In this episode, Chris Powers sits down with Ben Nowack, co-founder and CEO of Reflect Orbital, one of the first companies building satellites that redirect sunlight from orbit to specific spots on Earth - with the goal of delivering sunlight on demand, 24/7.

Why would you want sunlight 24/7? Agriculture and farming, construction projects, rescue missions, military operations, powering solar panels closer to 100% of the time instead of ~30%, etc.

Ben started Reflect in 2021. He spent the first year in a garage, $60k in credit card debt, before a $350k raise came in. Reflect has now raised more than $35 million - Sequoia led the seed (its first space investment since SpaceX), Lux Capital led the $20M Series A - and launches its first satellite later this year.

They discuss:
- A speech Gwynne Shotwell gave during his tenure at SpaceX that he will never forget
- What he learned while working at SpaceX that he implements at Reflect
- The story of building the actual company and why building hardware is hard
- How they think about vertical integration
- The trillion $ business case for redirecting sunlight
- How he recruits technical talent - what works and what doesn't

Timestamps:
(0:00) Intro
(1:07) "Rockets Are Cool, But They're Not the Big Money Makers"
(7:00) Lessons from SpaceX: What Ben Took (and Left Behind)
(16:35) The Origin: From High School Fusion Reactors to Reflect Orbital
(25:10) The Fossil Fuel Problem and Why It's So Hard to Beat
(28:37) "By 3 AM You Have a Minimum Viable Financial Model"
(35:44) The Breakthrough: Putting Mirrors in Space
(41:00) Building the First Satellite
(51:03) First Satellite and Seven-Figure Demand Nobody Expected
(57:00) The Constellation Plan: 18 Satellites, Global Coverage
(1:10:00) What It's Like to Order Sunlight
(1:22:00) Why Fashion Designers Build Better Spacecraft Than JWST Engineers
(1:25:36) The 10-Year Vision: Starship, Scale, and Powering the Earth

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