Will O’Brien is the Co-founder of Ulysses, building autonomous, low cost robots for the ocean.
Will considers the ocean humanity’s next great frontier. It makes up over $2.5 trillion of economic activity, considering things like fishing, aquaculture, shipping, mining, communications infrastructure, and defense. Yet we know more about the surface of the moon’s of Saturn than we do the bottom of our own ocean.
We talk about Ulysses first product, restoring plant life in the ocean, their modular autonomous underwater robotics platform, advice for anyone selling to governments, crazy businesses that could eventually evolve in the ocean, and why the way we finance startups needs to change.
Will also loves conspiracy theories, and we talk about some of our favorites, and why he thinks people who believe them could make good startup founders.
Thank you to Will’s brother’s Harry and Jacob O’Brien, and to upcoming guest of the show Eoghan McCabe for helping brainstorm topics for Will.
Special thanks to Ramp for supporting this episode. It's the corporate card and expense management platform used by over 40,000 companies, like Shopify, CBRE and Stripe. Time is money. Save both with Ramp. Get $250 for signing-up here: https://ramp.com/ThePeel
Timestamps:
(4:03) Peace offering of Dubai Chocolate
(5:30) Modern internet theory
(7:40) The ocean is the last frontier
(11:53) Ulysses: read/write layer of the ocean
(13:35) The $2.5 trillion ocean economy
(15:14) Current ocean unit economics
(18:50) Starting with seagrass ecosystem restoration
(24:13) Modular, underwater autonomous robots
(27:31) Starting Ulysses with a group chat
(29:51) Raising a Seed from Lowercarbon with no network off a cold calendar invite
(32:24) Economic use cases for ocean robotics
(36:07) Spiritual energy from the ocean
(42:36) First Ramp podcast ad in Irish
(43:21) Floating cities, sub tours, deep sea mining, iron fertilization
(51:47) $10+ billion in shipwrecked treasure
(53:18 Atlantis is real
(59:46) Craziest alien conspiracy theories
(1:01:28) Sinking the titanic to create the Fed
(1:04:19) Conspiracy theory believers are good founders
(1:07:55) How to sell to the government
(1:13:28) Writing a letter to an Irish billionaire
(1:16:00) Finding meaning after living with Monks in Nepal
(1:27:10) Why financial innovation precludes economic dominance
(1:44:01) The SPV peddler business model
(1:46:35) Should we bring back SPAC’s?
Referenced
Ulysses: https://www.ulysses.eco/
Careers at Ulysses: https://www.ulysses.eco/jobs
The Richat Structure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richat_Structure
Jesse Michael’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JesseMichels
Brad Jacobs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Jacobs_(businessman)
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/will0brien
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