"Ocean is the new space" - 7 Wild Ideas for the $3 Trillion Dollar Frontier

"Ocean is the new space" - 7 Wild Ideas for the $3 Trillion Dollar Frontier Sam Parr: That episode was a whirlwind. Shaan Puri: Yeah, we just recorded with our buddy Will O'Brien. This episode was like my favorite conversations living in San Francisco where you run into a weirdo who knows a lot about something you know very little about and you get way smarter. In like 45 minutes, your mind gets blown like five times and you just get smarter. So this is a get smarter episode for me. Sam Parr: And it wasn't just about like the business and the ideas that he talked about, but the mindset and how he thought about just like the philosophy of life that I was inspired by. Shaan Puri: Yeah, exactly. So, okay, what are we talking about? We're talking about how the ocean is the new space, how there's companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin, all these companies that are doing cool shit in space. He knows a lot about companies that are doing cool things in the ocean, which is something I honestly didn't know anything about going in. Now I'm pretty fascinated with. But then we talked about the conversation toward the end gets really fun. Conspiracy theories, why conspiracy theorists make for great founders, his summer living with monks in Nepal, and what he took out of that. It was, the end is really good. So get there to the end. I promise you, you will enjoy this episode. Unknown Speaker: ♪ I feel like I can rule the world. ♪ ♪ I know I can be what I want to. ♪ ♪ I put my all in it like no days off on the road. All right, what's up? Shaan Puri: We got our friend Will O'Brien here. And Will is an Irish guy who talks my ear off about the ocean. And I honestly wasn't thinking about the ocean at all until I saw maybe a tweet of yours, which was basically saying the ocean is the new space and how there's companies like SpaceX and others that have built huge hundred billion dollar plus companies about exploring space, about putting satellites in space, about reusable rockets. And that there's an opportunity for a similar wave of disruption for startups in the ocean. And I love that idea. Honestly, I'm never gonna do it. So I'll just put that up front. I'm never gonna do something like that. I think 99.9% of people listening to this will also never go do that thing. But just from a, I don't know, just as a fan of the game, just as a founder, I kind of love the theory and the intellectual idea here of what is the opportunity. And then if you're one of the rare few Hardcore founders that can go do this. This is gonna be right up your alley. So that's my interest in it. Sam, I'm curious, from your perspective, are you the same as me? Sam Parr: Dude, I won't even go on a cruise ship. Like, I was at a party the other day and the want liner or the icebreaker was something you're deathly afraid of. To me, it's being in the ocean to where I can't see land. So I'm not even gonna be out there. But yeah, I agree with your premise. Shaan Puri: And Will, did I kind of frame your argument right as to like the potential that you see as far as, you know, the business opportunity of building startups that are focused on the ocean? Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, the framing is like, you know, something like this. It's like, you know, you know, everyone is like here standing on Earth, like looking towards the stars and Absolutely. We should be doing that and we should be going full pelt with trying to go interplanetary, trying to put a base on the moon and take the dark side of the moon and then go from there and use that as a line going to Mars. We should be trying to fly supersonic as well. But then, look, if you're trying to build a startup, you're always asking yourself, what is everyone else looking to do and where is everyone else going and where is underrated? And I suppose I grew up by the seaside in the southwest of Ireland. I've always been obsessed with the ocean. If I wasn't on it, in it or near it growing up, there was something wrong in the same way that you're afraid, Sam, of it. Yeah, I'm kind of like when I'm away from it, I feel something wrong with me. So I've always been thinking about it. And I mean, if you just look at it in fundamental terms, The ocean economy right now is already massive. It's not like the future space economy is going to be massive. The ocean economy is massive. It's like $3 trillion in annual spend in different ways. It covers 70% of the planet, 3 billion people rely on it as their primary source of food, a billion as their primary source of income. And then while we have robots and Mars and these low-cost drones going in our skies, The technology in our oceans still pales in comparison. You look at the ships that are out there today, much of the technology is very same and similar to what we had years ago. The unmanned underwater drones are pretty much the same as well there. The key core technology stack supporting the key pillars of the ocean, whether it be transport, fisheries, defence, energy, biodiversity, all these areas, It's just like it's the same old, like stagnant incumbents, large scale incumbents offering solutions that, you know, are running on like ancient software. And there's just like very little innovation going on there. It's like, you know, you ask someone like, what is like a sexy ocean startup? And it's like they're kind of scratching their heads for a bit. You know, whereas you ask them about space, it's like SpaceX straight away. It's like, you know, it's straight away. It's like you ask them about aerospace. It's like, oh, boom. So, yeah, this is like the kind of like the core of the thesis. Sam Parr: Sean, you just wound him up really easily. This is going to be one of those podcasts that we've had. We've only had maybe five of them ever, where at the end of the hour, we are like, we're no longer podcasting. We're getting into the ocean business. Shaan Puri: Yeah. Like, aye, aye, let's go. Sam, he just said a bunch of stats. So which of those surprised you? So I'm just going to rattle a couple back. He said, all right, this one probably doesn't surprise you. 70% of the earth is covered in water. I think only 25% has ever been explored. He said a billion people rely on the ocean for their primary source of income. Three billion is their diet. Explain that. What's the diet and the jobs one of the income one? Speaker 3: Oh, it's just like people like, you know, most of them, I mean, the human societies generally settle along coastlines. Like this is like a very like common trend. Sam Parr: Yeah, but I'm in New York, but I don't eat fish every day. Speaker 3: Yeah, but in developed countries, it's not as easy. We've developed logistics, which means you can go down the street and walk into some sushi bar and get like, you know, bluefin tuna probably flew in last night from Japan. However, if you are in Mogadishu or like Somalia or something like that, this might be a bit more difficult because the systems are not set up. So that's important. Remember, most of the world does not live in, you know, developed countries. So yeah, most humans just live along the coastline naturally, then easiest source of food for them to get. This is Fish. Shaan Puri: Hey, quick message from our sponsor, Hubspot. You know, marketing in 2025 is wild. Customers can spot fake messages instantly. Privacy changes are making ad targeting a nightmare, and everybody needs more content than ever. That's why Hubspot has a new Marketing Trends Report. It doesn't just show you what's changing, it shows you exactly how to deal with it. Everything is backed by research, and it's about marketing plays that you can use tomorrow. So, if you're ready to turn your marketing challenges into results, go to hubspot.com slash marketing to download the report for free. Sam Parr: Alright, so what were some other stats, Shaan, that caught your eye? Shaan Puri: A billion people rely on it for their income. So what are the jobs that you're talking about here? Fisheries, shipping, is it like defense? Are those the big three or am I missing something big and obvious? Speaker 3: The framing for me, how I think about like the ocean economy is like you generally kind of break it up into like three categories, right? Like you have like the biosphere, right, which is like your fisheries, it's your ecosystem restoration, it's like your environmental mapping, it's science in the ocean, it's like all around like biosphere management. Then you have like, you know, the kind of prosperity oriented part around it. It's like the kind of commercial, this is like your energies, your infrastructures, your oil and gas, it's your like data infrastructure, you know, these sorts of things. It's your like logistics, shipping, and then you have like, you know, keeping the seas safe, which is like defense, defense and security, border security, critical infrastructure protection, deploying ships in the South China Sea, these sorts of things. Shaan Puri: And so give me an example of a startup today that's doing really well as based on this kind of ocean economy that you're talking about. Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think one player that's, like, interesting in the unmanned systems space that's been around for a long time, I think over a decade now, and was really kind of one of the first players to start doing interesting new things in the ocean is Saildrone. Shaan Puri: What problem are they solving? What does Saildrone do? Speaker 3: I suppose they are solving the kind of data gathering at scale in the ocean problem. They build these, like, autonomous sailboats, these huge vessels. Sam Parr: They look amazing. They look awesome. Speaker 3: They build these huge vessels, massive sailboats that can basically stay at sea for many, many months at a time. You can put a load of, you know, fancy sensors on them, you know, that can take data from the water, that can, you know, gather video footage at the surface and these sorts of things and then relay them back to someone like in the United States. It might be like a state, a government agency like NOAA, who want to know how much fish is in the, in the Alaskan, in the seas off Alaska. They could sell it to the US Navy to know You know, how deep is the waters in and around Guam or something like that. And then they said, yeah, they sell these things as a service. But, you know, there was a very interesting founder there. You know, it seems like a super sharp guy who's been obsessed with sailing for decades. Again, like a lot of these ocean vendors that you see, they're very, very obsessed with the ocean. It's the very thing people very often get obsessed about and then try to make a business out of it. Sam Parr: What's your business do, Will? What's Ulysses? Ulysses. Yeah, yeah. Speaker 3: Ulysses. Ulysses, we're building a general purpose autonomy platform for maritime operations. Shaan Puri: Say that like we're stupid. Sam Parr: Just pretend. Pretend that we're stupid. Shaan Puri: Yeah, I know it's hard to believe, but just go ahead and dump that down for me. Speaker 3: Autonomous robots for the ocean to do important things. Sam Parr: Okay, and what's one important thing that you would do? You would, like for example, you would go to a pipe in the ocean and determine if it's got a hole in it. Speaker 3: That is something you could do. Our first business line has been working with this weird plant that you've probably never heard of. There's this plant in the ocean that's probably about 10 times more abundant than coral reefs. It is 35 times better than rainforest at removing carbon. It supports about, it holds about 20% of the carbon in the ocean, supports about a quarter of the world's most critically important fish stocks, and it's called sea grass. It's basically just grass in the ocean. And this plant is dying off at an insane rate all around the world, about 7% loss per annum. If you follow these trends, we lose all our... Sam Parr: 7% a year of this thing is going away. Shaan Puri: Why is it dying? Is it because of pollution or what's the cause? Speaker 3: There's a few things. I mean, water quality is like a very common, you know, cause for loss. Other things are just like construction, construction around like coastlines, digging it up, dredging, changing ocean temperatures, changing like ocean currents, these sorts of things. Impact it. And basically, you know, the kind of context there is there's a lot of governments in around all over the world, like really, really panicking around this. Like if they lose their seagrasses, they lose their fish stocks. If they lose their fish stocks, you have the 1 billion people who rely on it and 3 billion people who rely on it for food and the billion for income. And, you know, they're in a tough situation. Basically, restoring it, i.e. bringing it back, is currently a very manual process. Sam Parr: And how are you guys doing that? Speaker 3: We built autonomous robots to do it. Sam Parr: And you're actually building the robots yourself? When you said you're building a platform, I thought that meant you're allowing other people to build it and use your technology to track them. Speaker 3: Yeah, so for this first use case, we've built a kind of custom robotic payload. You know, like when you're starting and trying to do something new, it's kind of important to kind of get, you know, initial traction in a weird place. And I think if we just built something and hoped that people would use it for something, if we just built the platform, which is like an underwater vehicle and a surface vehicle that dock together, You know, we might have trouble getting traction, but we started off with this initial use case. We basically built these like attachments that go on to our underwater vehicle that do collecting seeds, planting seeds, measuring their growth to kind of get this initial traction. So, you know, in our first year, we did a million dollars in revenue, just kind of like, you know, first year, five person team based here in San Francisco. Sam Parr: Why would someone pay you to do this? Speaker 3: So the reason people pay us is because it's a critically important ocean ecosystem that, if lost, has these very negative downstream impacts. That's one reason. Another reason is lots of governments now around the world have implemented laws that restrict your ability to damage this plant. Or if you damage it, you have to pay someone to plant it. So they're paying us to plant it. It's compliance driven restoration. So that's the kind of content we've contracted in Western Australia. We've contracted in Florida. We've contracted in Virginia. And they're all kind of for like these general reasons, either compliance-driven restoration or voluntary-led restorations. Shaan Puri: Sam, I put, how important is seagrass into ChatGPT? Here's what I said. Seagrass is wildly important to the world. It basically says it captures carbon 35 times faster than rainforest, which I think you said. And then it says it's like a baby crib for the ocean. The seagrass basically is where small fish, crabs, seahorses, and even endangered species and turtles, they're born and they live early on in their life. And if lost, then you would, it says, lose the seagrass and entire marine ecosystems collapse. Speaker 3: Yeah. Sam Parr: Well, what's crazy is you, okay, the mission check, like on board, amazing. You kind of skipped the headline, Shaan. He built a robotics business in the first year. I think you said you only raised $2 million or something like that. So with only $2 million in funding in your first 18 months of business, you did a million in revenue. Is that right? Shaan Puri: Yeah. Unknown Speaker: And just five people as well. Shaan Puri: Is there something new about building like a robotics company today that lets you do it way cheaper? Like did something change? Like, oh, we all use whatever, you know, it's like when the Raspberry Pi came out, then it's like, oh, we can now have this little computer for 35 bucks or whatever. Is there something that does that's made it a lot cheaper or maybe just more talent? What's changed? Speaker 3: 3D printers has been huge. Like that's just like a game changer. It means just like the speed of iteration has gone up massively. You know, it's easier now to get parts overnight as well and just like get like sheet metal cut and the cost of a lot of things has gone down like massively as well. Like with like the advent of like electric vehicles, batteries kind of went down massively and a lot of electronic components with drones, the motors went down massively in cost. You know, for us as well, like a critical enabler of what we do, right, is Starlink because, you know, the way our system works is like we have this like autonomous boat. It's like a surface vehicle. This is like our mothership. And then we have a docking system that releases these daughter robots, these like autonomous underwater vehicles to do the actual critical activity in the ocean that you want to do. And, you know, we wouldn't be able to communicate with these assets without something like Starlink. You had Iridium before, but like the bandwidth on that wasn't that strong. And so you have like other like kind of wine-out features like that. Shaan Puri: And that company you were talking about, Saildrone, they've raised like over a hundred million dollars. It looks like they're valued 500 to a billion dollars. That's interesting. There's another one called Ceronic. Sam, do you know Ceronic? Sam Parr: No. How do you spell it? Shaan Puri: S-A-R-O-N-I-C. And Will, you probably know a little bit more about this company than me. I think this Joe Lonsdale seeded this company, right? Speaker 3: Yes. Shaan Puri: Yeah. Sam Parr: This looks sick as well. Shaan Puri: So like when we had Joe on the podcast and I was at his house, he was telling me about this company. Should have just invested on the spot, but he was basically like, we're building drone, like We're talking about drones for the water and drones for defense, just like Anduril's doing it for the sky and modern warfare has turned into drone base. They're building these unmanned surface vehicles, USVs, for the ocean. And they talked about how, did you know this, like the US Navy, Sam, just take a guess, how many ships are in the US Navy fleet? What's the number? Sam Parr: Oh, I don't know. 500? What? It's hard to even say. 100? Shaan Puri: Okay, so you're a lot closer than I thought. I would have guessed that we have thousands of ships. We have 300 ships in the Navy. Sam Parr: Is a ship considered like an aircraft carrier? Because those are huge, right? Those are like cities. Shaan Puri: Sure. Sam Parr: Oh my God. Shaan Puri: But only 300. That's just like a very small number to me. And we have 67 submarines. Sam Parr: That's it? Shaan Puri: 67. Dude, I had more kids at my three-year-old's birthday party. That's insane to me. So we got 300 ships or whatever and basically every ship is like I don't know the exact cost of it, but let me let me pull so I think they're like Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but like the average cost of these is something like, or maybe it's the average cost of these contracts, like $250 million every time you get a contract to do one of these. And so you're a startup like Saronic and all you have to do is basically say, all right, we're going to come in, we're going to build the most innovative, autonomous vehicles here. And we're going to operate, you know, what Anduril did was remarkable. So what Anduril did was, In Silicon Valley, the smartest tech people, nobody was working on defense. Google had famously shut down its defense project and defense was taboo. Like, you're going to make weapons? That was not cool at the time. And there was basically zero weapons startups in San Francisco. And what they did was they said, we're going to do this. We're going to use the Silicon Valley method and talent to do this. We're going to change the cost structure so all the big defense primes were operating on what's called cost plus model. And so their incentive really was to have really high cost operations because they were making 10% on top of whatever the cost was, right? So the incentive models sort of screwed up and that's how you get, you know, a single airplane that's like a billion dollars or something like that to get paid. And so it was costing the government a lot. These guys had no incentive to innovate, no incentive to cut costs, and they were using talent that was not the smartest engineering talent in the world, which was all centered in Silicon Valley. And Andrew comes out, Paul Maleky and Trey and others, they basically came out, and what they said was, we believe this is important. We believe that America needs this, and we believe we should put the best talent in the world on this problem. And they've built now a 20 to 30 billion dollar company doing this. And the reason I find this exciting is that I love these huge opportunities that are hidden in plain sight. I talked to a friend recently who knew Elon and I said, what was Elon like? Were you impressed with Elon? He goes, I was impressed with Elon, but not because he was the smartest guy in the room. You know, we would be at a party, there's 20 people, you couldn't say, oh my God, that's the guy. He goes, but the thing that Elon did better than everybody else was that Elon looked down at the ground and saw a trillion dollar opportunity that was just sitting there. You know, before Elon, it's not like there were a bunch of people trying to build, you know, rocket companies or electric car companies. It wasn't like they were trying and failed and he succeeded. They weren't even trying. And he goes, the beautiful part about Elon is that he saw those and he didn't ignore it like the rest of us. The idea of let's go to Mars was there. It was available to all of us and we were all blind to it. And so, similarly, I think Anduril did that in the defense space. And now it looks like Seronic is basically doing that in the sort of ocean defense space, where, you know, you have this combination of elite talent at robotics and AI and autonomy, and you pair it with this old industry. And I think you have a pretty unique window to build a very big company doing this. Speaker 3: Yeah, I think of it like they're building the Humvees and we're building the Toyota Hiluxes, right? They're building these ultra-fast, defense-focused vehicles and they're going to make the South China Sea a hellscape and make China not want to cross that ocean and keep Taiwan safe if they keep going on the path they're doing. And they're doing an incredible job at that. And then we occupy a different niche. We just want every single You know, day-to-day tasks that is done at sea, we want it done on our platform. And so we want all the servicing done by Ulysses platforms and these sorts of things. There's a lot of things that are making the ocean very important in this century more than previous ones. Warfare is a good example. Every other single war we fought in the last Three decades until now has been like in a desert, right? Now we're going to the ocean. That requires a complete retooling of the military, you know, and just even how we think about warfare fundamentally needs to change, like the climate question. Is ultimately an ocean question like the ocean is like the world's largest natural carbon sink. It is like where most of the life on Earth lives. It is, you know, one of our biggest sources of like food in a world where like a population is growing and food scarcity is always a question. Even just like you look at AI, right? Like the data infrastructure built out for AI is going to be like enormous, right? And basically that's going to require more data infrastructure, i.e. Like cables connecting different parts of the world, transmitting data. We're going to need more data centers. We're going to need more energy. These are all things like we're already putting and testing putting data centers in the ocean. The cooling costs go down massively. They become like more efficient. Shaan Puri: So we'll let's go back. So there's there's already pipes under the ocean that basically internet pipes under the ocean, correct? Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, most of the most of the information that tried our internet connection now is most of that is like traveling through is traveling underground. Shaan Puri: And who built that? Is that the government built that or Google built that? Who put those pipes in the ocean to do that? Speaker 3: So a lot of the initial infrastructure build-out for IT in the ocean came from telecoms companies, actually. Sam Parr: Yeah, like in the 80s, Shaan, there was a handful of telecom companies that were startups and they were some of the fastest growing companies in the world. So like imagine the AI companies today that are scaling to $100 million in revenue in a year. Shaan Puri: Did they die or what happened? Sam Parr: A lot of them are still running. And then there was some of the, you know, if you look at like what are the biggest frauds on earth, like it's like Bernie Madoff. And then like the third one is actually one of these telecom companies that was laying pipes in the ocean. But a lot of them are still around. They're just like small, they're not small, but they're B2B companies that you wouldn't even know, but they can be like a $10 billion a year company. But in the 80s, right? Well, maybe, I don't know if you know this, but in the 80s, that was like the birth of a lot of this, wasn't it? Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, massively. And now you're seeing a transition to the build-out being coming from Fang, from like Big Tech, and soon I think it'll be like the AI companies. Shaan Puri: So what you're saying, Will, now is that... AI companies need these data centers, just huge amounts of GPUs in a data center. And those data centers need cooling, they need power, they need tons of things. Ideally, they need to be close to places where people are using it. And what you're saying is that somebody's going to build a data center in the ocean or people are already building data centers in the ocean. And who's doing that or is this a future idea and why are they doing that? Why is that a good idea? Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think the first experiment of this was a Microsoft project. They did it. There's a YC startup as well run by friends of mine, Sam Mandel. He's got a company called Network Ocean. They're building and operating, starting to building and operate these things. Shaan Puri: Are they actually underwater or are they on top of the water, just out in the ocean? Speaker 3: The plan is for it to be subsea. And again, like these are the sorts of businesses that like Ulysses, we want to be the kind of servicing partner for in the future when they need maintenance, when they need like inspections done, when they like, it's like us they're coming to and we're selling them like a kind of in the box solution to. I think the biggest opportunity in this like, you know, Paradigm in the future where more and more data cables are being laid subsea is actually in the protection of them. Right. So I don't know if you guys are familiar what's going on in the Baltic Sea in places, but I think in the last year about 11 cables have been cut by foreign actors. Sam Parr: And these cables, by the way, it's like a human sized tunnel, right? Shaan Puri: Are they on the ocean floor or are they floating in the ocean? Sam Parr: To say cable, we're not talking like a rope that you pull. It's like a tunnel, right? Unknown Speaker: And I'm like, okay, like literally the Chinese are literally publicly advertising these cutters that they have, these cable cutters, right? They're literally putting in the South China Morning Press, China unveils powerful deep sea cable cutter could reset the world earth. They're not even fucking hiding this. They're cutting the cables. They're like, yeah, look how big our cable cutter is. This is just the new paradigm. And then they send these little Taiwanese ships or these Chinese ships into the Baltic Sea on fishing missions, right? What the hell are they doing in the Baltic Sea on fishing missions? They're clearly just cutting cables. Speaker 3: And then two days later, Oh, cable cut. Sam Parr: Dude, calling this a cable cutter is like calling a robo a ship. You know what I mean? Like, maybe technically it's correct, but they need to rebrand this because what you're showing us is basically a Like a huge submarine, you know, like I'm thinking of like a clip. Shaan Puri: It's not scissors. Speaker 3: Yeah. Sam Parr: This is insane. Shaan Puri: So they're going down and they're cutting this. And what does that do? Like, does a country lose Internet or is it just like damage it? Speaker 3: OK, I'll give you this vision, right? So these cables run between like military bases as well, right? And OK, let's say there's like a hot war breaks out in the South China Sea, right? First target then is going to be like a military base in like the Pacific, somewhere like Guam, right? If you want to completely scramble their understanding and situational awareness of what is going on, you are going to be sending these subsea drones down there to go and cut the cables that is giving them coms, that's giving them energy. And you're going to be scrambling their airwaves with electromagnetic interference. And that's how you're going to just completely prevent American military responses in the Pacific, right? Sam Parr: But how many cables, you're talking to two dummies, how many cables does America rely on? Speaker 3: There's not actually that many. There's an insane amount of data that goes over them, but there's only about 600 active. Shaan Puri: I'm so impressed that you knew that number. That's insane to me. So there's not a lot of redundancy, you're saying? Unknown Speaker: No, no, not at all. They're very difficult to lay, right? And you need to respond quickly. So yeah, like, I mean, there's like many critical things that rely on them, but like, yeah. Shaan Puri: You're way better off defending them with unmanned water drones than trying to lay backup pipes down there and leave them undefended, of course. Speaker 3: You need to be persistently out at sea, like sentry style, in the same way that like androids I started with these border systems to see what was coming in and over the land border. We need the exact same type of systems out at sea, permanently just sitting there on top of them. They need to be cheap so that you can deploy them massively at scale. The ocean is huge, so they need to be cheap to be scalable. You need to be able to see what's going on at the surface and you need to be able to see what's going on subsurface. And that's like the platform that we've developed. We have this like surface vehicle with a docking system that can drop a number of water vehicle and we've made it like all about 10 times cheaper than anyone else. You know, sea grass is like a nice place where we started. Shaan Puri: How deep do your vehicles go? Do they go to like the bottom of the ocean where these pipes are? Speaker 3: So for the Baltic Sea, I mean, it's one of the shallower seas and this is like a major, the major kind of like, you know, activity, area of activity where this is going right now. So our vehicle works in that sea, you know, at all depth profiles in that sea. So for the Baltic Sea part of it, it is, it works. When you get into like gnarlier parts of the ocean, like some of the Pacific where you're getting down to like 8,000 meters, right? Like Mount Everest, you know, levels of depth. We can't go there yet. It just starts getting difficult. But like, yeah, we will be adding future vehicles to the fleet that can do that. Sam Parr: How old are you, Will? I'm 27. Shaan, so when you and I moved to San Francisco in, well, I moved there in 12 and we're about the same age, it was the sharing economy. That was the thing. So it was Airbnb and Uber and Lyft were the winners. And then there was a bunch of derivative things like Airbnb for garages or, you know, or for storage. A few years later, it was crypto, so like Bitcoin and Coinbase were winners. Then there was a bunch of silly things. Right now, this is so strange to me. It's AI, but it's also, well, it's whatever category you guys would go in. You're not quite defense tech, but it's wild to me that this shift has happened because 10 years ago, I would have told you, that was when Boom Supersonic was starting and a few other things. I would have said, this is foolish. What are you guys doing? We're technology. This is a technology city. Why don't you do software? It's to hear you say this. It's so foreign to me. It's also so interesting. Speaker 3: For me, it's like a no-brainer. I mean, like, you know, the low-hanging fruit of software has been eaten. Right. You guys, like, you know, it's like, yeah, we ate it. Sam Parr: Like how many more CRMs are there? Shaan Puri: Yeah, exactly. Speaker 3: The boomers got cheaper to say, you guys got like B2B SaaS, right? Like it's like, that's like, and now it's like on us to do like something where like the next frontier is, which is like fundamental hardware. And then like, also, it's like, it's like a no brainer. You look at like the top 10 most valuable companies in the world right now, it's like 7 out of 10 of them have like a hardware, like an extreme like hardware component, right? Like the biggest companies being built today, We're hardware companies and also in a world where you can just like vibe code overnight like a CRM or a Salesforce or maybe not a Salesforce but like a Calendly competitor. It's like, okay, well, is there really a mode in like these sorts of things anymore? Sam Parr: It's like, yeah, you're right. You're absolutely right and I think it's so fascinating because so when Shaan and I lived in San Francisco, if someone who looked like you, so you, look, you're wearing a Ford Bronco shirt, I bet you you're wearing cowboy boots, and you got a little bit of swag too, and you like, if you were to talk about what you're talking about, it would be like, you're, you're so out of touch. You're out of touch for the, for the, for the YC group of out of touch people. Like it's just so interesting to me and I think it's great. Shaan Puri: So there's a, I did a podcast with James Crew and he has this. And today we're going to talk about this thing about technology windows. Sam, did you ever see this part? Sam Parr: No. Shaan Puri: A technology windows. So he basically says, all right, there's a reason. There's a there's a almost like a scientific reason why why what you just described happens, happens. And so he basically says, like when a wave of startups comes out, it's because of a technology change. So when we, you're right, when we first moved to San Francisco, I moved in 2012 and the mobile window was open. And that's when Instagram, Uber, Snapchat, like a bunch of companies got built that relied on you having a computer with you at all times that had internet connection, that had an accelerometer, that had a map, a GPS feature in it. And then all these companies could get built. But that window opens for a fixed amount of time and basically, like he said, the low-hanging fruit all gets eaten. And so he went back all the way to the railroads and he's like, the railroad technology window was open for 40 years. And if you just look, there was not another successful railroad company after that 40-year period. And because all the opportunities basically got eaten. Automobiles was 25 years. And so in a 25-year window, you got Buick, Dodge, Ford, Cadillac, GM, Chevrolet, Lincoln, Chrysler, all of it within a very short window. And then you had nothing for another about 80 years. And then the window reopened because of battery technology and you got Tesla and Rivian. And so that was almost a new technology window around automobiles because the tech had changed again around batteries. And so he was basically saying like B2B SaaS has had a 20-year window and now AI software, AI starting in 2016 and that's like the current window that we're in. And I would say, you know, what Will is doing and what a lot of smart entrepreneurs are doing right now is they're in the technology window of AI, robotics and 3D printing. And basically those three technologies have opened up the door to build new things that couldn't have been built So this is what a technology would look like. So just check this out. If you're on audio, you have to be on YouTube to see this, but I'm sharing my screen here. So it basically says like step one, the technology is invented and only the hobbyists are playing with it out of interest and creativity, right? And then two is the status moment. One of the hobbyists achieve status and wealth using the tech. So, you know, for example, So this is like, you know, Marc Andreessen on the cover of Time barefoot because the hobbyist internet guy became rich by building, you know, the browser. And then this happened again with social networking. This happened again with Elon and Palmer Luckey and all those guys right now who've had their status moment where Palmer was like literally like living in a RV building VR headsets for like 90 bucks using spare parts. He was a hobbyist and then the hobbyist got the wealth, the status moment when he sold to Facebook for $3 billion. And then same thing with Elon. Elon was building in relative obscurity, both OpenAI. OpenAI was a nonprofit. It was relatively obscure for the first five years that they were doing their thing. But now Sam Altman and Elon and Palmer, again with Andrew, have had a new status moment. And then there's what he calls knowledge diffusion, which is suddenly there's conferences, there's podcasts like this, there's newsletters, there's Twitter, where people are sharing ideas about how to do this, what's going on, and you get this explosion of stuff. And then competition floods, and then the new incumbents are born. And then the new incumbent regime takes over due to their defensibility. Like they build something that is defensible, maybe because it's hardware, maybe because it requires scale, maybe it has a network effect. And the technology window is 90% closed, and you'll only have a few exceptions from there on out. All right, let's take a quick break because as you know, we are on the Hubspot Podcast Network, but we're not the only ones. There's other podcasts on this network too, and maybe you like them. Maybe you should check them out. One of them that I want to draw your attention to is called Nudge by Phil Agnew. And whether you're a marketer or a salesperson and you're looking for the small changes you could make, the new habits you could do, the small decisions you could make that will make a big difference, that's what that podcast is all about. Check it out. It's called Nudge, and you can get it wherever you get your podcasts. Sam Parr: It's so funny, Shaan, to meet Will, who's in the thick of actually what you're describing. Shaan Puri: Yeah. Will, when did you start? Were you a hobbyist? When did you start with doing what you're doing? Like, when were you messing around with drones or ocean tech? Speaker 3: So, yeah, I mean, like I said, I've been in the ocean, on the ocean, near the ocean since I was a kid, diving, surfing, you know, whatever, wakeboarding, all these sorts of things growing up, but never had built in it really before this kind of scooter sharing startup thing popped off. I was working in that. My co-founders all kind of have been tinkering and these sorts of things. But again, none of us had ever actually really done anything in the ocean, which I actually think is a massive benefit, right? Because none of us came in with these preconceived notions for how subsea drones should work. Two of my co-founders were building aerial drones in a drone delivery startup Before so they took like a lot of the primitives from that one of them had worked on self-driving cars took some of the like ideas from that. But again, I think there's like definitely this like idea that I agree with that like, you know to really actually shake up an industry you it's probably good if you don't come from it because we came to it and like. You know, we thought initially that we were going to be maybe using someone else's platform and repurposing it, but we looked at all of the subsea drones on the market and they were crap. They cost like, you know, they were like, one of the ones we were looking at, which like actually had the specs that would have met what we wanted to do, cost like 500 grand. That's like a quarter of our pre-seed to do what we want. And then, like, our CTO, Jamie, he just, like, went into a cave for a few days and just, like, came back with, like, a design for, like, a new type of, like, autonomous water vehicle. And then we, like, tested it and we were like, oh, shit, this works. Oh, shit, it's, like, 10, 20 times cheaper than, like, anything we could have bought. You know, so it's, like, sometimes you just need, like, a new idea and, like, an artist to go into a cave and then you can, like, change things. Sam Parr: That's how all the great things, that's how all the biggest problems have been solved. Speaker 3: This is like, I mean, all religions, like Muhammad went into the cave, like Jesus went into the desert, you know, like all these like prophets, like they go off into the old and they come back with like this like secret and then, you know, someone else spreads the word for them, right? Like it's like, yeah, St. Peter does it in like the Catholic Church and like, well, there is so, yes, this is a common archetype that, and yeah, that does work. Yes. Shaan Puri: You said something earlier about, um, How a billion people rely on the sea for their food. Has anybody done, you know, food or like tuna or salmon in a way? Are they doing anything interesting there with like, whether it's like lab grown or something innovative? Speaker 3: Yeah. Sam Parr: Yeah. Speaker 3: My friend's got a very, very interesting startup called Wild Type, which is like sustainable sushi grade salmon so basically that's like cultivated seafood and so their first product like their... Shaan Puri: What do you mean by cultivated? Speaker 3: It's grown. It's grown. It's not like farmed in or caught at sea. Shaan Puri: Like grown in a lab or grown? Speaker 3: Yeah like in a yeah exactly in this like industrial process. Yeah, they can basically grow cells and then put them together in such a way that it tastes like sashimi grade salmon. So, you know, in the same way that Elon started off with like a sports car, right, they're starting off with like your sashimi grade salmon, the highest end salmon to get. And I've tried it. It's great. Shaan Puri: This is in San Francisco. It looks like a brewery. Speaker 3: Yes, exactly. Unknown Speaker: It's like similar ideas. Speaker 3: I mean, look, breweries are like where so much of the best kind of biotech innovation has come from people building mass industrial processes for cultivating food for a very long period of time, in fact. Sam Parr: So you're telling me that someone is growing salmon that I can go and eat right now? Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I got it through my friend. I don't know if they're in stores yet. They're still undergoing FDA approval. But like, yeah, none of these nasty heavy metals or microplastics in them, you know, it's reducing pressure on fish stocks. You know, this is good stuff. It doesn't have any of the nasty, like, parasites that you get in some of this, like, farmed salmon as well. So, yeah, definitely, I think things like this would be important. Sam Parr: Holy shit. Shaan Puri: This is crazy to me. Sam Parr: This is crazy. Shaan Puri: Is it like the lab-grown meats where it's like $10,000 an ounce? You either pick, you either have the cheap thing like Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods, but it doesn't taste great or it's not good for you, it's made with a bunch of chemicals, or you have the real thing but it's super expensive and so nobody can afford it. Speaker 3: Um, well, I think given that, like, uh, my friend shared it with me that it's not that expensive. Uh, but, uh, it's... Shaan Puri: You're not that good a friend. Speaker 3: No, no, exactly. Yeah, I already... But I think this stuff is, like, sooner than we think. It's around the corner. Shaan Puri: Wow, these guys did $100 million Series B in 2022. That's pretty crazy. Sam Parr: What? What else is cool? Tell... Will, tell me everything. What the guys like you are into. Like, uh, some more ocean shit. Unknown Speaker: Some crazy ones. Sam Parr: Yes. Shaan Puri: Yeah. Speaker 3: Okay. All right. Unknown Speaker: This one is wild, right? Speaker 3: Buckle up. Okay. Ocean treasure hunting, right? So there is actually like, you know, hundreds of wrecks out there in the ocean today that Potentially have like more than a billion dollars on them, right? Like gold bullions that like the Spanish were bringing back from their conquests and then, you know, they got hit by a storm or these sorts of things. Right. And there's like probably thousands that have like millions of dollars of funds in them. Right. So governments. The source governments like the Spaniards, the Portuguese still have claim on these things. However, there is precedent in history for you to do these kind of like profit sharing agreements, right? It's like if we find that and we restore, we give you back all your artifacts, we give you back everything, but you know, we sell some of them, we get to, we get, can we keep some? You can do this, right? Shaan Puri: It's like these models where It's like these SaaS negotiation companies are like, hey, if we go and save you money on your vendors, we get a cut. We keep 20%. It's that, except for you go to the Spanish royal government and you're like, hey, if we find any hidden treasures in the ocean, can we keep a couple bars for ourselves? Speaker 3: Rum for piracy. Who's building this? Sam Parr: So my friend used to do this. His name's Chip Forsythe. And he would be like, hey, I'm going off the coast of whatever to go. Shaan Puri: Bro, you did not have a friend that used to do this. It's insane. Sam Parr: Chip Forsythe, you know. Shaan Puri: He went up the coast and just, what, scuba dived? Sam Parr: Well, it was Chip and A.J. Forsythe, who I think you've met A.J. He's crazy. His brother, Chip, they basically, the way it works now is it's kind of like a movie. Like you have these crazy people and you get other people to finance it and you say, if we find this treasure, you know, here's the agreement on how we split it. And they would somehow narrow in on where they think it is, they would spend a week trying to find it, and most of the time you don't find it, but occasionally you hit the lottery. Is that right, Will, how it works now? Speaker 3: Pretty much, yeah. So there's fundamentally two parts of a mission. Our three parts is like, there's like, you know, the pre-mission, you know, negotiating, like, you know, looking to restart the records to see like where we think it could be, you know, kind of scoping it out and also getting permission so that when you do the recovery, you have like some chance of being able to hold on to it. Then there's like this kind of scouting where you're actually on site and you're doing like scouting and you're like basically using sonar to scan the sea bed and understand what's there. And then there's like recovery where you're bringing out these like gnarly like JCB style ROVs and remote operated vehicles that go down and just like dig it all up and bring it back up and And you have your party. Shaan Puri: And is anybody doing this? Like has anybody, do you know someone who's like made like 10 million dollars finding treasures in the ocean? Speaker 3: I know some people working on this that haven't like shared their plans publicly yet, so I won't like share, but there is like some exciting developments coming in this space that we may or may not be helping with. Shaan Puri: Did you say there's three million? Shipwrecks at the bottom of the ocean? Speaker 3: So I'm not sure specifically on like a total amount of shipwrecks. I wouldn't be surprised if there's like that many shipwrecks, but there is like, there's like hundreds that potentially have billions on them. Sam Parr: Wow. Okay. That's crazy. What else? Speaker 3: So there's, okay, I'll give you like a banger quote, right? There's this like Canadian billionaire called Ross who had this quote a few years ago. He said, give me a tanker of iron filings and I will give you an ice age. Right. What I meant by that is that you can actually alter, like, the kind of weather of the Earth by, like, dunking iron into the ocean. Right. So basically, like, many, many parts of the ocean are low in iron. They need more iron. And if you add iron to these parts of the ocean, you stimulate, like, algae growing at the surface. Algae then draws down carbon and then the fish eat it and then the fish die and they fall to the bottom of the sea. And then so the carbon goes from the air Into the bottom of the ocean, right? So this is like generally good because we have too much carbon in the atmosphere. We also want more fish, but you need to balance it because you don't want to put too much in and then just like there's too much salmon and then there's like salmon take over like, you know, a certain ecosystem, which is maybe like not good or something. Or, you know, there's a basically when you're doing stuff in like with ecosystems, the rate It's very, like, difficult to predict how things are going to pan out. You need to be careful. So this dude didn't do it that carefully. It went out, like, off the coast of, like, Vancouver, partnered up with these, like, Native Americans and just did, like, this experiment where he just, like, basically dumped off a load of iron filings. We moved, through his quantifications, like thousands of tons of carbon off the coast there that year. They had the biggest take of salmon ever as a result. But the kind of DSAO authorities did not like his experimentation and the Canadian government, like the CIA, busted his home and he got a warrant and he got in a lot of trouble. So people haven't really done it since then because he kind of got like, you know, he was kind of first crazy, maybe like the first hobbyist to do something like this at scale. But I think there is going to be like a billion dollar company built in like marine geo-engineering of some description. There's this and so I'm Catholic. So it's like there's this like a lot of my Beliefs around, like, environmentalism and stuff like that comes from, like, this Christian notion of stewardship, that, like, we should, like, look after our lands and our seas because it's, like, our duty to. And I think this is, like, kind of, like, where we're going with, like, how we manage the climate. Like, climate used to be this kind of, let's, like, avoid the worst case scenario. And it was just very, like, kind of, like, let's, like, stop emitting carbon. But, like, I think there's, like, a more interesting idea of, like, this, like, stewardship, I think, of environmentalism, where we actually just, like, control You know, we steward the planet, right? We like, we take control, we get involved. We, you know, someone like Augustus at Rainmaker can make it rain when we want it to rain. You know, someone like you Aziz can come in and bring back the seagrasses when we need the seagrass. You know, someone could, you know, when we want to draw down carbon can do like or increase fish stock somewhere. We could just like do a bit of this. I think it's going to we're going to have to build these tools, right? Because these we need these in tandem with growing the size of the economic pie. If we want to keep doing that, you know, we don't want to just like shut down the economy. We don't want to like just stop doing like emissions altogether. It's important for us to have these other kind of compensatory mechanisms. And I think marine geo-engineering is like an interesting and like Under Explorer Space, I think many things we need to get right there are science, better science on it, better technology and governance, the governance about it because the ocean is like a public space. It's like, you know, you just need to get the governance part right. Sam Parr: Have you seen, Shaan, have you seen this guy, Augustus, the founder of Rainmaker? Shaan Puri: Incredible mullet, oh my god. Sam Parr: There's this whole cohort of people of which Will appears to be one of the like you know class presidents where there's this like They're very strange. They don't fit this stereotype that when you think of a tech entrepreneur, they're like kind of manly men or they're like, they're not the, they're not like this engineer, like typical thing that you and I grew up with, Shaan. Like there's something about them that is different. And I can't tell if you guys are going to take over the world and be billionaires or if you're going to go broke, but it's only going to be one of the two. Do you understand, Shaan, this new genre that I'm trying to describe? I don't know exactly what I'm saying, Will. Maybe you can put words to it, but there's this new breed. Shaan Puri: Austin and San Francisco had a baby. You get the stash and the mullet of Austin, and then you get the insane ambition and tech chops of Silicon Valley, and that's what's happening. Sam Parr: For example, this guy, Augustus, I think his name is, he's on the cover, I think of Forbes or something, and he's sitting on a bench press, like working out. That is not something that Brian Chesky or, you know, Travis Kalanick would have done in 2012. Speaker 3: I think it's emblematic of, like, of kind of the evolution of the technology industry, though. I think, like, you know, we began, like, as this kind of, like, hippies that found computers or people like Steve Jobs who were, like, actualizing on, like, the axis of, like, the spiritual, you know, realm. And then it was, like, you know, you had, like, people like Bill Gates and Zuckerberg who were just, like, nerds, like, actualizing on the sense of, like, mind. You know, they were, like, smart and nerdy. And now you have, like, people who are, like, openly flexing on, like, we're actualizing on the sense of, The body, right? Like, we're, like, becoming strong. And, like, you have, like, this, like, full integration of mind, body and spirit. And it's, like, no wonder that this, like, tech becoming, like, fully actualized on all of the access that a human needs to develop on is happening at the exact same time where you have, like, Elon, who is, like, chief tech bro in the fucking White House, right? Like, these things, this is, like, no coincidence to me. It's, like, tech has, like, found its voice. It's, like, found itself. It's, like, self-confident. And it's, like, ready to, like, actually change the world now because it's, like, It's, you know, it's it's like spiritually like aligned. It's like mentally there, you know, we're smart and like we're like now like a strong group of people as well who are taking health and fitness seriously. And it's like, yes, like this is why I think like we're at like the most interesting time in technology right now. Shaan Puri: I like that. Poetic. You know, last night I watched a clip of the final scene of Ratatouille. You seen that, Sam? Sam Parr: No. Shaan Puri: It's a great movie and the final scene of Ratatouille is the critic who is the most fearsome critic in all of the town writes the review about the restaurant where the rat has been cooking. And he just gives this beautiful monologue. Maybe the most beautiful four minutes in all of film is the last four minutes of Ratatouille here, the monologue. Will, I think you're up there with the last four minutes of Ratatouille there with your mind, body and spirit analogy for tech. I think that's kind of amazing. I've actually heard that before. It's like you had the initial, you know, the bicycle for the mind. So you had Steve Jobs talking about how computers will enable creativity. And then you had, you know, sort of AI. It's like, oh, we gave computers a brain and now they can think for themselves. And then with robotics and self-driving cars, it's like we gave the computers a body so they can move around and pick up things and do things. And I like how you extended that to, you know, the entrepreneurial will has grown in that way. Speaker 3: Look at Bezos and Zuckerberg, they're getting jacked, like they're doing TRT, they're like, look, this is like, I think it's traumatic of like the spirit is in technology now. It's like, you have the like, you know, one of my favorite podcasts besides yours, you know, the tech bros and like what Jordi and John are doing there. It's like, they're like, they're, you know, the technology brothers. They're like leaning into the fact that they're like tech bros. That used to be a slur. Right now it's like, oh, I'm confident in it. I'm like, I'm owning it. And they're like doing these like hilarious promo videos of them like sipping Dom Perignon. Like it's like, there's like a confidence and an air of like, okay, let's do it now. You know, we're not like, we're not going to be like at like the events and functions anymore, kind of lying about what we're doing. Shaan Puri: You're not neutered. Sam Parr: Dude, listen to this. I got an email from this guy named Jamie at the Wall Street Journal. So Jamie is a reporter for Wall Street Journal's style team and he, listen to this, he goes, I'm writing a story about tech guys embracing Western wear, so basically cowboy clothes, in the past recent years. And I want to write about how the Tech Bro uniform has changed from quarter zips and all birds to denim shirts, cowboy boots. And like when I saw this and he said Tech Bro, I was like. Shaan Puri: Dude, that's amazing. Sam Parr: I don't think I could talk, like this is not going to be. Shaan Puri: LifeWin that he thinks you're the expert to go to, right? Sam Parr: Yeah, LifeWin. But I was like, I'm not exactly a tech, but that's amazing that you think that I, like, I am a fashion influencer officially. Shaan Puri: No. Reply. Mission accomplished. Dude, that's amazing. And you're right. Like, dude, is there any difference? You know, the first time you saw Zuck Doing MMA. Do you remember when that video came out? Is there any difference between that video and the first time you saw like a Boston Robotics or Boston Dynamics robot dog getting kicked and jumping around and doing backflips and shit? There's no difference between the two videos. It's the same video to me. Sam Parr: It's one of those days that everyone remembers where they were when they saw it. Shaan Puri: It's like, wow, I didn't know the robots could do that. That's how I felt watching Zuck. That's how I felt watching the Boston Dynamics robot. Sam Parr: Well, one lot of last questions. Can I invest? Speaker 3: Yeah. Sam Parr: Yeah, great. Okay, cool. Because I think this is awesome. You guys are insane, man. This energy is so wild. I'm not convinced that it's going to end. Okay, so on one hand, It goes both ways. So on one hand, there's the hubris where, you know, you're like a, you know, in the case of Andrew, you're Boeing or you're one of these huge companies and you're like, you know, Parker or Palmer, you know, nothing, you know, just go back to. Shaan Puri: It would be better if they called him Parker. Sam Parr: A little Parker. Shaan Puri: Listen, Parker. Sam Parr: They would be like, Palmer, you know, you know, nothing, you know, you're just go back to making Facebook apps, you know, and like, probably eight out of 10 times that idea is right, right? Where like there's an incumbent and like they fail because it's really hard and there's, We've got centuries of hard work to go against in competition. And so that's the same with you, I would have to imagine, where you have these young, really smart people who have no experience. And is this the 10% of the time where you guys are just going to take over the world? Or is this another time where someone's going to be like, look, this is exactly what you told you. It does not work. Shaan Puri: Listen, that guy, John, that guy who said, give me half a tanker of iron and I will give you an ice age. Here's what I say. Give me a hundred mullets and I'll give you a 10x portfolio. I just need Will, I need Augustus, I need Palmer with a mullet, right? Three mullets. I need 97 more mullets and I'll give you a 10x return. Speaker 3: Okay, give me the fund. I'll find the mullets for you. Shaan Puri: You find the mullets. Sam Parr: Like, I can't, I don't know enough to know if this is achievable or not. Shaan Puri: Oh, I definitely understand that feeling. Yeah, for sure. I'm not qualified to judge the feasibility of something, but I think in general, it's not about any, you know, if nothing, if anybody, if anybody who's doing a startup like this thinks it's a sure thing or a sure bet, you're nuts, right? Like, you're going to have to perform a miracle, right? And that's okay. The important thing is, oh, wow, we took a portion of our brain power That was otherwise going to be building X or working at Y company, you know, working at Facebook, optimizing, you know, ad clicks or starting a company that was going to be doing, you know, B2B, HR, whatever, software. And instead, now we peeled off a portion of that talent and now we sent, you know, a hundred mullets at these problems. And I think that that That's the winning strategy is 100 or 1,000 shots on goal like this, and then the winners will obviously emerge. Speaker 3: Well, I can assure you what we're doing is very real. You wouldn't have a million dollars in our bank account without it. We wouldn't have done all the things we've done in the last five months. If you want to come here to San Francisco and see some real robots in ocean, the door is always open, Sam. Same for you, Shaan. Shaan Puri: I got to ask you two quick questions. Number one, seagrass seems so random. And if you started this company, you might have thought, oh, I'll do drones, like for warfare. How did you arrive at the seagrass thing? Was it instant? Was that the initial idea or did you do some discovery to figure that out? Speaker 3: It was the initial idea. I came to one of my co-founders. He was on a surf trip and he kind of, the same one who went into the cave and designed our AUV, heard about seagrass and went into the cave and like went deep on seagrass and came back to us and presented like this is a very interesting space. Shaan Puri: He heard about seagrass on a surf trip? From who? Speaker 3: A marine biologist friend of his who was working on a boat. Sam Parr: A guy out in the wave? Speaker 3: Yeah. Shaan Puri: Dude, this co-founder is absolutely carrying your company. He's built the tech and figured out the go-to marketing. Speaker 3: I love it. Yeah, he's the, well, yeah, he found the kind of, he was the one who brought seagrass to us and then myself and my other co-founders kind of put it together and we're like, this is what the business probably should look like. But then, yeah, we kind of went out from there into other areas and like, you know, like I think any brilliant company finds a local monopoly to build in first, somewhere where there's nobody else doing stuff with technology, where you've, you know, it's a great time and nobody's ever heard of what you're even doing initially and you can, it's a pretty big market, you can Bring cash into your business is like a lifeblood. And so it's been a great place for us to start. It's like the best place for us to start. Nobody's ever heard of it. So I think that's always a good place to start off on. And then, yes, we're going to use that as a kind of launching point to do other interesting things in the ocean. Sam Parr: Who do you admire, Will? Who do you want to be like? Speaker 3: Steve Irwin, probably. Sam Parr: Dude, motherfucker. I was going to say this earlier on. I go, you are Steve Irwin. I knew you got Steve vibes. Hardcore, man. Do you got any khaki shorts on right now? Speaker 3: Not right now, but we have a picture of him up on the wall here. Sam Parr: Oh, you scream, Steve Irwin. You have Steve Irwin vibes through and through. Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I know he's, yeah, I'm hopeful I can get the Irwin family on the Ulysses train at some point. Sam Parr: We gotta holler at Bindi, Bindi Irwin. Speaker 3: That would be great. Robert as well. Sam Parr: I'd love those guys. Speaker 3: Yeah, Robert as well. Yeah, you know, look, Steve, I think is like, And it's so funny, people say Steve on a podcast, in the tech, it's like Steve Jobs. Shaan Puri: You should have just said Steve at the beginning and then let us fall into your trap. Sam Parr: Dude, Shaan, there's this famous video, I know you've seen this as well, there's this famous video of, it's Steve Irwin and his wife, what's her name? I forget her name. And anyway, there's an interviewer who asked Steve, like, you know, you don't seem like you care. Unknown Speaker: Sam, Sam, Sam, Sam, Sam. Shaan Puri: Just look. Just look. Just look what's on my screen. Just look what's on my screen right now. Sam Parr: Oh, there it is. Speaker 3: Thank you. Sam Parr: I love that clip. Shaan Puri: I'm with you, brother. I love this clip. Sam Parr: I love this clip. Shaan Puri: Play it. Sam Parr: Play it. Unknown Speaker: What good is a fast car, a flash house and a gold plate of dunny to me? Absolutely no good at all. I've been put on this planet to protect wildlife and wilderness areas, which in essence is going to help humanity. I want to have the purest oceans. I want to be able to drink water straight out of that creek. I want to stop the ozone layer. I want to save the world. And you know money? Money's great. I can't get enough money. And you know what I'm going to do with it? I'm going to buy wilderness areas with it. Every single cent I get goes straight into conservation. And guess what, Charles? I don't give a rip whose money it is, mate. I'll use it and I'll spend it on buying land. Sam Parr: This is how every man should be, by the way. Like you're passionate about something that's good for others. And like his wife's just like eyeing him. And that's one of my favorite clips of all time. Shaan Puri: Yeah. Speaker 3: So I think the traits in him that I'm aware of are just like raw passion. It's like this unbridled passion. It's like this nonsensical passion. Shaan Puri: It's like, you think I'm going to have a conversation without a microphone? No, I'm going to put a microphone there. I'm going to record a podcast. I'm going to record a podcast every day. And I don't give a rip who's listening because you know what? I'm a podcaster and I'm going to podcast my ass off. Sam Parr: It's a whole lot more lame, but you're not talking about like saving the earth. You know what I mean? Shaan Puri: I tried. Sam Parr: Like when we're talking about like conversion rate optimization or B2B. In fact, Will, we kind of, my generation and the generation before me, we, you know, what do they say? Hard times create, or no, like we need a hard man to create soft times. That's what I did for you. You know, we went and did the B2B software stuff so you guys could do this fun, amazing stuff. So really, you're welcome. Speaker 3: Thank you. Thank you. Sam Parr: New York City founders, if you've listened to My First Million before, you know I've got this company called Hampton and Hampton is a community for founders and CEOs. A lot of the stories and ideas that I get for this podcast, I actually got it from people who I met in Hampton. We have this big community of a thousand plus people and it's amazing, but the main part is this eight person core group that becomes your board of advisors for your life and for your business and it's life changing. Now, to the folks in New York City, I'm building a in real life core group in New York City. And so if you meet one of the following criteria, your business either does three million in revenue or you've raised three million in funding or you've started and sold a company for at least $10 million, then you are eligible to apply. So go to joinhampton.com and apply. I'm going to be reviewing all of the applications myself. So put that you heard about this on MFM so I know to give you a little extra love. Now back to the show. Shaan Puri: Can we do just a quick happy hour of two topics that you had on this list that, you know, Sam, if you got to run or whatever, feel free, but I just got to ask you about these. So I want to do the fun one and then the spiritual one. The fun one is conspiracy theories. You're a big conspiracy, you're a fan of conspiracy theories, I believe, and you like people who like conspiracy theories. So can you just give me a rant? On why conspiracy theories are underrated here? Speaker 3: I think, well, I think it's like, you know, a lot of the traits of like conspiracy theorists are like those of like a great like founder. I think like someone that like believes in something that everyone else tells them is like not real or like, you know, that they shouldn't believe in or like, you know, people that are like able to see patterns that others can't see. And, you know, they just like go down these like rabbit holes. And I think like just like this contrarian spirit, I think it's like Very, very good. And I think it's just like a very important, you know, the default is like doing things that other people do. And so I think it's very important to cultivate an ability to see the world differently, I think. Shaan Puri: Isn't it funny how contrarian is this like really positive description and conspiracy theorist? It's like this negative description, you know what I mean? It's the same thing. Speaker 3: I just think it's very important to have weird ideas and take them seriously, right? Like if we just had heard the sea grass idea and just like rubbished it, you know, we wouldn't, I would like, I don't know what the hell I'd be doing today. You know, it's like you need to take something weird and go with it. I don't believe like to blindly believe every report of Telepathy and nonverbal autistic children or every like late night UFO sighting. But like I refuse to dismiss them outright. And I think, you know, history shows us that breakthroughs often happen at the edges where people are curious enough or foolhardy enough to investigate the unexplainable. So it's like whether it's like Christian mystics, you know, we swear by miraculous healings or physics experiments that like challenge our understanding of space time. I think it's very important to like lean into these weird things and ask, what if? And yeah, I think conspiracy theories are just kind of like fun as well. They're like kind of like horoscopes for dudes. So they're like, if nothing else, like they're just like, it's like, it's just like a fun thing to kind of like spend your time reading about. Sam Parr: On here, you talk about aliens. We are with Joe Gebbia recently, who's like the 90th richest person in the world. And I was like, Joe, look, you're worth like $10 billion. Like if there's a Illuminati, like you are either in it or you're friends with the people in it. Tell me one thing that like you guys talk about. And he looked at me, he goes, aliens are real. And he went on a, he went on a big, he had a big diatribe on his passion for like, you know, UFOs and aliens and how he absolutely is on board with them. Speaker 3: 100%. Shaan Puri: Is on board with them? Sam Parr: He came off very passionately. Like it is absolutely a thing. Shaan Puri: And the funny thing is if you meet Joe, he's, he's a serious dude. Joe doesn't just say wild shit for wild shit's sake. You know, Joe's not like, Oh, he's a kooky billionaire. No, no, no. Joe is like an extremely principled artist. He is a very serious individual and so for him to say something like that, it's not like, you don't discount it with the same discount rate you would if John McAfee was the guy saying it, you know what I mean? Speaker 3: If your readers want to go down this rabbit hole, the best website I recommend going is a website a friend of mine runs, uapevidence.com. Shaan Puri: Is there any other dope conspiracy that I should go look at? A rabbit hole that would waste a nice five hours of my time? Speaker 3: It's less of a conspiracy, more like wacky, weird rabbit hole you need to go down is you need to listen to the Telepathy Tapes podcast. Shaan Puri: I have and I love it. Sam Parr: What is this? Is this like I can read your mind? Speaker 3: So basically there's this group of people that people have been calling crazy for like the last two decades, right? It's basically the teachers and parents of children with nonverbal autism because they've been convinced that their kids have been able to read their mind. And now for like the first time with teaching kids how to spell on like iPads and also with like getting researchers in to study them, they're actually verifying these telepathic capabilities, right? So like a mother will like go into one room and she'll be shown like a random number generator and her son Akhil in the other room will hit the exact same three numbers 100% of the time consistently in tests. Sam Parr: That's awesome. Speaker 3: Yes. Shaan Puri: It's like the serial podcast, but it's this woman investigating these claims and she's like, you know, like an NPR skeptical, let me call it, right? So she comes in, she's like, this didn't make a ton of sense, but I'm open-minded. Sam Parr: Is she turned? Shaan Puri: I didn't finish the whole thing. I listened to probably the first two or three, but I was listening to while I was going to sleep and I just had some like wild, wild nights there. So I decided, all right, I need to only listen to this, you know, not falling asleep if I'm going to do this right. By the way, Will, did you walk away from that? You know, half convinced, three-fourths convinced, totally convinced. What did you walk away? Speaker 3: I was going into it already with some sort of, like, priors that I thought that, like, consciousness isn't local to the brain. Like, we like to think that, like, our brain is this kind of, like, DVD player where, like, consciousness is playing and it's, like, being played to us and that's how we experience things. I think we're more like, I always kind of thought, and for different reasons, that we're more like a radio antenna. You know, you have these stories of people, like, their son dies in an accident and they just know something's wrong, right? They just, like, know. Right. Like, there's like, you know, everyone, every family has these stories of, like, death or, like, something bad happened and they just, like, knew. They woke up in the middle of the night and they're like, I couldn't sleep. And after that, and they wake up the next day, they hear about this awful accident or something like that. Or you have, like, there's, like, knowingness and these other things, like, just, like, telepathy, twins, telepathy and stuff. And there's, like, this world of parapsychology, which is, like, the study of these kind of psi phenomena. There's, like, actually very reproducible experiments in it, like the Gansfeld experiment, which if you allow me to go on this, like, very short rabbit hole, but, like, The most reproducible experiment in this field is basically you take two people, you put them in like two separate rooms. These could be twins. These could be a husband, wife. They could be two artists. They could be two people who don't know each other. Different settings. And basically you give me a picture and you give and you're the receiver then in another room. And I'm in one room and I'm talking about this random picture I've been given. Let's say it's one in four different pictures. I get a picture of an elephant. For five minutes, I talk about elephants. I saturate my brain with Africa and wild animals in Savannah. You're in the other room, you're listening to white noise and you're talking basically about what you're sensing, feeling that it could be about. And then at the end of the five minutes, I stop and you get replayed while you were saying to yourself for five minutes, you get the four random images and you get to pick one of the four. And then you would assume if complete chance, you know, you would 25% chance of getting it right. But pretty consistently you get like 30% or above. In this experiment and then when there's like twins, husband and wives and or artists, they actually score like more consistently 35 in some instances like 70% in some of these experiments. And so I've always kind of been like primed to think that like actually maybe we're more like we're touching into something and like that explains a lot of the spiritual and woo woo stuff. And then I see this and it's like very good experimental evidence and really well done. And I'm like, okay, no, that's 100% legit, like our brain is not like this like AI chip that like runs and just like tells us what to do. It's like an AI chip, but it's like it also has a radio antenna that can connect to other people, can maybe connect to God, spirits, other things we don't really know. Sam Parr: Dude, I'm so bummed that I grew up in the B2B era of startups. Yeah, so bummed. Well, I wish I was 10 years younger. I wish we could have hung out. Speaker 3: Yeah, let's grab some beers. Shaan Puri: I went to a bachelor party this weekend and everybody on the, it was a bachelor party where the bachelors and the bachelorettes were both doing it together basically as a party together. And the Bachelorette side was so cool. Like every single one of them just, you know those tattoos that aren't like filled in, they're just like, it almost looks like a pencil sketch. Just seven or eight of those, some piercings, sense of style off the charts, knowledge of beer and music way beyond my recognition. You know, sexuality was a total spectrum. You never knew who was, who's dating who. Anybody could be dating anybody in the room. It was insane. I just felt like, I literally felt like I came from, I was a caveman and I was like, I was the gingerbread man, actually. I wasn't even a real human being. I was a cookie cutter shape that was placed in this room. Sam Parr: That's awesome. That is so funny. Speaker 3: I think one universal law about technology is that it breeds variance, right? It creates skewed outcomes. And I think you probably see this in younger generations as well. You've got weird, kind of like schizo people like me that will burn your ear off. There's the theories and like, you know, go down like these weird rabbit holes. But like, I think you also it's like on the like maybe on the more negative end that could send you down like some pretty dark places that maybe you wouldn't be a productive member of society if you go down like those like into those very dark corners of the Internet. Or similarly, like, you know, you have people who are like doing like great things, but then you also like, you know, I think there is like a very interesting question that's posed in technology right now is like, where are the, you know, the kind of like less than kind of 25, you know, you know, billion dollar Company founders. This is like an interesting question that I think is still not really like there's no satisfying answers around like previous generations had like the Collisons pretty early. You know we had like Alexander Wang like he's maybe like a few years older than me pretty early. Still doesn't seem clear why there isn't one in this generation. Maybe we have to wait another year or two for companies like Ulysses or Rainmaker or others to like to get there but there's definitely like a I think a bigger skew in both the ideas that young people are interested in today. I think that's like broadly just like downstream of Yeah, technology. Sam Parr: Are you going to become an American? Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I'm on the green carriage path, yeah. Shaan Puri: My last question was the spiritual one. You said you lived with Buddhist monks in Nepal for a summer. You learned a lot and one thing I liked, you said, I couldn't come around to their view which states that zero desires leads to enlightenment. And then you said like, you know, you wanted to be You wanted to be action-oriented and do something with your life rather than sit and sort of renounce everything. And then you said something like, I came to explain my five desires or six desires. Can you just give me the quick story on your summer with the monks and then what you landed at? Speaker 3: I just have heard that you can do this, right? You can actually just like find a monastery to like basically put you up if you teach them English. So I did that, found a monastery in Nepal that would like put me up. It's pretty rural, a few hours outside, Kathmandu. Went there, flew there. I taught myself to teach English before I came over, I was teaching them English. And then, like, in the downtime, I was, like, able to speak to some of the older monks who had, like, good English and, like, ask them about their ideology. Shaan Puri: Because there's just five monks with, like, a thick Irish accent speaking English out there. They're like, yeah, I learned from an expert. Unknown Speaker: Wild actual segue. I was out running in the middle of Nepal one day, and I bumped into a dude who was wearing a Galway Bay 5K t-shirt. And I was, like, I was like, sorry now, you might have no English, but I was like, where did you get this T-shirt? This is like, we're near where I'm from. And he was like, he had kind of like an Irish accent. He's like, oh, well, you know, I actually work with an Irish guy. He has an orphanage and a charity out here. And I was like, oh wait, what's this Irish guy's name? The Irish guy he named was, like, the one Irish guy that my neighbour, who's, like, my mum's friend, my mum's friend was, like, my mum was worried about me going to Nepal. She was, like, well, you need to have a contact in Nepal when you go over there. You know, I was, like, and it's in my neighbour knew a guy who's in Nepal who had a charity out there. Anyway, like, this random guy I met in this, like, tiny village worked with him. So this is, like, you know, there's, like, Irish people everywhere. Sam Parr: Everyone's just talking, like, all these mugs are, like. Shaan Puri: They're like, you'll do nothing. Sam Parr: I boxed the bullocks off them. Unknown Speaker: You'll do nothing, literally. Speaker 3: There's other people everywhere. We have people everywhere. That's like the kind of moral of the story. Sam Parr: Is that what the monks are saying? We didn't come to take part. We came to take over. Shaan Puri: All right, so sorry. So you go there and you're, continue. Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm curious about their religion. I'm asking them questions about it. But one thing I just couldn't get over was like, you know, they don't believe in desire. Like they believe desire is like what leads to suffering. If you desire for something, then you're creating a contract with yourself. Be unhappy until you have that thing. And I'm just like. Dude, I'm very like American dream pill. I'm like, you know, I should want for things, I should want for things, but I can see how that can go wrong as well, right? Because that leads to like, you know, keeping up with the Joneses type lifestyle or maybe like, you know, kind of like, you know, the fatties on the chair at Walmart kind of like thing, you know, like that's like probably like when it goes like maybe too far. Sam Parr: Hey, you better watch it, Will. Speaker 3: So anyway, so that's why I can see where I can go wrong, right? But I do think there was like an essence of truth in there where it's like maybe you should like actually I try to trim down things as little as possible. And I had this, like, bizarre experience where I went and did Everest Base Camp afterwards, and I was thinking a lot about, like, the things that they were saying to me. And again, I feel like I had, like, a download, like one of these experiences where, like, something just came into my brain that I hadn't been thinking about it before. And I genuinely think it was a download from something spiritual that gave me, like, some guidance. It sounds crazy, but I was sitting on a rock. I'm like, just like on a break in the hike, this like 10 day hike up to a base camp. And I was like, thinking through, it's like, hey, well, if you have no desire, like what do you do? It's like, oh, maybe you should have desire, but the minimum amount of them. Then I was like, what is like important to me? And I was like, on my hand, I was like, oh, my family, my friends, my health, my wealth, my craft. And I was like, oh, shit, like that's like five things. That's like nice and clean. And then I had this idea at the same time of like a rose bush. Rose bushes, if you like leave them go unkept, They basically just grow, like, briars and they go thorns and the flowers don't really grow. You have to, like, cut them back to let the energy go back to, like, the rose. And I was just like, I had this, like, very clear vision of, like, roses and I was like, oh, OK, right. So this is it. OK, so whenever I'm, like, down over something, it's like, if it's not one of these, like, five important things to me, then it's like, OK, just, like, let it go. Like, stop desiring for it. And I found that to be helpful. Sam Parr: You had a girlfriend? Speaker 3: No. Shaan Puri: That was your reaction to his story about the Buddhist monks and realizing the meaning of life? Sam Parr: Dude, you're telling me an Irish guy with that in his inner profile isn't just going to destroy the whole city? Give me a break. Shaan Puri: Saving the world, saving the world, seagrass, former monk, Sam's Five Desires, family, health, wealth, fitness, and will. Those are Sam's Five Desires. Sam Parr: This is so good, man. You're the best. Shaan Puri: Will, this is awesome. People should check you out. We're on Twitter. You're Will O'Brien. What's your handle? Speaker 3: At Will O'Brien, W-I-L-L-B-R-I. Shaan Puri: Okay, great. And good luck with the company, man. Speaker 3: Thank you, dude. Sam Parr: All right, that's it. That's the pod. Thank you.