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Base Earth
Joined July 2018
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Parsec Institute retweeted
What was @SpaceX like from the inside in its early days?
I sat down with @karantalati in Detroit during the @reindsummit , we talked about his journey being an early engineer at SpaceX to raising $30M for @firstresonance
Karan tells us, what SpaceX early days looked like, how does SpaceX compare to legacy brands like Boeing in terms of culture and what Elon Musk’s relationship with Gwynne Shotwell taught Karan about co-founder relationships.
His journey started just over a decade ago: Illinois engineering grad, early SpaceXer (he arrived when Falcon 9 launches were still cool and they risked blowing up more engines than they landed), then a key player connecting engineering and production as SpaceX transitioned from “N of 1” rocket builds to genuine factory-scale assembly lines.
He almost got his start in manufacturing accidentally. His father helped bring up Motorola’s early global supply chains, and would bring early prototypes for him to test, play and hack.
Hope you enjoy!
Timestamps
00:00 - Introduction
03:00 - Marriage, Startup, Early Life
07:30 - Early SpaceX life and intersection with Tesla
11:39 - Gwynne Shotwell & Elon Musk and co founder relationships
15:52 - Learnings from SpaceX
24:45 - Boeing vs SpaceX, difference in company culture
34:41 - Relationship building and nurturing
41:20 - How to build company culture and hiring
50:22 - Evaluating agency in new hires
58:50 - Defining high agency and importance in founders
1:04:49 - Making intentional choices that compound
1:07:48 - Early interest in hardware and father’s impact
1:12:58 - Why hacking appealed to Karan?
1:16:52 - Mentors in career
1:20:09 - The art of soft influence
1:24:00 - Internship at Samsung in Korea
1:27:50 - Software, taste and distribution
1:32:48 - What makes a good story?
Parsec Institute retweeted
Why does a single In & Out store do 2-3x the revenue of a McDonald's store and what can you learn from it about building products that can survive generations?
Simplicity, Consistency, and Taste.
@mehul breaks it down:
Episode with @mehul cofounder of @maticrobots is now live on We The Builders. Matic has raised ~$28m to bring the home automation revolution to every consumer, starting with the best robot vacuum. Full masterplan in the pod.
Mehul moved to Silicon Valley about 20 years ago. He has gone from moving to the US at 15 barely speaking English, to an early career in DC-area dot-com startups, to product leadership at Salesforce (back when it was just 300 people), and building and working with teams that launched like dot com (acquired by google for ~$100M), Flutter (vision-based gesture recognition; acquired by Google for ~$40M), and key parts of the Nest camera and home hardware lineup where he worked closely with Tony Fadell, the father of iPod and Nest.
Parsec Institute retweeted
We issued an update to the map of Thiel disciples founded venture firms from The Generalist's four part series on Founders Fund called "No Rivals" which did not originally include 137 Ventures and Gigafund.
@137ventures was cofounded by Justin Fishner-Wolfson (Former Principal at Founders Fund) and @alexjacobson (Former EIR at Founders Fund). Christian brought up in the pod that the info-graph was missing key data - well, now it's taken care of.
Other venture funds Thiel and his former associates have gone on to start include:
@foundersfund
@8vc
@1517fund
@NaryaVC
@LongJourneyVC
@A_StarVC
@bedrock
@Valar_Ventures
@gigafund
Aloft VC
Mithril Capital
Clarium
Full interview with Christian at 137 Ventures dropped last night
This Friday on @WeThe_Builders: I interviewed @CGarrett_15, Partner at @137ventures, a $5B+ AUM growth-stage venture fund known for backing generational cateogory defining technology companies, investments include @SpaceX , @figma , @anduriltech, @PalantirTech , @Spotify , @Airbnb , @turo , @AppliedInt and @Uber. Shoutout to my friends at @reindsummit who put together an incredible event in Detroit mid-July, this interview was recorded on the sides of the conference.
Christian also cofounded The Hill and Valley Forum with @zebulgar at @foundersfund and @jacobhelberg to connect Capitol Hill and Silicon Valley, the event started as a small dinner gathering over 3 years ago and has quickly become the premier place to bring together decision makers from venture capital, Silicon Valley’s top startups and tech companies and decision makers in D.C.
I was at the “Winning The AI Race” Summit hosted by All-In Podcast and Hill & Valley Forum last week where President Trump, JD Vance and four cabinet secretaries gave talks which is a testament to the influence and role of the forum in bridging D.C and the Valley.
In this podcast we go through a range of topics. Christian talks about his journey building his first computer as a kid to play Runescape and how that developed his love for sci-fi. He talks about playing college basketball at the University of Kansas and his learnings from being a “benchwarmer for some NBA all stars” and going deep into philosophy and theology before venturing into tech investing.
At 137 Ventures, Christian went from joining as an analyst to becoming partner in a very short period of time without taking the traditional business school detour to get into venture capital, he talks about what that taught him about finding and nurturing talent having been on the receiving end of the apprenticeship.
Timestamps and Highlights
(00:00) - Introduction
(00:39) - Reindustrialize and Detroit
(02:40) - Investing and growing at 137 Ventures
(10:16) - Early life and influences
(18:21) - Wanting to be an investor
(28:25) - Forging and maintaining relationships
(37:48) - Hill & Valley Forum and rallying people
(42:57) - Obsessions, self reflections and weaknesses
(40:37) - Capital allocation in venture
(53:02) - Compounding in personal life
(57:43) - Portfolio Construction Debates
(1:05:36) - Remote work, city concentration and next wave of innovation
(1:10:12) - Accelerated innovation due to growing private markets
(1:15:05) - Rapid fire and closing thoughts
Parsec Institute retweeted
This Friday on @WeThe_Builders: I interviewed @CGarrett_15, Partner at @137ventures, a $5B+ AUM growth-stage venture fund known for backing generational cateogory defining technology companies, investments include @SpaceX , @figma , @anduriltech, @PalantirTech , @Spotify , @Airbnb , @turo , @AppliedInt and @Uber. Shoutout to my friends at @reindsummit who put together an incredible event in Detroit mid-July, this interview was recorded on the sides of the conference.
Christian also cofounded The Hill and Valley Forum with @zebulgar at @foundersfund and @jacobhelberg to connect Capitol Hill and Silicon Valley, the event started as a small dinner gathering over 3 years ago and has quickly become the premier place to bring together decision makers from venture capital, Silicon Valley’s top startups and tech companies and decision makers in D.C.
I was at the “Winning The AI Race” Summit hosted by All-In Podcast and Hill & Valley Forum last week where President Trump, JD Vance and four cabinet secretaries gave talks which is a testament to the influence and role of the forum in bridging D.C and the Valley.
In this podcast we go through a range of topics. Christian talks about his journey building his first computer as a kid to play Runescape and how that developed his love for sci-fi. He talks about playing college basketball at the University of Kansas and his learnings from being a “benchwarmer for some NBA all stars” and going deep into philosophy and theology before venturing into tech investing.
At 137 Ventures, Christian went from joining as an analyst to becoming partner in a very short period of time without taking the traditional business school detour to get into venture capital, he talks about what that taught him about finding and nurturing talent having been on the receiving end of the apprenticeship.
Timestamps and Highlights
(00:00) - Introduction
(00:39) - Reindustrialize and Detroit
(02:40) - Investing and growing at 137 Ventures
(10:16) - Early life and influences
(18:21) - Wanting to be an investor
(28:25) - Forging and maintaining relationships
(37:48) - Hill & Valley Forum and rallying people
(42:57) - Obsessions, self reflections and weaknesses
(40:37) - Capital allocation in venture
(53:02) - Compounding in personal life
(57:43) - Portfolio Construction Debates
(1:05:36) - Remote work, city concentration and next wave of innovation
(1:10:12) - Accelerated innovation due to growing private markets
(1:15:05) - Rapid fire and closing thoughts
We’re going to double the human lifespan and live to 160. But will it be this century? More on the pod with @omri_drory 👇
I asked @omri_drory about his "Road To 160" thesis according to which the human lifespan should double within this century with the pace of progress in bio.
I was curious about what stage on the road are we at practically. More on the science behind reprogramming aging cells:
"I think obviously there's a lot of energy behind it. A lot of people with money would like to live longer if they could. The problem is a lack of scientifically valid things to do.
But this is also changing. There is a bunch of new approach that might work. One of them, I don't know if you heard about @newlimit or @altos_labs or @RetroBio_ , a bunch of companies that start with a lot of money behind them to work on the partial reprogramming area.
So what is reprogramming? Nobel prize winning discovery a few years ago. Yamanaka factor is a 4 protein factor for transcription that can take any adult cell and turn it into what looks like a young embryonic state cell that can differentiate to any cell type.
So it almost turned the clock backwards in time to take adult cells with short telomeres and a bunch of epigenetic tissue and turn it, reprogram it back to something young embryonic cells. Amazing, right?
So the question was, what will happen if you can instead of fully reprogram a cell all the way back to embryonic states? And the problem is cancer is also reprogrammed.
It takes a differentiated cell and turns into something that look embryonic and reproduce. So it's very dangerous.
So what happens if we can partially reprogram those cells to be younger but not to lose our identity? So either by using a subset of your manaka factors or heat, just use it for a short period of time just to make this slightly younger and then stop or find new factors that can do it in a safe way."
Parsec Institute retweeted
I asked @omri_drory about his "Road To 160" thesis according to which the human lifespan should double within this century with the pace of progress in bio.
I was curious about what stage on the road are we at practically. More on the science behind reprogramming aging cells:
"I think obviously there's a lot of energy behind it. A lot of people with money would like to live longer if they could. The problem is a lack of scientifically valid things to do.
But this is also changing. There is a bunch of new approach that might work. One of them, I don't know if you heard about @newlimit or @altos_labs or @RetroBio_ , a bunch of companies that start with a lot of money behind them to work on the partial reprogramming area.
So what is reprogramming? Nobel prize winning discovery a few years ago. Yamanaka factor is a 4 protein factor for transcription that can take any adult cell and turn it into what looks like a young embryonic state cell that can differentiate to any cell type.
So it almost turned the clock backwards in time to take adult cells with short telomeres and a bunch of epigenetic tissue and turn it, reprogram it back to something young embryonic cells. Amazing, right?
So the question was, what will happen if you can instead of fully reprogram a cell all the way back to embryonic states? And the problem is cancer is also reprogrammed.
It takes a differentiated cell and turns into something that look embryonic and reproduce. So it's very dangerous.
So what happens if we can partially reprogram those cells to be younger but not to lose our identity? So either by using a subset of your manaka factors or heat, just use it for a short period of time just to make this slightly younger and then stop or find new factors that can do it in a safe way."
Tuesday drop @WeThe_Builders, featuring, @omri_drory, General Partner, @NFX, a $1.4B AUM pre-seed and seed stage venture capital firm that invests in tech startups across various sectors, focusing on fostering network effects and defensible competitive advantages. They seek out companies in fields like AI, biotech, fintech, SaaS, marketplaces, and crypto.
He started out conducting research in Israel’s intelligence corps to pipetting at Stanford labs. Exited Genome Compiler to @TwistBioscience ($2B market cap, NASDAQ: TWST). Launching a pre-seed venture fund called TechBio which lead him to his role at NFX.
Worth reading, Omri’s “Race to 160” blog. This actually makes sense as the human lifespan has double in the last few centuries from ~40 to ~80 and up from ~20 from about 5,000 years ago - Omri discusses this in the pod.
He's on the board of/invested/advisor in some of the following companies: @immunebridge @Powerhouse_Bio, @permanencebio, Radar Therapeutics, TwoStep Therapeutics, @ZipBio_Inc, @centivax, @mammothbiosci. We will be covering Trevor @ Mammoth in a future episode, stay tuned!
Highlights & Timestamps:
(00:00) - Introduction
(00:55) - Early Life, Military, PhD
(04:00) - Learnings from the Military
(07:10) - Life at Stanford and Entrepreneurship
(11:56) - Recruiting friends to start a company
(13:30) - Race to 160
(18:05) - ABCD plan for aging
(26:59) - Companies actively working towards solving aging
(31:22) - Singularity and Ray Kurzweil
(33:12) - What it takes to be a founder
(40:12) - People investing vs Technology investing
(45:00) - DNA of a founder
(48:11) - The initial spark to become an entrepreneur
(51:37) - Agency, Risk Appetite and Perseverance
(55:21) - Network Effects
(1:04:47) - Breakthrough Innovation
(1:09:41) - Storytelling and authenticity
(1:14:58) - Role Models
(1:18:11) - Rapid fire and closing thoughts
Parsec Institute retweeted
Tuesday drop @WeThe_Builders, featuring, @omri_drory, General Partner, @NFX, a $1.4B AUM pre-seed and seed stage venture capital firm that invests in tech startups across various sectors, focusing on fostering network effects and defensible competitive advantages. They seek out companies in fields like AI, biotech, fintech, SaaS, marketplaces, and crypto.
He started out conducting research in Israel’s intelligence corps to pipetting at Stanford labs. Exited Genome Compiler to @TwistBioscience ($2B market cap, NASDAQ: TWST). Launching a pre-seed venture fund called TechBio which lead him to his role at NFX.
Worth reading, Omri’s “Race to 160” blog. This actually makes sense as the human lifespan has double in the last few centuries from ~40 to ~80 and up from ~20 from about 5,000 years ago - Omri discusses this in the pod.
He's on the board of/invested/advisor in some of the following companies: @immunebridge @Powerhouse_Bio, @permanencebio, Radar Therapeutics, TwoStep Therapeutics, @ZipBio_Inc, @centivax, @mammothbiosci. We will be covering Trevor @ Mammoth in a future episode, stay tuned!
Highlights & Timestamps:
(00:00) - Introduction
(00:55) - Early Life, Military, PhD
(04:00) - Learnings from the Military
(07:10) - Life at Stanford and Entrepreneurship
(11:56) - Recruiting friends to start a company
(13:30) - Race to 160
(18:05) - ABCD plan for aging
(26:59) - Companies actively working towards solving aging
(31:22) - Singularity and Ray Kurzweil
(33:12) - What it takes to be a founder
(40:12) - People investing vs Technology investing
(45:00) - DNA of a founder
(48:11) - The initial spark to become an entrepreneur
(51:37) - Agency, Risk Appetite and Perseverance
(55:21) - Network Effects
(1:04:47) - Breakthrough Innovation
(1:09:41) - Storytelling and authenticity
(1:14:58) - Role Models
(1:18:11) - Rapid fire and closing thoughts
Parsec Institute retweeted
Thanks for the tour and dinner @sampritibh - it was incredibly inspiring learning about your journey. Rooting for you and Navier!!
@navierboat is building electric flying boats - I’ll be collaborating with them to organise private boat rides across Austin, SF.
We will be back to do a Maritime 101 on @WeThe_Builders and more exciting collabs - stay tuned!
Parsec Institute retweeted
Jason Dunn manufactured the first parts ever made in space with his first company.
And now, he’s back with @OutpostSpace — a startup building shipping-container-sized autonomous space factories... that can return to Earth.
I invited @ImJasonDunn to my (terrestrial) space factory to ask him how it works, and we got into the technical details.
It was a fascinating conversation about how to build a space company. I think you’ll love it.
Chapters:
0:00:00 — Introducing Outpost’s autonomous space factories
0:02:34 — Jason’s first rodeo: Made in Space
0:04:07 — Why NASA got mad about the first part ever manufactured off Earth
0:10:00 — Designing a 3D printer that works in zero-G
0:15:19 — Getting inspiration from “a secret cult for the future of space”
0:22:02 — Jason almost started a surf shop
0:23:45 — The first time Jason made ZBLAN fiber optics in zero gravity
0:31:17 — What are the driving engineering requirements for a space return lane?
0:36:44 — “What’s the deal with the huge cube of metal on the Space Station?”
0:37:37 — How do you bring a shipping container back to Earth from space?
0:43:50 — Deployments are scary… why are these worth it?
0:47:40 — Is there a risk of bouncing off the atmosphere?
0:50:11 — Delivering MREs from God to America’s warfighters
0:53:45 — “We are very very hardware-rich.”
0:58:06 — How to convince your children to go into hard tech
Parsec Institute retweeted
Work on the biggest most important thing you possibly can, don’t give up and you get to have days like today - @bscholl
@boomsupersonic is the first private and commercial aircraft to go supersonic.
Like Blake said, the future doesn’t automatically get build, you have to go out there and do it.
What a day.
Happening Now. Watch XB-1's supersonic test flight in real-time. Join us and see XB-1 break the sound barrier from the viewpoint of our chase aircraft. xitter.cf/i/broadcasts/1vOxwrXqz…
Flying cars are here. The Jetsons future we were promised.
Andrew is introducing @flyarcher at #SFTechWeek @Techweek_
🛸🚀
Looks like CGI, but these are all real video highlights from the @PolarisProgram space mission
Parsec Institute retweeted
chAI Time Ep. 54: Can AI Contribute to Climate Management? xitter.cf/i/broadcasts/1PlKQDyak…
Parsec Institute retweeted
chAI Time Ep 53: Can AI Achieve Consciousness?: Exploring the Possibilities xitter.cf/i/broadcasts/1OdJrjpvO…
Parsec Institute retweeted
Is it safe to let AI decide what's right and wrong?⚖️🤖🤔
Listen to our LIVE Podcast every week and share your thoughts with us!!!✨
#opusai #narrativeai #earlyaccess
Parsec Institute retweeted
chAI Time Ep. 52: Will AI be able to read your mind? xitter.cf/i/broadcasts/1mrxmyRRW…