← This Week in Startups
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- [00:00]
Jason Calacanis
All right everybody, welcome back to Twist this week in Startups. Very excited to have Bryn Putnam on the program. She is the CEO and founder of Bored. Welcome to the program.
- [00:11]
Bryn Putnam
Thanks so much for having me, Jason.
- [00:12]
Alex
This Week in Startups is brought to you by Deal. Founders scale faster on Deal. Set up payroll for any country in minutes. Hire anyone anywhere, get visas handled fast and get back to building. Visit deal.com twist to learn more. Northwest Registered Agent. Get more when you start your business with northwest in 10 clicks and 10 minutes, you can form your company and walk away with a real business identity. Learn more@northwestregisteredagent.com Twist and thanks to our partners at LinkedIn. Post your job for free@LinkedIn.com Twist then promote it to get access to LinkedIn jobs. New AI assistant.
- [00:49]
Jason Calacanis
I saw you going trending. I think my friends over at usv, Union Square Ventures, did your Series A, I'm assuming were a big seed. Congratulations on that. I've been friends with Fred Wilson. He was hired me to read business plans for him in 1995 just to massively date this. Yeah, he was doing something called Acme Ventures with Jerry Colonna, which became Flatiron, which then became Union Square. But he's been at it for a long time and I've known him since I was 24 years old. Great investors. But my lord, what an amazing demo. Sweeping the interwebs. Maybe you could tell everybody what board is and maybe we could look at a launch video or whatever you have here. Because I saw this and I was like, oh my God, I'm buying three of them.
- [01:35]
Bryn Putnam
I love it. That's what we want to hear. So board is the first face to face gaming console. It's a 24 inch touchscreen that sits on a table. And what we've done is we've trained the touchscreen to recognize physical game pieces. So it delivers an experience that's like board games meets video games where everyone can sit around the same share display, interacting with the screen using these incredible game pieces.
- [02:01]
Jason Calacanis
Okay, so it's a giant iPad, but it has some sort of way of knowing what's on the screen that you put on there, whether it's a chess piece or whatever it is. And this technology has existed in iPads for a little while. Yeah, what is that? No, it hasn't. So what is the underlying technology here that lets the board know about the pieces? Because touchscreens have existed for a long time, obviously. What is the technology that's having these pieces? Because I know I saw something that worked on iPad, but I'm not sure how the technology worked. And it might have been like a decade ago, it was some sort of a Disney thing, but I can't remember. You tell me.
- [02:43]
Bryn Putnam
So touchscreens recognize 10 touch points. So if you put two fingers on, it recognizes 10 fingers, but the 11th or 12th finger it doesn't recognize. So our challenge was recognizing unlimited touch points and as well as physical objects. So the way that we do that, we actually made you a special piece, a special Jason next piece.
- [03:02]
Jason Calacanis
Oh, look at me. I love it.
- [03:03]
Bryn Putnam
Jason. To illustrate our purpose, Put me in Coach Brown.
- [03:07]
Jason Calacanis
I'm going to be. I'm going to be in. I always. I always wear a pair of high tops just in case Coach Brown puts me in the game.
- [03:12]
Bryn Putnam
You're ready to go?
- [03:13]
Jason Calacanis
I'm ready.
- [03:14]
Bryn Putnam
So the way that our pieces do that, they don't contain electronics or sensors. They have a unique conductive pattern built into the surface that uses a special blend of capacitive and non capacitive plastic and is a unique manufacturing process that we've developed in house. And then our custom software stack processes the raw data from the board's touch sensor, using embedded AI to detect and track the pieces. So it knows this is the Jason piece. It's over here facing this direction. It's shooting a basket. And so we can play games where the pieces are actually controlling the digital screen in real time. And all of that is built entirely from the ground up. So our models are proprietary, trained on our own custom data set. You know, we leverage open source frameworks, but really everything is unique to our platform.
- [04:04]
Jason Calacanis
How many years have you been building this and what does it take today to build a hardware product like this to the level of refinement? You got to. Because people used to always say hardware is hard. I don't want to touch a hardware startup. Most hardware startups failed brutally. Now everybody's like, oh, hardware is the moat. This is amazing. Can you add hardware to your SaaS product? And it's like, it's slack. I don't know. What hardware would you like me to add to HubSpot? You know, it's. But it's funny because Square had that little hardware device that Jack was way ahead of his time. So tell us a little bit about how long it takes from, you know, prototyping, you know, getting out the first thousand Kickstarters. If you took that route and building a modern hardware company in 2026, it
- [04:51]
Bryn Putnam
took us about two years to get to launch, which was remarkably fast, I think, frankly, because we had sort of the right avengers building the product. My last company was called Mirror and it was an interactive smart mirror that streamed workouts to people in their homes. So I was very familiar with screen technology and how to get those types of products built. And then my CTO Ryan has a deep background in TV and machine learning and worked in computer vision self driving cars at his previous startup. So he sort of brought his, his team with him and we had a bit of a head start as it relates to kind of solving the challenge of the screen, recognizing the pieces. So I think we were fortunate just to have that kind of unique combination of experience.
- [05:34]
Jason Calacanis
So let's take Miura and how long that took and how long it took to build that hardware footprint versus this one. What's changed? And I'm assuming you're going to Shenzhen or somewhere and working with these hardware, you know, intermediaries or consultants maybe take us inside that piece of the business when you have to go find contract manufacturers or a factory to build this. And what it was like when you did Mira, which was I think like that was a pretty good decent time ago. Yeah, versus now. And I know Shenzhen just changed 2017. Shenzhen has changed a lot since I went there 20 years ago to ask my wife's father if I could marry her.
- [06:17]
Bryn Putnam
Oh, amazing.
- [06:18]
Jason Calacanis
This is 20 years ago and 22 years ago and there was one hotel in Shenzhen and just huge swaths of open dirt plots waiting to be building stuff. But it's changed a lot.
- [06:29]
Bryn Putnam
Yeah, it's definitely much more evolved with Mira. Actually I had no experience building technology at all. My background was a, I was a professional ballerina here at the New York City Ballet. And then I moved into bricks and mortar gyms, fitness studios and sort of took that IRL knowledge and turned that into Mirror. So Mirror was my first tech company tech product and it was really a napkin sketch. You know, I had the idea for the experience and we built a prototype that was completely non functional but just to validate that you could see a screen through a piece of one way mirror and that the experience was really engaging. And so from there I had heard a lot of sort of horror stories about people spending all this time sort of designing these pieces of hardware and then by the time they got to manufacturing they had either run out of money or the manufacturers couldn't make the designs because there was a mismatch between what a factory could do and what had been conceived. And so pretty early I started working with a local manufacturer just to build a prototype, just to understand how we would tackle some of the challenges of our custom mirror and the framing and things like that. And then eventually we produced actually in Mexico because with Mir, it was such a large and heavy object that sort of the shipment from Asia really cut into sort of the benefits of producing overseas. So we produced in Mexico that was
- [07:50]
Jason Calacanis
cost competitive because of the shipping issue,
- [07:52]
Bryn Putnam
because of the weight and the size
- [07:54]
Jason Calacanis
and the quality was there. I've heard mixed things about like people trusting, you know, maybe Vietnam or Shenzhen versus Mexico or other labor forces. And I'm not sure if my information is outdated, but high quality manufacturing of tech items in Mexico, yeah, incredibly.
- [08:11]
Bryn Putnam
And the factory there had worked on a digital picture frame prior, so they had sort of a similar experience with a smaller product and they did a lot of digital signage. And it was actually a factory run by a woman operated almost entirely by women. So as a, as a female operated company, it was really an incredible experience to feel like there was this amazing workforce of, of Mexican women kind of driving our growth.
- [08:33]
Jason Calacanis
Well, and if, you know, not this isn't a political show, this is this week in startups, not this week in politics. But when you think about it, if we're trying to have more resiliency in our supply chain and not, you know, and if there are geopolitical issues with China in the future, it does create a pretty resilient way for you to get product, avoid the shipping containers and avoid tariffs and other issues. If it's that close to what did it take to build this product in terms of like timeline compared to that first time? Is it half as much time now to build a hardware product? Is it half as you know, what would a founder listening to this say? Is the minimum amount of money required to get to like a functional prototype that you could show to users and get feedback or show to a VC and get a big check. Adding a new member to your team is a crucial decision and you don't want to rush into a hiring situation that you will regret. But if you're a busy founder, you also don't want to spend a ton of time in the trenches looking for that perfect candidate. Instead, you need a partner and you need a trusted partner. And LinkedIn Hiring Pro is that partner. How do I know this? Because I use LinkedIn Hiring Pro. You want a real world testimony. All right, here you go. We recently hired a new customer success manager. They handle all the advertising accounts here on this Week in Startups and they ensure that we're keeping all of our wonderful partners happy. LinkedIn helped us connect with an amazing candidate right here in Austin. And he had exactly the combination of experience we were looking for. It's magic, it's alchemy, it's everything for me to find a great team member. So hire right the first time. Get started by posting your job for free@LinkedIn.com twist. Terms and conditions apply. That's LinkedIn.com twist.
- [10:20]
Bryn Putnam
This time we, it did make sense for us to manufacture in Asia and we work with a tier 1cm out of Thailand who had a lot of experience with just display products, working with folks like Peloton or Portal or Nook. And so we were fortunate to be able to leverage kind of their experience with the core element of our product, the touchscreen. And so this time we worked really closely in collaboration with the manufacturer to get to a prototype more quickly, leveraging their experience, as opposed to the first time where we were owning the entire supply chain and sourcing and managing every single component that went into the device. And so that definitely shaved a large amount of time off our process. I think for me, um, perhaps because I'm not a, I don't come from a technical background, I've always focused on trying to validate the experience for investors. And so really we built early days a product where the technology wasn't fully there, but it really showed off what it was to sit around a shared experience playing with physical pieces as the controller. And we did that through a series of hacky, hacky ways and that's how we raised our first round. And so I generally recommend that you don't over engineer your early startups. You actually try to show and deliver the experience that you're trying to give to your customers and then build into that once you have more capital.
- [11:39]
Jason Calacanis
And so you did a seed round before the USV round, I'm assuming. And in your mind, if you can basically show the product and people can get excited trying it in a VC boardroom or an angel investors boardroom or, I don't know, a seed funds boardroom, that's enough to get you the money you need to get to that next stage.
- [11:58]
Bryn Putnam
Yeah, yeah. And to make the experience come alive, the brand you're creating, who your customer is, the, you know, it's storytelling, fundraising and storytelling, just like talking to your customers is storytelling. So you have to build what you need to tell that story and you obviously need to have a clear understanding of how you're going to build the end product and make it fully functional. But we've always sort of leaned into, you know, do the Bare minimum to show what the experience will be like for the customer.
- [12:23]
Jason Calacanis
Yeah. And the cost of this item. And then I'm assuming there's an app store where I either rent or buy games, where I get some sort of a subscription with some number of games. Tell me about how you price things in today's world. Obviously I'm wearing a whoop here, and whoop is ungodly expensive compared to like buying a Fitbit back in the day where you didn't even have a premium account, you just bought it. These, I think, are $300 a year. And they were upselling me on having like four members of the family. And, and I was like, wow, if all five of us were on this thing for $200, I'd be spending $1,000 a year just on woo for my family. And I said cheap, actually, for the value I'm getting. So how do you think about pricing in 2026 for a product like yours?
- [13:05]
Bryn Putnam
So the board is 399 and includes seven games so that you get a flavor for the experience from there. We have a game store where you can buy individual games at around $35 and they come with their own custom P sets. And then we have a subscription product that's launching at the end of the year that gives you access to basically creator tools to allow you to create your own games and custom pieces on board. So right now people are using our SDK with their favorite AI coding tools to build their own interactive experiences. And we're building a more formal product around that that will be a subscription product as an add on to the base.
- [13:42]
Jason Calacanis
So it's not cheap, it's valid, it's priced. You know, 400 bucks is like buying a Chromebook or, you know, an Android phone. But if you were to divide it by the number of hours, which is how I look at entertainment, is like Netflix. They always say, like, this is the greatest value. I mean, if you played with this thing for 10 hours a month, 100 hours a year, you know, now you're at $3 an hour. It's. It's free, basically, is, I think, the way to think about it. Why make people pay upfront? Do you have to do that because of the hardware, or could you eventually just do what Whoop does and abstract the hardware into the cost of the subscription? And you must have had a debate about that internally. Yeah, yeah.
- [14:24]
Bryn Putnam
I mean, we're definitely trying to get the hardware done to the lowest price point possible. And obviously we're only about seven months out from launch now. So the price will continue to gel over time. So for us it really has been about selling the product at low to no margins and looking to the games, the accessories. So things like cases and piece storage and premium pieces that unlock new experiences in the game as well as the creator membership as a way to really build long time ltv off of the customer. But I think agreeing with you, you know, 85% of our members are active monthly paying, playing over 30 sessions per month. So for us, you know, if the average trip for a family of four going to the movies is 100 or $150, once you factor in popcorn and candy more, I think it's really, it's a really high value experience.
- [15:16]
Jason Calacanis
Yeah, I think that's something the movie theaters have to really reconsider in the studios is the how accessible their product is and they haven't figured out subscriptions yet or how to utilize downtimes. I mean, it would be so commonsensical for them to just come up with a $99 a month plan for families to go to the movies two or three times a month if they get there, you know, not on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. They just, you know, a weekly thing or whatever.
- [15:44]
Bryn Putnam
Yeah, off peak, off peak hours would
- [15:47]
Jason Calacanis
be such a great. I mean if it works for quad code and music tokens, like what does the movie theater think? They're dying and they have no ability to innovate. There was something kind of sneaky in there that you dropped that I caught on, which is sneaky in a good way. Like sneaky, brilliant, clever, which is the unique pieces in the game. My daughters were addicted to the shopkins thing for a little bit or popping cooking. And you know, a lot of folks are unpacking packs of baseball cards, cracking packs or whatever they call it on live streams, etc. It's like a hobby. This could be amazing if you were able to do a deal with LucasArt for Star wars and make the famous Millennium Falcon, you know, game, the hologram game or you know, add other piece. Yeah, that could be really fun, right?
- [16:45]
Bryn Putnam
I mean, I think it's just we have so many businesses in one. We're sort of like Nintendo meets Roblox meets Lego meets a great collectibles business. And that's obviously the challenge of running the business, but also the incredible opportunity, particularly when you start to think about creation. So, you know, over the weekend my daughter used the creator product to make a piece that looks like herself that is a mermaid. And you know, I sure as heck I'm gonna pay Whatever it takes to get that piece delivered to her, because she sat there and she created it and she used her imagination to come up with something. And then that piece is gonna unlock new games and experiences for her, which she'll be able to create even further.
- [17:21]
Jason Calacanis
There's a lot of orthodoxy in this space, like the Wil Wheaton crowd, and, you know, they play board games on podcasts, the Dungeons and Dragons crowd. And I did see some of the feedback being like, well, technically, it's not a board game if you have a screen and you can't do that. And there's like the whole, like, you can't do that crowd. You have to have your conviction. You're not going after these board game lunatics who are, you know, oh, this is sacrilegious to them. Yeah. You're trying to expand the board game market here, I'm assuming.
- [17:53]
Bryn Putnam
Yeah, this is very much. This is sort of the area I always play. This is new category creation. So we take the interactivity of video games and we take the tactile feel of playing with physical pieces and sitting around a shared experience. But we're creating something that's fundamentally new. And I think for some people who are in the board game community or in the video game community, we don't fit what they're looking for. But I think for lots of people, what they're looking for is a really fun way to build memories with people that they love. And this fits the bill. And so that's really our North Stars. We're looking at fun, accessible, full family entertainment. So regardless of your age or your gaming experience or your taste, you should be able to sit around together and have a really great time where the screen is not taking you into your own isolated experience, but really bringing you together. And so, you know, there's. There's obviously so much value in all sorts of play, but we're creating something new.
- [18:48]
Jason Calacanis
Okay, so you've identified a real problem and you put together a solid solution and a business model that you believe in. So you're all set to launch your new company, right? Not so fast. If you want investors and potential customers to take your new business seriously, you need to consider forming a Delaware C corp. And that's where Northwest registered Agent comes in. They're going to give your new company a real identity. That means an address for your public filings, a domain, a custom website, a business email, and of course, a phone number. And that's going to take just 10 minutes and 10 clicks. They don't charge hidden fees. Customer service is Available around the clock. They're not overwhelming your inbox with spam and they make it easy to cancel at any time. So get all the advantages of a Delaware C corp. Independent, regardless of where in the US you're operating from. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com twist for more details. And the links are in the show notes. You know, I think that's kind of the brilliance of it. If you think about this on a generational basis. I'm Gen X. You know, I've got two 10 year olds and a 16 year old. And then there's, you know, my nieces and nephews who are millennials. We all know we're using these devices too much. And the fact that the device goes in between you and I and, you know, just kills the facial expression. This is very troubling for parents. Parents are trying to get their kids off devices. I got all the controls, the number of hours, which devices. For my 16 year old, I'm, I'm down on the app level, like, okay, I'm going to give you eight hours a day of aut. You can have unlimited audible Spotify for two hours. I'm like thinking about this, but what I most of all want to do is bring back the memories of doing things together. And I think the young crowd also, I don't know, I was talking about it with sue at the top of the show from Brilliant, and you two are both brilliant. You should make friends. I should have done a little crossover here and had you because she's one of my favorite entrepreneurs of all time. What you're both doing is kind of using this technology for good. I don't know if that has anything to do with the fact that you're both female founders and that you're thinking, is this good for society or not, as opposed to is this good for the bottom line of the company? Yeah, maybe there's something a little bit there, but I love the brilliance of it's on the table. We're all looking at it and there's like silly practical things. I was just playing a board game with my daughter. It's like some game where you move beads around from these 10 different little crevices in a piece of wood. It's like some ancient game and Mancala.
- [21:18]
Bryn Putnam
Thank you.
- [21:18]
Jason Calacanis
Yeah, he's 10 years old. She played Moncala at home. She doesn't know exactly the rules, but she's like, this is the rules I want to play. And I'm like reading the rules and trying to understand Moncala. I've never Heard of this. I know Go, I know Jazz, I know backgammon. And we had an amazing, hilarious time doing it with her rules. But eventually you want to play by the rules. Strategy games have rules for that reason. And this just for the tutorial portion of, you know, Settlers of Catan or whatever that's called that everybody gets into. Like, I tried to play that two or three times with people. It's just way too much. It's like learning to snowboard or golf or something. Like, the first five games are going to be brutal, and then I'm sure you have some opening up moment, but maybe you could talk a little bit about the skill level and onboarding people to these games, because that seemed to be the hardest part of getting into a new board game, is getting five people around to learn the rules.
- [22:13]
Bryn Putnam
I mean, that's the genesis of board is I. I left Mir, and my life looked very different. When I started Mir, I was pregnant with my first child. Now I have a three year old, a nine year old, and three stepchildren, 18, 20 and 22. And so, you know, trying to get that range of ages and interests together for family time is virtually impossible. You know, we would try to play video games, and I don't know if you've played with a modern controller, but there's about 20 more buttons than the last time I played Mario, which was, you know, incredibly challenging. And then, yeah, you know, we'd play board games and it was the exact experience that you said. We would sit there and we'd either play the same game over and over again or we'd read 20 pages of rules to try and fight about them to try to get to a game. And then invariably it would be too hard for the youngest or too easy for the oldest. And so we really think about that when we're making games we want. For example, we've got a kitchen game similar to Overcooked, where you're all collaborating to manage a busy kitchen. And my littlest one, she's the cleaner, she manages the sponge, and she has a great time. And the oldest girls are there trying to memorize the recipes and think about the strategy of sequencing the tickets to get the optimal payday. And so that's really kind of where Board shines is experiences where everyone can come together without too much setup and no one feeling left behind.
- [23:32]
Jason Calacanis
All right, do me a favor. This is like the third time I've heard about Overcooked. Explain to Unk. I'm like, people are starting to call me Unk now. I Think it's like a compliment slash joke. It's like six, seven, or something like that. But what is overcooked? Because Jalen Brunson was playing overcooked after a Knicks win, I think. And I'm just like, well, if the captain's playing overcooked and my daughters are telling me I'm cooked all the time, I need to know what's going on here in the phenomenon here.
- [24:03]
Bryn Putnam
It's a cooperative cooking game. So you're working together to manage a kitchen. And there we go. So you get guests who come in and they have specific requests, and you have to figure out who does what in the kitchen to deliver these dishes before the guests get angry and leave. And so you're rewarded for the speed with which you're able to deliver on the guest satisfaction.
- [24:25]
Jason Calacanis
Oh, my God. This is like the bear. Yes, Jeff. Exactly.
- [24:29]
Bryn Putnam
Yes, Jeff.
- [24:29]
Jason Calacanis
Oh, my God. Funny, I was at the French Laundry last week, and we had a party for Paul in. And this liquidity conference we do, and they were putting, like, they let us walk into the kitchen, and they created stations. So I just went in and I just started saying, service hands, and I just started, like, expediting. They thought it was either hilarious or totally cringe. But my understanding is now, I don't know if you're. I think you're a millennial, but the you should embrace cringe is what I'm understanding now. Like, embrace your personal cringe.
- [25:01]
Bryn Putnam
This is what. This is what my. My teenage stepdaughters say, that you should lean into what makes you a little bit odd. That's. That wasn't what I grew up with, though. So I'm. I'm.
- [25:10]
Jason Calacanis
No, you were supposed to hide the odd stuff. Exactly.
- [25:12]
Bryn Putnam
Hide your crazy.
- [25:13]
Jason Calacanis
Hide the crazy. Try to be normal here. You could just be like, I love board games. I'm going to do this. So when will this be available? How do people get one? And how do you think about distribution this early on? I like that you have premium pricing for the first year or two. You know, make sure the company's profitable. You don't run out of money. Everybody. Every hardware startup I've ever been involved in is like, we want everybody to afford it. I'm like, so you want to be the Sony Walkman in your first 40? It's month four, like, always a bad idea. And you probably learned that lesson, I think maybe with Mira, which was a huge success, right? You sold it for a half billion dollars to somebody. I can't remember.
- [25:51]
Bryn Putnam
Lululemon.
- [25:52]
Jason Calacanis
Lululemon. So you Felt good about that. I mean, it was a good sale.
- [25:57]
Bryn Putnam
Yeah. I mean, I think we got. People don't realize we actually sold about a week before COVID So I think it was. Certainly would have been an interesting. An interesting outcome if that conversation happened a year later.
- [26:10]
Jason Calacanis
Timing is everything.
- [26:10]
Alex
Yes.
- [26:11]
Jason Calacanis
That would have been a different time. Regrets?
- [26:13]
Bryn Putnam
No, but an incredible experience. And to be able to watch a public company that's that beloved sort of operate from the inside was really fascinating.
- [26:20]
Jason Calacanis
So. So tell us a little bit about like availability and how you think about distribution. Did you do a Kickstarter for this? That seemed to be like a requirement for hardware companies back in the day. Is to run some sort of a Kickstarter?
- [26:31]
Bryn Putnam
No, I mean, I think we. We felt like we didn't want to use a Kickstarter to fund development. You know, we really. We wanted people to have confidence that the product was going to ship and that the product was going to be really high quality. And so we didn't. We didn't do a Kickstarter. We launched DTC for holiday of last year and you know, we sold out of our 10,000 launch units within a few weeks of our launch, which was really exciting. And then from there you can get bored still at boredot Fun on our website, the core channel.
- [27:03]
Jason Calacanis
Is there a wait for these or could I just buy one of these to take on my summer trip? It's just available now.
- [27:08]
Bryn Putnam
Available now.
- [27:10]
Jason Calacanis
Amazing. I am so stoked for this. I was like, oh man, I'm going to have to like, I'm going to have to use my. My celebrity to my micro celebrity to get one of these early because I was talking about it with my daughter, one of my two twins, and they were losing their mind over it. But I don't need to try to leverage a tweet or something to get one. That's good to know. I'm going to order one now for our trip. The games that are on it. Omokase. That's your cooking one, I take it.
- [27:42]
Bryn Putnam
Chop Chop is our cookie one. Omokase is a strategy game where you're sort of building different sets of sushi bloogs is sort of our interpretation of Lemmings, this great physics puzzle game where you're trying to save these little blue characters in this reverse platformer.
- [28:01]
Jason Calacanis
I remember that.
- [28:01]
Bryn Putnam
Yeah, yeah. And we have a retro arcade game. So things where you're shooting asteroids with spaceships or trying to use robots to steer, snakes to eat fruit. Spycraft is like our escape room in a box. So it's a puzzle game. You're working with spies to unlock this kind of global mystery. Mushka is our virtual pet, sort of similar to Tamagotchi, who you have to care for and play with in a couple weeks. Our next game that's launching is called Heist, where you're using mirrors to route lasers to try to sort of get burglars in and out of various heist puzzles.
- [28:38]
Jason Calacanis
Founder scale faster on deal. That's the deal. You can grow your company without borders and you can set up payroll for any country in minutes. Hire anyone anywhere, like a modern startup or large company does. And deal is going to get all the visas handled fast so you can get back to building. There's a great talent war that's going on right now and you need people with superpowers for your startup to be competitive, to beat your competitors, to get your products to market. But anytime you try to grow your team with overseas hires, oh my lord, you've got to reinvent the wheel and you got to navigate a tangled web of international laws, regulations and you can't get these things wrong. Folks you want to onboard new staffers in other countries, you want to get them set up on your network nice and secure IT access, all that good stuff. You want to manage their benefits. Trust me, this is all a nightmare unless you partner with dealers. They are the people stack for startups. They're going to take care of all the onboarding, payroll, hr, it benefits, everything you need quickly in one place done perfectly. So visit deal.com twist that'S-E-E l.com twist you know what's interesting about what you're doing? I remember getting pitched early on about casual games and it didn't fit in a box, right. Like there was gaming. And like, okay, you have this Nvidia card and you get your keyboard and then you know, consoles and it just didn't fit anywhere. And then it became bigger than everything. Candy crush, plants versus zombies, all that stuff. I kind of feel like you have that potential here, which is it's hard for people to understand where it lands, but once they do, it'll probably feel to them like an obvious use of 30 bucks. Oh, Tharos
- [30:19]
Bryn Putnam
Thrassos.
- [30:20]
Jason Calacanis
Is that like to risk? Oh, to risk. Perfect. So yeah, this is one of the interesting things about gaming. You know any of these formats, like a recipe, not copyrightable. The name obviously is, but not the game functionality. So you can make these. But what about. And you have an API. Anybody can put a game in the store. Great. So that's an app store. You take half the money, 30% of the money. Do you have a model yet?
- [30:47]
Bryn Putnam
So our first community game launches next month. It's a. A pinball game using the robots and spaceships from our arcade game. And the model differs based on game by game. In some cases it's a rev share, in some cases we're buying the game outright. But it's a. It's a marketplace where people submit their games for review and then they get posted in the community section.
- [31:07]
Jason Calacanis
Got it. So tbd like what the sustainable business model there is in terms of like you have to be careful that it's. Since you don't want it to be an open platform, you want some level of quality.
- [31:18]
Bryn Putnam
I think for us, we feel really excited about the fact that building a game on board to some degree is one of the most fun games on board. So I think for lots of people, they'll use the creator studio to build experiences for themselves and share them with their friends. And then for people who want to share with the broader community, it'll go through our review just to ensure it meets sort of our quality and safety standards. And then that will be in most cases a rev share model.
- [31:41]
Jason Calacanis
Fascinating. Yeah, that. That is going to be great potential. Now talk to me about like premium ip. There's huge businesses out there licensing IP constantly. Lucasart was probably one of the most famous Marvel before they were inside of Disney was completely licensing and tragically so they licensed their characters across five movie studios and had to go recollect them all. But how do you think about IP here? Because lucasart loves people to make games for them. And my lord, I mean if we could have an Ashoka Mandalorian Grogu game, I mean we probably wouldn't leave. And there's 10 different games you can do because you could give me a chess game for that. There's Lord of the Rings. There's so many different amazing collections of ip. Is that like down the road or you're talking to folks already?
- [32:32]
Bryn Putnam
Yeah, we've been in conversation with sort of all the large players that you mentioned. I think for us we are really excited about sort of like Monopoly go strategy where you take IP and characters and worlds that are really beloved and you reimagine them for board in a way that feels native and true to the technology. You know, where the pieces in the digital worlds really make sense. So early days, I think investors and customers even were encouraging us to do sort of more ports, just bringing Monopoly over, bringing checkers over. And I Think we've steered away from that really in service of trying to figure out places where IP partnership can really deliver something that is new and native and authentic to board. And those, those will release in the next few years.
- [33:16]
Jason Calacanis
Oh man, this is going to be such an amazing startup. I think like, don't sell this one. Never, never sell it. I think you're going to crack. I think you're going to, like you said earlier, like you're going to create a new category that on a platform basis, you know, as you could just, I mean look at what services has done to Apple. Apple was kind of stagnant and then services just layering, layering, layering on all these different opportunities. So yeah, this has got to be the patient go for the ipo. Never sell this company.
- [33:52]
Bryn Putnam
One of the benefits of selling a company is I think you're probably less likely to do it again. You're more excited about other outcomes.
- [33:58]
Jason Calacanis
It's funny you say that. I now own 100% of my firm and the projects. I do have complete control. Don't take on investors and go for a 10, 20 year vision. Like, why not? And you have patient investors in USV. I mean they were in meetup.com, scott Heiferman's company for a long time. Patient capital, super important. I don't think you'll ever need to raise money again the way you're doing this. If people are willing to buy the next version ahead of time and you'll release a new version every year or two, I would assume you'll have some sort of a cycle and the size could get bigger or different. You could build a table, I mean so many different hardware profiles you can
- [34:37]
Bryn Putnam
do and launch a DND product. A table, a tabletop product comes out in July, which obviously really lends itself to a larger, you know, a larger surface, a larger map. So I think we're excited to see how that community receives it. And if that's positive, there's definitely an opportunity for a much larger.
- [34:54]
Jason Calacanis
Did you ever play Dungeons and Dragons when you were young or were you.
- [34:57]
Bryn Putnam
You know, I did it young, but my son really got into it. And so we had a GM who would come to our house with a bunch of kids and they would do sessions in our, you know, in our dining room. And it's been really fun to watch him just use his imaginations to create stories. It's incredible.
- [35:12]
Jason Calacanis
I can remember when I was like 11, 12 or 13 growing up in Brooklyn and we would play Sunday nights and I would just be counting the hours I would wake up thinking about playing Dungeons and Dragons on a Sunday morning. And then we got together at like three or four o'clock for this Dungeons and Dragons game. I would just be on pins and needles. I can't wait to play kind of like poker now. Like, if I'm going to go to like tomorrow to play poker, I'm going to play poker in a game. I'll just. I was talking to my friend sky and we would be at work 20 years ago and thinking about going to the casino in la Hollywood park down in Inglewood. And he'd be like texting me and we'd be like, oh, two more hours to go and we can go to the casino and play poker and learn strategies. There's something just great about playfulness and my Lord, what a brilliant idea. And man, if I had a nickel. For every founder that came through Stanford, MIT or Juilliard and the dance program, it's like, seems to be the three major paths to being a successful founder. It's either you're a scientist from mit, GSB or a ballet dancer. Those seem to be the three big funnels. You're one of one from ballet.
- [36:22]
Bryn Putnam
I've been loving my. Any. Any dancer I've ever hired has been an incredible success. So it's been number one of my hiring criteria. Any. Any background really love hiring dancers.
- [36:33]
Jason Calacanis
They seem to be a bit obsessive. Yeah. Like, and resilient. And they're able to deal with pain. It seems like an incredibly painful thing to do.
- [36:41]
Bryn Putnam
You'll run through walls. So it's a good fit for startups.
- [36:44]
Jason Calacanis
All right, now, is this background? I have to ask, is this background? Are you in Paris right now? Is it a fake background or do you have an extremely cool bistro office that looks like it's France?
- [36:58]
Bryn Putnam
No, I'm in New York. So just a wall.
- [37:04]
Jason Calacanis
It looks like you might be in a Parisian cafe. Listen, I'm ordering one. Like, literally when I get off the. Actually, I don't even have to do that. I have people, hey, can somebody buy me one of these and ship it to the ranch? I. I'm going on this great vacation with my kids and I'm like thinking of things to do between going to the Louvre and getting a croque madame. You know, I want to sit in the park or do something at night in Hawaii or in Paris or, you know, two of our destinations this summer. And this is like the perfect thing to travel with. And man, a larger version for like, Dungeons and Dragons. That would really Be cool. You should look at the poker table space. There's like anybody who's into poker buys a specific poker table. Like there's the Octagon one, there's the nine seat one and like you can get them all customized and stuff like that. And there are some Dungeons and Dragons and board game ones. I think people are going to want. Like there'll be an aftermarket. You were talking about like accessories, luxe tables.
- [38:06]
Bryn Putnam
Yeah. Embedded.
- [38:07]
Jason Calacanis
There's going to be some, you know, some idiot whale like me is going to be like, is there a ,thousand dollar version, $2,000 version that make all the kids in the neighborhood want to come over and play with my daughters. That's what I'm always trying to do is have our house be the hub.
- [38:21]
Bryn Putnam
Yeah.
- [38:21]
Jason Calacanis
Like, I want the version that's like absurdly large and all the kids can't wait to come over.
- [38:28]
Bryn Putnam
I love it. I love it.
- [38:29]
Jason Calacanis
Yeah. All right, listen. Continued success. Everybody go to Board Fun. Is that it? Bored Fun Board Fun and a fun. A fun domain name. I didn't know Dot Fun existed. It's the first startup I've ever heard. Listen, continued success with this and everybody go buy one.
- [38:43]
Bryn Putnam
Thank you. I appreciate it.
- [38:44]
Jason Calacanis
My Lord, it is so great to see all these great entrepreneurs making new products. And a lot of lessons there from today's interviews for founders. Number one, really understanding your customer and finding spaces where maybe it's not clearly defined, which means idiot VCs or entitled VCs. The issue with venture capitalists, in a lot of cases, not all. And people like to dig on VCs, which is kind of lame in and of itself because they dedicate their lives to supporting founders and getting a bunch of capital from around the world and providing it. So it should be a little more symbiotic and there should be a love of VCs and the part they provide in the ecosystem. But there is a valid criticism that if it doesn't fit into an existing TAM, very hard for I think some young, inexperienced VCs to understand this. When you look at these two companies, like, online tutor doesn't exist. Digital board game doesn't exist. And the people who like the existing board games hate this and the serious gamers, it's not serious enough. And the Dungeons and Dragons people think it's sacrilege. You have to ignore all that and you have to ignore people who are trying to create a TAM for something that doesn't exist in the world. The TAM for Airbnb was basically zero. They induced a market to exist. The TAM for ride sharing, the TAM for eBay. You know, ebay was like flea markets, but you couldn't really assess it to flea markets because it was global. All of this is to say, listen to your customers and build a product that delights them and everything will be fine. High order lessons here.
- [40:30]
Alex
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Twist. My name is Alex. Now, if you're watching this show, listening to it, I presume you are interested in technology, and that means you know about great human projects like the Concorde, the world's first supersonic passenger jet. Now, that's pretty far in the past, but some companies are trying to bring it back, one of which is called Boom. Had them on the show a couple times. They want to build the modern supersonic passenger jet. But what if you wanted to go faster and with fewer people? That's what Hermeus is working on. They're trying to build a hypersonic autonomous jet. And hypersonic means five times the speed of sound. So we're not just going over the limit by a little bit, we're blowing past it. I wanted to figure out how they're building this, what technology still needs to be put together when it's coming to market, what the use cases are, and also how much more money do they need? So please join me in welcoming to the show. It's co founder and chairman A.J. piplica. A.J. how you doing?
- [41:19]
A.J. Piplica
Great, Alex. Happy to be here.
- [41:20]
Alex
And just because we can't start anywhere else, you are currently on camera and you're in front of what appear to be a lot of trust cranes. So where are we and what's being built behind you?
- [41:30]
A.J. Piplica
Yeah, I'm in our factory here in Atlanta, Georgia. And behind me right now is our quarter horse mark 2.2 airplane. So it is our second supersonic jet that the company's built. Should be out of here hopefully in the next few weeks.
- [41:42]
Alex
I can't wait. I'm actually literally counting down to the news about that. But look, look, AJ, I want to get to the entire quarter horse program and the recent iterative and impressive progress the company has made. But I think what we should do is set kind of the North Star, what you're building towards, and then we'll go back to the technology and how fast you're progressing. So maybe the thing to understand is what is Dark Horse, which is what you're building towards, and why is it an exciting and worthy technology project?
- [42:08]
A.J. Piplica
Sure. So Dark Horse is a hypersonic reusable aircraft, faster than the SR71, smaller than the SR71 with no person on board. So as you can imagine, you know, put that in the hands of our military leaders, the ability to operate basically with impunity in almost any airspace in the world. That is the type of asymmetric advantage that our Air Force and our allied partners are used to having. You know, we've had that type of advantage for many years through stealth technology and precision guided weapons and those kinds of things. But as we look forward into the future of modern warfare, and especially things over very long distances, dealing with adversaries like China, being able to fly very far, very fast and efficiently is an important piece of that because it allows you to stay alive. And, oh, by the way, don't put your airmen at risk by putting them in harm's way. So, yeah, not to be rude about
- [43:01]
Alex
it, but we've seen a number of, let's call them, high profile military aircraft crashes lately, and it would be great if instead of seeing people pass away, no one got hurt. That would be a dramatic upgrade. The unmanned element of this is very interesting to me because when I think about going faster, I think about the need to make even quicker decisions. And on one hand, it seems like it'd be a great time to have a human there so they can drive the plane. But on the other hand, at that kind of speed, I wonder if humans are even fast enough in reactions. So why is it useful to have this be an uncrewed aerial system and keep the humans out of it?
- [43:36]
A.J. Piplica
Yeah, so, I mean, I'll give you a couple relatively recent pieces of news. You know, we had two F15 shot down over Iran. You know, created a really difficult search and rescue operation that thankfully was wildly successful. But imagine where we would be today in the negotiations if that wasn't successful and if those pilots were captured and became POWs. I mean, a POW being captured from an airplane getting shot down is almost the whole reason the SR71 existed in the first place, because Gary, Gary Powers got shot down in the U2. And then same kind of thing with the helicopter pilots that were rescued by an uncrewed system from Sironic.
- [44:14]
Alex
Shouting Sironic. I love that company.
- [44:16]
A.J. Piplica
Yeah, yeah, love what Dino's doing there. But, you know, as you look at the modern battlefield, be it Ukraine or the conflict in Iran, unmanned systems are by all means the future of warfare.
- [44:29]
Alex
So for sure. But when I think about Ukraine, I'm thinking about FPV drones and trailing fiber optic cables. So that way they have low latency, 100% available steering ability. When you're going Mach 5, it's a little bit trickier. So these systems, are they going to be entirely autonomously driven, or will there be a human somewhere in a bunker or a crate with a stick?
- [44:52]
A.J. Piplica
No, they'll, they'll, they'll be uncrewed. I mean, they'll, they'll fly the way that, you know, rockets fly today. Rockets fly very fast in the atmosphere, on their way up and on the way down. And they do that with no human pilot in the loop whatsoever. Now, how they fly is a little bit different. They, they adjust to their environments, you know, within some constraints. You know, modern aerial warfare is a bit more challenging. And that's why I think you see the type of investment that you see in the US Air Force making in its collaborative combat aircraft program, you know, on the software side, especially to create autonomy capabilities that can actually apply to real airplanes at a real combat. So, yeah, I do not expect there to be pilots in the loop, maybe decision makers on the loop, but they're not there flying the airplanes. They're making high level command and control decisions.
- [45:38]
Alex
The rocket analogy is very interesting because earlier you called it a reusable aircraft. And I'm like, of course it's reusable. It's an aircraft, not a rocket. And you're like, it's just like a rocket, actually. So we're kind of, we're between the two. It feels, in a way, because we've taken out the humans and we've taken away the human control, which smells like a rocket, but it definitely looks like a plane and it flies like a plane. So it kind of walks, talks and quacks like a duck. Yeah. Maybe when you kind of have a middle category that's not just like drone or jet, maybe you're inventing something like a third way, if you will.
- [46:09]
A.J. Piplica
Maybe. You know, I always have fights with people on the Internet about what's an airplane and what is not that. You know, I think we're, we're all, we're all very eager here to break some records around airplanes. You know, the SR71 speed record is, is the one that we all see in the, in the headlights. But yeah, I mean, there are, there are a lot of fundamental differences there. You know, like we flew rockets before we flew supersonic jets. Like the V2 flew. Before we flew a supersonic, we flew a supersonic rocket plane in the, you know, the, the X1 is the first aircraft or vehicle to break the sound barrier that was powered by a rocket because it's easier to do that in A rocket. So I think it just underscores the challenge and difficulty in building a supersonic jet powered aircraft. It's tough. There are not that many companies out there that have been able to do it.
- [46:56]
Alex
We're going to talk about how you're making it go so fast in just a second. But I'm thinking about applications in this because clearly as someone who grew up playing Jane's flight simulator and taking a couple hours in private planes and such,
- [47:06]
A.J. Piplica
I think I only flew the A10.
- [47:09]
Alex
Well, that's because it has the world's best gun in it.
- [47:11]
A.J. Piplica
Yes.
- [47:12]
Alex
If you don't, if you don't know what we're talking about, look up the A10 Warthog. And two things about it you need to know. One, look at how the pilot is protected in their little cocoon of metal. And then look at the gun in the front and look at the stats about how fast it can fire and the amount of lead it can put down range. It's tremendous.
- [47:26]
A.J. Piplica
Notice this is like literally an airplane designed around a gun. Like the main, the nose landing gear is off center because of the gut. So yeah, gun's huge.
- [47:35]
Alex
I mean, okay, people joke that Russia is an oil company with an economy attached. I think really the A10 is essentially a rotary cannon with some wings.
- [47:43]
A.J. Piplica
Correct.
- [47:43]
Alex
Bolted on. But those things look tough.
- [47:46]
A.J. Piplica
Still are.
- [47:46]
Alex
Now A10s, A10s slow, close to the ground. You know, I mean these are anti tank aircraft essentially. You're building kind of the opposite. But I'm curious outside the military context what we could do with this. Now I started off by bringing up boom because everyone kind of gets that I want to go to Paris fast. I'm going to get into boom. Off I go. Viva. But when I think about what you can do with an unmanned hypersonic plane, like, I mean you could bring like a, like a donor kidney anywhere in the world in like some small amount of time. I'm not going to do the math in my head because I'll get it wrong, but to me it seems like there's a lot of applications for what you're building that are, that are possible if we can get the per flight cost down. So AJ I'm really curious. Do you see Dark Horse and other similar flight platforms that you're going to build down the road becoming cost possible for non defense, non military application?
- [48:37]
A.J. Piplica
Yeah, I certainly think there are commercial applications down the road. You know, cargo is the like natural entry point number one because you don't need to put people on the platform. So like you know, you're still flying over people, you're still flying over long distances. So there's certainly an element of safety there. But you know, because you've built this military business along the way, it's not your first rodeo. It's not the first iteration of the aircraft that's going and getting, getting certified. So there's a, there's a handful of things that like to fly around the world very quickly. I looked this up a long time ago. It's pretty funny. Like the, the things that people overnight around the world, it's like somehow still like legal documents. I don't know how that's still a thing and we haven't gotten rid of
- [49:17]
Alex
that, but apparently it is a docuSign is just a vibe coded app with a big salesforce. Well, no friends, because people are still overnighting Docum.
- [49:24]
A.J. Piplica
So, so there's, there's that flowers and lobsters. This, these are like the things that people ship around the world and, and, and they want to, you know, move around more quickly. So. Great. And like the thing that you, the really, I think the real way to think about, you know, Mach 4, Mach 5 travel, like it really takes the world and makes it regional, you know, across the Atlantic Ocean in 90 minutes at the same time from like Miami to New York today. So you're, you're really taking these economies and you're bringing them closer together. At any time in history that you've done that by whatever technological means, be it steam power and shipping or railroads or the interstate system in the US it's always driven economic growth.
- [50:03]
Alex
Trans Siberian Railway. I mean, just the advent of containerization as a way to move goods more quickly with easier transfer. I mean, faster equals better and cheaper for everybody. And that's why even though we're going to talk probably mostly in a defense context today, I wanted to put that seating in people's heads because I think that what you're building, and I know it's hard, you're not done yet. But once you get it up there and you're ready for the second version, I'm optimistic that you'll find some cool use cases there. Now, you hinted at rockets are good for going fast, but you guys aren't actually doing that. Instead, you've built Chimera, which is a great name for this because it's kind of a two in one system. On one hand you have the turbojet, which I think people probably understand. And then here's the thing that blows my mind. It converts into a ramjet mid flight and allows you to go even faster. I'm going to pull up a picture of this that you guys put out, but explain to me one, how hard this was to do and then two, what it unlocks for your program that off the shelf engines wouldn't have been able to bring to the company.
- [51:01]
A.J. Piplica
Yeah. So in terms of the challenges associated with a turbine based combined cycle engine, the fancy term that they, that they use out in the air force for these things, number one, you have to get an off the shelf existing gas turbine engine up to about miles, Mach 3. So you have to get it to go maybe 30 to 50% faster than it was originally designed to go. And we've done that through developing a pre cooler which cools down the air that's coming in so that the thing doesn't melt. And you get pretty good performance up at those, those high speeds out of the gas turbine. And then the other piece you got.
- [51:34]
Jason Calacanis
Jake.
- [51:34]
A.J. Piplica
Yeah.
- [51:35]
Alex
Can I ask a question about that? So you're cooling down the air intake because at those speeds the air gets kind of compressed and therefore heats up. So you have to effectively air condition the air before you let it on fire.
- [51:47]
A.J. Piplica
Yes, a little bit counterintuitive. So at Mach 3, if you take air that's flying at Mach 3 and you slow it down to a stop, which happens at the front face of a gas driven engine, that air will heat up to about 800 degrees Fahrenheit, which will, you know, melt aluminum and lots of other things. So like. Yeah, it doesn't work super well when your engine's just like fragging out along the way up there. Not to mention the, the performance that you get. Because the way turbojets create thrust is they raise the temperature of this high pressure flow and then exhaust it through a nozzle. The temperature coming in is already pretty hot. You're not getting as much, you know, bang for your buck in terms of generating thrust. So yeah, those two, two big pieces of, of that. And then, and then Once you're over
- [52:27]
Alex
Mach 3, then the real magic can begin.
- [52:30]
A.J. Piplica
Yes, that's right. So actually I actually I think it's much more simple. So like a ramjet is literally the simplest aero propulsion device you can think of. It is the first thing in the textbook. Literally you open the air breathing propulsion textbook. It's ramjets before anything else because they're literally a tube with fuel injectors and a nozzle. That's it.
- [52:51]
Alex
Now there's a potato cannon that goes very frequently.
- [52:55]
A.J. Piplica
Yeah. So you're using instead of Mechanical compressor blades to compress the air. You're using shock waves which naturally occur when you're flying faster than the speed of sound. Those do the compression for you. And because you have no mechanical compressor, you don't need a turbine, a mechanical turbine, to generate the power to drive that compressor. So you remove those two components from the system and there you go, kind
- [53:17]
Alex
of, you kind of. You don't actually remove them from the system. You just route the air around the original turbine, which to me sounds difficult because you're talking about a lot of volume and a lot of inertia moving very quickly. So one, has anyone done this sort of hybrid turbojet ramjet before? Not just in a lab, but I mean, like actually out in the sky. And how long did it take to figure out how to swap between modes?
- [53:41]
A.J. Piplica
Yep. So it's never been done in the sky. It's been done in the lab. Lockheed and Aerogen Rocket had a program that did it took them like six years and I don't know, like $250 million to do it. But the closest thing that has existed and actually flown would be the J58 engine which powered the SR71. They bypassed some of the turbine, but not all.
- [54:01]
Alex
Well, we all know the SR71 famously worked, so I'm glad you're barking up the right tree now, Chimera, as far as I understand, it has reached the point to which you have these in the air. Yes.
- [54:12]
A.J. Piplica
No, we haven't flown them yet. So we've tested them on the ground at two scales. The airplane that you see behind me is the first one where we will fly the Pre cooler. So we'll do that later this year. Okay. And then pretty soon we'll be flying the ramjet piece too.
- [54:26]
Alex
All right, so then let's. Because this is a little technical and I've already gotten a point of it wrong, let's go back to the beginning and talk about your quarter horse program. Which is, I think a fair way to say it is the iterative process by which you're adding complexity to your kind of smaller sized jets to work your way up to dark horse down the road.
- [54:42]
A.J. Piplica
Yeah, that's right. Quarter horse is the program by which we're de risking the technology for long duration high speed flight. So we do that in an iterative way, building roughly one new airplane per year that de risks the next step. Famous adage from Kelly Johnson, famous founder of Skunk Works and greatest aircraft designer ever to live. One miracle per program. And.
- [55:03]
Alex
But like, that's one miracle Per year though, AJ I mean that seems like a little bit more.
- [55:07]
A.J. Piplica
Yeah, but like, you know, Kelly Johnson put 41 aircraft into production, his 40 year career. So like we're not, we're not, like, we still have a ways to go to, to meet what, you know, the ideal that they set back then. But yeah, you know, like the way we set up the program was like step one, teach rocket people how to build airplanes. That was the first piece because like there was nowhere we could hire from. Like where in the world could we hire people who had built, built a brand new airplane a year in their career? Today, like nowhere. They're all dead. Like we used to do this back in the 50s and 60s, but they're
- [55:39]
Jason Calacanis
all, they're all dead.
- [55:40]
A.J. Piplica
So we have to rebuild it.
- [55:41]
Alex
The inverse of Boeing today, essentially.
- [55:43]
A.J. Piplica
Yes, exactly. Now in the rocket world they do this all the time. This is exactly how SpaceX was built. Rockets, spacecraft, satellites, even over Tesla with cars. But we have to build that workforce and that discipline from scratch. So the first airplane that we built wasn't even an airplane. It was a jet powered go kart. It's the size of our first airplane. But the goal was really to just drive around an Air force Runway at 50 miles an hour and do it in a very short period of time. So that was the quarter horse mark zero. And then next step was, okay, now go fly. So that was quarter horse mark one, which flew in May of last year. Fly is a, we like, I think skirted the definition of flight as best as we could. It was about a 32nd flight, 50ft off the ground. But it achieved the outcome of fly the airplane and get all the approvals and everything required.
- [56:35]
Alex
Okay, so that was the earliest stages. Now I know that the quarter horse program in its 2.2.1 edition is actually breaking the sound barrier. So what's the latest flight you've done and then what's the next flight you have coming up?
- [56:49]
A.J. Piplica
Yeah, so the last flight we did was with Cordoris 2.1 was its first supersonic flight. So that was achieved 364 days after Mark 1 flew. So less than a year. So kind of exactly hitting that de risk one new thing on an annual basis. The next things that we'll want to do is we'll want to push the speed up higher. We hit about Mach 1.21, so want to get that up a little bit higher. Maybe 1.5, a little bit north of that. And then we've already integrated, we call a weapons rack. So, so these are the racks that you start integrating stores and missiles and things on. So that's been integrated. We want to start flying with those in the relatively near term and start dropping things from the airplane.
- [57:31]
Alex
Question. So everything that I know about ordnance for jets is so much slower than the speeds we're talking about here. So can you rack mount, let's just pick a messle beyond though sidewinder on the wings or do they go in a bay because we're going so fast that you can't afford the drag on the actual wings?
- [57:53]
A.J. Piplica
Yeah. So one of the nice things about having an F100 engine in there is that we have an immense amount of thrust. So that allows us to carry a lot of things externally still at these high speeds. So the aircraft will be capable of releasing stores like an Amraam. So Amraam is a bit bigger than a sidewinder, but you know, the longest range air to air weapon that we have from high speed and high altitude. And what do you get when you release these weapons from those conditions? They tend to go a lot further. And that's a pretty big value proposition of these types of aircraft. The ability to extend the range of existing and new weapons. Because like the name of the game, whether it's like the Ukrainian conflict or around the Pacific, is range. Like, it's just like boxing. If you've got a longer arm, you're probably going to win.
- [58:41]
Alex
Same thing goes with basketball and defense. So let's talk about range because I'm really curious about what you think you're going to get. So let's go to the future. We've handled all the yearly miracles we have Dark Horse, the Air Force or the Navy or whomever is going to put it into use. How far can it go on one tank of whatever magic juice it's going to run on.
- [59:00]
A.J. Piplica
So the Mark 2 will have a range. It's actually pretty similar to existing fighter jets, maybe a little bit more, but nothing wild. The big thing is the range that you get out of the weapons that it can launch. So, you know, existing weapons, double ish the range, maybe more. And then we've got some other things up our sleeve that go beyond that that I can't really talk about just yet. So we'll have to talk about that next time we come on.
- [59:23]
Alex
If this thing is a platform to bring munitions, especially missiles, closer to potential targets, does that mean that it's really just a reusable first stage?
- [59:32]
A.J. Piplica
There you go.
- [59:32]
Alex
I'm actually legitimate.
- [59:33]
A.J. Piplica
I told you we were building rockets.
- [59:35]
Alex
I'm not sure if you're building. Well, you're not.
- [59:36]
Jason Calacanis
But you are.
- [59:37]
Alex
But you aren't. But you definitely are. But definitely you might be. This is weird. I thought I had your company kind of figured out before the show, but now I'm actually more confused than I was before. Okay, well anyways, I'll learn more as you guys keep building. Now, quarter horse 2.3, I think you're going to bump up the speed to like Mach 3.
- [59:54]
A.J. Piplica
Exactly. Yep. So that one will not only have the Pre cooler in it, it'll also be it also have a high temperature airframe. So these airplanes, this one behind me and the first one that we flew, they're all aluminum. So the next ones will be high temperature metallic that can take the temperatures up at those conditions and you know, also have all the fuel that's needed to get up there. So yeah, big thing there is get up into the Mach 3 range where you can start a ramjet engine.
- [60:17]
Alex
And then I'm going to stick with your numerical nomenclature here. Does Quarter Horse 2.4 bring Chimera up to the clouds?
- [60:25]
A.J. Piplica
So actually Mark 3 will be Chimera. So the Mark 2 series is just the F100 Pro across the pre cooler from a propulsion perspective. And then we move on to the next kind of family. Still similar scale. But now we bring in the full Chimera engine with the ramjet and the Pre cooler and the gas turbine together. But the airframe itself is actually pretty much the same as 2.3. So that step is actually quite small. From the aircraft that will fly next year without the ramjet to the one that will fly with Chimera maybe a year or so later. It's not that big of a difference.
- [60:55]
Alex
And then after that, once we get the new airframe that can take higher temperatures, once we get the ramjet in place, that can go even faster. What's left to sort out before you can start to build? Let's just call it 1.0, the final production version.
- [61:09]
A.J. Piplica
Yeah. So for the kind of dark Horse style concept, like you know, high speed airplane, the next big thing and kind of the last big thing is long duration high speed flight. And that's the single most challenging bit of the whole thing. Can you fly for long time at Mach 3 to 5, handle the thermal environment in a closed loop and then reuse it it quickly and for many, many cycles, that's the last chunk.
- [61:35]
Alex
So when I think about thermal issues, I think mostly about kind of like orbital re entry. How good of an analogy is that to the Heat that we're talking about when we're going Mach 3 to Mach 5 for one of your aircraft, it's a great question.
- [61:48]
A.J. Piplica
So I would say it is an equally challenging problem. But the nature of the problem is flipped. So for orbital reentry, you spend a very short period of time, like you're only in these high temperature conditions for maybe a few minutes because you're screaming through the atmosphere, which means like the total heat load, the total amount of heat that comes into the system is not that bad. But the peak heating, the peak temperature that you have to take is ridiculous now.
- [62:13]
Alex
But if you're gonna fly, you're gonna keep building up heat constantly at that level. So you have to have simply an amazing way to dump heat out of the aircraft. Avoid picking it up.
- [62:21]
A.J. Piplica
That's right.
- [62:21]
Alex
Which way are you guys going? Dump or just don't pick it up?
- [62:24]
A.J. Piplica
There are lots of ways to do it and likely it'll be a combination of the two. So, yeah, you got to manage it once it's on once, once it's in the system, and you want to keep it out of the system as best you can too.
- [62:35]
Alex
So could the pre cooler pre cool the plane?
- [62:40]
A.J. Piplica
That would be.
- [62:43]
Alex
Maybe you have a little cooler in there already. Why can't you just plug that in?
- [62:46]
A.J. Piplica
You know, it would be, I think it would be like pretty inefficient to do that for long periods of time. It just takes a ton of energy to do that. So, like you could. I don't know that it would make the right system level trade though.
- [62:58]
Alex
All right, I want to talk about a couple of other things. First of all, you guys recently raised a $350 million Series C LED by Khosla. Congrats, by the way.
- [63:06]
A.J. Piplica
Thank you.
- [63:07]
Alex
Quite a lot of capital. Glad to see that venture funds can kind of put up that kind of funding. I'm curious about if you look a couple years down the road, if venture capital is going to have enough muscle to provide what you guys need. My guess is that this is going to be an expensive project to get over the finish line, which is kind of a compliment because I think it's worth it. But are you guys going to look at other capital sources as you grow, or will venture capital kind of take you all the way to church?
- [63:32]
A.J. Piplica
Yeah, I think the way we're building this company, you can build it privately with sufficient access to capital, so long as that stays good to do what we need to do. And I think a perfect example of that is like compare SpaceX and Anduril, you know, Anduril has raised, I think, like, $11 billion of equity financing in the private markets. So, like, quite a bit. So, like, there's plenty of capital out there for these types of businesses. But look at SpaceX, prior to the IPO, they raised $10 billion. Everything that they did.
- [64:01]
Alex
I know.
- [64:02]
A.J. Piplica
And, like, how much of that was liquidity not actually working capital? Like, it's. It's insane. The level of capital efficiency that that company has been able to create and the way that they did is because they effectively got their customer to pay for their R and D by paying them to fly rockets all the time.
- [64:17]
Jason Calacanis
Time.
- [64:17]
A.J. Piplica
Like, how do you get the data to learn how to land a rocket? We fly rockets a lot. And you get your customers to pay for it. It's the greatest hack in the book. So for us, like, we get paid to fly our airplanes by our customers all the time, which gives us the data that we need to move on to the next step. And the next step. The next step. And then it'll be the same for production down the road. But, like, capital efficiency is. Is the name of the game when you're doing something this hard. So I don't expect the numbers to be small, like, there will be billions of dollars that we'll want to raise, but the revenue numbers that are coming alongside that, that will be equal, if not more. And I think that allows us to persist in the private markets much longer than you might otherwise be able to.
- [64:52]
Alex
I'm really glad to hear all of that. You also have some deals with the Defense. Oh, it's the diu Defense Innovation Unit. Innovation Unit. Thank you. Sorry, my brain just. Okay, so the DIU recently bumped up its contract with y' all essentially, as far as I can tell, just to learn and de risk hypersonic flight. Right. Does that provide a equity capital like infusion to the company, or should I think about that deal as something entirely distinct from this part of the conversation?
- [65:19]
A.J. Piplica
Yeah, I think you look at that deal as we are monetizing the tech de risking that we're doing with the equity capital that we're raising. So we're developing these products with private capital, and then all of the testing that we're doing to expand the envelope and push beyond what's been done before. That data is very valuable. And we're delivering that data to the Department of War under this contract, which is exactly the type of contract that SpaceX set up with NASA in the original commercial Orbital Transportation services contract. I've literally been walking around The Pentagon, like a Jehovah's Witness, with the report from that, that says, this is how you do this. I've been doing this for almost eight years now. And now DIU and the Air Force specifically are starting to understand this. They're starting to see the technical progress that's being made and the tiny, relatively tiny amount of capital that they're having to put forward to do it. And they're seeing what happens. And SpaceX wouldn't exist without. Yeah, it's amazing.
- [66:18]
Alex
Think about what. Okay, look, I don't want to cast stones or throw aspersions, but let's make fun of Raytheon. Why not?
- [66:25]
A.J. Piplica
Well, they're an investor, so I won't make fun of them too much.
- [66:28]
Alex
Name a prime who hasn't invested in you.
- [66:31]
A.J. Piplica
Choose others.
- [66:32]
Alex
That one.
- [66:33]
A.J. Piplica
That one.
- [66:34]
Alex
That unnamed prime. Imagine how Raytheon would have gotten this done in three days for $5. We all know it, but any other prime would have taken so much longer and so much more capital. I wonder if we just have a structural advantage for startups like you guys, because you're not. I don't know exactly what their ills are other than inertia, organizational drift, lack of efficiency, poor incentives, et cetera. But it's just so refreshing to hear that we're going to what it feels like three times faster than we used to or five times faster for less money.
- [67:02]
A.J. Piplica
AJ like, that is, I mean like there, there is a reason there has not been a new fighter jet manufacturer or like large military aircraft manufacturer founded in this country since the 1950s. Aerial dynamics was the last one. And like Peter Thiel talked to Elon about this when he was thinking about investing in SpaceX and he was asking like, hey, you're, you got this Tesla thing over here. Nobody started a successful US car company since when it was like, well, Jeep in 1941. And people, everybody saw that as like, oh, this is a reason not to do it. And yet the inverse is actually paradoxically the correct thing. This is the opportunity, if you are willing to take the risk to try. And that's what we've done here over the past seven and a half years and proved it out. And now I think we've got pretty good moat for ourselves that we hope to continue building. But like, there's no other help coming when it comes to aircraft production in this country. Like the F22 and F35, they each took 20 to 25 years to develop and like 30 and 60 billion dollars just for development. So being able to cost a bajillion
- [68:08]
Alex
dollars a piece, and they can't make more than two per year. And look, the F22 Raptor is gorgeous. We can all agree it's a beautiful plane that took too long to build and cost too much money. That's why I'm excited about you guys. So, A.J. i guess we'll have to have you back on every three to six months as you have new announcements. But I'm incredibly hype, and you're building this here in the United States, and I think your last couple of paragraphs are pretty much the distilled pitch for American dynamism. So thank you for coming on and spreading the good word. Go fly. Go faster. And then as soon as you have one with a seat, I volunteer as tribute.
- [68:37]
A.J. Piplica
Perfect. We'll put a saddle on for you. How's that?
- [68:39]
Alex
I'll hang on to the fricking wing, dude. Let's go. I like things that go fast in the sky, so I'm a natural fan. All right, this has been Twist. He's aj, the company is Hermeus. Check it out. See y' all next time.