#81 Brian Streem, Vermeer: An American founder’s move to Ukraine to build drone tech

Brian: 0:00

This is a very complicated sale. It's a very complicated sales process. There is, unfortunately, no silver bullet to getting this to work. You know, you could impress the hell out of the most important commander who runs some important battalion, but if the guy who runs the drone company doesn't like you, it doesn't matter, you're toast. If the people funding the commander don't like you, you're toast. There's so many ways to be burnt and toast. So I kind of always just go back to, you better hope to God that you have a product that just solves a big enough problem.

Luka: 1:40

Welcome back to The Vertical Space. Today we're diving into a fascinating and wide ranging conversation with Brian Streem, the CEO and founder of Vermeer, a company at the forefront of innovations in positioning and navigation technology. So like a few previous guests we've had on the podcast, Brian is not an aviation guy or even a drone guy, or with any defense background. He is a problem solver, went to NYU for film production, and prior to Vermeer led a company that was the leader in drone footage for the U.S. film industry. Brian kicks off our discussion with a compelling answer to our favorite opener: what do people disagree with you on. His response doesn't hold back, even challenging views shared by some of our previous guests. If you enjoy a bit of controversy, you'll love Brian's candid perspective. About a year ago, Brian made the bold decision to relocate from New York to Kyiv, immersing himself and his company in the Ukrainian defense tech ecosystem. This move has given him a truly unique perspective and much of our conversation centers on that journey. Why he chose Kyiv, how he built a trusted network, navigated local business dynamics and understood the flow of money in Ukraine's defense ecosystem. All the while developing advanced drone technology in the war zone. Interestingly, one of the most unexpected benefits of being in Ukraine, hasn't been forging local business relationships, but gaining credibility with U.S. and European companies that ultimately supply technology to Ukraine. Brian unpacks this in great detail and outlines how he collaborates with the end users of his technology although his direct customers are large drone manufacturers, often funded by the DOD. Hearing him describe the challenges and opportunities of marketing solutions in Ukraine is truly eyeopening. We also talk about Vermeer's visual positioning system and how that might be a gateway to equipping drones with sensors and computers and enabling them to do all kinds of intelligent and autonomous behaviors. Along the way, Brian shares his thoughts on the competitive drone landscape in Ukraine, why being early to market matters and the importance of listening to customers. As we wrap up, Brian discusses other pressing problems in Ukraine that he believes needs solutions. He also shares his philosophy on starting companies and solving problems. He says you should call hundreds, if not thousands of people, and people with money, and listen to their problems and to never ever start with a product. First ask people with money, what problems they want to solve. Another gem is his comment that you should never be the person to speak after introductions, let others describe their problems first. Brian has a diverse background that traces back to the film industry. His journey is marked by a unique blend of creativity and technical ingenuity. His early fascination with cameras became the catalyst for a groundbreaking solution to the GPS denied problem. Leading Vermeer Brian is transforming that vision into reality, creating a sophisticated vision-based navigation system for GPS denied environments. In navigating both uncharted territories and industry norms, Brian's journey highlights the power of interdisciplinary thinking. His success underscores the idea that even outsiders can thrive in traditionally rigid sectors, such as defense technology through determination and innovation. Thanks a lot, Brian, for a terrific conversation. Brian, welcome to The Vertical Space. It's so great to have you

Brian: 5:46

Yeah, no, thank you for, for having me on

Luka: 5:49

Is there anything that very few in the industry agree with you on?

Brian: 5:52

Yeah, I think, there's kind of a few things that come immediately to mind, which is that like, you know, holy crap, everything stinks in general, like everything is terrible and nothing kind of works. that's my first impression. My second, my second kind of immediate thing is, I cannot find a good drone platform that does what I need it to do. Like, just like, but like, I'm, I'm in Ukraine 10 months. everything kind of stinks. I'm part of a solicitation right now, with the U. S. government, and I have big drone partners, and like, I'm like, oh my god, these drones stink too. That's a problem. My second thing and I'm kind of shocked by this, but there seems to be like a very big, very big appeal to mass and volume. Like, oh, we need more mass. We need more volume. We need more volume. And the amount of times when I'm here, here in Ukraine and people are like, yeah, look at, look at this drone. It cost us$10. I'm like, yeah, and it stinks and it doesn't work. Like spend more money. And, you know, things that cost more money are typically better. You get what you pay for. And I see just like a lot of people like, oh, low cost, low cost. I suppose low cost means different things to different people. But I'd rather spend more money on better things that actually are effective. And I think we're kind of like losing some sight of like, of that in the industry.

Luka: 7:20

Tell us more about the, Nothing works part, you know, in what way do you see that the drones or the technology is deficient

Brian: 7:29

So, yeah, I'm heavily involved in, you know, mid-strike, deep-strike drone program here in Ukraine, and, like, there is, there are problems all over the place. I mean, I guess my first reaction, you know, well, what do you expect? Some people have only been building drones for two years. I mean, these are complex things that are designed to fly, you know, thousands of kilometers away, avoid air defense systems, avoid electronic warfare systems, fly really low, fly at night, hit things precisely. I mean, we're talking about things that have kind of like never been attempted in like in, in the history of mankind. And they're trying to do it at a price point, which is like, you know, absolutely insane. I mean, I've seen some platforms that are supposed to go a thousand, so, kilometers. A thousand kilometers. This is an American audience. That's like taking a flight from JFK and landing in Florida. Like, that is like a manned aviation plane flight that lasts for two and a half hours. And now the unmanned system is doing that sort of flight. so. Obviously, you'd be kind of stupid, and you wouldn't have any, like, experience dealing in the real world to think it would go well right away. Of course there's going to be, probably, of course there's going to be, it's going to take five years before it starts to work. I mean, that's what the average kind of, like, you know, time of doing anything, let alone, like, complicated aviation thing where there's, like, an aggressive enemy that's, like, you know, defying your ability to use, you know, GPS. So yes, I mean, there is a lot of low success rates, you know, things not hitting their targets. Drones not hitting their targets. I mean, that's what we're talking about. I mean, people read about things on CNN hitting targets, but it's like, yeah. It hit that building. It wasn't supposed to hit that building. Like, at a certain point, gravity is going to take hold, and the drone's going to come down and hit something. so, and there's a lot of, kind of, pride in, like, the price points of some of these platforms. Oh, 35, 000, 45, 000, 65, 000. And like I said earlier, yeah, and it's not working. Like, you can have all the pride in the world that you made it so cheap, but at a certain point, like, guess what? It's not working. There's like a cost benefit analysis of that someone needs to run. And like, that's like, well, if we, if we spend You know, maybe we have to spend 100, 000 to get this magical doohickey device, and that magical doohickey device will allow these drones to be 50 percent effective. Well, then you have to kind of like, look and do some mathematics and be like, well, we'd be saving, we're losing so much money because these drones are not effective. We're losing billions of dollars because these drones are not effective, but if we bought this million dollar doohickey device, It'll cost more money up front, but the drones will be more effective, and then we'll save more money because we won't have to buy so many drones. so, you know, a lot of, a lot of times also we simply don't have good, we don't know what goes wrong. I mean, like, who, you know, who's collecting data on this? What, what infrastructure is, who has a spreadsheet that shows every single drone mission that lists the flight hours, the, like, the engine used? I mean, the battlefield is, like, not a, not a good place to collect scientific data where there's only one variable that changes. You're dealing with, like, no one's, no one's really collecting data on this stuff in some way that could be, like, scientifically observed. And also like, you know, for drones that are one way or like, you know, munition drones, they don't, oftentimes you shoot them off into the middle of the night and then they disappear and you have no clue what happens to them. There's no pinging, there's no satellite, there's no SATCOMs, there's no RFCOMs. It's just kind of goes and then you wonder if, you know, you get BDA. and then you either maybe hit it or like there's a forest fire somewhere in Siberia, and you wonder, was that you was that me? Did I do that?

Luka: 11:21

You're BDA, refreshing your newsfeed on your phone.

Brian: 11:26

Yeah. Yeah. It's, there's, you know, professional forms of BDA and then there's like, you know, Twitter and, you know, Telegram or, or, or, or whatever. so.

Luka: 11:33

Brian, what parts of the drone tech stack most contribute to this, poor performance from your observation?

Brian: 11:41

The reality is, we do not know, because, because we are not, you know, we are not getting good data back from the drones. Like, that's like, you know, we don't have a good RF signal, especially on things that are going very far away. There's no, I mean, there's just like no, I don't know, hey, I don't know what happened to it. And sometimes you're shooting dozens of these things off and you just like don't know. but we don't really know, but we can't, I mean, they could either be anything from engine failure, to air defense systems. To electronic warfare GPS spoofing or jamming, to their being abducted by aliens, and anything and everything in between. Having said that, we kinda know, we kinda know, that there's a lot of air defense, and drones are showing up on radars, and then they're shooting them down. These platforms, aren't, you know, aren't going particularly fast. You know, you can shoot them down with radars, and then we also know that there's significant heavy jamming and spoofing of GPS. And the Russians are very, very smart about how to, It's not just turning off the GPS, it's spoofing, it's literally slowly and over time manipulating the GPS signal so that these things ultimately just kind of careen into a mountain or careen into the ground or whatever. You know, you make the drone think it's really high, so it goes lower, and then it goes lower, and then it goes lower, and then it goes lower, and then it just kind of crashes somewhere. So we know, we know that those two things are happening, to what extent those two things are happening, and what I would call just like, you know, mechanical failure, no one really knows the percentage of those things, or how they're divvied up.

Peter: 13:15

It's this chaotic innovation environment that you find yourself right in the middle of. What was it that led you to move to Kiev? Was it to find this, to get into the middle of this? What brought you there? Tell us the story of how you went all in on that and what it was like when you first landed.

Brian: 13:35

yeah, so you know, it's kind of, it's kind of funny, I remember, so I don't have a defense background, I went to NYU, I studied film production. and, the short, somewhat version of the story is, I know a lot about cameras and how cameras work, so I kind of, by chance, and through some good fortune, I ended up kind of getting into, the defense industry by way of this, vision based navigation system I was building, where I was using cameras to, like, help drones navigate where there was no GPS. And what happened was, I had a customer who, well, number one, I was trying to kind of get in, you know, from my house in Queens, my apartment in Queens, I was like trying to send emails to people in Ukraine, and wondering how come they're not begging me for my technology. Like, I'm like, I can't get any traction. Like, how, like, who were they to not respond? Like, don't I have something great? like, don't I have something that could solve all their problems? So I was kind of like bitter and like a little bitter and a little like kind of dumbfounded that like it wasn't easy. And this was in maybe 20, 2022, I would say. And then in, or maybe it's around 2023. And then what happened was in 2024, I was doing an integration with a kind of a large ISR drone manufacturer in Western Europe, and they were taking one of their platforms to do a demo into Ukraine, to essentially, you know, show it off and try to sell more stuff. And I had made contact with, like, one loitering munition company in Ukraine, and I kind of set up, like, an integration with them. So, I just decided to, like, let me go, let me go. I mean, it was pretty scary. I mean, I've never, never been, in a, in a war environment before, but I actually kind of thought, oh, this should be easy. Like, you know, I, I'm in the desert, I have a glass of water, I should be able to sell the water, and it should be like, you know, I, I, it should take me two weeks, I'll be there for two weeks, in and out, I'll make a zillion dollars, and that would be that. I ended up kind of, you know, and I literally, my perception was I had like no clue. I had no clue. I thought I'd be in a foxhole for a week or two. Like, I just like, and now I see some, you know, friends when they come to Kyiv, like, I'm like, okay. People carrying large, like Americans, carrying like large sums of cash, like, around like strange body apparatus, like, they're gonna be kidnapped, or, you know, I'm just like, wow, you guys really, you know, you're, you're, you're naive, but I was also naive at the time, and,

Jim: 15:59

How was it most different than what you thought it would be?

Brian: 16:01

It's somewhat kind of like, you know, when you watch like black and white movies, you're kind of like, you just see the, you're like, oh, well, the 40s and the 50s, they must have been in black and white. But like, no, like, it's actually was in full color and people like spoke normally and people had like depth to their person. It's like normal life. It's like, yeah, I go outside right now, there's like cafes and I have to like wonder like what to eat and like, you know, like, oh, man, like, you know, I have to deal with the fact that I don't really speak the language. It's like normal life. And three times a day, there are air raid alarms. And once in a while, more than once in a while, like the air defense system will engage. So like, life is normal. It's in color. There's, you know, obviously military presence and there's like, but there's cafes and there's children and there's, you know, laughing and there's crying and there's the cinema is playing films. And, you know, there's people going to nightclubs and, there's Uber, and there's taxis, and there's, you know, all that kind of stuff is happening. you know, there are people conducting, you know, hair salons, and all that kind of business is kind of operating. Just, once in a while, you hear an air raid alarm. And, but this is in Kiev. Obviously, if you go further east, like, it's a very, very different sort of a thing. And then, you know, the, the deeper you kind of get into like the military stuff, the more you start to realize you're like, you know, oh, I'm in the thick of a war right now. So the story kind of goes like, I got here and then what, what, so what did I do? when I got here, I kind of did a few things. One of the things I did was I essentially like went on LinkedIn and I LinkedIn automated anyone who worked in the government of Ukraine, any, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. I essentially kind of like cold, outreached, to people. And, that ultimately got me into kind of like the Pentagon of Ukraine, where I met a pretty senior member of the military political scene, and, It was kind of like that scene, if you've ever seen Inglorious Bastards, where he meets, Churchill. He's, like, sitting in a big room, and there's, like, a big globe and maps. It was kind of like that. It wasn't as ornate. It was more of a kind of post Soviet mustiness. And he, this individual, is looking at maps on a wall, big maps on a wall, and he starts to tell me about targets that we're gonna hit together. And he doesn't even ask me if I wanted to do it. He just starts to kind of tell me that's what we're going to do. And, I'm, you know, I'm sitting, standing there, shaking my head as if I'm like, this is what I was expecting. This is not what I was expecting. And then he pretty much looks at me and he tells me that he needs my help to win the war. And I kind of tried, tried my best to, You know, not be lame. I was just, I was just trying to be cool. I was just being like, I was like, yep, I think I could do that. And, and then I kind of, I mean, it would have, it would have looked really stupid to be like, oh, I don't think I'm interested. I don't really know if I want to do that. Like, just like, I had, like, kind of no option. but to say, you know, What would you, what would you like me to do? and then I kind of got, introduced around to a lot of, a lot of drone manufacturers, a lot of mid range and deep strike drone manufacturers. And, people started to kind of hear that there was like a, you know, an American guy around who was hawking a vision navigation product. And, you know, What do you do? You kind of, act professionally, you learn, and I, I, I'm not an engineer, so I always had kind of like one or two of my engineers from, you know, America with me, and we started to kind of integrate. I think we got, like, started to get like a good reputation. We started to show that, like, our thing actually worked, which was pretty decent, but also, like, You know, there's, I've been involved in every level of kind of, you know, a lot of people think that the movie I've been living is kind of like War Dogs, it's actually not. It's actually been kind of more Bridge of Spies, which, if, I don't know if people have seen it, but it's a Steven Spielberg, it's essentially Tom Hanks Tom Hanks has to go across the Berlin Wall and essentially negotiate a swap of spies. And when he's over there, he doesn't speak the language. People are kind of like, like somebody steals his jacket. Like people like, like he can't trust anyone. No one trusts him. People are lying to him. There's, there's like 50 shades of obfuscation and confusion. And like, Is that person fucking with me right now? I think they're fucking with me, but like, you'll never know. I'll go to my deathbed confused about certain meanings I've had. deciding who to trust is really complicated. You know, there are certain people who you're like, I don't trust that guy at all, but I think I need to like, I think I need to play ball with him. But you just have to like, know what you're kind of getting involved with.

Jim: 20:39

Brian, if I could ask a quick question, love the story. So to educate our audience, when they said you could help us win the war, what were the capabilities that you represented where they thought it was novel, where you could have such an

Peter: 20:51

I'm just blown away that this, this was off of a LinkedIn cold outreach. I mean, you imagine doing that at the Pentagon, how far you would get.

Jim: 20:59

But a lot of your story, Brian, comes from cold calling link contacts, even when you started your company.

Brian: 21:05

Peter, I did do that with the Pentagon and it worked, you know, like when I, so when I started in 2020, I mean, it's like kind of like my famous story of like how I got involved with all this stuff is like, I was in this, Techstars, Air Force program in 2020, I knew, I probably in my life never met anyone from the, like, Didn't know anyone from the military, couldn't imagine that like someone from the military would think that what I was doing was interesting. Didn't really even like figure out that like generals were like human beings. Like it was like, you know, it's like kind of like, oh, they're like, they must like, they might like, they must not be human or like, you know, like, yeah. I just, like, didn't know. And when I got into this thing in 2020, I, I have a very simple rule of sales, which is you can't sell shit to people if they don't know you exist. And I was like, hmm, somehow I need to let everyone in the DoD know I exist. So I hired someone off of Upwork who built a tool that scraped every DoD email off of Google. All dod emails end in dot mill, socom dot mill, us af mill, navy dot mill, darpa.mil. You know, they all end in dot mill. So I built a tool. This was I mean, every email, every email off of PDFs, PowerPoint presentations, and you know, this is also something that Google does not want you to do. So there was a level of sophistication to this. So that's what I did. in 2020, I ended up cold emailing 50, 000 people at the DoD, and I probably spoke to 2, 000 people in my first year, and I ended up winning about 6 or 7 million dollars of government contracts my first year, because I did just that. I cold emailed the Pentagon.

Peter: 22:44

That's an impressive ratio. That's

Brian: 22:47

Yes, I think, it was, yes, 2, 000 phone calls, 50, 000 people emailed, and it led to 7 million of, like, R& D money to, like, build technology. And that's ultimately where I learned about the big problem, which was GPS denied navigation, GPS denied navigation. That's what I, essentially, that was the smartest thing I ever did, was I asked people what the hard problem was. And what was, what were they having a problem with? And they said GPS and because I had a background in cinematography, I knew about cameras and I kind of thought, Hey, maybe I could say, I think I can, I think I know how to solve this with cameras. and then, you know, four years later, I'm being asked in Ukraine if I could help win a war. So I kind of like growth hacked and hustled my way to, to, to the site of a global conflict.

Peter: 23:30

Yeah. So you take that same business development recipe in the Ukraine into that community, but it's different,

Brian: 23:37

That's exactly right. I do the thing with LinkedIn, and then on LinkedIn, I essentially, I also did something else, which was like, I, I started to see who was commenting on Ukrainian military type posts, and I start to just reach out to people. Hey, this guy looks like he knows stuff. Hi, Sir, you look like you know stuff, I'm in Ukraine, whatever, and then like, when you, when you land in Ukraine, you start to meet a lot of people who are, and you know, these people, these people are very, you know, there's a lot of sharky people who are like, look, you know, advisors. Oh, give me, give me, what is it, a 10, 000 a month thing and I'll be your bead, I'll connect you with all the people, you know, and like those people, I mean, I avoided those people like the plague in America, and I'm certainly going to avoid you like the plague in Ukraine. I mean, like, anybody who's like, 20, 000 a month. I mean, it just seems like, Well, it's like, I don't know, I have like LinkedIn and like, listen, if, if you have a product that people really, really want, people like, people will find you, like people will, like, you might be able to accelerate it. But if you got something that no one wants. You are screwed. the fortunate fact was I had and I have a product that actually is very desirable. So people started to come out the wood work, get a good reputation, started to integrate things with places, start to get introduced to people that I'm just like, I think this guy's lying to me about everything. Like that guy who I do trust is telling me to trust him.

Luka: 25:02

Give us an example of those conversations, what, what was it that kind of

Brian: 25:06

well,

Luka: 25:07

your, your hair stand up in the back

Brian: 25:08

you know, when shit they say doesn't make sense, you know, there have been business people here, you know, when the stories just don't jive, you know, when people are not answering questions directly, you know, Stories changing and people not answering questions directly. is a bit, you know, I don't know anything about the environment I'm in. But I know you said this and now you're saying this. Why is, why is there, what changed? What's the delta? Why did you change the story on me? But also you all have to be, you also have to be concerned with the fact of like, Do I call, do I call this person out on their bullshit? you know, like is, am I at risk of something terrible happening to me if I do that? so like I, like, this is all like very kind of, you know, Bridge of Spies like it's very like, who are these people? They're all lying to me. Okay. Like, you know, that was kind of like my biggest thing out here this is, sorry, this episode is filled with so many film references, but, you know, in Indiana Jones, and the Last Crusade, he gets off. Well, who is it? The, the guy at the beginning, the doctor tells him, Dr. Jones, don't trust anyone, and that guy ends up being a Nazi. So like, you know, the only person to really trust is, my lawyer. You know, I have, like, a Ukrainian lawyer, and I trust that guy. if somebody lies to you one time, like, they could, they, they shall never be trusted again, and the amount of people who have lied to me, who've, you know, told me fibs, I'm like, listen, it's a very complex environment. People tell fibs, or they lie, or they kind of tell mistruths sometimes. They're embarrassed by the truth. It's everything from like embarrassed by the truth. Like if you're like a young person, like you have to like lie because your resume isn't that good because you have like nothing else to go on. So sometimes people just like embarrassed and sometimes people have like nefarious intentions. And, but you have to be very, I mean, you have to be very, very, very careful. And this is the kind of stuff that they don't teach at Harvard Business School, I suspect. I wouldn't know, I've never been to Harvard Business School, but I would, I would imagine that that kind of stuff is not, is not readily taught.

Luka: 27:12

What were some other ways in which the experience in Ukraine was in stark contrast to what you know from the Western world, from the U. S.?

Brian: 27:21

You know, it's not even, not even technology per se. It's more like defined business processes and defined business acumen sorts of things. Of like, okay, we're doing this integration, you know, in the West, we're doing this integration, let's have a technical phone call. Let's do an intro business call. Okay, let's sign an NDA. Okay, we sign an NDA. Okay, let's have a technical phone call. Technical phone call done. Okay, would we like to go ahead with an integration? Okay, when would you like to do it? Let's do it on this date. How much is it going to cost? Okay, this much. Do you have that money? Okay. There's just like, Very step procedure. Let's sign an NDA. Let's do this. Let's do that. Let's meet on this day. You're paying for it. I'm paying for it. Let's do this. Okay, great. Let's, and then let's review the results and let's work. You know, there's a, there doesn't seem to be that level, that kind of like clear path to business being conducted. Um, why that, why that is is the obvious next question. I think a few things. I think like, the war is a very challenging environment. A lot of like the biggest drone companies I know here, literally, I mean, two and a half years ago, were not making drones. They were doing something else. Everyone, some people were chefs, some people were interior decorators, some people were landscape architects, and now they're building drones. so I would imagine, and I've been privy to some of this. I would imagine every level of clusterfuckery is going on in terms of like, Oh my god, like, oh my god, nothing has worked, like, like, you know, I mean, just operational business stuff. Ordering parts, the parts are broken, ordering this, the shipment's delayed, cash flow problems, people problems. landlord problems. I imagine that there's every level of drones crashing when they're not supposed to crash. That and a zillion bajillion other things that I am, like, not privy to. Every level of kind of those sorts of problems. So I just imagine that, like, it's, it's that coupled with, you know, my piece of technology is, somewhat sophisticated, like it's like a deep neural network computer visioned localization system. And like, you need a certain level of professionalism, of like, how the drone works and kind of like how to integrate it to do a good job with it and actually have it succeed like i have like a 35 page ICD it's like a technical manual on how my you know and i've been asked most most multiple times by people who are trying to like help me sell stuff here and then like brian it's a little too long can you make it five pages i'm just like what the fuck am i supposed to just like delete 80 percent of this and, like, assume that, like, people are going to be able to figure out. I mean, it's like, it's like, no, this is, you know, hard problems, hard, complicated, technical problems, like, electronic warfare and air defense systems require sophisticated, complicated, sometimes more expensive than you'd like solutions to solve the problem.

Jim: 30:26

While you talk about the problem, talk, tell our audience what problem you're there to solve.

Brian: 30:30

Yes, so the problem that I'm here to solve essentially is electronic warfare, EW. So essentially, the Russians have, pretty sophisticated methods of essentially jamming or spoofing GPS signals, all drones, all missiles, all ground, pretty much every robot in your life, but particularly drones and missiles, require GPS to know how to go. And the Russians are very, very good at essentially emitting fake GPS signal or fake GPS noise, making these platforms think that there are other places. I will literally be, I mean, and this, this affects me personally, like, I literally will be in my apartment, And I, like, look at, you know, where I need to go on a map, and the blue dot is, like, in the, in the Caspian Sea. I've been driven in a, in a taxi, and the guy took a wrong turn because GPS was being spoofed at the time. So this is a real thing, like, I, it has affected me personally, but it's also affecting these platforms. And if the drone's GPS gets confused It's just not going to be able to go where it goes. So my product, I call it VPS, Visual Positioning System. Essentially the way it works is we take, one to four EO, daytime, or longwave infrared, nighttime, like thermal cameras. Those cameras are looking down at the ground, so it's kind of like a box with these cameras. The cameras go into a little computer, the little computer has our software on it, and then attached to that little computer is like a little hard drive, like a SSD card, and on that SSD card is a previously acquired, pre installed 3D terrain map database that we get from a third party satellite imagery provider. So essentially, as the drone flies through the environment, the cameras see the terrain, and in real time, our software matches what the cameras see to the locally stored 3D terrain map database. So people really like it because you cannot jam it. You cannot spoof it. It doesn't emit or receive any signal. We're not relying on GPS signals. we're relying on photons are hitting the sensor. The computer is running like a deep neural network. And it's essentially consistently matching what the cameras see to that locally stored database. So you can't jam it, you can't spoof it. It works during the daytime, during the nighttime. It's very accurate. It works at multiple different altitudes, different speeds, and is rather effective. So that is, you know, we've been developing this for the last 4 or 5 years or so. And, we made some kind of very smart choices early on and kind of like the development of the thing of the product that make it actually very effective out here. Like, where we use multiple cameras and 3D map data. So, because we use multiple maps or should be 3D maps and multiple cameras, we're able to fly very low. Because if you have just like 1 camera looking directly down, you're If you're like over farmland, the closer to the ground you get, the more kind of just grass you see, and then you can't localize to the map at all. So we're using 3D maps, so you could actually point the cameras looking forward. So if you're just looking down, imagine you're going to see like a one square foot of terrain, but if you point the cameras forward, suddenly you could see, you know, a hundred square miles of terrain. So, and we're using multiple cameras, so we're able to see. Not just, you know, 90 degrees of terrain, we're able to see 180 degrees of terrain. So the more stuff you see, the more, the better the chances you can localize against something. People want to fly low. They want to fly low to avoid radar, to avoid air defense systems, etc. So, it's a pretty sophisticated system. And, we made some smart choices early on in the development that, quite literally by chance. I mean, the reason we did the multiple cameras and the 3D maps is because we initially intended to have this work on multi rotor drones. And multi rotor drones, I built this for drone cinematographers to fly low in cities. So I kind of knew I needed, 3D maps and multiple cameras to fly low. So it's just kind of like, a sheer coincidence that, that yielded, the results that we're getting out here that are required to fly, like, low and fast and at night.

Jim: 34:35

So the market that you found yourself in was underserved. You were providing a novel capability where other people doing some of the same things and how were they, how are they doing it?

Peter: 34:45

I mean, from what, just from our perspective, we've seen a number of people attempting this, but the results vary greatly.

Brian: 34:53

Yeah, I think, I mean, You know, when I, when I first got here, there were people who clearly like, wanted the capability and believed mine was the best. And they were saying things like, you know, Brian, we had like a hackathon and 30 other people propose doing the same thing. And I was like. Good luck and Godspeed to those, you know, college kids. Like, I spent, you know, 15 million building this thing four years of my life. I know what it is to build this and actually get it to work. I don't wish it on my worst enemy. If you want to start from scratch and you want some like young kids to try to like do this, like, okay, fine, it's going to take a long time and it's going to be complicated. And the devil is in the details. So it's complicated. It's really complicated to do and do it like the right way. So, there are competitors on the market. My spiel with customers is pretty much like the technical spiel I gave you, which I know that there are other competitors, much bigger, much, much bigger companies that build a lot of other types of technology, but they have a system, it uses one camera, and they're working with a big drone provider now, and they can't fly lower than a certain altitude, and I, I bid to work on that project a year ago, and that drone maker kind of has come back to me recently and said, I really messed up. We should have gone with you. What will it take? We're going to, we might fire this other company. Can we work with you instead? And, you know, I'm over here being like, oh, well, you know, you know, which makes me feel obviously amazing. But it's also like, I don't know, I'm busy. Like, how many drones have you sold? Like, what's your sales pipeline look like? Like, I'm, I'm busy. like, what, what are you doing that's so interesting? I mean, I, I see drone companies all the time. you know, what are you going to do to convince me now to come back, come back to you? so there are people, you know, like, listen, it's competitive. People are now realizing, I was fortunate that I realized it was a problem in 2020 when I made my 2000 phone calls. Like, I was early and I moved aggressively. And I move with conviction. There was a lot of people, by the way, in 2020 who told me not to solve this problem. Who told me, Oh, people have been doing this with, with missiles already. And people had, you know, Oh, they have this. Oh, I know they have this. and I went, where? Where is it? You know, I heard rumors and I heard myths and I kind of ultimately, I just couldn't find anyone who actually had it. That was the thing. People told me, people, I actually could not find anyone who actually had it. And I also kind of knew like, you know, they're like these like very fancy computers coming out now and I'm like, I'm like, the kind of computer you need to really do this the right way didn't exist before today. Like, so what the hell are people talking about? Like, there's no way, like, it just, like, it doesn't exist. I think, I think everyone is wrong. And I spoke to a lot of people. and like, listen, like, yes, I knew nothing about the industry. I knew nothing about, you know, what, one of my customers, like a, you know, tier one prime, contractor in California. And, I was in a meeting maybe two years ago, with the PMs, of a really, really, really, really big, program for like a zillion dollar plane that's supposed to circle the Earth in case, you know, the end of humanity happens, sort of a plane. And I was having a discussion about installing my VPS system onto this plane. And my contact over there, who's kind of like a friend, he's like, Brian, how the hell did you do this? You haven't, yeah, you've been in the industry for three, four years. Somehow you figure it out, something everyone wants, you built it. And now like, you know, you, you've reached the heart of military aviation. How the hell did you do that? and I think my answer is, and I tell this to like entrepreneurs is like, I simply, I spoke to 2, 000 people. I asked them what their hardest problem was. I solved their hardest problem in a slightly novel way. And that was by, listen, if people told me they wanted a time machine, I would not know how to build a time machine. It ends up I had an idea on how to build something that, to this really hard problem. And I moved very decisively, aggressively, quickly. And, and I ended up with something that everyone, and then, and then I got a little lucky in that a war broke out a few years later, where, yeah, people in 2020 were right. That was the big problem. GPS is a problem. People are, like, it is not effective anymore in a war, like, table stakes. table stakes like, does your thing use GPS? Bullshit, we can't have that. so, you

Jim: 39:11

Are people willing to pay for it, Brian?

Brian: 39:13

Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Oh, man. People are willing to let the Americans pay for it. or NATO countries pay for it. Large aerospace companies that are building these things, yes, they are willing to pay for it. Absolutely. Ukrainian companies, it's kind of the same thing. I kind of said this already. It's like, yeah, it's cheap and it don't work. So you maybe need to spend more money with more sophisticated technology and get it to work. So that is, I mean, that's a, so that's, that's part, that's part of the challenge out here.

Peter: 39:51

So how's it playing out for you, in the more recent months across the different partners, right? You have U. S. partners you've been talking to, you're decoding the relationships in Ukraine itself, and finding those partners. And then there are other European partners. How's it playing out? What's looking the most promising?

Brian: 40:11

So yeah, the reality is, a lot of the young drone companies that are a year or two old that you know, have orders, but there are, you know, almost impossible to sell anything to. You know, these are the people who are like, can you make your ICD be five pages? They might lack the interest. They might lack the financial incentive. They might lack a whole host of things. Really the people who have the money are the Americans, the Germans, the Poles. NATO countries, like you need to kind of get into the, you know, United Kingdom. You need to get into like the flow of money that's coming from the people who are paying for all this stuff. And the reality is, is like, Ukrainians aren't paying for this stuff. It's you know, foreign nations that are paying for this stuff. So you need to kind of figure out how to like, essentially like add your stuff onto the line items of those of those countries that are paying for that stuff. so selling to those companies directly, very challenging. I also, I'm also in a little bit of a strange position because, I am not a drone manufacturer. I'm not a platform. I'm not like a prime. I am a component. I'm an important component, but I am a new novel component. I'm just like them buying a CRPA antenna. I'm just like a new antenna that they have to buy for their thing. My antenna, you know, costs a lot of money, but it's a component, okay? So, so, you know, I both need to kind of sell somewhat to the drone maker, but I also kind of need to sell to the people financing acquisition of the drone. So I don't actually know a whole lot about like selling to like the MOD here. Like there's, but I'm not, they're not really my customer, you know, for all intents and purposes, like the U. S. government isn't really my customer. I need to talk to them to let them know that I exist. And they're, you know, you should write requirements because look at how dope my product is. But really I'm selling to, you know, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin and, you know, Griffin Aerospace, the guys building the platforms. But at the, at the same time, it would have been totally wrong of me, like, like, I, I do have several purchase orders for large drone manufacturers here, but they're old established companies in Ukraine. People who actually have accounting departments and human resources departments and R& D department, you know, people actually like have like real businesses that aren't kind of like, guys in a garage. Okay. Selling to guys in a, I mean, it's got, everybody's kind of like a guy in a garage here. So you gotta, you gotta be careful falling down an endless pithole of guys in garages. And sometimes the garages are big and impressive, but it's still like, kind of like guys in garages. So you gotta be careful of that. And then, you know, I have a large purchase order with like the U. S. government. and, you know, that's a good customer. you know, so you need to find the people kind of where the money's coming from. But you also, like, listen, you also need, like, you also need to have a product that's, like, unique. Like, people tell me in America, oh, I have a drone. I want to bring it to Ukraine. I'm like, yeah, so does everyone, like, so does everyone. Get in line. Get in line, buddy. Everyone's got a drone. And I'm also unique in that, I'm not a drone maker, so I, I know all the drone makers and I see everyone's dirty laundry, my hands touch everyone's drone and I know what they're doing and I'm also just kind of like, okay, so your fly's longer, like what, it has an Orange Cube, and oh, you're like a better process of manufacturing it, like, you know, I, I kind of hope that people realize that, whatever, okay, you're buying the motors from the same guy in Japan or in Germany, you're buying the this from the same guy over there, you're buying the same lithium polymer, blah, blah, blah, you know, okay, well, it's electric or it's whatever, it's a slingshot or it's a bungee cord, like, you know, How long does it fly? Okay, everyone's lying about that. okay, everyone's lying about, like, it's like the software. It's like the, the software that's going to kind of make these things do like magical, wonderful things. and, and that's kind of like my, you know, and I, I hope people are starting to kind of like realize that, because you're going to need magical software To get around a lot of these problems where like you don't, you can't talk to the drone. If you can't talk to the drone, and you can't see what the drone is doing, and the drone doesn't have GPS, you're gonna need the drone to like have a mind of its own. And take in sensor data, cameras, i. e. eyeballs. A computer, like a brain, and interpret and make its own judgment calls as to what needs to happen, because it can't phone home. and kind of my, like, idea here is that, you know, we're do we're solving this kind of, like, very, like, keystone critical technology, like GPS., You need that to do anything. And then, as we kind of mature that, we can kind of add other things, you know, sense and avoid. Not just sense of avoid of ground, but sense, or terrain, or other drone, but like sense of avoid of like, maybe someone's shooting things at it. Maybe we need to sense and avoid, air defense systems. maybe we need to do, like, precision strikes. Maybe we need to, like, you know, detect and follow certain things. kind of like the, the, the GPS vision app thing is a gateway drug to essentially, like, install cameras and with fancy computers on these aerial platforms to do all sorts of magical landing, landing on moving vessels, taking off on moving vessels. Overwater navigation by way of the moon and the sun, which is something we're developing. really these drones should have cameras and fancy computers on them all over the body. be like a Tesla.

Luka: 45:30

I'm curious, You mentioned a couple of times the flow of money in Ukraine. So can you give us an example of how Ukrainians buy defense technology and how that ultimately makes its way to the battlefield? Is it more of a centralized purchasing or do individual units have their own, acquisition?

Brian: 45:47

So I don't know if I'm, the best person to answer about this. Again, I'm not selling directly to, the M. O. D. I'm selling to, the drone manufacturers. But, I think there's some sort of standardized procurement process where you know, you get, like, a letter of intent or a letter of request from a unit. Certain units, you know, signatures are more valuables than other, and you take that to the purchasing department, there's some sort of standardized, testing of the equipment, deployment of the equipment, seeing if it works. And then, you know, you get into like a contract negotiation, I don't know exactly, you know, where the M. O. D. gets its money, but it's certainly from America and allied nations, I think is a large part of it. so that's like one chunk of it. Then the other chunk of it is from like what they call like third parties. And I believe if you go through that first route the system needs to be certified. What is certification? Certification is kind of like, someone at the MOD has kind of, you know, standardized pricing. The platform is kind of in the book of like, you know, this price, that price. And then, and then it could be like, you know, kind of like listed as an item for purchase. And then there, there's a second way, which is kind of like third party, which is anything like donations to like wealthy individuals who just want to fund something and donate the equipment. And then you get like kind of like task orders from like the MOD to like utilize it. Those are like the two main kind of ways. I'm trying to think, yeah, those are the two kind of main ways. And then there's also you just have like in my case, a drone manufacturer who's like, I'm investing my own money into your product. I think, I think, Brian, I think your product is so great. I think I'm going to be able to charge a thousand times X for my product. So I'm going to give you, you know, X dollars to essentially buy 50 of your systems and integrate it into my platform. And it'll be just like a new product. a new feature for my product and I'll be able to charge, you know, X amount of dollars more for it.

Luka: 47:37

In this chaotic, unstructured way that business is made, the decisions are made. It's not a stepwise approach that you know, we in the U. S. or Europe are used to? In that kind of a environment, what defines success? How do decisions get made? What's the winner's playbook?

Brian: 47:55

Well, I can't even imagine, trying to get into the drone game, now, like it's so much competition. you have to have a magical, magical capability that, like, blows people's minds to, like, really differentiate yourself. We're talking about, like, you know, the thing is affordable, flies at Mach 1, has no GPS, no com, and I guess, 50 percent hit rate. You know, you have to have a real magical capability to, like, get people's attention, I think. So being early, I think there are some early movers and I think you know, like anything, people utilize their connections from, like, there are some, there's some people have drone companies here who are very big and successful that were just like successful business people and other aspects of life. So they. Probably utilize connections with government. And, yeah, I mean, I would, I would assume similar to, entrepreneurs in the U. S. defense market. Like, okay, I see a need. I have these connections. I'm going to try to exploit it. So being early is critical. Listening to customers, is critical. Are there people with better technology who aren't getting their fair shake because of winners have already been picked? Yeah, I'm sure. You know, is it more, is it more so than any other place in the world? I do not know the answer to that question.

Peter: 49:14

I think one thing that would be interesting to talk about more is, you've been in Kyiv for a while now. You've pushed through this whole process of, you know, decoding the relationships, getting to know people, trying to figure out who to trust. And I'm just interested in how you pushed through that and what that's yielding. And was there a breakthrough moment for you or was it more, gradual, because the interesting wrinkle here is that, you know, you go to Kyiv, but perhaps some of the greatest assets coming out of it are not, sales relationships into Ukrainian companies, but it is a broader understanding of what's going on in that market for, your business development with U S and European companies. And so I'm really interested to unpack that and, and talk more about how you have decoded the relationships and developed actual trusted relationships with the right people in Kyiv and what that whole sort of process has been like for you.

Brian: 50:17

Yeah, I mean, I kind of think that any real sane person would have, left Ukraine seven months ago easily. Because there have been strange Kafka esque, Orwellian nightmare, like, what the hell is go like, who, why, like, why am I being treated like this? Like, why are people gaslighting me in certain situations? I'm like, I am not crazy. I think I, I think I'm actually rather normal. I have my wits about my, I'm like, why am I being treated like I'm the lunatic here. And, I mean, some of those situations you get, I mean, it's like kind of scary, you know, when you're, I'm sitting around tables with, commanders of units and there's like yelling fights going on and I'm like Brian you're right. You're right. Don't let them see you sweat like like you like you are right but sometimes I've been like holy shit like me like like This is a fuck situation. but kind of pushed through it, and I continued to work with these companies in the ways that I thought I knew how to. And, ultimately that gave me a level of experience and expertise. when I say experience, what do I mean? I mean, like, I probably now, me and my company have more experience in integrating and deploying vision based navigation systems on drones than anyone else in the world. And I tell it to customers, well, why should, why should we go with you? I actually know what it takes to do this. Not only technically, yes, but I've also had to deal with a tremendous amount of bullshit from a lot of people to get it done. So you know, okay, like take three months to set up an integration with a company. Then, you know, okay, three months later, five minutes into the flight, the CEO turns around, looks at me, we lost the drone, Brian. Ugh, okay, can we fly it you know, they crashed it into the side of a mountain, or the side of a hill, okay? great, three mon I waited three months. Okay, let's do another flight next week. Okay, fine, we're gonna Three more months go by. Okay, we've wasted six months now. Six goddamn months. And I'm also, like, a small startup. Like, I'm blowin through money, blowin through capital. My investors Brian, you have a glass of water. You're in the middle of the goddamn desert. You can't sell the wa like, what, like And there have been just things that Okay, oh, Brian we ordered the components for your system. They'll be here next week. Oh, next week? That's fantastic. How are you gonna get them here next week? I know those suppliers. They tell me it's gonna take two months. Trust me, Brian. Trust you? Why? Brian, it's magic. I don't believe in magic, which I don't. Anyone tells you they have magic, they're full of shit. Okay, and guess what? Nine months later, the component's still not here. Okay, so like, there has just been like, every level of lying, bullshitty, confusing. Like, okay, where are the components? You say DHL has them, you say they're on a private plane, they're at the border, they're not there. Show me, say DHL, show me a tracking number. Call DHL in front of me. So I mean, I've had to deal with a tremendous amount of, what the fuck is really going on here? But ultimately, I did enough work. I did enough work. I dealt with a tremendous amount of what I could only look back on and be like, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I have some conspiracy theories. There's some sort of concerted effort to stop me from doing what I wanted to do. Okay, like, it's like, like, how, like, how is all these terrible things happening? And then ultimately you deal with enough stuff. It takes the U. S. government a certain amount of time to get money free and then they go, oh yeah, well, we actually want to fund vision navigation and oh, we're DIU and we want to fund drones with vision navigation. Now, there's a solicitation from DIU, for mid strike, deep strike drones with vision navigation. Maybe it does say, maybe it said APNT or something like that. And then I had 12 different drone companies. Brian, can we put your logo in our book? Okay. it's about damn time. and then, you know, the funding starts to flow. So I, I had to deal with a tremendous amount of bullshit, but I got credibility. Listen, I could show you a 30 minute slideshow of all of the systems I've integrated with here, and all the data I've collected here, and all the missions flown here, and you know, It looks incredibly credible. Like I, I did a presentation for one of the biggest drone manufacturers, probably the biggest drone manufacturer in the world, or one of them. And, it was kind of like a sales pitch sort of a call. And, I go, okay, let me do a demo for you, like a virtual video demo. And I, you know, shared my screen. I showed, This platform, this data, this platform, this data, this platform. And they looked at that, all of them in this big company, big drone company, looked at themselves on video call and they go, does anyone think that doesn't work? So it's like, listen, we're not going to, they're like, we're not going to pay you to do a paid demo for us. It clearly works. We're going to work with you to get it integrated onto our product. So like all that terrible shit I went through, it ultimately led to me getting credibility, me actually collecting data, me actually being able to show people, look at all the stuff I did, and look at all, like, these systems I've integrated onto to have, you know, people in, at a big company in a powerful room look at each other and be like, yeah, clearly this shit works, and we should pay this guy money to integrate it onto our platform.

Jim: 55:43

So let me follow up with that. I, one thing that's really cool is that you're a component of a larger system, but you're actually meeting with, and you're talking with the end users, driving the demand for the capability. What's the greatest return on your effort? And who's most influencing how money is spent? Is it the end user who's saying, I need this capability? Is it the large drone company that's buying your capability? Or is the U. S. government saying, I will now fund this capability? You're working all three, Brian. Help others who would be doing something similar to what you're doing. How would you guide their path?

Brian: 56:18

I don't think that there's like a, out here, at least, I don't think there's like a super clear path to like requirements being written. I've asked a lot of people, can you share the, I would like to see the document where it lists the requirements for these things. No one has been able to actually like come up with this document. So I somewhat think that requirements is somewhere in like the hearts and minds of the people buying it, ultimately.

Jim: 56:42

How important is your work meeting the people who are actually on the, I'll call it the front lines, in driving the demand for your unique capabilities?

Brian: 56:52

Listen, this is a very complicated sale. It's a very complicated sales process. There is, unfortunately, no silver bullet to kind of getting this to work. You know, you could impress the hell out of the most important commander who runs some important battalion, but if like, the guy who runs the drone company doesn't like you, you're toast. Like, it doesn't matter. You're toast. If the people funding the commander don't like you, if they don't like you, like, you're toast. There's so many ways to be burnt and toast. So, the answer really is At the end of the day, and at the end of the day, like, you can't control any of this stuff. So I kind of always just go back to, you better hope to God that you have a product that just solves a big enough problem. If you have a product that could solve the big enough problem, I mean, this is not really true, but it's a little hyperbole. If you have a pro if you have a product that magically solves a big enough problem, even if you're the world's biggest asshole, people should line up to buy it from you.

Jim: 57:56

Does yours?

Brian: 57:57

Yes, I I I actually think it does. I actually think it does. And that listen, that's that is also, should be a searing indictment of the U. S. military, the Department of Defense, the, like, the fact that me, who has no experience, no expertise, went to film school, got into the defense thing in 2020, that somehow I was able to, build something better, do it faster, deploy it quicker than everyone else at every other company. I'm in a position where I'm like, yeah, how the hell did I get here? like, yeah, no one else did it. It's very important. I somehow, like, threaded a needle very, very, very delicately. and I wind up being, like, thinking, like, yes. This is very important. And if it doesn't work, like, it's on me, like, it's on me, like, you know, like, what, what I'm doing, like, these missions are very important. It's like, if I can't get this to work, it won't work. And if it won't work, you know, Ukrainians will be disadvantaged in the war tremendously. And if it does work, they will be significantly advantaged. And it's just strange to sit back and think, like, I can't believe I find myself in this position.

Luka: 59:10

Brian, can you speak a little bit to the Ukrainian defense tech ecosystem? On the one hand, it's common knowledge that, innovation is happening really, really fast. But at the same time, what we hear and see quite frankly, is that there's a lot more incremental innovation that really, truly disruptive new ideas. What's, what's it like from your perspective?

Brian: 59:31

Yeah. So, like, I do not see that innovation. I mean, listen, like, If you gave the world's biggest company a zillion dollars and one year, they couldn't build you a magical solution, like, at a certain point, you know, there's entropy of the universe, shipments only could move so fast, people could only work so many hours in a day, emails can only be responded so quickly. At a certain point, like, you just can't innovate, in a year and a half when there's a war going on, when there's a financial war, economic war, military war, I mean, it's just like too, it's like too many things you're competing with to like really build like really, really, really cutting edge sort of technology. The thing I have seen is I've seen a lot of what I would call like, you know, business innovation. Like, it is not, it is not easy to build 500 drones a month. When two years ago, you wouldn't even have a company to build 500 drones a month and you're buying things for cheap and you're assembling them, but then you just kind of have, like, the minutia of running a assembly, like a, you know, a car assembly line for building a drone, you know, and I, as I said earlier, like, I think that the real innovation is, building, like, sophisticated software that makes these things do magical, magical things. And that requires, you know, engineers of a certain variety working on things for a long period of time. It just takes time and money, testing and more testing and failing and more engineering and more failing. So, like, there's been a lot of what I would call, like, impressive ability to figure out supply chains, figure out logistics, Yeah. And I've seen some people proposing and people have companies where there's like swarms, but even, you know, swarms. Okay, I've heard about swarms for a couple years now. It seems like people in the U. S., some people have swarms. I actually don't know how far along that stuff is, but it's like, I imagine getting swarms to like, you know, like, do stuff in a sophisticated nature that that's really complicated. I kind of can't imagine you could do that well in two years, with like a little bit of money investment and, you know, 10 people. I don't know. It just doesn't, it just doesn't seem likely to me. so like, you know, Innovative ideas like, you know, there is, there is, listen, but also like, what do we, listen, what do we expect? I mean, I don't know, 99. 999 percent of businesses go out of business. Like, why should we, you know, I don't know, I don't know what the real number is, like, close to 90, it's close to 100 percent of businesses go out of business. Why should we expect anything different from here? you know, some people don't have a good product. Some people can't figure out the logistics. Some people can't raise enough money. Some, some people suck at sales. Some people's product hasn't been innovative enough. Some people get crushed by a competitor. Some people, most small businesses die because of suicide, because they make a really stupid mistake. So, like, what do you expect? You expect, like, everybody's going to be, you know, do well and have a, you know, wonderful outcome?

Luka: 1:02:28

Yeah, it's, it's that, but also, you know, we see a lot of companies who are really trying hard to solve a critical problem that exists today. An existing pain point, that obviously you need because you're fighting the war as opposed to, similar to what you went, you know, five years ago, where you looked ahead into the future, what the critical capability and said, okay, I'm going to invest, you

Brian: 1:02:50

now,

Luka: 1:02:51

of years to go

Brian: 1:02:52

that's right. Many millions of dollars. And that's, yes, that's right. I mean, it's, and like I said, it's, if you're in the middle of a kinetic war where people are getting shot, people are getting killed, your city's getting bombed. It's like too late to innovate. It's like you ca like you're, you know, you're, well, it's whack-a-mole. You're like patching a hole here. More holes are filling up. I mean, it's just like, it's like, it's like too much to do. You kind of need to rely on other people who have like built stuff. And spent their time and money, I mean, I, I, I think, I think you absolutely need to, you need to rely on people who've like, been doing it for a little, I'm like, listen, like, I've also been like, hurriedly adding features and capability while I've been here as well, but like, I had a big, I had a big jumpstart. If you started just like, you know, two years, you can't, you can't solve all of the world's problems. you know, in a year, you just can't. You can't build super sophisticated AI, deep neural, blah, blah, blah. And if you can The enemy could counter it, like, whatever you could do, the enemy will counter it, or competition will, will beat you, or whatever.

Jim: 1:03:54

If people are making money today through the use of drones in Ukraine, where is most of it being made?

Brian: 1:04:01

I certainly think that there are, you know, meat and potatoes things. Like, there are drone manufacturers that I think are making lots and lots of drones that have, like, large government contracts that are flowing through, you know, money's ultimately coming from outside the country, I believe. I think some of those guys are making a lot of money. yeah, there certainly are people building platforms who are winning large contracts. But some of those things don't work so well. And, and they're failing and changes need to be made.

Jim: 1:04:28

And five years from now, you've talked about software, five years from now, let's say in the next war, how will it be dramatically different than today and who's going to be making the most money and why?

Brian: 1:04:39

I think about five years from now, I'm like, damn, will anything like, will anything change? It seems so brutally slow, so brutally slow. I mean, part of the reason like I'm in a war zone is because I could not sell my thing fast enough in America. Like, you know. Guys, Jesus Christ, please, for the love of God, you know, give me 100, 000, you know, I've had relationships with some big, big prime drone manufacturers, for four or five years, I've made 50, 000 on one of them, you know, like, brutally slow. So part of me is just like, Jesus Christ, five years? That's not that far from now. Like, will they be able to do anything? I mean, I'm partnered with some large companies now on some programs that like I'm sitting in meetings. I was in, you know, I, so I've been here for 10 months. I came back to America about a month ago. I was in, I was in America for maybe, I don't know, about a week or so. I was on the West coast in a three hour long meeting with a big company ready to pitch something for a proposal. And it came to light two hours into the meeting that the drone has never flown and I was just like, holy shit. Like, Oh, like, wow. We are, we are in bad, bad shape. If these guys don't even have a drone, we're, we're supposed to demo this for this proposal in two weeks and this drone, I'm like, literally part of the reason I'm on a plane here is for this meeting. And the drone hasn't even flown. So part of me, I mean, I am really, really curmudgeonly skeptical about everything, which I think if history has shown us anything, it's always be skeptical about everything. But, you know, slowly over time, I don't really know the timeline exactly, but over time, these drones should all have, cameras all over the place with sophisticated high end computers and software that's doing wonderful, amazing local, you know, navigation, sense and avoid, avoiding missiles, hitting things, avoiding things, landing on things, all sorts of kind of magical capabilities. I am stunned with how primitive a lot of these drones. I am stunned. that, I'm somehow the guy with, like, the magical computer vision deep neural network box, and, like, you, you guys haven't built this? What are you, what are you kidding me? You guys, you guys built a drone. Great. It's a tube with wings that has a flight controller and some props and some batteries. That is understood technology that has been like refined and refined and refined for a very long time. I understand it's like hard to do, but like, come on guys. Somebody build a good drone that like works. And it's like, you know, I don't think that's innovative. I think it's just like, kind of like, small improvements here and there. So, ultimately, it'll get better. I just don't know when. And you know, because this whole thing about yeah, Brian, look at this drone, this drone cost$1. And I'm like, yeah, and it stinks you know, have it cost 100, 000 and have it be better. So I actually, hired a, a mathematician to build a cost benefit analysis model of, like, my, okay, my, let's say my, let's say my thing costs 10, 000. The drone costs 50, 000. Assume that 85 percent of that getting destroyed by electronic warfare. So you're losing X dollars and at the end, it's like a U shape with like a diagonal line. And there's like. The filler between the diagonal line and the U shape. And so it's not all of the drones should have a vision navigation system and not none of them, but somewhere over here is where your cost benefit analysis will be. Well, maybe 65 percent of our drones should have a vision navigation system on it. So at a certain point, like I hope that people will stop thinking and just kind of like, more mass, more mass, because that's just like not, it's just like not effective. Like it's just throwing shit against the wall. You need it to be like a little bit of mass, a little bit of sophisticated stuff, a little bit of like, you know, price savings. And there's like some, you know, goldilocks zone of where it like kind of all makes sense. And over time, you know, we'll figure out what that is. But as far as I can tell, we certainly haven't figured it out right now.

Luka: 1:08:47

Brian, when you had those 2000 interviews with the DoD folks and, GNSS denied navigation capability came up as one of the big problems. I'm just curious, what other problems have you heard about at that time that are perhaps worthwhile solving still?

Brian: 1:09:03

I don't, I mean, that's a long time ago, so I don't exactly remember what the other problems were, but I'll tell you, the other problem that I see, like, today, that's really big is comms. there's no, way to kind of communicate with platforms that are going very far away that can't be detected, that can't be jammed, which kind of leads me to one of my main theses, which is like, you know, the drones need to kind of be able to do all of this stuff on their own with a sophisticated computer at the edge. And then if you wanted to develop some sort of really sophisticated encrypted comms, sort of, which I think people have, it might be expensive, but if you wanted to kind of do something like that, it's kind of like, well, do you solve that and spend all your time and all your money and all your resources developing this fancy encrypted comms thing? When at the end of the day, all that tells you is data, it doesn't really allow you to like change the outcome? You're just like collecting data. And sometimes when you're just collecting data, you look at data and you get more confused by the data. You're like, I have all this data, what the hell, what the hell does any of this stuff mean? So, or do you kind of just like steer it towards like, let's just make a resilient EW platform. Let's put all of our resources into that. So I think there's something about comms, but like, that seems really challenging to solve. Getting data back so you can know what the drone is doing, that no one could detect, no one could interfere with, no one could jam it. I don't know how to do that. And I don't think, from my assessment, my kind of like dumb guy assessment, is that if you're transmitting something, if you're sending shit out, a beep, some sort of signal, somebody could hear it, somebody could see it, someone could get into that signal and do something to it. Like, I think that's just like a constant arms race, like, oh, let's encrypt it. They decrypted it. Let's encrypt it a little bit more. Okay, then they decryp That just seems like an endless game of, like, one upping each other. which kind of goes back to my thing, which is like, you know, at the end of the day, these platforms need to have, like, their, like, their own brains, their own smarts on a sophisticated computer at the edge and do their own magical capabilities.

Jim: 1:11:05

Brian, give some advice to our entrepreneurs who are listening, that you haven't already told them about either starting a company, you've started at least two companies, or about, being in Ukraine, selling capabilities in Ukraine, whatever you choose.

Brian: 1:11:21

I'm going to repeat something I've said already, just because I really, really, really think it's like the most important thing. If you're young and you're trying to start a company, like do not build a goddamn thing. Stop building anything. Do not build anything. You need to do kind of what I did, and you need to do it yourself. You need to send a thousand cold emails, you need to send a thousand cold LinkedIn messages to people who are important, who have a lot of money, or are close to a lot of money. And you need to ask them, what is your biggest problem?

Jim: 1:11:59

And the other thing you said somewhere before I read or heard, the other thing is, you're not the first one talking. Talk about

Brian: 1:12:06

But yeah, so it's, it's pretty intimidating to, like, kind of just, you know, I was pretty intimidated. I'm like, talking to generals. Do I call them, sir? Do I call them general? Do I call them lieutenant? Lieutenant colonel? Like, you know, and I, you know, like, I really didn't even know how to address people. So pretty much under no circumstance, when you get someone called on a phone call, shall you ever, ever, ever, ever under any circumstance, open your mouth first. You always just do, Hi Jim, thanks for taking the time. Jim, can you tell me a little about you and what you do? And then you shut up. Never have I, I've, I've had 3 million cold phone calls. I have never, ever, ever, and I think people are like young and intimidated. They go, what if they go, no, Brian, you asked for the meeting. Why don't you talk first? No one has ever, ever, ever said, no, Brian, you talk, you talk first. Where we're in some insane standoff of who's going to like make an introduction. Like the person has to be totally socially like inept.

Jim: 1:13:02

lesson for our entrepreneurs. Ask them their problems, talk to people with money

Brian: 1:13:06

never. And let them talk first. And never, and like, also like, you'll get like intimidated because then you'll be like, Oh really, Jim? Tell me more about that. Oh really? I never heard that. Is that like that? Or is it like that? Like you need to, like you need to be like rather savvy and like, like, quick on your toes to be like, oh, is that like that? Oh, I read about that. Oh, is that like that? Oh, tell me more about that. And then, and like, like, it should just like, the last 10 minutes of that phone call should be like, oh, let me tell you about me now, Jim. Like, you know, like, like, it's like, that's not me. Me's not important. you're,

Jim: 1:13:37

But by the time you start talking, you've just heard an hour of conversation, and now you can better link what you're thinking of doing to what your demands are. All right, next one. Tell us something about Ukraine that most of our listeners don't know.

Brian: 1:13:52

It's the little, it's the little things. you know, they, they don't use check marks. When they want you to sign something, they'll put an X. We put a checkmark, like, sign over here. They'll put an X. I find that to be very confusing. I find all the, public restrooms to be very clean. It's stuff like that, but if you're asking me about,

Jim: 1:14:08

Tell us about the war. How is the war different than we perceive it to be?

Brian: 1:14:12

You know, my vision of war is like, you know, Saving Private Ryan, okay, okay, we're landing, and then, like, everyone's getting kind of, like, you know, shot at immediately. And now, again, like, it's different, like, there is, you know, combat like that going on, but, It's the, it's the, death by a zillion paper cuts that will kill you. It's like, in order for my product to be successful, I need to calibrate the cameras. Okay, I need a calibration chart. Okay, I need someone to build a calibration chart. Okay, where do I find that person? Okay, I found someone because I posted a job posting on Upwork in Ukraine. Okay, that person's three hours away. Okay, I need to rent a car. Okay, shit, I can't rent a car because I don't have insurance. Shit, I need to get insurance. Shit, okay, now I drove three hours okay, great, this guy doesn't speak English and he, like, messed something up. Okay, I need to find an it's like And it's like, if I don't do all these things, I won't get a calibration chart. If I don't get the calibration chart, my thing won't work. So it's, and if any one of those things don't work, we lose the war. my perspective on war, It's a, it's like, yes, there are missiles, but it's like, yeah, but somebody had to like, get the calibration chart for the missile. And he had to drive and, you know, it's like,

Jim: 1:15:29

There's an everydayness to

Brian: 1:15:30

there's an every, yes, yes, there's, there's like, there's an absolute, it's like, oh shit, and if like, oh man, like the thermal calibration on the calibration chart, it, it, he used the wrong glue. Great, now I need to get better glue, you know, I need to, now I need to, you know, There's an everydayness to it, there's like a minutiae, and all of these are paper cuts. And all of these things, every paper cut will kill you a little bit.

Jim: 1:15:55

Is there anything that we haven't asked you that you'd love to tell our audience?

Brian: 1:16:00

I guess I will just say, it's a very challenging environment. And, there's like a lot of complexity to it. And, you know, at listen, at the, at the end, I would, I would, I would lie to you if I told you I wasn't somewhat like, you know, enjoying it. And it's like a little perverse to kind of admit that, but it's thrilling and it's exciting. And I feel like there's a gravitas to like, what, what I'm working on, which is, which is really cool. I mean, listen, I never in my lifetime thought I'd be involved in, situation like this. So, it really didn't sting me until like, you know, a month ago when I was, I was in Midtown Manhattan meeting a friend. And like, you know, I'm here to one day, 72 hours later, I'm in Midtown Manhattan, and I'm telling my friend there, and I'm telling my friend in Los Angeles, and my friends who are like, you know, in the film business are like, Brian, this is, what are you, what are you, nuts? And then I'm kinda like, I guess it is a little, a little, a little abnormal. so when you're here, you know, you're kind of, you know, it's my everyday nature. I'm here on a, on a mission. you know, it's, it's actually funny. I think about this a lot. 2020, no, 2019, when I first got into, this defense accelerator, before I even knew, I had no idea who I was going to sell my product to, swiftly going out of business in 2019, and I got into this defense accelerator, and my, one of my oldest friends, who at the time was on my board of directors, he said to me, he goes, Brian, you're, you're a heat seeking missile, you'll figure it out. And I think five years later, I'm like, I'm a heat, like, yeah, that's actually what I became, is, heat seeking missile, like that's what I'm actually building. so like, it's been very ch I mean, it's been very, very challenging. And, people who think that they could just, like, kind of, like, ship over stuff, and like, oh, they're gonna buy, it's just like a, a total joke. total joke. they have other, like, you know, Ukrainians have other things going on.

Jim: 1:17:51

Brian, great having you on the show. We really appreciate your time. Thanks for joining us.