. He came there. He was a brewery owner.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: Jim Raris gave me a 25k check. My first ever investor. Wow. Anything that I ever did, really, wow.
Speaker A: For me, it was 200k.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: The first one, I was like, we did it. Yeah, dude, it feels huge. I mean, you get fine. Because at that point, like, at least for me, you're already going around saying, like, I'm starting a startup, I'm building a company, and you're super naive and you don't know. And then, like, suddenly when you raise, even, like, A little bit of money, it suddenly gives you the credibility, hey, this guy's actually, like, doing something. Like, they're actually able to accomplish it. Like, the first check matters. Um, yeah. So the second time, you know, you just take your time. And I found myself at least also, like, very picky on what and on how, like, we're not going to take money if it's not the right amount of money, if it's not the right people. Like, we're gonna build this company the right way.
Speaker B: Yeah. The second time around, you realize, like, it matters. It matters because it matters. Like, what networks you get into.
Speaker A: 100% in branding. You know what I mean?
Speaker B: It's a momentum game. And, like, if you're not taking, like, the right in. I call it the in crowd. If you're not taking in crowd money, then you don't have access to the markup for this, because you have to. You have to be really. Like, this is real talk. Because a lot of founders, listen, they like this. But, like, yeah, there's. There's certain firms that investors are okay marking up.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: And there are certain firms, of course.
Speaker A: Yeah. That's why you got the. That's why you get the Tron.
Speaker B: Because they look like. They look at it. They're like, listen, I don't. I'm not marking that guy's deal up. That.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: And that matters, of course.
Speaker A: I mean, that. That's a hundred percent. It's all part of it. And you learn this, I think, you know, the second time around, you learn how much these things, at the end of the day, unfortunately, do matter now, obviously, build a great product, get a lot of revenue. You'll be able to, like, overcome these
Speaker B: things, like a really good balance sheet, like a really good P and L, like, product with revenue. Like, that's undeniable. But, like, a lot of times that takes in defense, you know, it takes 24, 36 months. Like. Like, if you look at. If you looked at our founding date as, uh, in the 22. 20, 22 time frame, I mean, till our first founding date, till first contract, had to have been. I don't have the exact number. Had to have been 24 months or something.
Speaker A: Yeah, 24 months.
Speaker B: Because we had not, you know, we just started nothing. We had. We had a clean sheet of paper.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: So it takes. It does take some time in defense.
Speaker A: It does. And even when you get the contracts, like, when you get something in writing, whatever it is, a prototyping contract, an loi, anything just from that to con, convert to dollars in the bank is a whole other shit.
Speaker B: I mean. I mean, sometimes they even want to pay you, but they're so bureaucratic, they're, like, loaded into the system. Your new company, you gotta, like, go through all the certificates.
Speaker A: Come on, where's the money? Like, you know, this thing is signed. Let's go.
Speaker B: Yeah, you gotta go through the certifications. They got processed before they can wire it.
Speaker A: Yeah. You know, I mean, in Israel, we have something called a sole source, uh, provider. I think you have something similar here as well. Um, so you gotta go through that designation. And that designation allows the military to pay you. And we got a sole source designation that I'm very happy with. It literally says, the only SOL for mechanical demolition of tunnels. Which is like. I think it's a great thing to have autonomous mechanical demolition of tunnels. I thought, like, yeah, we have that. That's it. Infinite money unlock. No, like, that's step one.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: Get the revenue.
Speaker B: Actually, no. One of my favorite contracts to win is, like, when they put you, uh, what's called in the basket. I know you've seen these before where, like, you're like. It's like an OTA type thing. But they'll be like. It's like a. They kind of trick you. Or at least I didn't know. I was not. I was naive to it. But they're like, okay, you won't. You won the ability to get selected later.
Speaker A: You got the ability to maybe win in the future.
Speaker B: They're like, you won the award. You got awarded. I'm like, I got awarded sick. And they're like, yeah, you got awarded to be in the basket. So now you're a company.
Speaker A: But that's how it is, like, 90% of the times, right. You get awarded the opportunity to be part of the opportunity.
Speaker B: Yeah, that's so good. And I was like. At first, I was. Cause even though I was in defense, and I've seen it from the other side, I didn't have the appreciation for the side of the table. So I didn't really actually know the details of these things. But I feel like we've learned a ton about the whole. The process over the last couple years.
Speaker A: Oh, 100%. For me, I mean, just the last six months have been crazy. Like, I wasn't able to talk in the acronyms at the beginning. Like, you dive into this. You have to learn this inside out. And you have to be, like, the most knowledgeable person in the room about it. At least for me, in the stage we're at.
Speaker B: Yeah, I had to learn a new set of acronyms. I knew the Navy ones.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: The army's got their own.
Speaker A: There's endless. Yeah. I mean the contracting acronym, that's the thing.
Speaker B: You want more. Why do you want to um. Like it feels like Israel love this product, you know, because they're in, they're battling all the time over there. Why. Why the US for like the company?
Speaker A: Look, at the end of the day, the tunnels in Israel call it the Hezbollah and Hamas tunnels. That's not the subterra. Not the opportunity and not. Not you think. It's not the problem. It's much bigger. Like Iran is the great example here.
Speaker B: Iran in China.
Speaker A: Yeah. Of, of what happens when you don't control the subterra domain. Yeah, that's. Look, if, if we wanted to solve and this, this was like kind of how we started. Like if we wanted to solve the problems locally just to like help back home, then the method would be very different. We, we may or may not even like want to make money out of it. Right. Because it's just like for the good of the country. But even if we would want to make money out of it, I would never raise venture capital for that. It doesn't justify the existence of it. So for us more than anything, you know, solving hair on. On fire problems in Israel, solving the Hamas tunnels and the Hezbollah tunnels, that is for us, you know, as they say, a hair on fire go to market. Right. You have a problem that needs to be solved. So yes, we're going to allocate some resources to get that solved. And that is a good jumping board because it gives us operational deployment experience in a real military environment. It allows us to test other things. But once we got that ball rolling, like 80% of our investment is in the U.S. 80% of our investment at the end of the day is on building U.S. capabilities to win the subterranean domain.
Speaker B: Yeah, I need to just blow this thing out of the water, bro. Like I need to just fucking go big ten products within the next four years. Like and a real style.
Speaker A: So you hit it on the head. So like our development, our development strategy and you know, obviously it took a while to sort of formulate this and I think it's non consensus. Like a lot of people are expecting to have your like, you know, your starship moment, your one thing that you're building. We realized to win this domain, the way it works is like you get six to eight products. It's multi product at a TRL 45. Yeah. And then eventually when everything consolidates into one, maybe you put the effort on it.
Speaker B: You're selling a suite of products.
Speaker A: Exactly, yeah. Uh, everything in the subterranean.
Speaker B: Much different business model than.
Speaker A: Exactly. Very different.
Speaker B: Like, we're like, more like we're selling the same thing over and over again.
Speaker A: Yeah. And if you crack that, it's a huge market. It has a ton of value.
Speaker B: But your strategy, I see it.
Speaker A: Yeah. It has to be horizontal. And I'll say, like, even more than that. I mean, we're pitching trl ones and twos, right? Like the RFI from DARPA right now that ask for non. Non kinetic penetrators. Like, that's a piece of paper. And if we can win that piece of paper, we win the opportunity for an opportunity, as you said. So that's what we're going after.
Speaker B: All right, so we're blowing this out of the water. We're going to. Andre. Underground.
Speaker A: No, I don't like that word.
Speaker B: Okay, we're going to be.
Speaker A: And I like Saronic Underground. You know why? Because, like, Saronic is vertical, right. Anderil goes horizontally.
Speaker B: You got to correct me.
Speaker A: Andre, by the way, will have an underground department. I'm sure Andre is going to develop products for Underground.
Speaker B: That's actually. That's a good. For you.
Speaker A: That's great for us.
Speaker B: Bring some more attention to this.
Speaker A: You know, they have like, uh, a, a, ah, a, a A page buried in their website for underground. You can pull this up. It's like, it's andrew.com. future state, slash. Uh, uh, I love this. We're getting the, uh, future state is between. Between future to state.
Speaker B: Oh, here we go.
Speaker A: Hell yeah. Now scroll down. This is the whole thing.
Speaker B: This is. All right, they're getting ready.
Speaker A: Oh, my God, you got a scoop here. His.
Speaker B: His tweet had to help you fundraise a little, right?
Speaker A: All of his tweets?
Speaker B: Yeah, all of us.
Speaker A: Look, I mean, not. Not just his tweets. Everyone tells me, by the way, like, people are talking to Palmer. He's like, yeah, behind closed doors, you ask him, like, what are you excited about? Then he's like, subterranean. Subterranean. He's like, going out there on a subterranean tour. He's, like, doing our work for us. It's incredible.
Speaker B: Oh, dude, that's awesome.
Speaker A: I mean. And you know, to his credit, he was saying this much before us. Like, Palmer is the biggest advocate for subterranean, and I think that's super important. You need to have people like him talking about it.
Speaker B: So did you, like. I guess you said some Andrew execs invested too.
Speaker A: Founders. Did you see can't say who.
Speaker B: Yeah, it's okay. That's okay. Did you see, um. Uh, their beef was SHIELD over the weekend.
Speaker A: I did not. Oh, I did. I did this in their place.
Speaker B: It was funny. As I met. I only met. I haven't met. I met Trey and Matt. Matt. I met him like, when we, like, by a year into my. The company. We went to the Android office and met with them.
Speaker A: No, not the underground. The, uh, shield.
Speaker B: Matt Grimm Twitter. Just go to his Twitter. Just go to his Twitter. He. I love this beef. Oh, well, this is one of them where he's like, oh, I genuinely pity.
Speaker A: Yeah, it's all part. It's all part of it.
Speaker B: Here, click on Slinky Vagabond's tweet. Go in there. This is like, where they're trying to rip on.
Speaker A: Yeah. And everyone was fighting about it.
Speaker B: But don't you think it's great verse fury and shit?
Speaker A: Don't you think it's great for. I mean, it's great for both of them. No, like, the beef. It just. Everyone knows that, you know, and then
Speaker B: Trey made a post and then Palmer made one. Yeah, they're, like, attacking.
Speaker A: Look, I think. I think it's funny, like, how aggressive and good I think the Andrew guys are, right? Like, everything, like, super healthy, what they're doing, um, with all these, you know, investors in the company that try to get in through these, like, weird vehicles. And then Matt calling them out. That's great stuff for the industry. Like, you know, being open about this shit. That's important.
Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. They, um. I guess they're really. When will they go public, do you know?
Speaker A: Anduril Now?
Speaker B: Could be a while. Could be a while. They're gonna be like, stripe. You know, stripe just says private forever.
Speaker A: I kind of think, like, they. I don't know. I feel like they won't.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: Uh, like, it's a good time to IPO. I mean, look, the SpaceX IPO, that was crazy. I was not expecting that. Like, you know, I SpaceX to the moon, man. But yeah, um, like, I was not expecting up into the right the whole time.
Speaker B: Are you, um. Do you follow the, uh. This is not a Nero show. And you follow Nero's like them.
Speaker A: Yeah, Yeah. I mean, look, drone production capability is critical.
Speaker B: Obviously. All these drones in the air, they got to go. And you got to go underground to survive.
Speaker A: That's part of our thesis. It's not. It's, you know, that's it. The end state of the sky is no one can be in the sky. It's not like, of course we need to be able to like live up right, to, to a uh, war scenario with China. We need to have the drone manufacturing capability. I get that, but don't like, I don't think anyone thinks that we're gonna have a call, um, it Iran situation in China, where we control the skies. Right. We're untouchable in the sky. Come on, like they have their production capabilities. It's gonna be a contested environment. It's gonna be a dangerous environment for both sides. That's what it is. So at the end of the day, if that's where you're heading, just win underground.
Speaker B: Well, maybe I'll have to, we'll have to collab in the future. We'll make some sort of underground weapon.
Speaker A: That's crazy.
Speaker B: We're like a lethality company.
Speaker A: Everyone asked me, by the way, about the first products because they had this like, like, I think misguided perception that um, they're like, okay, so you're getting this like excavator class autonomous underground system into a tunnel in Gaza. What if a terrorist pops up? Like, will you have autonomous, you know, machine guns on it? Like, listen guys, we're operating in tunnels that have been cleared out for like months. We're not getting surprises. Like, we're not getting terrorists in the tunnels. You will get like mines, blast doors, you know, obstructions, but you're not going to get a person in the tunnel.
Speaker B: So are you going to keep an engineering team? A team in Israel and here?
Speaker A: Yeah. By the way, that's like a rare, everyone's shocked about that. There aren't many companies turn out that have like double R and D facilities. It's usually like an R and D facility in a sales and marketing.
Speaker B: Well, how do you do, how do you do it? Like itar and stuff?
Speaker A: Yeah, that's, that's the difficulty we're navigating. Yeah, yeah. Uh, you deal with it. I mean you, you, you make it work. Or obviously our parent companies in the U.S. our IP is in the U.S. it's not too difficult. Like there are many U.S. defense contractors that have subsidiaries in the world where majority owned by US citizens. It's not a problem.
Speaker B: Yeah, the um, uh, you know, like the Elbit guys, that's like the big prime in Israel, right?
Speaker A: Albert Elbit and Rafael.
Speaker B: Are they going to start a subterranean department?
Speaker A: I don't think so. I mean they, by the way, Elbit just purchased, um, they acquired a company called Blue White. Blue, um, White does um, autonomy for like big excavators. Yeah, right. So I mean you can picture the use case with that. We have 10 years of rubble to take away in Gaza. So like um, autonomous vehicles, autonomous D9 type vehicles. Right. To get in and do some work there is critical. They acquired that. That is under the category of land systems. Taking that to like you know, excavator class, underground systems. Maybe they go there someday. I don't think so.
Speaker B: What's going to happen in Gaza basically? Is it going to be like livable at some point?
Speaker A: It's crazy.
Speaker B: I mean it's a pretty beautiful.
Speaker A: We were talking, we had some really interesting conversations, like very early conversations with the Peace board, um, and you hear like their approach to it. I mean one, you see all these articles online that they don't have money. So I don't know, you know, what the situation is there. I assume they do have like, it's just like allocated differently. But their main challenge right now is like figuring stuff out. It's not even about rebuilding, it's like can we rebuild here? Like okay, so imagine you're building uh, whatever 100 story building in Gaza, right? The Trump Tower in Gaza. Uh, three years into the, three years later that building gets shot down by Israel. Not even Hamas. Not. It gets shot down by. Why? Because we found underground terrorist infrastructure. And by the way like Israel's right, you know, they're not making it up. There is underground infrastructure there. So the only way that someone's going to underwrite a hundred story building in Gaza is if someone does the work of dismantling the tunnels. Sending back a BDA and uh, I would even go as far as saying sending back an engineering report that says you can now build a building here. The Board of Peace does not have anyone to do this except for the Israeli military. Now watch the Board of Peace like beg the Israeli military to like do work for them. Yeah, like go, go convince this like 30 year old guy who's controlling Gaza right now, who all he cares about is the security of Israel and rightfully so to go do some work for the Board of Peace. So they're in a problem now. They need to find civilian contractors and we hope to like you know, find our place there's to work with them.
Speaker B: Yeah, I mean so basically you're saying is it's going to be a long road.
Speaker A: It's a long road. By the way, there's an interesting US company as well that's doing some automation and uh, clearing out the rubble. They say it's a 10 year project if they work 247 to clear out the rubble in Gaza.
Speaker B: Damn.
Speaker A: It's crazy.
Speaker B: That's crazy.
Speaker A: You don't see the end of it. And it's just clearing the rubble. We're not talking about reconstruction.
Speaker B: It's just a really, really terrible region.
Speaker A: Terrible.
Speaker B: Sad.
Speaker A: Sucks, man.
Speaker B: It really does suck. And Israel's like, in the middle of it.
Speaker A: Right in the middle. Always been right in the middle, man.
Speaker B: Uh, it's really, really. Yeah, I mean, they just, they need
Speaker A: the front lines of, you know, democracy.
Speaker B: What, What? Before we wrap, I would love to get your take on, obviously your tech for Ukraine. Um, is Ukraine, I'm sure, trying to go underground a lot, right? Like in Russia.
Speaker A: Well, the entire battlefield, uh, in Ukraine right now has gone underground. Um, I mentioned this, uh, um, in, in the, in the launch. Russians were reported to be using, uh, gas pipes to breach Ukrainian front lines. And, and Russians are using these, like, decommissioned, uh, mines in order to build up, you know, their supplies. So, yes, the underground is being utilized. But more than that, the, I think crazy thing, looking at Ukraine, Russia, which is sort of what we thought was going to happen, is that it went back to trench warfare. Everyone is fighting in trenches.
Speaker B: It's World War I over there.
Speaker A: It's World War I. It goes back to your ability now to dig trenches, right? To dig underground facilities, command and control posts underground.
Speaker B: I would consider trenches to be subterranean.
Speaker A: They are 100% subterra. So one of the devices we're developing, for example, is trench to trench resupply. So let's say you're at a trench like here, right? And you want to get more munitions to trench here. You know, you can go above ground, super dangerous. But what if you could just like, literally drill a hole and send everything you need there? And let me take this a step forward, and this is where we want to go eventually. It's, you know, maneuvering through, basically using the crust of the Earth as a 3D maneuver space to carry, like, people, signals and effects. Right. So carrying people through the crust of the earth. Think about it like as a underground subterranean that's carrying a train behind it that literally knows how to take someone from point A beneath all the trenches to point B to enemy, enemy territory. So if you look at Russia, Ukraine, I think that's where we want to be. Like, you know, hopefully not. But the next time time something like that happens.
Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's a really valuable product, that trench resupply. That's a good idea. Yeah, that's a good one. They'll buy the shit out of that by the way.
Speaker A: Also hitting right. Like you want to hit enemy trenches underground.
Speaker B: Like that's true too. Oh yeah. Messing up their, their trenches. I saw in your re. Industrialized speech you had like this three domains of like there's three.
Speaker A: Oh, three subterranean, one subterra, two subterranean.
Speaker B: Yeah. I kind of like that categorization. Yeah.
Speaker A: I think it's important for people to understand because they think about, you know, you think about like short term maneuvering space. You think about long term bunkers. Like listen, the nuclear enrichment facilities like in Iran are very, very, very different than the Hamas tunnels.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: There's almost no similar characteristics to them. So when you're developing a company in the space, also just for like mainstream, for people to understand, you got to organize it a bit.
Speaker B: Well. I love how you're. You're a great, effective communicator.
Speaker A: Thank you.
Speaker B: That's necessary when you're building a new category.
Speaker A: It is, it is.
Speaker B: And probably, probably since this is not your first startup, better at recruiting now than before.
Speaker A: 100%. And it's all about, it's all about getting the stars initially.
Speaker B: You know, it really like recruiting was so hard when I first started. It's much easier now, like now that I've been doing this for a long time.
Speaker A: But it's also easier when you get that first person. Like we got one of the first people at the boring company to lead our engineering team and uh, you know, he was previously at SpaceX and that's it. Now you're like the company. Now if you go to our talent section, you see like SpaceX boring company, Andrew Logos. Who doesn't want to join with like engineers from SpaceX.
Speaker B: Yeah, no, I agree with that. I agree with that. ACS is a little bit weirder. I don't think we have any, uh, anyone from anywhere. I don't know.
Speaker A: By the way, my co founders laugh at me that I'm just like, you know. Exactly. Branhor. That's the way to put it. Logos, logos, logos.
Speaker B: I like to find weird diamonds in the rough.
Speaker A: That's amazing.
Speaker B: People that have been overlooked.
Speaker A: I like to do that too. But I feel like I only have like the luxury of doing that like after I get my logos.
Speaker B: That's true. Yeah.
Speaker A: Because then the logos attract everyone. Yeah. And then I'm like, okay, you don't have a logo, but you seem like a really good guy. Let's go.
Speaker B: Well, cool. Well, thanks for coming on. Yadine. Right?
Speaker A: Yeah, say it right this time.
Speaker B: I got it. This is awesome. Some things we have to have you come on, um, in, like, maybe 10 months or so when you're, like, in the middle of what, product launch or something.
Speaker A: Hell, yeah.
Speaker B: To launch that shit.
Speaker A: Of course.
Speaker B: And then obviously, we're going to have you in the American dynamism show.
Speaker A: That's crazy. I'm looking forward to Orlando balloon. That is. Yeah, you got to get Orlando Moon shout out to Orlando.
Speaker B: Yeah. Orlando Bloom are nothing. That's. You got to. You got a hard line on.
Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, I'm fine with Bradley Cooper, too, if you want to go.
Speaker B: Okay. Yeah, that's true. Obviously, I can see that you're like. That you're like, he's not Jewish, though.
Speaker A: He's not Jewish.
Speaker B: I don't think so, but I can see the resemblance.
Speaker A: But also, it kind of sucks because we brought in the guy who brought to lead our engineering team.
Speaker B: He looked.
Speaker A: He really looks like Bradley Cooper. So now, like, I lost that title.
Speaker B: I really like that movie. I like Silver Linings Playbook. I thought he was really good in that.
Speaker A: Yeah. All his ROM coms. Dude, he's the king of rom coms.
Speaker B: He's just good at everything. Wedding crashers. Genius in, uh, that. Genius in that, too. All right, bro. Thanks for coming on, dog.
Speaker A: Thank you so much. Thanks for the invite, man.
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