Think Forward: Conversations with Futurists, Innovators and Big Thinkers
Welcome to the Think Forward podcast where we have conversations with futurists, innovators and big thinkers about what lies ahead. We explore emerging trends on the horizon and what it means to be a futurist.
Think Forward: Conversations with Futurists, Innovators and Big Thinkers
Think Forward Ep 105 - Future of Space and Exploration with Guillermo Sohnlein
Welcome fellow futurists and big thinkers to the Think Forward podcast. My name is Steve and I am a futurist.
Welcome to our fifth episode, where we greet our second official guest, Guillermo Sohnlein. an explorer and entrepreneur with the WayPaver Foundation, Humans2Venus and SpaceBridge Partners to name a few of his "parallel entrepreneurship" endeavors.
In this episode, Guillermo and I cover a range of topics, including the entrepreneurial journey, the differences between serial and parallel entrepreneurship, and lessons learned over 25 years of new venture creation. We dive into his work exploring both our oceans and space which lead us to his work to establish a permanent human presence in the high atmosphere of Venus (where it is earth's gravity and we can use light air-cooled acid-resistant suits with small rebreather masks.. We cover the future of exploration and the space industry. He leaves us with sage advice on how to follow your calling and the legacy you should leave behind.
Guillermo's site: www.sohnlein.com
Steve's site: www.stevenfisher.io
Think Forward Show: www.thinkforwardshow.com
Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.
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Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.
Guillermo welcome. Good to have you here on this podcast. I think for the audience some may know you, some may not can you just, tell us about you and your journey as an entrepreneur.
Guillermo:Sure. So from an entrepreneurship standpoint why don't we start with the fact that I've been doing so many of my startups in technical fields, but I'm not an engineer or a scientist by background, I studied economics as an undergrad and then went to law school. I've been doing startups since 1998, co founded a speech recognition startup in Silicon Valley during the internet boom, and I've probably launched or helped launch. I think over a dozen for profit, non profit ventures over the years. A lot of them in my areas of expertise, including space and oceans.
Steve F:So what inspired you to become an entrepreneur?
Guillermo:I don't think I was inspired. I think I fell into being an entrepreneur. I was in on active duty in the Marine Corps trying to figure out what I was going to do next when I got out of the Marine Corps and I was evaluating all sorts of different possibilities and one of my old college buddies who was a technologist and actually had been my roommate during one of my years in law school. He was sitting in San Francisco watching the whole internet boom happening. And he said, Hey we gotta do something. We gotta jump in on this. And to his credit, he said, look, I'm a technologist, but I don't know how to run a business. You don't know how to run a business, but you obviously have leadership skills you picked up in the Marine Corps. Why don't you come? Help help me start a new company. We didn't really have an idea or anything at the time. So that's what I ended up doing. I left the active duty in the Marine Corps, moved to San Francisco and we started a company. And I think that's what launched my entrepreneurial career. From an inspiration standpoint, I think what kept me doing startups is the creative process. I think that's, what's always fascinated me about new venture creation, where a founder or co founders sit in front of a blank whiteboard and have no idea what they're going to do. And they brainstorm, come up with an idea and somehow will it into being and ends up being a real. Company that employs people, it sells products, it impacts people's lives. And I think that's probably what's kept me going doing these over the past quarter century. Oh my God. Quarter century. I'm getting old. Yeah, but past 25 years or so.
Steve F:From the quarter century of entre, what are some lessons that you've learned? Anything you would share with those in the journey, starting the journey,
Guillermo:Yeah, I think the first lesson I learned was actually between that first startup and my second startup. And that is that startups are so risky and they're so demanding of the founders. That if you're going to do it, you may as well do it in something where you're passionate about the underlying business or the underlying field. You've got a re a personal, very personal reason as to why you're doing it. Doing a startup because it's a good idea is not a good idea. Doing a startup because you want to make money is definitely not a good idea. Doing a startup because you think you're going to have more control over your time is not a good idea. You really have to be. Passionate about what you're doing or the field that you're doing it in. Because startups, I don't know what the statistics are. I don't know, have a 95 or 98 percent failure rate in the first year or two. So you're almost guaranteed of failing. And they're going to eat up a hundred hours a week of your time. They're going to take over your. Your your physical fitness, your health, your finances, your personal relationships. It's just going to consume you for so long. That if you're going to make those kind of sacrifices and take the risk of failing at the end, you may as well do it in something that you're really interested in and really passionate about.
Steve F:And you talked about the passion, you related that in the terms of resiliency and stay motivated, when the ups and downs come, how do you stay motivated and resilient through things? And then I know you faced some ups and downs.
Guillermo:Yeah, I think number one is knowing that they're coming, right? That those ups and downs are coming. If you know they're coming, then when you experience them, you don't get, Thrown off by them so much because you're going through it and that it's just a downturn and it's going to turn up at some point. So that's one. The other is, at least for me, it's always been a matter of maintaining my physical health. So continuing to work out and get enough sleep and eat well and all that stuff. But I found by far best quality for any founder specifically, but even anybody who works at a startup. Is a sense of humor. Like you've got to be able to have fun, to joke around, to take things lightly, to not take things too seriously. Even though, especially as a founder, CEO, you're going to be making decisions that could make the company or break the company almost on a daily basis. You've got to be able to to laugh and and have fun along the way, or else you're just going to make yourself miserable. Even during the upturns, you're going to make yourself miserable, but definitely during the downturns.
Steve F:So can you recall or a pivotal moment that impacted your path, like that really needed you to be that motivation, motivated and resilient person.
Guillermo:Yeah, it's funny when you asked me that question, I know it's in the context of startups, but for me, what always comes to mind is actually more of a personal. Personal event that happened to me when I was 22 years old and impacted me for the rest of my life, including in my startups. I was 22 years old. I was seven weeks away from graduating from Berkeley as an undergrad. And and I dropped out of school. Seven weeks from graduation. And yeah, my parents were not happy, but I dropped out because I really didn't have plans for what I was going to do afterwards. And it suddenly dawned on me that nobody had ever asked me whether or not I wanted to go to college. Nobody had ever asked me whether or not I wanted to do X, Y, or Z. I had really been doing things up till that point because of societal pressures, because my parents, because my teachers, because my friends. And I wasn't doing it because of what I wanted to do. And even though I realized at 22 years old. I was an adult. That was my life. I should take control of it. And for me, walking out of that classroom where I made that decision and dropping out within three days of making that decision was my way of regaining control of my life. And flash forward, I went back the next semester and I ended up finishing school, but at least I finished it on my own terms. I finished because I wanted to do that. And I think I was fortunate at 22 years old to have that experience because so many other times in my life, including with a lot of the various startups, I had decisions I had to make that were not necessarily popular. They were not necessarily the status quo. They're not necessarily the most recommended paths to go. But I had enough confidence in myself and in my in my desire to do certain things that I just did it. And that included, later on during my startup life, going into doing space. Space ventures and then do making a left turn and doing stuff in the oceans and things like that. They weren't necessarily popular or the, maybe the right wife choices, but I had the confidence to, to go ahead and do them anyway.
Steve F:Yeah, the one thing that, yeah, I think all of us as entrepreneurs face is we question our own abilities on a daily basis because you can get into a job where it's comfortable and all of us have to, got to pay the bills, right? And I've always said that the quickest way to be broke is, be an entrepreneur. So it definitely is not for the money and not for the glory. It is for vision or this thing that you want to get out to the world and you want to see and you hope the world likes it. They respond to that sometimes they don't but you also learn so much through these experiences. What, you've been through so many different kinds, you and I have known each other about 20 years and I've seen many different ventures. Where you are now, we'll talk about the space industry in a bit, but I know you're doing some other things. So what are you up to right now? What's your, we'll call it your portfolio of fun that you are, that's what I like to call it. I'd always call it portfolio of work because. But it's the portfolio of adventure, if maybe it's a better term. So
Guillermo:Yeah it's fine. I like that term portfolio fun. It's funny because having done so many ventures over the years, I guess the. Industry term for the kind of stuff that you and I have done is serial entrepreneur. And then about three, four years ago I swore I wasn't going to do any more startups, but then about four years ago, I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with the next, say, 20 years of my life, given what I had done in the previous 20 years of my life. And and I realized that I still had some venture ideas in me. And but I didn't have the energy or the time or the focus to do them in series. So I did something completely stupid that I would never recommend to anybody. And that's, I switched from serial entrepreneur to parallel entrepreneur. I basically started three ventures at the same time, actually three ventures and a nonprofit at the same time. So that's what I'm doing right now. I've got one of the ventures that I'm still running as CEO. And then the other two ventures where I have co founder CEOs that are running them, where I'm the chief strategy officer. And then I've got one nonprofit where I'm. The founder and chairman, but we have an executive director who runs it. And to answer your question before you ask it I have no idea how I'm managing the timer around those. I don't think I'm being very efficient or effective, but it is what it is and I'm trying to make it work.
Steve F:I was about to ask the question about, it's the so much time in the day, but also I think of Tim Ferriss of trying to create, having others to outsource things or, get things done, being a parallel entrepreneur, do you. Allocate certain amounts of time because obviously things can come up and get into another probably the most famous parallel entrepreneur right now is Elon Musk, I think of, but he's got what most people don't understand, I think is the there's the big picture. If you think about everything he's doing, he's creating the entire value chain of colonization of Mars. Robots, cyber trucks, solar, like everything is for boring through Hill, he doesn't want to just, go from LA to Las Vegas with a tunnel, he wants to dig in Mars. So I think it's also, is parallel entrepreneurship for you also a value chain creation? Is it a, because it's, there's so many interests and so little time we have on earth, what, why do you feel the compulsion the desire to, have things in parallel
Guillermo:Yeah I think that's exactly right. So a lot of people look at the ventures and I can walk you through. Through them if you want in a second, but look at the ventures and they're trying to figure out how they all fit together other than the fact that I'm a common link among the three of them or the four of them. But in my mind, they make sense because they all come back to my lifelong pursuit of helping to make humanity and multi planet species. So I think you're right. They do hit different parts of the value chain. Also for me, they also hit different. Timeframes. So one of them is very tactical, like near term, like day to day, week to week. Another one is every couple of years. And the other one is more long term. And they also hit different areas of interest for me. So the tactical near term one is is a music focused media company. So that one's more. Near term, it's almost formulaic and trying to set it up and run it. That's the one that I'm still running. Cause I, I need to get it to a certain point where I can bring someone on to, to take it over. The one that's more like every couple of years is an exploration focused media company. And for that, we organize exploration expeditions. That's the ocean one for us. And so we're organizing an expedition every couple of years. And then the longer term one is is in basically in space mission finance. So actually I just, I could have given you the names, right? So the music venture is called Fortibo music. The exploration focused media company is called blue marble exploration. And then the longterm one that's in space mission finance, that's space bridge partners. And then overlaying across all of those. Is is the nonprofit, which is called humans to Venus foundation. And that for me is a perspective a potential destination for humanity as we become a multi planet species. So in, in my mind, do they all come together because let's say the long term vision over the next few decades for me is to make humanity a multi planet species, specifically going to Venus. In order to do that, we're going to need a bunch of missions that need finance. That's where space bridge partners comes in. The early missions to Venus are going to be exploration expeditions. So that's where blue marble exploration comes in, getting that experience here on earth before we go out to Venus. And the music venture is more of. Eventually when humanity becomes a multi planet species the people that are going to be out there are not just going to be the scientists or the explorers or the engineers or the early people that go to set up the community there, it's going to be the artists and the musicians and the videographers and the storytellers and the poets. And this venture is my way of keeping my toes in the creative bucket that will eventually make its way off planet, either to Venus or Mars or wherever.
Steve F:when you got to listen to music on the trip? Hey,
Guillermo:exactly.
Steve F:As we're both musicians, I'd love to hear more about Fortivo music. Could you explain the business and it kind of bridges to like the future of the music industry, which is like most everything, a lot of the institutions are truly transforming as we move to a different era. So yeah. Could you talk about like why you started it and what it's doing?
Guillermo:Yeah. The problem we're trying to solve and you a long term vision is to help the thousands, if not tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of very talented emerging artists, musicians that are out there in the world that are trying to get to a point where they can do their music for a living. Where they don't have to work a full time job.
Steve F:Like log tail.
Guillermo:Yeah. Yeah. So they can get to a point where they don't have to work a full time job during the week to pay the bills. And then they're doing their music on nights and weekends. And. Traditionally in the past, in, the last century, it was, that was more about the only way you could do that was to get to a point where you get it signed to a music label and they push and put and form you into the next Taylor Swift or Ed Sheeran or John Mayer or whatever. But now with digital tools out there there's democratizing the way of getting music out into the world. There's so many. More opportunities for emerging artists to make money and to get their music out there and to build a fan base. And so the long term vision for Fortebo music is to help those kinds of artists. Eventually maybe we create a like what I've been calling a 21st century digital label to help those kinds of artists get to the point where they're making money for themselves. That's our long term vision going down to near term. The, where we're starting is basically a YouTube channel focused on promoting emerging artists and connecting them with fans. If you go, if you think, if you're a little bit older and you remember the advent of MTV, when it first came out in the eighties. That was pushing forward this new medium of music videos. And back then, it was only available to artists who were signed to major labels because major labels would pay for the creation of the music videos and promoting the music videos. Nowadays, emerging artists can do that all by themselves. They can upload their videos to YouTube and then promote them on YouTube. The problem now is that there's so much for lack of a better term, so much noise out there. It's hard to parse the signal, right? It's hard to rise above so many artists out there. So we're looking at doing something similar, creating a series of shows on YouTube that kind of replicate a little bit what MTV did in the early days. And help promote some of these emerging artists out there and connect them with new fans. So that's the near term thing that we're doing. Here is this first phase of Fortebo Music.
Steve F:So that's a great explanation. It reminds me of, when I was young when MTV came on and I remember also broadcast because everybody didn't have cable is broadcast television would have 1130 at night for a half hour music videos.
Guillermo:Exactly.
Steve F:obviously, and you're right. It was the Van Halens. It was the, new wave. Like it was established large labels, right? They were going to make that invest just like investing in a business, right? They're going to put the money into. Making a video.
Guillermo:Yeah. And if you think
Steve F:Jump. Van Halen's Jump only cost 7, 000 to make. But it's just hilarious. The reach it got and it changed the model. My question was around like, the distribution. Because that was the way they distributed it. Cable and then broadcast. With this, are you looking at decentralized models? Blockchain, any types of
Guillermo:we haven't, yeah, I haven't got, honestly, I haven't gotten to that point yet because it's really more about the fact that so if, since you brought up jump so let's use that as an example. The four members have been inhaling. So if you think about it the four members of Van Halen were great musicians and they wrote the song jump and they played the song jump. However, to make that video, they were going to need videographers. They needed cinematographers. They needed editors. They needed to put the whole thing together. Then they needed a whole army of marketers to push it and monetize it which back then is what the label did, but now when you're, if you're, if you were Van Halen today and you record it jump you, you wrote jump and you recorded it on in your garage. And now you could actually create the video yourself and upload it to YouTube and try to promote it. And some artists are doing that. There's a lot of artists that have built entire fan bases on YouTube. Because they were able to do that kind of work, but not every musician can do that. I'm sure if you left Eddie Van Halen, Michael Anthony, and David Lee Roth to their own devices today, maybe they would have figured out how to do it, but maybe they wouldn't have. And then the world would have never seen Van Halen or Jump.
Steve F:To, I'm trying to imagine David Lee Roth on Tik Tok. It would be quite the quite the spectacle. But I think Eddie Van Halen would be more, Eddie Van Halen's more of an Instagram kind of guy, probably,
Guillermo:yeah. Yeah. All right. So we're dating ourselves, but anyway
Steve F:got it's got to teach the kids. Cause you know, history rhymes. You got to teach them, but it's a good, it's a good kind of like example. I think that's why I brought it up is that was the way they distributed. That was only for the top tier in terms of struggling artists. Now we have transformed. But we still still have the old music model of getting through getting, Spotify is now there others, there are other options, to
Guillermo:So that's
Steve F:have to do that. That's why I was getting like, where is Fortivo kind of seeing the future of the industry and a different,
Guillermo:I think that's why we break Fortivo music into three phases and phase one is this YouTube music focused YouTube channel. So it is like MTV for the YouTube age is how we've been talking about it. And that's really just taking emerging artists that have figured out how to make their own music and create their own videos. And now they're just trying to figure out how to get. In front of new fans and build their fan bases. That's phase one for us. Phase two for us is going to be helping those emerging artists use the tools that are out there to help them grow their own fan bases and monetize their, their own their own music helping them. It'd be the equivalent in the old days of helping them become independent artists that can be self sufficient. And then phase three for us would be actually creating a 21st century digital label where we can help as many of these artists as possible. And we can do it in a way that doesn't. Turn them into products like the labels did in the past or turn them into surfs for them. Because as you said before the music labels back then, and still to this day operate like VCs. They invest a lot of money into certain artists and they're going to lose a lot of money in less, at least a small percentage of them become hyper successful. They're betting that one of them is going to be the next Beyonce or Taylor Swift. But I think now with 21st century digital platforms and tools that are available, I think you can do the similar function for an artist without the huge. Investment. And so you don't need everybody, or you don't need a small number of your artists to become the next Beyonce or Taylor Swift, you can have a huge, a number of them just become moderately successful, quote unquote, and you can still make money and you can do that by just helping them become more successful. So Forteva music is really to help the emerging artists and get them to a point. Where, like I said, where they can make a living making their music and not have to rely on other employment.
Steve F:it's great. That's great. And love this, like switch gears and. Talk about the space industry, talk about your work in space and exploration. So how did you get involved in the space industry?
Guillermo:It's funny that you of all people asked me how I got involved in the space industry, because I think you were there like at the beginning when I got involved with space industry.
Steve F:Not everybody was there. So I just wanted everyone to know, just got to hear the story because it's not something usually accidental. That happens it's it has to be with purpose, my own space nerdiness, is not, this is not, that's not the focus of this podcast, but you know why I, but went along with us, Mary band of space entrepreneurs. So please, yeah. So what, how did you get involved? Like I just started.
Guillermo:yeah. So first of all, backtracking, I've always wanted to go into space. I have still to this day, vivid memories of when I was 11 years old, having a recurring dream that I was there. It's going to be the commander of the first Martian colony. And my life actually followed that path until I was 19 years old. My eyesight went bad and I couldn't become a fighter pilot and which meant I wasn't going to be a pilot in the at NASA. So I strayed for a while. I did a bunch of different things. Like I said, I ended up going to law school. I went to the Marine Corps. I got out and I did that startup in Silicon Valley. But after that, as I said earlier, I was hooked on startups because of the creative process. And if starting with a blank slate and creating something tangible. And, but as I said before I had to do it in something I was passionate about. And so in 2002, in 2001 we sold that company. So by 2002, when I left the acquiring company, I knew I was going to do another startup because I was hooked on this new venture creation bug. But I knew I had to do it in something I was passionate about. And so I was trying to figure out doing like a life self analysis, what was I passionate about? And I realized as I went back through my life, that the one thing I'd always been passionate about was space. And so I figured, okay, I'm going to do a space startup. That's what I'm going to do next. So this was in 2002. The problem is at the time was I didn't know anything about space. I didn't know anything about the space industry. I didn't have an idea. I didn't know anyone in the space industry, and I didn't have a technical co founder. Cause remember, I was a lawyer by training. So I figured what I needed to do is just meet other space entrepreneurs and meet other people interested in space startups. So I started going to a lot of space events, looking for those kinds of kindred spirits. And what I realized After going, spending a few months of going to these different space events was that there was no place for kindred spirits like me, right? Somebody who's an entrepreneur from another industry. I wanted to come in and start a space startup. So I got a lot of advice from a lot of people, including one of my mentors who just told me, look. You're going to have to create your own, you're going to have to create your own place for entrepreneurs from other industries to come in and learn about space and connect with space people and launch their space ventures. So in 2003, I started a group called the International Association of Space Entrepreneurs specifically to do that. And that's where Steve Fisher comes into the picture because you were part of that early crew. Of putting together events and tools and mechanisms to help connect entrepreneurs from other venture, from other industries with people in the space industry and help them set up their space startups. And just. A postscript on that. IAC ended up eventually growing to be an online community with about 2, 500 people around the world. We transferred it to the Space Frontier Foundation and they ran it in 2010 and they ran it until 2014 when they sunsetted it because they realized there were so many space entrepreneurs around the world by the end of the day. That it was no longer necessary. But and when I say that it grew to 20, a global community of 2, 500 people, I always like to tell people remember this was predated Facebook and LinkedIn and all that. So
Steve F:That's just to give some context to where people might be younger or some people remember or may not touch the space industry that much. So back then, this is when the X Prize had just been announced a few years prior. Peter Diamandis did his, which is quite an interesting story, it's just that P. T., it's very P. T. Barnum in the way he got that committed, but the Ansari family committed to the money, which was a million dollars if you were able to do suborbital flight. There are a number of teams. Sorry, 10 million. I apologize. Yeah, 10 million. If you, so you had Burt Rutan, who is a famous experimental aircraft designer their team eventually won and in 2004, this was, before that, the only space flight was governments and it was large nations. So to show that we could do basically what John Glenn did, sorry, not jungle, but
Guillermo:Shepard.
Steve F:Shout out Alan Shepard, thank you. I can see his face. Alan Shepard did, in 1961, or 60, that right after Yuri Gagarin to get up there and come back down, that was huge. That's a span of, the, and then take consumers, take people, just take the every person if you had the money. And that changed the game. It showed commercial, it changed the game in terms of commercial space, commercial, the industry for it. And now looking this, it leads me to, where we are now. With, obviously SpaceX and other, yeah, please go ahead. Yeah. Cause I want to ask you,
Guillermo:wait, before you go to where we are now, just giving more context to where we were then and just to bring me and you together in, in a proper historical context, right? So that was 2003 when you and I First came together through IASC. So to give context, Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos had started Blue Origin just a few, couple years before that. Elon had just started SpaceX two years before that. The X the Ansari XPRIZE, which you just talked about, was not won until 2004, so the next year. That's also when Branson announced Virgin Galactic. So that was all that to the extent that SpaceX has helped revolutionize and get us to where we are today, which is what you were about to say SpaceX did not launch, have their first successful orbital launch of Falcon one until 2008. So five years after. We started I and C. So that's how either, either visionary we were back then or how way too early we were back then or way too naive we were back then. But anyway, just wanting to put that in historical perspective before you went on to where we are today.
Steve F:it's a great, it's a great point. I started an air taxi company in 2004. It was about 20 years ahead of my time. So now you're seeing all the EV tolls
Guillermo:you're a
Steve F:Yeah, I am. That's the thing is about futurists and entrepreneurship is that I was also betting on a class of aircraft and other manufacturers, which is one of my pieces of advice to people is don't have a. If your main business is depending on something that's not out there yet, do you don't do that. Just don't do that. And then there's a, you can be too early. It was like, it's cause like Amazon is not the first bookseller. Like they, it's not about being first and it's about the timing and the, as a futurist, when you look at industries, you look at the rate of change in an industry, right? Some industries are super fast, right? Technology. But if you look at the broader industries, oil and gas. Energy, like anything like space, it's a longer horizon. And I think that we're now at a place where you look at the Falcon, the heavy rock, the starship, like they, people think it like explodes. It's an iterative model. They get it farther every time and they learn from it and it gets even farther than they thought. And they've learned from it. And eventually I will guess within the next year, they will have everything figured out. It will be. Successful in all the ways they want, and they will make it like, and that's where it becomes that it becomes commoditized, like it becomes routine. And then you said when Falcon came out in 2008, now it's Oh yeah, I can land on its own pad. Imagine that a rocket coming back all the way, landing on its own, on a pad in the middle of the ocean, do it if and now we just think it's routine, right?
Guillermo:Going back since you mentioned Alan Shepard and suborbital and the Ansari XPRIZE and, but now you're mentioning Starship, right? One of the things that I think. Even space people forget about it's easy to forget about when you're watching the Starship tests. The live video feeds. So one of the things that people ask is, okay, so Starship is being designed to go land on the moon. And this thing, they still can't even land it on here on earth, right? They're still testing. Like you were saying, they're getting iterative and they're almost testing it. People who know a little bit more about space know that even once they get to the point where they can land it here on, on earth in order to get it to the moon, so it can land on the moon, it requires them launching it and then doing, I don't know, something like 10 refueling flights in orbit to get more fuel into it before it can actually make the voyage over to the moon. And so people are asking, wait a sec, in the 1960s, and the last time humans were on the moon in 1972, 50 years ago. We launched a Saturn five with the Apollo spacecraft and it just went straight to the moon. They went, they landed, they came back. Like, why is this so difficult now? And I think what people forget, even people in the space industry is. The Apollo spacecraft were like the equivalent of, I don't know, let's call it a minivan, right? So Starship's the equivalent of a 20 story building. Like it's just massive difference in scale. If you told Elon that, Hey, we need you to take a minivan. To the moon, he could probably do it today probably using a Falcon nine, but he's trying to take a 20 story building to the moon. It's just a completely different just a completely different effort, that they're trying to, or objectives that they're trying to achieve. So anyway, I just wanted to throw that out there because I knew a couple of weeks ago when they did the fourth Starship test a lot of people thought it was a success and yet there were so many critics online. And one of the most common critiques was why is this so difficult? We were doing it 50 years ago.
Steve F:What excites you the most about the future of X space exploration? Obviously being. You're vision and mission or calling is to create a multi planet species in order to make humanity survivable despite our own failings. What do you, what gets you most excited?
Guillermo:So up until about a year ago, I used to say there's one thing that gets me excited. But now after last year, it's two things. So the one thing most obvious I've already been talking about, you've been talking about is Starship, right? Starship is just such a game changer. Again, most people don't realize this, but in the entire history of humanity, the most human beings we've ever launched. Off this planet at any given point in time has been seven. And that's when the space shuttle for the United States was sending up seven people on each launch. Starship is designed to take a hundred. More importantly than that SpaceX is designing Starship and its operations so that they can launch like on a weekly basis. Ideally, Elon wants Starship to be launching several times per day, but at a minimum, they're trying to get it, let's say one a week. So one a week. Even if you take two weeks off, that's 50 weeks a year, 50 launches a year, right? That's 5, 000 people in one year. We've never launched nearly that many people. And if SpaceX can get to that point in the next two, three years, it's just a huge, just a seismic paradigm shift in how we have to look that impacts everything. It impacts budgets. It impacts missions, mission plans. There's a lot of the international space station is probably the largest engineering project in human history. And it only holds nine, maybe 12 people during the emergency sex can send up a hundred at a time. There are a bunch of private space station projects being built, but I think the biggest one I saw is only going to hold 24 people. So what happens when Starship can take up a hundred at a time a week? So I think it impacts all of that. It impacts our lunar plants. It impacts, and it's not just space sex with Starship because as you were saying earlier If SpaceX can prove that Starship can work, then that will inspire competition and more companies will try building heavy launch vehicles like that. I know the Chinese are developing at least three or four kind of Starship clones right now. So I think it's going to be a big shift for humanity over the next 10 years. I think over the next 10 years, we'll probably be as big of a shift as it was maybe in the sixties with the Apollo program. So up until a year ago, I would always say Starship is the one thing that got me excited. A year ago, I came across a startup that now has me thinking that this is the second thing, which is a company called Max Space which is building developing inflatable habitats in space. And the reason they I'm excited about them is again, since I just mentioned that I S the limitations of the ISS and private space stations no one's really developing habitats on the assumption that Starship can bring a hundred people up. These guys are, they're developing inflatable structures. Their focus is really on the number, the amount of usable volume in a habitat. And according to them inflatable habitats are the only way to maximize the the usable volume. So they've got they've got plans to do a prototype launch, I think in the next year or so using the Falcon nine, they've got, production model that I think would launch on a Falcon nine that in one launch would get the same, put the same amount of usable volume in space as the current ISS, which took I don't know, 10, 15 years of multiple launches to build to that point. And they can do it in one Falcon nine launch. They've got plans in the future for a lot on inflatable habitat model that fits in a starship. And that one, if they get a chance to build it and launch it in a starship, when it goes up in one fell swoop, in one launch, it will have the same, roughly the same usable volume as a a football stadium. And so that will be something you put up in orbit in one launch and now Starship can bring up as many people as you want because it can hold thousands. So I think that's got me excited. I don't know if they're going to succeed in what they're doing, but the fact that they're thinking that big and they're planning that big and they're pushing in that direction again, if even if they don't succeed, they will inspire others to compete with them. And and that will drive humanity forward significantly, I think.
Steve F:So what do you envision as a, get on all those things to stop getting all those things accomplished and the things you're seeing right now, because we've seen the span of 20 years of us space entrepreneurship and even just the space industry. How do you envision, let's look, Put our future set on 50 years, 100 years, obviously larger span of rate of change, longer rate of change. How do you, what do you envision for the future of humanity in space?
Guillermo:Yeah, I think so there's two parts to this. And I'm sure you do this in your futurist work, but on the one hand, I want to be the space optimist and think, within the next 50 years, we'll have people living and working in orbit around earth. We'll have people living and working on the surface of the moon, probably on a temporary basis and both regards, they'll probably just go up and come back and within the next 50 years, we should have people living and working on the Martian surface. And then obviously from my work I'd hope that we'll have people living and working in the atmosphere of Venus. The part that's, I think, and I think that for me, I'd give that, I don't know, over the next 50 years, I'd give that like a 90%. Chance of happening. What I don't know is again, we're going to date ourselves here a little bit. I don't know if that future is going to be star Trek or star Wars. I don't know if it's a lot of people, when they think of, oh, there's, he wants to have a thousand people living and working in the Venetian atmosphere, or Elon wants a million people living and working in, in, on Mars. Everyone immediately, for some reason thinks it's going to be billionaires, right? That it's only going to be for the wealthy. And I just don't see that at all. I don't see any bit, because if you think about what gives a billionaire their status is their wealth. And that wealth is only because of the systems we have here on earth. We're not going to have the same systems off planet. And so the second they leave earth, they lose their status. So I don't see a billionaire wanting to go at least. Off planet, I think instead, it's going to be like every other expansion that humanity's ever done, which is the people that are going to want to go are the people that don't really have great lives here and are looking for new lives somewhere else. They're looking for new opportunities. And and if anyone's watched the expanse, that was one of my favorite shows because it showed the. a grittier alternative for how humanity expands into the solar system. I'd probably bet that's the direction we go a lot more than the Star Trek utopian future for humanity and the solar system.
Steve F:Yeah it's not a negative perspective. I think it's more realist, pragmatic cause we're also a very, we're tribal people. We wouldn't travel warfare. We don't see beyond our lifetimes. We don't think of the, it's it is a systemic change. If you think about Star Trek, for those of you who are not fans, and if you haven't, I would suggest watching it, the whole point of that is, think of an alternative Earth where they have World War III, war, and it basically, it completely destroys humanity, and the, the one person that is still working on things creates a warp drive, he has a breakthrough, and that's the way, that signals, To the galactic greater community that we are now at a place where we can join that community and we get visited and we get met by the Vulcans and it was through time. It is an abundance mentality and it creates new energy in Peter, Peter Diamandis. That's his big thing is abundance, and it's not a wrong thing. It's just a, it's just a belief or a perspective on new forms of energy. And you have to also to change a monetary system. I unfortunately believe I trust more in people's greed than I do in their altruism. So I think it, the nature of humanity is still still exists. So you have to change things culturally where the expanse, which is an amazing show. You have 30 billion people living on planet earth that has been destroyed by the climate a long time ago, but they've figured out how to feed it. But the problem is they, everyone, most people live on basic, which is universal basic income, call it basic. And there's not enough jobs. They get in, then there could be years of a wait and they're. So when the ring opens up and everyone gets to, there it's just I'm a poor farmer in Ireland and I am starving and I can go here at work and I can. Make money or I can even go further and have my own farm. They're just giving away the land. It's going to be the same thing. You're exactly right. The people who have the status will keep, will stay where they are to keep the status. The others that don't, who have a new opportunity will go and they will become the future of us in space because there's are also the risk takers. I think you, you touched upon with the future. I think we talk about Earth, right? You just mentioned the expanse and the things that will maybe evolve. What do you think that, looking at it now, what do you think the role of space exploration plays in solving the wicked problems here, the global challenges on earth,
Guillermo:Yeah. Obviously that's a question that. Almost everybody working in space gets all the time, right? Which is in different variations of, why should we spend money or time going to space when we have so many problems here on earth. And there are a lot of different answers to that. I always start my answer with what you said earlier Peter Di Menez likes to say, which is, an abundance mentality. I think that either or question is a legacy of space being exclusive purview of just a handful of national governments and national governments have by definition fixed budgets. And so it, the way they allocate the budgets is always based on a scarcity mindset, by definition every penny that they give a space program is a penny they can't give to education or healthcare or infrastructure. But if you expand it beyond. A national budget and you extend it out to the private sector and globally it becomes much more of an abundance mindset. And so I think first of all, so my first stab at the question is always we have plenty of financial and human resources in the world to do both, to go into space and to solve all of the world's problems. So I think the role that space plays in all this is twofold. One is. It's inspirational, right? It can help inspire people to solve a lot of our problems here on earth. But the more direct one is that. In order to go into space, because space is such a harsh environment, we have to solve a lot of problems to overcome those challenges. And those solutions can also be used here on Earth to solve similar problems. For example, we go up into space and we're going to need to bring drinking water. So we've got to have a way of creating Usable drinking water for any community off planet. If we can create drinkable drinking water Off planet we can create drinking water here on earth and there are millions of people on earth that have trouble Getting good access to clean water a similar thing for diseases for energy for all sorts of things and so I think a lot of The engineering and medical and other problems that we need to solve to go into space for the longterm are also going to provide solutions that can be tailored to solve problems here on earth.
Steve F:Getting more focused on your space ventures. I know you have a few and I know we'll cover more. We have an off, we have another podcast called the off road podcast for those of you listening and we'll dive deeper into that on the other. But I want to talk about the, those three images behind you. If you're listening, that's great. But behind him are three beautiful images of our closest planet, Venus. And, you are definitely an iconoclast when everyone's talking about Mars, you're talking about Venus. And you, I remember when you and I first started talking about it, I had the same that's possible. And I'd love for you to frame for the, even the space interested, or the space You know, adjacent, like where this kind of fits in the mix. And, when you told me, I'm just going to say, I thought of one word, best been cloud city. That's all I guess that could think about, which is cool. But yeah, you which relate to like humans to Venus. So if you want to. What inspired you to go in this direction and create this organization?
Guillermo:Yeah. So as I said earlier, since I was a kid I've been thinking about making humanity a multi planet species. And when you think about a multi planet species, it means multi generational. You're going somewhere off planet, and you're not just going there and coming back to Earth. You're going there, you're staying, you're raising a family there, they're raising their family there, and so on and so forth. And so one of the things that always bothered me, again, even though I'm not a biologist I'm an economist and a lawyer not a scientist or a doctor. One of the things that always concerned me was the fact that on the moon and on Mars and on, on floating stations we have less than one G of gravity. And as much as I could research I couldn't find anything that confirms that Homo sapiens can reproduce in less than one G of gravity. And it, it may be possible, but we don't know. And unfortunately, there's only one way to confirm that humans can reproduce in less than one g of gravity, and that's to go and do it. And to go and do it requires going, let's say, to Mars, being there long enough to conceive a child carry through one through carry a fetus through to term, delivering a baby without birth defects, having that baby grow into adulthood, and then have that adult reproduce as well, right? Until we go through a couple of generations of that, we're not going to be able to confirm that Homo sapiens can in fact reproduce effectively. In less than one g of gravity. That could be decades from now. And for all we know, if it's not possible, we could potentially be going to taking humanity, let's say to Mars and then die out within one or two generations if we can't actually do this. Personally, I don't know if that's going to be the case. I think what is going to be the case is we're going to have difficulties and the medical community is going to have to come up with therapies and technologies to help us through the reproductive process. So I think it won't be a huge roadblock, but it is. As we sit here today, it is a roadblock, or at least it's an unknown and it's a considerable risk. So in 20, that's always bothered me. So in 2019, 2020, I started thinking it'd be nice if there was some other place in the solar system that had one G of gravity, that way we wouldn't have to worry about it. We would know that's not a risk. And by the way, the reason gravity is a big problem is because it's the only environmental. Risk that we face going off planet that we cannot fix. We can do something about the radiation and about lack of food and air and all that stuff, but gravity is something we cannot fix. The only way we can really fix it is if we were in a in a floating structure and we can spin it and in rotating it, we create artificial gravity through centrifugal force. But if we're going to be on the surface of Mars, we're stuck with 38 percent gravity. And so it's the only thing that we can't fix. So if it's going to be a risk, we, it'd be better for us if we could find a destination that already had one G of gravity. And since gravity is a function of size and mass the only other planet in the solar system or celestial body in the solar system that's similar size and mass to earth is Venus, which also conveniently is our closest planetary neighbor. It's much closer to earth than Mars. So Venus has. Roughly 98 percent of Earth's gravity. So I started thinking, four years ago, if we could find a way of going to Venus, then that would be an ideal destination. But, as anybody who knows anything about Venus knows, there's no way we're ever landing on the surface. The pressure is like being 3, 000 feet underwater. There's no way we'd survive. And the temperature is hot enough to melt lead. So there's no way humans are ever landing on the surface of Venus. But four years ago, I did It run across white papers that were talking about scientific data that was collected by the old Soviet missions to Venus. And it looked like 50, 60 kilometers above the Venusian surface in the atmosphere. The atmospheric pressure was actually one atmosphere. roughly 40, 50 degrees centigrade, which is hot, but. bearable, not fatal. And and you'd have one G of gravity. So we're close to one G of gravity. So if we could find a way of creating floating structures in the Venetian atmosphere there's a lot of scientists around the world that think that would be the place in the solar system where we'd probably find the most earth like conditions after leaving earth. And it turns out, as I looked around, I thought the same thing you did, the floating cities from floating city from Star Wars and I started looking around and sure enough, NASA had already looked at the opportunity they'd created an operational concept around having floating research stations in the Venetian atmosphere. And I figured if it was good enough for NASA, there's gotta be other people that have looked at this. And sure enough. There are people all over the world, whether scientists or engineers who have looked at this and think that it's viable enough, theoretically, to at least warrant taking a closer look over the next, I don't know, 5, 10 years and see if we can actually do something there.
Steve F:Are you the only organization that's focused on getting humans to Venus? Are there
Guillermo:Yeah. So you'd appreciate this from IAC days. I did not set out to want to start a new organization. I'd rather do this inside of another organization, but none of them were looking at Venus. There used to be a group called the Venus society. I don't know whatever happened to them. They seem to have trailed off. I would have much rather revived the Venus society, but I couldn't figure out. Who to contact for that. So we ended up starting our own called the humans to Venus foundation. Primary, our primary mission is to promote Venus focus science and education programs, since we need to learn a lot more about the planet before we can start Taking any steps toward sending humans there. And then our secondary one, which you'd appreciate from IAC days is we took a page out of ideas IASC, which is we're currently fostering and curating a global community of about 400 professionals who are looking at. realistically the possibility of sending humans to Venus. And this includes scientists, engineers, educators, technologists, investors, entrepreneurs, all sorts of different folks, students, educators.
Steve F:so what kind of, this kind of blends together, what kind of technological innovations are necessary and what's the timeline for getting to be, cause you've talked, you've, you, I've heard you in different conversations, talk about, 50 year, what, 2050 so
Guillermo:Yeah.
Steve F:to get us there. There's like a two part, it's a two parter.
Guillermo:Yeah. So this is my favorite part of Venus, the more I dug into this, right? Because initially it was the skeptic part no way you can do this. Then it was like, holy cow, there's a lot of people that are actually looking at this. Maybe it's viable. And then the next thing that got me excited was realizing that We don't need a lot of technical, technological innovation, at least theoretically, we don't need a lot of technological innovation to get us there. It's not like we have to invent the warp drive or artificial gravity or any, or time travel or tractor beams or any of that stuff. There are certain things that need to be developed but they're totally viable. Like for example the big, two big downsides to Venus from a Homo sapiens survivability standpoint. Number one is that the atmosphere is completely, almost completely CO2. So we need to find a way of converting CO2 into breathable air. The upside to that is that we've, we already know how to do that here on earth. Even scuba divers use rebreathers. Here on earth. So we know how to do it on small scale. We just need to figure out how to scale it up. To be able to withstand or to support at least a small population in the Venetian atmosphere. The other thing we need to develop is so the other big risk to human beings in the Venetian atmosphere is that right about the 50, 60 kilometer mark where we're going to want to be floating Venus is completely covered in a cloud layer. And those clouds are made of sulfuric acid, which obviously is toxic to humans, and you have to build your floating structures in a way that they withstand that. But the nice thing about that from a technology innovation standpoint is that we already have materials that we use every day. that are resistant to sulfuric acid, the most common of which is Teflon. Actually, someone just told me a couple months ago that glass is also resistant to to sulfuric acid. So we, if we build structures out of glass and Teflon we should be able to to be safe to have the safe habitats floating in, in the Venetian atmosphere. So those are the things that we have today. We just have to figure out how to scale it and obviously how to do this in Venus instead of doing it here. So it seems to be more a matter of scaling and moving everything to Venus as opposed to doing it here on earth. Which obviously those are not those are not minor efforts, right? Those are not insignificant efforts, but it's a lot more doable than, inventing artificial gravity or warp drives or new propulsion systems and things like that. By the way, speaking of propulsion systems, because Venus is closer. The the transit between here and Venus is a lot shorter than it would be to Mars and there are more launch window availabilities. For those of you that know Mars, because of the relative orbits, there's launch windows only every 26 months, whereas Venus has many more launch windows and it's closer, which means the transits are shorter, which means that astronauts or travelers going from here to Venus are back. Have to spend less time being exposed to solar radiation during transit.
Steve F:It's great. It's like, how long would it take to get to Venus?
Guillermo:I think it's it depends on when you go, but anywhere from three to six months.
Steve F:That's very different.
Guillermo:So the other thing, speaking of the transit, sorry just one last thing, cause it just reminded me from a long term standpoint from a futurist standpoint, right? We're looking 50, let's say a hundred years in the future humans going to, and you've got people living on Mars and people living on Venus. Actually you've got homo sapiens who were born and bred on Mars and homo sapiens who were born and bred on Venus. Humans from earth will be able to go to both planets, visit, turn around and come back. Humans who were born in Venus and raised in Venus will be able to, if they wanted to come to earth, visit and go back because they will be. Born, raised and in 1g of gravity and they come to Earth and it's 1g of gravity. However, humans that are born and bred on Mars are going to have a much tougher time coming back to Earth at all, because they'll be used to 38 percent of its gravity. Coming here, I ran the rough numbers. They will constantly feel like they're in a 2. 6 G turn on an airplane. And that's going to get uncomfortable in a hurry. So they're not really going to be able to make the, they're not going to want to make the long journey all the way here. just to spend however long they can withstand two and a half G turns before they want to get back up to space and then get back to their home planet. I think in the long term from a societal standpoint, I think Venus is going to be much more, have much, have a much closer relationship with earth than Mars will. It is. I don't know if it's bold because because I guess for some segments of society, it may seem bold, but for at least the circles I run in, it's not bold, which is what we were just talking about earlier, 50 to a hundred years from now. I believe humanity will end up being a multi planet species. And that's something we just need to start accepting and prepare for. I think What's going to get us there is these transportation systems and habitats that are geared more toward entire societies, not just for, four or five, six scientists for, and they're set up more for permanent residents rather than temporary residents. So I think that's I'm fairly confident that's going to happen in the next 50 to a hundred years and we just need to start Just start getting comfortable with that and just accepting it because one way or another, I think it will happen. There's 8 billion people on the planet, even if Less than 1 percent of them are working on this future. That's a lot of people working on this future and they will find a way of making it happen.
Steve F:so it relates, it's sometimes, I call it my restarting civilization question. We'll call it starting civilization. So if you were, you're starting this colony on Venus or, what are the two books, the two pieces of music and two things you bring with you?
Guillermo:I, I don't know. Cause it's interesting. Cause with the humans to Venus foundation, I guess one of the things I should have said that this global community is working on right now is a roadmap for Venus that we're hoping to publicly launch in October. That basically gives a much deeper. Answer to your question, about how do we get there and timelines and things like that. It's going to be a website that people can go to and help update. And I think that's what we're trying to get the global community to come in with, which is how do we restart. society. And I don't have a direct answer to your question because I just know there's a lot more questions about this than people think there are. I'll give you some examples. For some reason, every time someone envisions a Martian colony, or let's say in our case, a thousand people living and working in the Venetian atmosphere, for some reason, they always envision it's going to be a democracy. And I don't know why they have that assumption because in such a risky environment. If you give people unlimited freedom, one person can accidentally kill the other 999. One person exercising their right to freedom is, could conceivably kill the other 999. So I would not be surprised if the first off world colonies are more like dictatorships or more like military rule or something like that, something much more autocratic than, I don't think you can, humans would be able to afford the luxury of democracy when you go off planet. So that, that's one assumption, another assumption, especially in the U. S., I don't know why, maybe it's American hubris or whatever, that when they envision a Martian colony, they envision a bunch of Americans, or at least a bunch of Westerners And honestly, I don't even know if the United States is set up to execute on that kind of a audacious long term plan. I would bet more on the Chinese or the Indians. I think they've got more resources and more long term vision than Americans do. It's like these kind of different assumptions that for some reason we make when we, a lot of people make when they look at this that I think need to be questioned and need to be rethought. And so I don't have an answer for how to answer those questions. I just think there are a lot of questions that need to be looked at.
Steve F:We talked about different of your adventure, your entrepreneurial journey is what would advice would you give like this newer generation of thinkers and innovators who want to make an impact in this way? What would you tell them?
Guillermo:One of the lessons that I learned early on in life and in startups, and it's a lesson that I've tried passing on to my three kids is there are very few decisions in life. that are not reversible, right? And most of those have to do with any decision that would take a human life. In the Marine Corps, they teach us firearm safety. And one of the things is never point a weapon at. Something you don't intend to kill or destroy because once you pull that trigger, that weapon goes off. You can't take it back. But other than that, just about every decision that you make in life is reversible. It may be painful to reverse it, but it is reversible. And so don't be afraid to make decisions. You've got to make decisions, especially if you're a founder of a startup, that's what you're there for. You're there to make decisions. You're there to make decisions under, in incomplete information quickly changing circumstances. You're there to make decisions that could potentially make or break the company. And the worst thing you can do is analysis paralysis, right? Do the best you can and make the decisions you can the best decision you can. And don't be afraid to do it. You can always. Change it later, even if it may be painful to do but,
Steve F:It's the last question and we'll get into some where people can find you. I always like to ask the legacy question, how do you want your work to be remembered and what impact do you hope it'll have on the world?
Guillermo:oh I don't know if it's a legacy, but. I can tell you what gives me the most personal satisfaction and fulfillment and it's it's helping other people in their own life journeys for some reason. Like I love it. Like we, in 2006, we started a group called Space Angels Network and you were around for the beginning of that too. And I don't know how many people involved in leadership positions in quote unquote, new space today at one point or another went through space angels network. They either volunteered there. They worked there. They were investors there. They were entrepreneurs through there. And yeah, To this day, even though we started in 2006 a long time ago I still get people every now and then coming up to me and saying, Hey, I had a great experience through Space Angels Network. Thanks so much for starting it. Likewise, with some of the other ventures that I've done, or some of the mentorship that I've done of young, students or professionals as they were coming up and I've had people say, Hey, you gave me my start in this industry, or, you gave me this advice and it really helped change my life. I think that's what gives me the most satisfaction. And and I think that's what founders from an entrepreneurial standpoint, I think that's what founders have to remember, right? When you're sitting in front of that blank whiteboard thinking of what your business venture is going to be, you're going to be impacting a lot of people's lives. Transcribed Hopefully, especially if you're successful, you're going to be impacting a lot of people's lives your fellow co founders, your fellow startup people, their families yeah the people that use your products and services, the people that hear about you, competitors, investors, you're going to be impacting a lot of people's lives. And I think I hope that I've done my best to keep that in mind at every step of the way. So I don't know if that's a legacy question, but at least that's what that's what kind of keeps me going the most and what gives me the most satisfaction.
Steve F:The everybody's thoughts on legacy are different. That's great. Thank you for that. And where can people find you? You have a lot of things going on. Where's the best place people can learn more about what you're doing. And
Guillermo:Yeah, because I'm so scattered and I've got this whole parallel entrepreneurship thing going. A couple of years ago I redid my personal website, so that's where I direct people to. It's a good landing page and that'll take you out in the different directions, whether it's ocean music space, whatever. So that said, sunline. com.
Steve F:I'll put that also in the link on the show notes and everything. So I want to thank you for the time. It's been a great conversation and people learn about what, learn about you and I'm sure we'll have you back to a lot more to talk about. So thanks for the time today.
Guillermo:Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate it.
