Transcript of Robinhood Co-Founder Baiju Bhatt on Space Energy, AI Power & Building the Galactic Brain

What is the Galactic Brain?

The Galactic Brain. Yes. This is something that I wanted to do probably my whole life. Started a company called Athero Flux with a mission to build power grid in space.

Hold on.

Hold the fuck on. And the way you do it is with lasers.

Yes. Space lasers.

Space lasers. More specifically.

You want to freaking...

What the fuck? That concept is like Starlink for power, right? This is probably the most interesting the energy industry has been in our lifetime.

Yeah, I'm locked in on this, man.

The artificial intelligence brain of humanity orbiting Earth.

I know. Have fun watching the show. Get your damn pop for it because you're going to need it. What's up, guys? We are back, and we are here at an amazing location in Midtown in Miami, Florida, at 305 Podcast. And today's guest, I'm going to tell you what, probably one of the bigger accomplished guests that we've ever had on the show. And I'm really excited for you guys to hear what he has to say about his life, about his upbringing, and what he has built. And then later on in the show, we have a very big announcement for something that he has launched, and it's going to be a big deal. I have with me today Bijou I got, co founder of Robin hood, and just an amazing dude. We had so much fun talking off camera. I feel like we are already friends, already know each other. And just welcome to the show, man. It's great to have you.

Thanks for having me, man. It's fun to be here.

Oh, man, it's been great already.

We had a great We had a conversation already about fitness and shit.

Yeah, fitness. You came in, you gave me a hug. I'm like, All right, this is my dude, man. Of course.

This is great.

No, dude, it's great to have you. We've been throwing around when we can get this thing going for, I think, a couple months, and I finally forgot about it and just like, okay, maybe just not right now. If it's meant to be, it'll come around. Then I think a week later, after I said that, Sarah just sent me the email and she goes, Hey, he going to be in town. I'm like, Well, let's We do this thing. That's perfect. We're here, man. We're here. You have an amazing story. I'm not just talking about the entrepreneurial story of what you've built and how you've, in my opinion, impacted the market and how the landscape is for the layperson now, right? That wants to invest and get into the market, whether it's traditional or Bitcoin. Like, dude, you and Vlad were the pioneers, in my humble opinion. We'll get to that later. But your family came over from India, right? You were in the womb when your mom and dad came here as immigrants of this country. What was that like when growing up here and listening to their stories and their experiences?

I tell you, one of my first memories in life is watching the Dukes of Hazzard. Oh, hell, yeah. Yeah. Because my family moved to the US from India right before I was born. My dad had... It's interesting story. I'll tell you a little bit about it. My grandfather on my dad's side was I think one of the first Western-trained eye doctors. At the time, it was probably much more of a village. Now, it's a huge city in Bhavnagar in Gujarat. He was one of the first Western-trained eye doctors. He made glasses for everybody. He was like, Oh, all of my children are going to go into the optometry business with me. My dad had always wanted to study physics. He'd always had a love of science and the core truths of how the universe works to the to the extent that our little monkey brains can understand it. He starts out in, I guess, biology, and he starts switching to chemistry, and he starts a PhD in India in chemistry. I don't think he finishes that, and he goes and joins my dad's optometry business, my grandfather's optometry business. But all the while, he's applying to PhD programs in the US.

He wants to study physics. He wants to study, in particular, the real nature of how gravity works. He's applying year in, year out. I think he's at this point, he's devoting himself to science. He's like, I want to be... That's all I want to do. Doesn't want to get married, doesn't want to have kids, but ends up getting married to my mom. It all happens in rapid succession, which is that they get married, my mom is pregnant, and then he gets into University of Huntsville, Alabama, which is where the Dukes of Hazard connection comes in. My mom didn't speak English, loved her family in had no interest in moving to America. Apparently, my mom's dad, my grandfather, had a talk with my dad. It's like, Look, you can marry my daughter, but under one condition, can't go to America. Because it was known that he was trying to go to America, and lo and behold, it happens immediately. He gets sent to University of Huntsville, Alabama, to study physics as a PhD student, and my mom doesn't speak any English. It's like, She wasn't even sure she was going to come. The way she describes it, she goes to the embassy, and they're like, Oh, you're pregnant, right?

And she's like, Yeah. And they're like, Oh, it's a boy. And they're like, Cool. You're coming to America. And your son is going to be born in America.

Wow.

For the first five years of my life, I actually didn't even speak English. I learned English watching TV with my mom.

That's pretty cool, watching Dukes of Hazard.

Watching Dukes of Hazard.

I love that show, by the way. Yeah, dude, come on. I grew up on Dukes of Hazard, too. Yeah, I had the Lunchbox. Yeah, the Dukes of Hazard Lunchbox and the Nightrider Lunchbox.

Oh, the Nightrider Lunchbox.

That was dope. That was some good shit, man. It was. I thought I could literally have a car that would talk to me like Kit would.

Car culture was awesome in the '80s.

Dude, you love cars. I heard you love cars.

I love cars, yeah. I love everything about them. I love the way they work. We can get into this more.

Yeah, we'll get into that. I want to stay on where we're at right now. So first five years, you learned English through watching TV with your mom. And everyone that I speak to that is a successful entrepreneur, and I'm not talking mid-success. I'm talking massive success, like what you've created. A lot of them are immigrants.

Yeah.

I think there's a thing to be said, and I don't know what it is. I have my theories, but I think that being born in America, myself, you go through life just taking things for granted knowing that you live in utopia. You live in utopia. You may not live in San Francisco or New York. You might live in the Midwest, but you can go anywhere in the landscape of the United States and have anything you want. And immigrants, they come over with this different understanding. They are getting away from a country that they may not have the opportunity that they want, so they come here and they appreciate it more. And even if the children are not born yet, a la bijou bat, the benefit of that, the benefit of being in a family that immigrates here, having a different perspective within the household and how to work and how to appreciate, I always find that those individuals are massively successful. What are your thoughts on that?

I wholeheartedly agree. I mean, we'll get to this in a little bit, but this is the bedrock of the The idea behind Robinhood, even. Because my family came to the US because my dad wanted to study physics. They wanted to come here because this is a land of opportunity. And especially if you rewind the clock back to the '80s when they did this, it's like As Americans, we lose sight of the fact that living in this great nation is the envy of literally everybody in the world. And the reason people come here, by and large, is because of upward economic mobility. This is the land of opportunity has been, and as long as we don't fuck it up too badly, will continue to be for our kids' generation and kids and kids' generation. It's the place in the world where if you want to do something and you want to make it for yourself, you can do it. And the thing is, where else in the world can you do this? What's number two? I don't even know. There is no number two. I don't know.

Exactly. It's your point. And yet you made a comment of, Hopefully, we don't fuck it up. It's like, We're trying to fuck it up. We're trying hard.

We're trying our darndest.

I mean, give it to the college try, man. Really screw this fucking country up so our kids and their kids and their kids don't have what we have. Hopefully, it recorrects itself. I don't know the answer, but-I think about this sometimes.

I think as adults of this generation, the baton is in our hands right now. We're grown-ass men. This is our time to shepherd society variety, culture, all these things through this era. We look at it where we are right now with a lot of skepticism. You can talk about where the United States position is in the world relative to China and some of our other adversaries. But this is also the era of the information boom, right? When we look back on what our generation has done, we should, I think, be pretty fucking proud of it, too.

I think so, man.

Despite the fact that I think both of us are acutely Are you aware of the risk of totally fucking it up right now.

Yeah, man. I think what's really sad is you go back to when we were kids, right? I don't know how it was in Huntsville, Alabama, but I grew up in the San Francisco Bay.

Oh, did you?

Yeah, I'm from Concord, California. That's right. I look at these two things, and it used to be in California, if we needed an egg or if we needed sugar or a cup of milk, we'd go to our neighbors and ask for it. It was a normal thing. It was a normal thing to go borrow shit from your neighbor and to knock on a door and see a Biji wanted to come out and play. We don't have that now. What we have now is, I think, this constant need to be right and need to be better than somebody else. It's to a point where you look at, just even if we were to post a clip on Instagram, and it goes viral. Someone's going to say some shit because they're jealous of where they're at in their life, and they haven't created what you have or what I have. But We don't have this culture of the love for the community more like we used to. It's like how I feel. I love people in general until you give me a reason not to like you and not to love you. So I always I always start it with very open, and that gap can close based on my experience level with you.

Or if I read your energy and like, Okay, I'm out. This is dark. I can't be a part of this. But I just feel I don't know if it's because of all the screens and everything else going on with the technology.

No, it is because of the screens. That is one of the main reasons why.

My kids don't get screens. But yeah, I just think we're on a tangent, but I just feel like in an effort to rebuild, I think, respect in the community and within society, it starts with dudes like us and wives like our wives to truly raise the children and to give them love and to provide this safe space for them that they can communicate their feelings when they're feeling a certain way and the proper way to, I guess, talk to their friends or in relationships when they are feeling a certain way. It's on us. It's on parents, man, to really parent children to where they can go out in the world and be kind and successful and hopefully, compassion, empathetic.

Yeah. I think we're talking about being trad dads right now. What is it? Trad dads. Talk to what? Traditional dads.

Oh, trad.

Yeah, right?

Yeah, traditional, right?

It's actually nice that being traditional is back in vogue in some way that it wasn't for a while. We were just talking about this a little while ago, right? It's like, you think about what happened with a generation of people that... You take a generation of developing young people and you isolate them for two years. What's going to happen? We did this during COVID. We did this all around the US, all around the world, and we're living with it right now, in addition to all the screens. Where it's like, play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Covid was one hell of a production. Let me give some context to the audience. I believe in it. I believe people lost their lives. I believe it was a nasty thing. What I'm saying the production is from the media, the government, and how-The byproduct of what happened, right?

Exactly. It's like the isolation of people for multiple years. We did it to everybody uniformly across society. I agree. I'm not trying to say COVID didn't happen or it wasn't real or any of that stuff. It's just commentary on what was the emergent phenomenon as we look back a couple of years.

One of the biggest things that I saw that I still see today because of that era, it gave people the permission to be assholes on social media.

A hundred %. I think people already were taking that permission, but it just turbo-charged it, and it cut out all the normal communication that people do. Yeah.

Someone called me a degenerate the other day on Instagram. It's funny because I read it in line. Listen, it used to really bother me, Bijou. I'm like, I'm not this per... They don't even know me. But I read it, I was in line for something I looked at it and I laughed because I can separate now because I know who I am. But I just feel like it gave people on these platforms an opportunity. You don't agree with something. Be as direct, be as mean, be as disgusting as humanly possible. And I'm allowed to type this and send it to somebody. It blows me away.

See, I don't know. I mean, don't you feel like, I'm saying you, but more broadly speaking, when you do stuff like that and you look back on it, you feel like shitty about yourself. It's like, why did I put that out there? Why did I put that negative thought out there?

Yeah, absolutely. But I don't think a lot of people have that awareness. I think they live in this state where their limbic system has to be all rushed up. It's like, okay, I'm going to say this because I have to show that person they're wrong or that I don't like them. And then after that, they go on this thing to where they continue to do that because that's their baseline. That's what they were taught. These generational curses, man, they're a real thing. And if their parents-That's just not how my head works at all.

This is not how my head works at all. What do you mean? I just like There's so much... We all have negative feelings, right? It's what do you do with them? I'm very firmly of the opinion. I grew up idolizing people like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, right? Come on, dude. Somebody said something negative to you, you're It's like, thank you. Love it. Thank you. It's like you internalize it, you motivate yourself with it. I'm of the opinion that the fiercest competition, the thing that makes you the strongest is you versus yourself, you versus your own demons, your own fears, whatever it is. There's other ways of taking this. The idea of negative feelings and then just vomiting it out on people.

I don't get it. I think I'm tracking it now.

My brain is not working like that at all.

Mine neither. I could be in the darkest place of my life. I'm never going to go to a social platform and say something like that and spew negativity or even respond negatively. Sometimes, I just don't even engage. But I truly do feel, and to your point, our generation, and depending on how we were raised or how anybody else was raised, if someone tells me that's not going to work or you can't do that, who do you think you are? Because I got a lot of that when I started the show.

Yeah, I've gotten that plenty of times. I bet you have.

I'm like, of the school I still thought, I'm like, You just added to this chip on my shoulder. You don't know who you're dealing with. You just put jet fuel in an engine, buddy. Watch me. I think that if we handle those thoughts and feelings and process them correctly and stay in our process and really focus on the mission at hand for the cause and the purpose and not because of what they said, cool, I'm in. But if you let this control your actions, then you're going to hit so many roadblocks because you're operating out of a negative motivational space instead of the purpose. But yeah, man, when someone tells me I can't do something, I'm like,. I know. Have fun watching the show. Get your damn popcorn because you're going to need it.

I mean, I've had this example again and again in my life. I don't know if we talk about this or not, but I was jumping around a little bit. I was a pretty overweight kid growing up, and I got made fun of a lot for that. At one point in 10th grade, to quote the great Michael Jordan, I took it personally. I was like, I don't want to live in this body anymore. And watch me. Wow. I came back and I lost almost a third my body weight. Granted, I was a string bean at that point. But people were like, who are you? What did you do? People didn't even recognize me afterwards. And I'm like, hi, it's me. Yeah, I took it personally. This exact thing we're talking about, right? Is like, when people say negative things or they make fun of you or they do the things that actually get to you a little bit, I personally, I relish those opportunities because I'm like...

At this point, because Because the alternative is malaise, right?

The alternative is not having as much motivation. And more motivation, I think it's just better.

I'm in the space where I welcome. I welcome people to push back and tell me that I can't do something or it won't work. I welcome it. Go ahead. I'm fine. But I do want to share something with you. My whole life, I grew up overweight. I still battle it. It's like when I was in high school-When was the last time you were overweight?

You were not overweight at all.

November. I was November of last year, that's when I started my journey of getting back in shape. When I was playing baseball in college, I wasn't out of shape, just To be clear, it was high school, freshman year, and then some of the subsequent ups and downs as an adult. In November of 2024, I was severely depressed, couldn't get off the couch unless I was recording under a blanket watching TV, and I was 230 pounds and 31% body fat.

Wait, this was November of '24?

Yeah. By January, I was 199 pounds. Then I worked my butt off and I got to July and I was 188 pounds. Then vacation happened and it took me a while to get back on track. Then right now, I sit about 195 in the morning. No, 195. But I'm still working to get some of the stubborn areas off, just staying consistent.

Me too.

Yeah, but it's crazy because once I got in really good shape last year, everything changed. Everything changed.

What changed? Tell me.

Oh, dude, I couldn't get a dime of capital for people to invest. Couldn't until Marina and Brad Miller. Brad Miller was either friends of mine. They were on He was on the show. He was this massive telecom company, a $60 million company, Southern Tears Telecom. They crushed it. They saw me a couple of weeks later and like, What are you doing? Holy shit. Then they see me again like, Dude, You look phenomenal. Like your discipline level. Like, holy shit, the determination. This is unreal. Then all of a sudden it was, how do we do this with you?

Yeah. Then respond to this across the board in society.

Then another partner named Roman came on afterwards with another infusion. It's like, Hold on. And now I'm turning people away.

Isn't it funny how that happened?

Isn't it funny? I mean, you have a similar story, too. I don't want it to be about me, but I'm just saying that when I fixed me, that one thing that always bothered me that was in my frontal lobe every single day, I don't feel good in these clothes. I don't feel good in this shell right now. This has got to be impacting the way people view me because if I'm giving off an energy that I'm not confident, I need to fix that. And all of a sudden, it blew up. But you had a lot of people tell you and Vlad, no, when you were creating, when you're looking for money for Robin hood, let's go through that.

Haters at every step along the way.

Yeah, Adversity, bro. Adversity.

I mean, one thought on this, right? Is for some reason it's okay for successful men to just be fatos, right? Historically speaking, if you're a successful dude, it's totally fine to be completely out of shape and not give a shit about your outward appearance. And I think the point that you're getting at here is like, At the risk of being a little controversial, the same rules apply for men as for women. If you take care of yourself and you present yourself in a way that you feel like you're putting your best foot forward, it's because women do this naturally, and a lot of dudes But if you actually show that you care about your body, the way that you look, that feeds back. People take notice of that. They show you more respect. Just in the way that you show up, you're like, I'm showing myself respect by being fit, being reasonably while groom, not smelling like- Yeah, you smell good. Been coating for the last twelve hours or whatever.

Smell like Lil Debbies.

Smelling like hard work.

Yeah, exactly. It's funny because I always take it a step further for myself, too. How do I want Bijou to feel and his entourage to feel when they walk through the door and meet me for the first time?

Pretty good.

Right?

You gave me a big hug. It was awesome.

But that's the thing for me. I have to chase those feelings. I have to chase those feelings for myself so I can exude that to other people and give it to the audience. Because that's the deal. The show is about determination, overcoming obstacles. When you and Vlad were building Robin hood, it wasn't the first thing that you tried. You went through multiple ventures that failed, which is normal. Failure is good. But then you were looking for VC money for Robin hood. I mentioned it earlier. I can't remember if it was when we started the show or in the kitchen. Dude, you and Vlad are the pioneers. I look at you. I'm sitting here with a guy right now, and I want the audience to really understand this. There's teachers right now on their planning period, day trading. Day trading to make more money. I truly believe that Robin hood is the cause of that, because before you had to go to a broker, and there was broker fees, commission fees, all this stuff. But then insert Robin hood, and now there's no minimums. There's no minimum spins. There's like, okay, you can do it this way.

Do it under your own terms and educate themselves on the market in this trading. So dude, you built something amazing. And I'd love for you to share with the audience, some of the pitfalls that you've had in creating it and how you feel about it now.

I mean, I think it's interesting because at this particular moment in time, it's in many ways, at It's like it is the zeitgeist, right? Let me just tell you this emotional, philosophical backdrop of this.

Love it.

When we started Robin hood, this was in the wake of the 2008 economic collapse. I entered the working world, literally the month or two months before Lehman going under. I stumbled into a job in finance, didn't really know whether I even wanted to be doing it or not. I had been an academic mathematician before this, and a combination of the economy going south is how I ended up working in finance. Just looking around and seeing these financial tectonic plates moving and seeing a generation of young people, like my generation of people entering the working world, looking at the financial system and being like, this thing is totally broken. It doesn't work for ordinary people. It systematically advantages the people that already have money, all these things. And then the three to four years that followed 2008, I don't remember the exact numbers on this, but I remember something like 90% of the recovery went to the wealthiest people. And this is the backdrop of things like Occupy Wall Street that are happening. Mind you, at the time, Vlad and I are two wildly unsuccessful nobody entrepreneurs.

Roomates at Stanford, correct?

Roomates at Stanford, roommates for years and years after that, too. For seven or eight years, we were roommates in a row.

This is a major Facebook vibes.

Yeah, it was a really fun period of time. We had nothing, but we had each other. That's cool, man. So this period that follows 2008, and this is talking about society and the way the zeitgeist is changing, you talk to young people and it was not cool to know what you were doing with your money. If you actually showed up and you were dopey about it, it's like, Yeah, I just spend money. I don't really care. You would get nods of social approval for that. And coming back to this immigrant story stuff, I remember just being like, What is happening here? Because I grew up without a lot, wanting to get further ahead in life, it was the story of my parents' life. And all of a sudden, I'm an adult now, and I look around at my generation of peers, and they don't believe in this anymore. They just straight up don't believe in the financial system. If you want real evidence of that, look at clips of Occupy Wall Street. And this was the point in time where the light bulb, I think, went off for both me and Vlad. We're like, wait a second.

To the extent that people are protesting the financial system, what are they asking for? What's the implicit ask here? It's that somebody's going to come to save this thing. Maybe the government will help. Maybe it'll fix the financial system. I remember just thinking to myself, That ain't happening. There's no way that's happening. Moreover, if you look at this, it's like, how could it be that a generation of young people don't realize that they have access to the greatest tool for upward economic mobility? How is it that this engaging in the capital system is something that is falling out of the bloodstream of society in some way. We, I think, saw it very clearly as immigrants looking in because, again, our families opted into wanting to be a part of the system. We wanted to come to the land of opportunity and to Robin hood. We're like, We can't solve the whole thing. We're two entrepreneurs with really bad haircuts and have been borderline homeless for the last couple of years.

Oh, college. I miss it.

Yeah, it was years after college, too. Plenty of our peers had good jobs. We were bumbling, spending months at our parents house, coding in the basement, trying to make one of our startups work. Wow. We're like, We're not going to be able to solve the whole thing, but we understand how the stock market works. In the stock market, it's a microcosm of all the stuff that young people are upset about. We thought prohibitively expensive for young people to invest in the stock market. There's this pervasive wisdom where finger wagging, you don't know what you're doing. You need to go and talk to an expert before you do it. You end up with the phenomenon of a generation of people that just doesn't engage in this. We're like, there is another way. You can make it accessible for people. You can make it something that young people have access to. You can put it on mobile. If we're able to solve this problem, meaning to give more people access to the markets, that's actually a microcosm of this bigger thing, and we can put a real dent in it. What is it like 10, 15 years out from that now?

Putting aside the fact that you have a generation of people that have had the ability to participate in the upward mobility of the economy, look at the way culture is now, especially, let's be real, for young men, where not knowing about your money, you're like a dumb ass. Yeah, you do. That's what we want. We want there to be societal pressure for people to be self-sufficient, self-reliant, engaged with the economy because we have it here at our disposal.

The pressure is such a fucking privilege. I'm so tired of people thinking pressure is a bad thing.

Yeah.

No matter what it is.

The absence of pressure is just a malaise.

Dude, it's boring.

It's boring. You'll be in your blanket watching TV, right?

I got some good binging in, though. Yeah. Got some good TV watching it, dude. Not going back, me.

I've played The Legend of Zeldas so many times.

Oh, my God. What a game, dude. What a game.

My son We've played it multiple times now, but he's a little kid. I'm like, remember, we played this once already. He's like, No. I'm like, Okay, so let's just play it again.

Did you have the original Nintendo?

No, I don't. I got a Switch. I remember when I was a kid, this is what my life was like as a kid, once or twice a year, my parents would rent a Nintendo, a Super Nintendo for the weekend.

From Blockbuster or some shit? Yeah, those are the days.

That was pretty much what I got back in the day.

That's awesome, dude. That's awesome. I had the Nintendo. I had the Nintendo.

I did. The original one?

The original. Original. I'd sit there and play Tecmo Bowl and fuck shit up, bro. I'm like, all the time. Now we have this thing that plugs into the TV, and I got 250 of them.

Oh, yeah. The little dongle that you plug in that has everything on it.

It's okay. It's not the same. But anyway, sidetrack. But yeah, dude, where were you at with that? You went Nintendo, and then we got...

Oh, Yeah. Binging, watching TV, not having any motivation. Coding in a basement. Coding in a basement. We were talking about Robin hood for a second there. So that was the backdrop of it. You look at it today, and it's ubiquitous It's ubiquitous that people understand the importance of this. In many ways, if you look around at the economy as a whole, there was a study I was reading on this recently, but you look at the people that feel good about the economy today versus the people that don't feel so good about it. And one of the dividing lines is whether or not they're engaged in the capital markets.

Wow. That's very interesting. Yeah. That is very interesting.

Because there's a lot of the economy, the structure of capitalism. To me, it feels like we're in the beginning of what feels like a pretty substantial change, where there's this boogie man of of AI and its impact on the job market, which I intuitively both believe it and don't believe it at some levels, but it's there. It's very real. And there's the prices of things going up, like the prices of things you need to live, not the prices of things that you necessarily want to have. There's a lot of layoffs that are happening in the system. At the same time, The stock market, or at least parts of the stock market, have been showing a lot of strength. So we live in changing economic times, I guess, is the point I'm trying to make.

Yeah, I agree. And I also think that the people are the happiest with the economy or the things that are going on are those that are taking control of what they can. I think that's a special thought for any industry. You're going to be happier with your health. You're going to be happier in your business. If you're a student, you're going to be happier in your math class because you're taking ownership of what you're doing. You're allowing yourself to become educated in that vertical. I think that's massively important. The one thing I do want to touch on, though, and I've hinted around at it a couple of different times, in building something, there's a massive amount of adversity and low points, and you guys went through that. You went through a ton of different things to build this platform to where it is now. How did you guys, and maybe more you, specifically, I guess, navigate those waters of the adversity and a potential thinking about, Man, this isn't going to work, and nobody believes, they don't want to invest. Because the audience right now is listening. I'm like, Okay, how can I apply that information to what I'm doing?

How did you go through all that?

Yeah, I think you have to be pretty stubborn about your ideas. I think you have to both be stubborn in your belief in yourself. You also have to be really systematic about verifying that you're not barking up the wrong tree. For me, at least, it was this... If I believe something is important, I will follow that belief very purely. But at the same time, what was the belief? The belief was that we could build something that would help a lot of young people be a part of the financial system. A prerequisite for that was that young people would, or just people in general, would actually use it. Which in and of itself, I thought was the central challenge for the founding chapter of the company. It's like, how do you build something that resonates with people? How do you do that? So what became And the mantra of the company for a very long time was we would spend an inordinate amount of time with our customers, with ordinary people. And for years and years, when we were through the early founding years of Robin hood, Let's talk about year one. What do we do?

We'd be like, okay, we have an idea for why we think people are going to use this. We would go and spend hours every week interviewing customers, being like, here's what we're building. What is this thing? Can you read Can you understand it? Explain back to us what this is. And it was through that process of, there's a word for it. It's called user research or customer research. But if you boil it down to what it is, you're getting feedback for your ideas. So the point I'm trying to make is you have to be stubborn about believing in yourself, but you don't want to be dumb about it. So while I think we were both very stubborn about wanting to see this thing come to life, we were also very deliberately and systematically trying to validate that we were barking up the right tree and tweaking it as we got feedback.

I think that's smart.

It's funny because-Because the right answer here is not just to be a knucklehead and be like, I got an idea.

No, I think you need to be really connected with the actual purpose of why you are doing something.

Exactly.

I look at this and it's so funny because I watch a lot of things now as research. I coin my TV time with my wife as research. I find things. I'm like, Okay, this is interesting. I can do a story on this. I can potentially get this guest, and we can talk about this, tie this in. I'm always working in the background. I watched this funny movie with Eddie Murphy and Jonahill. They called You People. In that movie, he had a podcast with his good friend that was female. In that, there was this underlying tone of, Dude, I'm a douchebag because I quit my career and I'm a podcaster now. They can make fun of people like me. This is literally what I did. I left a successful medical sales business, sales career. Eventually, in 2024, I went full-time, and I'm like, I'm that cliché. There was a lot of pushback. There There was a lot of all these different things of why it wouldn't work. We don't understand, how are you going to make money? How are you going to feed your family? I was like, That's easy. Watch me. You don't need to know the how.

I guess it's really, you need to know why. You need to know why. For me, and just like you and Vlad, my connection with my why or the reason I was doing this and the purpose was so great that I'm like, I'm going to double down because if I don't, I'm going to regret it.

I Dude, I get my fair share of that right now. It's like, Oh, aren't you just another successful tech guy trying to mess around in space? Isn't this just a little hobby playground thing that you're doing? You and the billionaires club, just launching satellites or whatever, because that's what really successful rich people do. No, I'm doing this because I want to do it, right? It's like-Yeah.

Well, let's talk about it. It's a good segue, man. You stole my thunder. Look at this guy, dude. Look at this guy. Look at this guy. Okay. I can tell the audience right now that's not who you are, right? That's easy to see. You're the same dude on camera than you are off camera. They were sitting here. A hundred %, yeah. And that's what I really do love about you already. But talk to me about this. What is the Galactic Brain?

The Galactic Brain, yes. I love that name.

I do, too. I read it. I'm like, What the hell?

Yeah, so a little bit of backdrop. I left Robin hood full-time a year and a half ago.

You're bored, right? You're on the board now.

Yeah, very much so. Still actively involved. But I stopped working on it full-time because I'd had this dream of wanting to build a space company. This is not a new thing. This is something that I wanted to do probably my whole life. Because, again, when I was growing up, my dad was a research scientist at Langley Research Center in Southern Virginia. He was working with NASA. He was doing atmospheric science. I remember we didn't have a lot, but I remember when my dad would go to work, it just felt like he's doing very important things. You get to see the big buildings and all the machinery behind the science there. I'm like, If I ever get a chance to do this at some point in my life, I want to be a part of the space industry. Especially in the 2010s, being like, Oh, there's people building rockets. That's cool to watch. And then realizing it's like, Oh, this concept of reusable rocketry is actually the fundamental gating factor for humans to be able to do a lot of stuff in space. Because if you were to blow up... Every time you flew from New York to San Francisco, you scrapped the plane, you wouldn't do it very much.

Exactly. That's the core idea behind it. I remember thinking to myself, if I ever get a chance to I do this in my lifetime, I need to take that opportunity. I did that a year and a half ago and started a company called Ather Flux with a mission to build power grid in space.

Endless energy and endless power up there.

Yeah, endless energy and power up there. That was the core idea, is we wanted to stand up another industrial use case for outer space. This is where the dots connect between this idea and Robin hood. We started Robin hood because we wanted to create a native financial platform in mobile. Here, the analogy is we want to build an energy company on the platform that is low Earth orbit or space because it doesn't really exist. There's not a lot of people out there that are building energy companies in space, I guess, up until maybe a month ago where now everybody's doing it. But the core The idea behind this was to build an energy grid in space. Why? Because there's a lot of really unique advantages to collecting power in space. We can get into that a little bit more, but maybe zooming a little bit in on this idea of the Galactic brain is we announced this week that we're targeting 2027 for the first version of a solar-powered AI data center satellite. So If you look at energy as an industry and as a problem space, this is probably the most interesting the energy industry has been in our lifetime.

Yeah, I'm locked in on this, man.

Because the amount of energy that is going to be required for scaling artificial intelligence, it's difficult to fathom. The numbers that I've heard are there's something like a 44 gigawatt power gap between in the next five years or even less between what's planned to be built and what people actually need to do AI.

And the issue, too, and forgive me for lying, I did read it in the press release. There's a massive time frame, like 8 to 10 years. It's like a decade to build a data center. So it would take 10 years to build something to support.

Well, think about what we're talking about doing here. It's like we've got the path of technological progress, which is developing artificial intelligence, and it's being resolved down to the timeline of digging dirt and constructing buildings and getting permitting and putting power lines into these data centers. This is the problem that we're solving from a practical perspective, because our approach, the thing that we see playing out here is that space is this abundant place for power, in particular in orbits that are still pretty close to the Earth. So you can to fly way more consumer-grade electronics, you can get near continuous illumination from the sun. Imagine if you're the sun, let's even get some props as an analogy in here. Imagine you're the sun, and this is the Earth. This is actually perfect. There are these orbits that go over near the North Pole and South Pole, not exactly, but are like, if the Earth is rotating like this, This half of the Earth is where there's sunrise. This half of the Earth is where there's sunset. These satellites will always be going over sunrise and sunset. The reason that's relevant is because those solar panels are always facing the sun, meaning they're producing power darn near-24/7.

Exactly. And also, there's a lot of space up there. There's no real limits to how much stuff we can put in space because it's so big. And even this We're just talking about a little sliver right off the surface of the Earth. Some coffee.

Yeah, drink from the Earth right now.

That's your Earth. Yeah, it literally is. So the idea is that this is actually a very natural place to build really power hungry applications, and artificial intelligence is the biggest one of them. So more specifically, the concept is we're going to build... We aim to build a constellation of satellites. Each one doesn't have to be this monumentally a large thing, can power a cluster of GPUs that are used for artificial intelligence. You actually start with that cluster of chips, and you build a satellite out from it. You start with the chips and you say, what's the power requirement of it? And you size the power array based on that. And you say, okay, how much heat is this thing generating? You size out the radiator array that you need for it. And it turns out the math on this point is something that's actually quite buildable. And at a normal size or size of satellites that are being built, a la Starlink, you can build something really useful that will, over time, we think, substantially put a dent in this energy use problem for artificial intelligence.

That's some wild stuff, dude.

That's wild.

The Galactic brain.

It's cool. Yeah, it is. It's cool. If you fast forward in the future, what does this look like? This will look like rings around the Earth, the rings around Saturn. And I imagine the artificial intelligence brain of humanity orbiting Earth. That's badass. That's pretty cool.

That's freaking cool, dude. You did it.

Well, I haven't done it yet. I'm working on it.

You're going to. You're It's annoying, too. So I read something, too, and forgive me if I completely butcher this. The power source from space to here, there's a gap, right? There's a time period gap. I read it in the press release, it was something that was like, what, four to eight years or something like that? And these satellites cut this down because it's laser.

Yeah, there's a couple of-So I sound like a complete Jackass right now.

I told you I was going to sound like one.

No, no, no. So there's It'll take however long, say 8 to 10 years, if that's what it takes to build a data center on the ground. The difference here is that you can take the chips for artificial intelligence and put them on an assembly line, build satellites around them. It's literally how quickly you can build a satellite. How quickly can you build a car? Pretty darn quick. You can apply those same manufacturing techniques to building satellites. Then you turn this problem that otherwise requires multiple years build out to build a new data center to just say, Hey, we're going to take chips and turn them into satellites. You get stacks and stacks of them, put them on rockets that go to space, and rockets are launching multiple times a week. You can cut the time from when you buy the chips for artificial intelligence to get them into working use to basically how quickly you can build the satellites.

How long do you think it would take to build a satellite?

Good question. We're going to be scaling that up over the next couple of years. I think we're going to have two satellites that go to space in '26, both of which are currently targeting doing a slightly different variation of this power grid and space concept, which I can talk about in a minute. But we're going to be targeting, let's say, roughly speaking, 10 to 20 satellites the year after, 50 to hundreds of satellites the year after that, to thousands the year after that. Now, these are ambitious. We haven't done it yet, and no guarantees will do it. But if you don't set your goals that ambitious, you'll never hit them.

You're going to fall. It's crazy. I always set something. Set something really high, and people look at me like, Dude, that's not realistic. I'm like, Oh, so should I make it more? Because my thing is, and I talk to my colleagues like this, too, as well. I was like, Well, if I set the goal here, then we're going to fall here, and that's unacceptable. But if I make it out of this world, put it in space, pretty much. Set this goal, but if we fall short, if we fall way higher.

Exactly. You know? I mean, I even think about this in the context of Robin hood, right? What was our goal then? We're like, We're going to change the way a generation of people invest in the stock market. You think about that as an idea on its base value, and you're like, That's a long shot, don't you think so? You're going to do something, you're going to figure out something that natively fits into the lives of tens of millions of people who you've never met. You think you're actually going to be able to do that? This is the thing is you can shoot that high or you can shoot much more modestly. But a lot of the times, doing stuff is just hard, and the failure rate intrinsic in doing anything is like, it's intrinsically a number, and it doesn't get that much harder. It doesn't get that much higher if you're doing something much harder, for example. There's still a probability if you compare trying to convince a generation of young people that the stock market is something they should care about versus building, let me think of something that feels more mundane, an accounting platform for some commerce.

Sure, some type of SaaS software. Cool. Yeah, neat.

That's not easy. You're going to run a bunch of roadblocks there, too. There's, let's say, a 20% failure rate there, like 20% of the time, it's just not going to work. It might be the same failure rate, but you just apply it to something much bigger, you'll end up with something much bigger.

That's the one thing that I really want the audience to take home with them and really sit in it is set big, hairy-ass audacious goals.

Dreaming big is free. Being optimistic is free.

Yeah, but then you also have to put in the work to get there. It's like, if you don't do it, you're just a talker. But if you dream it up and you take action, you're a doer, and that's who wins. But I always like to say this is I want to make myself in my direct team, whether it's my publicist, my production team, my partners in my business, my wife, whomever we're working with, whoever we've contracted for this business, my agent over at CA, it doesn't matter, whoever. I want everybody to be so uncomfortable with my goal. If they're not uncomfortable, then I'm not doing my job. I mean that in a good way. Like, whoa.

You're actually trying to do this? You want to freaking...

What the fuck, Sean? What the fuck? Yeah, that's what I want. That's exactly what I want. And that's the reaction I want. So now you know how important it is. Let's try to get it done. Because if we don't hit it, but we fall short, we are going to be so much better. And I think that's the thing. I really want people to give themselves permission to dream again.

Yeah. There's another thing, too, is get your failures out of the way quickly. I have this mantra where it's like whenever I do something new, which, mind you, this has been the story of my whole fucking life. I've always been doing stuff where I didn't really know what I was doing. I entered the finance industry as a mathematician, physicist, 22-year-old college grad. Unreal. I didn't know anything about that, and I spent a decade of my life being a novice to that industry, doing it again 10 years, 15 years later. I make this joke sometimes when I talk to people in the space industry because I'm building a space company right now. I'm like, You do realize for all intents and purposes, which is, I'm a finance bro. I've been a finance bro for a long time. So just bear with me here, right? Yeah, if you don't know how to do something, wear this badge of honor and try to get good at it.

You gave me an interesting idea, a very interesting idea. I'm doing another TED Talk in March. Oh, cool. And the topic is lifelong learner. And And then being a lifelong learner and why is it important? And you gave me a really good idea because I want to start off with a nice story. Maybe the story is what you've done. Maybe the story is building Robin hood. And like I said earlier, you could be home doing nothing right now.

You don't have to. I could be sitting on my keystone. Totally could.

Bro, you don't have to lift a finger the rest of your life. Very well aware of that. Instead, you've chosen to learn another industry.

It It would be profoundly boring. It would be profoundly boring.

Because you're so young, too, dude. That would be miserable.

I think there's a lot of truth to that. And without getting too political here, to quote our President, right? I think President Trump's right on this. It's like, to retire is to expire. As soon as you stop.

Well, what's the true definition of retire? To put out of use.

Yeah.

Are you ready to be put out of use?

Hell no. Hell, no, man. Fuck that.

Fuck that. It's like, what more can I do?

I want to die tired and busy.

Yeah, absolutely. Because you stay sharp. You stay alive longer. You truly do. When you have that purpose and you're doing something, you stay healthier longer. Everything is still working, right? I always say, someone's asking me, Hey, what happens when you get the big Spotify deal or the big deal from Serious for hundreds of millions of dollars. What do you mean, what happens? I don't understand the question. I'm going to fulfill my contract. I'm going to kick ass. But after that, you're just going to walk away, right? I'm like, Where's the fun in that? I do this because I love it. I don't do this for the potential payout. I know that's going to come, but I can do this until I'm 70 or 80. I can sit in a chair and talk. Why would I ever stop? Why would I ever stop building? I have children to think about.

There's also just something I'm acutely aware of. It's like I have a pretty hyperactive mind, and I draw the distinction between real problems than fake problems. Another way of saying it, the idol mind is the devil's playground. I would way rather have a big, healthy, steaming dose of real problems to deal with Yeah. Because otherwise, your mind will just make stuff up for you to be equally fixated on, equally angry about, or grumpy about. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Well, the mind will find what you are looking for.

The mind will find what you're looking for. So you might as well channel that and try to put it to use on some real problems where you have stuff to work through and challenges. Right now, I'm trying to figure out how to stand up manufacturing satellites, which is really fun and is a very real problem. Real problem, and we need to solve it.

Yeah, and you will. But it's being able to work through that and give yourself the opportunity to struggle with something, I think is important. You know, anything we do, we've touched on health and fitness. Anything we do in conditioning our body, it's going to hurt a little bit. It's going to hurt a lot. If you want to get the real results, there's a lot of suffering that goes into it. You need to feed your body and get rid of the noise that food makes you fat. No, it doesn't. Real food does not. But you also have to go through getting through the fact that or the thought process of, I don't like failure. You better learn to love it. If you want to be successful, you better learn to love failure and seek it early and often. That's the thing with weight training, right? They say the last three reps should be the hardest. There's times where you should go to failure. Why is it okay there, but not okay in your life? Why do you go to failure? Because you break your muscle all the way down, and it goes to repair, and it comes back stronger.

How is you failing in a-That's actually a pretty good analogy. Any fucking different. Yeah, it's a pretty good analogy. It makes you stronger. It makes you better. Like, fail. We failed a bunch of times during this shit. I mean, in creating this his brand. There's a lot of things I fail at.

Yeah. I think the version for me, which I was getting to a second ago, is get your failures out of the way quickly. Just assume you're going to fail and just be done with it quickly. Don't wait too long to fail. I think this is a related concept is a lot of the times, and I'm guilty of this as well, is you work on something and you're working on it and the idea is very precious in your head, right? You If you're like, Well, let me get a little further along before I really put it out into the world and let the idea get tested. What's going on there? It's an implicit fear of failure, where I try to turn that on its head, where I say, let's just take whatever the first version is, get it out there, let it fail, assume there's a good chance it'll fail the first time. Hopefully not. You never really want to fail. If you can avoid failure, you always want to avoid failure. But just put yourself out there and try to get the failure out of the way quickly because you'll condition yourself not to be super precious with your ideas in that way.

It's funny you mentioned that because a lot of people talk about it's not ready yet. It has to be perfect. No, you're hesitating because you're worried. You're afraid to fail. You're afraid to put yourself out there publicly. And I always wonder why people define failure as something so bad.

Failure hurts. Failure It's like sunk cost, sunk time. There's also something that's related to this, which is you put yourself out there as being different, which for some reason, our society puts very little value in that today, at least from my perspective. I feel like conformity is the status quo.

I agree with you, and I just think it's Look at music, man.

Music in the '80s and '90s was super fucking alternative and weird, and different, and strange, and pushing the boundaries. Where is that today?

I don't know about music today, dude. There's only a few artists that I really like.

There is good music, but by and large, I feel like this is not one of the more compelling periods of music.

What's your favorite genre?

I love all kinds of music. I've had the last couple of years, I've had a profound love affair with '90s hip hop.

You're my guy.

A profound love affair with '90s hip hop. In particular, Tupac. Fucking love Tupac.

Look, I grew up on that shit.

I was listening to Tupac this morning, too.

Oh, dude, he's so good. I listened to California Love on the way over here.

Reste in peace. Yeah.

My guy, dude. My guy. Could you imagine if he were still around? It always blows me away. But the thing that I loved about Tupac, he was so I hope he was a poet, right? But he could help.

He was an enigma. He was an enigma.

Yeah, but if you cross him, he'd hose your ass, and he'd hose you hard. Yeah. He was good, man.

It's like you see echoes. I mean, we have a whole podcast talking about Poq. But I think one of the interesting things is you see echoes of that in society, even today. I think about when Obama ran for President, right? And a lot of the messaging there on hope and change, I I hear a lot of Tupac's lyrics in that.

Yeah, the song changes.

Exactly.

Yeah, that song, dude. I listened to that the other day.

It was so prophetic.

It was so good. Who do you think the best rapper ever to live?

I think we just...

You think it's Pot?

For me, I'll actually go a step further. It's Tupac, and then there's a huge gap, and then there's everybody else. I think he is in a League of one.

One billion %. I also think M&M is like-M&M is awesome. That dude He's amazing.

He's lyrically amazing. Lyrically amazing.

Tupac was just different, dude.

Yeah, M&M didn't... M&m is awesome. It doesn't cast the same shadow on society. Even you think about the beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar. From a certain point of view, that was about Tupac. Yeah. Because Drake put out that song where he was AIing Tupac, which I'm like, Dude, what What are you doing?

Do you know you're the greatest of all time when people still think you're alive? Yeah. I still make arguments like, That dude ain't dead. That dude ain't dead. Show me.

Show me. It's because he had albums coming out for 10 years after he passed away.

When Machobelly came out, I'm like, I knew it. I knew it.

I knew it. I knew it.

I knew it. Oh, man.

Sadly, I don't think he's actually.

No, he's not. Sad, dude. That's sad. But it's crazy. You've had this This new love for '90s hip hop.

Another part of it also, if I may, on this little point. I'm Indian. My family are immigrants coming to America. America is a complicated cultural society where there are these massive cultural divides between white society and Black society, let's just call it what it is. As a kid, I was like, This shit's all pretty complicated. I understand white people and white society. I But just candidly, it's a little difficult for me to wrap my brain around all the challenges that Black people have in American society. I didn't say it differently. I didn't really get hip hop as a kid. It was difficult enough understanding my relationship to White society, I guess. But I was always profoundly curious. There are all these things as an immigrant kid growing up in this country. What the fuck is the point of wearing backwards baseball caps? I never really understood that as a kid. Or tailgating. What the fuck is happening when you tailgate?

Hold on.

Hold the fuck on.

Me and you are going to a college football game. I'd love to. I'm taking you to Baton Rouge next year when I take my family. You're coming. You and your family are coming because I'm going to put you in Tiger Stadium parking lot and you'll be like, Fuck. Honey, I think we should move to Baton Rouge. I think we should move here. Tailgating is the best.

I I've since come to love tailgating, but as a kid, I'm like, This is an enigma. With that in mind, you're like, Well, there's this whole tension between these two factions of society. I'm having enough difficulty understanding this, but I was like, what is going on there? Now I'm talking about hip hop, specifically, because obviously, I'm talking more specifically about hip hop here. I never really understood that music until I I was much older as an adult. And when I did, I was like, oh, my God. This was the lyrical backdrop of my childhood. This was that little piece of the puzzle that now fits in perfectly. I get it. That's amazing. And I get why this is so important, and I get why this music is so freaking resonant.

I love that, dude. I love music. I'm a big music guy, too. I will say I've always been a bigger hip hop guy than anything. Growing up in the San Francisco Bay, you had E-40. E-40. Ruthless By law, RBL Posse, which was more... It wasn't underground, but never was massive, like Poq or Biggie. Now, I'm like, hip hop artist today. I'm like, I don't know. I mean, M&M is still at it. Kendrick Lamar is pretty dope.

Kendrick Lamar is super dope.

So good.

Super dope.

Outside of that, for me, dude, I'm listening to old school.

I was talking to my son this morning. I was like, Do people in school say this six, seven thing? Oh, Jesus, dude. He's like, Yeah. I'm like, Do you know what that is? He's like, No. I'm like, And he asked me what it is. I'm like, It's based on a song which might be the single worst song ever recorded. It should not have been recorded. It sounds awful.

It's a god awful song.

It's God awful song. It's a God awful song. And it's about terrible stuff, too, right? Yeah. I don't know who's saying it. We're only a real boomer.

Yeah, boomer over here. But I will tell you-But that song fucking sucks. It fucking... And so does the 6 7 saying.

It doesn't mean anything.

It's ridiculous. Did you... Oh, my God. Okay, hold on. Did you see the... There's these clips that are going around, these reels on Instagram. And it's like middle schoolers these days. 6: 00 AM, 6: 7.

I've seen that, yeah.

And then it's like me in middle school, and it's like the opening of Hit 'Em Up from Tupac. That right there is game on. That is dead on. But it's dead on because that's how-I think I saw that real this morning. Oh, dude, I died. I sent it to my wife. I'm like, This is the difference. This is our kids, and this is what I was like. But it's just so funny. I saw that. I'm like, Dude, it's so funny you bring that up. It's so funny. Because my daughter still does it. When we go buy dog food at Petsmart, and it's like, Hey, do you have a good number for us? Because we get rewards and we get a couple of bucks off the dog bags. Our dog food is expensive because it's a prescription one because my wife's extra. Love you, baby.

Our dog has all kinds of prescriptions.

Yeah. I I just do it.

It's complicated being a dog in 2025. I mean, seriously.

They should identify as humans, and it'll be okay.

It'll be way easier.

But, fuck. Why did I say that? Because it's true. So we give the number, right? I go 305, and then, I'm not going to give the rest, and then the last two digits are six, seven. And so my daughter, anytime She gets to say a phone number or a zip, six, seven. I'm like, What in the fuck is this? I flipped everybody on their heads on Halloween. So dumb. Ridiculous. So dumb. I bought two Halloween shirts, one for my wife and one for me. It was six and seven. We walked around the neighborhood and we were heads. Oh, my God, we're seven. I'm like, She's got her sweatshirt on. She's back there. She sucks. I was She's walking around with six. It's cold. I'm like, Babe, put the shirt on the outside then because you're defeating the purpose of the costume. Shortly after that, got a little bit less, but yeah, six, seven, dude. It's amazing. I can't believe we're talking about that on my show. I I can't believe we're talking about it. But I love it. I love it because it-We're both a little dumber for it. No, we are. But I love having these types of conversations because it's so relatable.

You don't understand. We're laughing at it, but there's a parent that's listening right now and be like, Oh, my God, my kid won't stop saying it.

How about this? I'll come back to Miami, and we'll just record an entire podcast on the history, the significance. We'll like 6: 7 to something having to do with the Romans and its relevance through the-Oh, that's hilarious.

Let's do it.

God, no.

Yeah, so needless to say, 6: 7, I think, is dying. And I think we're good with that. It's funny, dude, because everybody's talking about it, whatever artist it was, and then there was this basketball game, and it's about this basketball player, 6: 7. Well, you know, Lil Wayne did a song called 6 Foot, 7 Foot a long ass time ago.

Yeah, Lil Wayne's awesome.

Dude, that guy's badass, dude.

He is. That's badass. He's on a different level.

Different level. And I love when he does the collabs with M&M. They're very good. Drop the World. Have you ever heard that one?

I don't know if I have, actually.

I'm going to send it to you. Yeah, send it to me. I'm going to text it to you. And then the M&M verse is how I feel. When I feel a certain way or when people count me out, for the underdog, that verse. So when you listen to it, when M&M comes in, he's like, Oh, shit, Sean's on a different level. This is how he thinks. I think you'll probably relate to it. Yeah. I think you'll-Send it to me. I'll listen to it. I'm going to send it to you. Look, man, I know we're We're running out of time, and this has been such an amazing conversation and being able to have a new good friendship.

That's been fun. It's been fun, yeah. I agree.

Which is what I cherish most. I was telling Bruce and Giles that when you're snuck away for a second. It This doesn't happen very often, right? There's a guess that it does happen, but when it happens so organically, I really cherish it. Cheers, man. My man, thank you. I'm looking forward to many more interactions with you and getting the families together eventually and all that good stuff. But this has been one of the better episodes ever recorded. I guess. That makes me very happy because low-key, I was like, Don't fuck this one up, Sean. That's straight up. It was funny. I called my buddy Mike on the way over here We hadn't talked in a long time. We talked for an hour and 15 minutes. Just catching up, talking about the kids.

Good friends. Yeah.

He's like, What are you doing? Why are you still driving? I'm going to Miami. I'm going to interview this gentleman named Bijou Bot. He goes, Hold on. Hold on. I'm like, Dude, I'm driving. What the fuck? I've got all the time in the world. He goes, You're interviewing Bijou. I was like, Yeah. You know who he is? He's like, Yeah, I use his shit all the time. It was a cool moment. He goes, Hey, dude, don't fuck that one up. I'm like, It wasn't enough that I was already thinking of this. I got to talk about two different things that I'm not necessarily in the way we're talking about space. We're talking about all this other stuff. But it's funny. It turned into something that immediately I felt comfort with you and your friends. Yeah, man, likewise. Dude, it was just such a great show, man. It One of the things I always talk to my guests about as we're landing the proverbial plane is I built this platform because I had something missing inside me. I didn't understand. I was successful. I was doing well in sales, but something felt empty. There was this gap, and I couldn't figure out what it was until I did.

I just wanted to do something that's massive amounts of purpose. The one thing that I felt was missing in society, I still think, but at large today, it's still missing, is people waking up, determined, society waking up, waking up in a society that's determined to chase their dreams no matter how they feel emotionally at that time. I think it's missing. I wanted to build something that can inspire people to do so. That's my true definition of what determination means to me is chasing your dreams, no matter how you feel emotionally at that time. You just don't stop. What's your definition of determination?

I think on a day-to-day basis, it's cutting the noise out and putting one foot in front of the other. Love it. It just is because you can always, regardless of how existential things feel, and Lord knows, things have felt that way for me many times over the years. You can always plot the next one move, two moves, three moves, and those Those add up, right? Wow. Like, those, they snowball. Again, being stubborn about your ideas and seeing them through, also being systematic about figuring out whether it's the right idea or not, systematic about getting feedback to validate or invalidate your thinking. For me, it's always thinking about things as hypotheses, right? I believe this to be true, like How can I validate that this is true or false? To the extent that I can, before which I have to do it. But once you do, you're still just putting one foot in front of the other. You're being determined about what your process is to go from A to B. Yeah, I think that's pretty much it.

I love that. It's very in line of how I feel and how I look at things. You have a process, but you also have standards. The standards are what you do no matter what, no matter how you feel. It's like, I'm going to have four to five meals today. That's a standard, and they're going to all be healthy. That's a standard. I have to stick to that every day. I get to stick to that every day. But the idea of moving forward no matter what is, I think, simpler than people really truly think about it that it is. I had somebody say on my show, like Marcus Lutrelle. He was Navy SEAL. He was a lone survivor. They made a movie about it, and I sat down with him and his brother about three weeks ago in my buddy's Ranch in Mississippi, Wing Ranch. And so for people that are having a hard time to go in the gym, drive yourself to the gym, pick up the dumbbell, put it back on the rack and walk out. You worked out. You went. And I think that determination is that. It's not these big sexy moves every day.

It's rarely that, guys. What it really is, is when you feel defeated and just broken, you still go for the walk. You still go lift the weight. You still make that phone call for your business. You still shoot the show. Because no bullshit, dude. Last night, I could barely move. I didn't feel good. I was just exhausted, man. I felt like I was getting sick, but I'm not, clearly, because I feel great. I looked at my wife, I'm like, I have one of the most important interviews tomorrow, and I'm feeling like this. I got to get through this. I was like, So here's what I need. If you could support me in this, So I'm going to make dinner. I'm going to do everything that I normally would. I'm going to put the girls down as well.

Isn't it awesome having a partner that you love and trust?

Dude, this isn't possible without my wife, dude.

Same for me.

The autonomy to to take a risk like this. I couldn't have done it without her. And early on, I remember getting so excited about certain people come on the show, and she goes, She wasn't excited. I'm like, Are you not understanding? She goes, No, I understand fully that they get to talk to you because I know you. I know what you're going to do in this business. I know how this is going to end.

Isn't it awesome when your wife says that to you? Yeah.

You know what I wish, though? I wish I would have taken it in more when she said it, because I myself didn't think that. She has seen things in me in different iterations and moments of our lives together and has never shifted belief in me.

How long have you guys been together?

Ten years. Ten years. Has never not believed in me. It's wild, right? I was at my most broken point when I met her. I was going through a divorce. I was broken. Everything. I'm starting to talk more about this publicly.

I never really said these things.

But I think it's important because I think it's relatable, right? I think more people need to be open to it.

Nobody's life is perfect. Everybody's life has adversities, right? Everybody makes mistakes along the way to air as human, right?

But dude, that woman, there's no way. There's no way I could have done it without her.

It's interesting you say that because when I was embarking on this journey to go from something that I definitely knew how to do to something that I definitely did not know how to do, my wife was like, You're going to crush it with us. You're going to succeed at this. And I'm like, Why do you? Just curious. Is this just a truism? Are you just saying this to make me feel better? She's like, No, I've seen you over the years. When you put your mind to something, you're not going to stop until you're successful. And so she's It was like, this is going to be just like that. And in those couple of moments early on, I was like, yeah, that's right. I guess that is what's going to happen here. It's what I do. Yeah, it's what I do.

It's funny because when I heard about it, when Sarah and I started throwing this around and talking about it, and it finally got to the point where it was going to happen, she goes, Okay, this is what it is. I'm like, Oh, wow. Wow, we're going to talk about this? This is crazy. But as I continued with the research and looking at all the different components, to me, it was a no-brainer that you'd be successful because you already built something.

It hasn't happened yet. We're working on it.

You're going to be fine. I find another component that's very interesting of this, and you haven't mentioned it, and I don't know if it's true or not, but your dad was involved in this business. He was working for NASA, doing important things. And now here you are, years later, and you have this love for physics, love for space, and you're doing something. Does any of that honor your dad?

Absolutely. My dad loves it. It's funny. My dad's a character. He's very disciplined in his thinking. I remember the Thanksgiving after we took Robin hood public. My dad's like, well, you know. He's like, you should go and get your PhD.

I'm like, What? Why?

I'm like, Dad, I have tons of PhDs that work for me at Robin. He's like, No, it's very important to go and get your PhD. Like, science is very important. It's Are you... Do you realize what's going on right now in my life? Do you realize what Robin it is? I'm not going to go get a PhD right now. But that's one of the things that I think about often is his love His love of science and his love of physics and math are so pure. I don't know if it's as pure for me. I went and started businesses. I would like to think I'm fairly practically minded, but here I am doing something that I'm we're on to purely out of a deep... I feel like it's a part of my life story I want to do this.

Sure.

Just a deep love of it.

I can't wait to see how it turns out. I know how it's going to turn out, but I can't wait to see it.

We're going to have satellites going up to space this year. We're targeting two launches this year. We talked about this a little bit. Maybe I can...

What quarter are we talking? Q2, Q3, Q1?

Yeah, like summertime. Sumertime, nice. Sumertime in the fall. Okay, perfect. Yeah. These are actually going to do something that's a little different than the Galactic brain, which is they're going to beam power. The two ideas that we have, the concept for Athero flux is a power grid in space, almost like a utility that you plug different kinds of appliances into. We have a vision for two different kinds of appliances. One that is the Galactic brain, which is actually taking the chips, the Silicon chips that do artificial intelligence and putting them in space because there's this unique power advantage. The other one is actually collecting power in space and then beaming it down to the ground. You can think of it like power lines from space. And that's the thing we're demonstrating in June. And so the utility for this is much more for getting power in places where there's no existing power grid.

Okay.

Not directly having to do with the artificial intelligence stuff, but for military applications, you can imagine groups of troops out in the battlefield where in order for them to get power, the best alternative is actually bringing out diesel fuel generators. Instead, this would be a small portable array that you can put out about 10 meters in diameter at first, but we think we can get it significantly smaller, sub 5 meter diameter, where you're able to link up to satellites in space and just get power drop down.

Damn.

And the way you do it is with lasers.

Yes.

Space lasers. Space lasers. More specifically.

Wow, dude.

So that's what's happening in June. And it's complicated. There's a lot of stuff we have to get right, but assuming we do, knock on wood, I think that's going to be a pretty significant step forward in that it's a new way of generating power on Earth. Sure. Right. And it fundamentally addresses many of the limitations with putting solar panels on the ground. It's the alternative that we're against.

Wow. I'll be on the lookout for that, dude. That's going to be freaking rad.

We should have you up for it. We're going to have a big demonstration party.

I would love to come. Yeah. Where is it going to be? California or?

Probably in the desert. Okay. I'm there. Yeah.

I'll be there.

New Mexico, I think is what we're thinking. Oh, very cool.

Very cool. Love it. Can't wait for that.

Yeah, me too.

It's going to be cool.

It is. We got a lot of work to do between now and then, but I think we can make it happen.

You will. Well, dude, thank you again. It's been an honor. And for the audience, man, is it atherflux. Com?

Mm-hmm.

Okay, atherflux. Com. Go check it out. It's a great site. Really cool stuff. My dumb ass even understood what was going on. I'm sure you guys at home will be fine in researching it, but go check it out, support it. You never know. This could really impact somebody in your life, troops in the desert. If you have a service member out there fighting for our country, this could really benefit them. Or Or if you've got family or you're in an area where there's not a whole lot of power or whatever, Hey, man, this could really... They're probably not listening to the show if there's no power.

That concept is like Starlink for power, right?

Yeah, of course. So go check them out. And please, guys, as always, I'm going to ask you to share this show, this episode, with someone you know, love, and trust. And whether you listen to us on Spotify, Apple, please go leave a review. Tell us what you love about the show. Maybe even get suggestions of who you want me to interview. But stay steadfast in your journey for success, guys. Don't ever let up, and don't let anybody ever tell you what your limits are. You set your limits, and you push forward every day. And so until next time, guys, stay determined.