00:08:56 · JC Lozano, Ryan Deng
[00:08:56] S1: bunch of venture capitalists. I mean, was like a... Like, [00:09:00] S0: where you just cold... Because like for me, like, I'm I'm out here like cold emailing VCs. And they're not responding. Right? So Yeah. What what were the secret sauce there in the beginning? [00:09:08] S1: So I think we got lucky. Like, I've been doing startups for my entire career. So like I had some folks to talk to. Turner had some folks to talk to. Baker had some folks to talk to. And so we were like, got lucky in the sense that like all three of us have always been like super active in this. I wouldn't say active in the VC communities, but, like, you know, we, like, have good friends and, like, we're just fond of our way through, if that makes sense. Yeah. And I think I'm I'm trying... Like, breakthrough was the original first check. Uh-huh. [00:09:35] S0: And What was that moment like for you when you raised for this company? Did you know that it was gonna be this big?
00:09:35 · Ryan Deng, JC Lozano
[00:09:35] S0: And What was that moment like for you when you raised for this company? Did you know that it was gonna be this big? [00:09:42] S1: That's a good question. So I guess, yes. Mhmm. That was always the belief. Yeah. It was definitely exciting to get the first check. Then it's like pretty stressful, right? Because there's like a lot of negotiation gets into it. Did you get good terms though, hopefully? I feel good about them, yeah, given the state of Love where we're at now. Okay. But no, it's just like it's The thing that we were super excited about, right, is like, it's rare that you get to work with people you really respect, that you have a close relationship with, that you have a high degree of trust with. And then you get to work on super meaningful problems, like things that actually matter. Mhmm. And so that was just, I think once the three of us realized, like, oh, there's an opportunity here, we already knew we got along really well, we already knew we trusted each other, it was just like, okay, gotta go for this. And at that point, you're just like, you know, you're doing everything you can to like make it work, but I think like the... Yeah. Like, I wouldn't say... It's happening really fast, which is awesome. Yeah. I would say we're like a year of where... Yeah. Maybe like six months ahead of where I thought we'd be. But like the plan was always to move at as fast as humanly possible to do this and and make it as big as possible [00:10:53] S0: for sure. So a 16 z series a Yes. Kochla series b
00:10:53 · Ryan Deng, JC Lozano
[00:10:53] S0: for sure. So a 16 z series a Yes. Kochla series b [00:10:58] S1: Yes. Was the future Well, Kochla is also one of our seed investors. [00:11:01] S0: Oh, wow. So they they doubled down. [00:11:02] S1: They did double It's [00:11:03] S0: a great signal. High signal. There we go. Let's go. Okay. What does the future of the company look like in ten years? Right? Are you gonna have these Yeah. Minds autonomously running? Like, humans in the loop. Kalanick is looking at something similar with Adams. [00:11:18] S1: He is. Yeah. [00:11:19] S0: How are you guys? Competitors, what does that look like? What does that landscape look like? [00:11:23] S1: That's a good question. So in ten years... So our, like, our our kind of, like, credo is, like, 10 projects in ten years. So we wanna build 10, like, large scale [00:11:30] S0: Mhmm. [00:11:30] S1: Mining projects in the next Well, 10 the next eight years. We've got two, and we'll, know, have a couple more following very quickly here. Mhmm. And so, you know, we wanna build, you know, the next generational mining company Wow. Fundamentally. And so in ten years, we're gonna be well on our way to doing that. We'll have 10 projects. So, you know, they're increasing in size. The first project is like a $100,000,000 in CapEx. The next one is about $250,000,000 in CapEx. There's some other stuff going on as well. Then we've got like, you know, we're just gonna keep moving up orders of magnitude in terms of the size of the projects, the size of the impact.
00:11:30 · JC Lozano, Ryan Deng
[00:11:30] S1: Mining projects in the next Well, 10 the next eight years. We've got two, and we'll, know, have a couple more following very quickly here. Mhmm. And so, you know, we wanna build, you know, the next generational mining company Wow. Fundamentally. And so in ten years, we're gonna be well on our way to doing that. We'll have 10 projects. So, you know, they're increasing in size. The first project is like a $100,000,000 in CapEx. The next one is about $250,000,000 in CapEx. There's some other stuff going on as well. Then we've got like, you know, we're just gonna keep moving up orders of magnitude in terms of the size of the projects, the size of the impact. [00:12:06] S0: So are there mines available to be bought in The US? Funny. When you're taking over like an old mine, my question is like, how do you identify it? How are you implementing your autonomous services? Right? Cause to me it seems like, they're doing... It's built out for just humans to operate. Right? Yeah. To drive the trucks, to shovel out the dirt. Shovel it by hand. Well, I'm sorry. Maybe not anymore. I'm not familiar with much. [00:12:27] S1: So it's it's pretty interesting. It's actually like a really good use case Mhmm. For autonomy. So on the process... So like, if you think about what mining is, right, and then what you basically do is you figure out... Somebody figures out there's like some minerals underground [00:12:41] S0: Mhmm. [00:12:42] S1: That they think will be [00:12:42] S0: How do
00:12:42 · JC Lozano
[00:12:42] S1: they figure that out? That is a great question that gets us deep into the ecosystem that is kinda junior mining. Mhmm. But basically what happens is is that geologists typically that's where it starts. They'll have a theory or hypothesis about this part of the subterranean ground has either old oceans or rivers or geologic activity, which causes minerals to sort of coalesce and form and sort of concentrate there. Mhmm. Very simplistically. And so they have a hypothesis, like, oh, we think that there's gold and then there hills, roughly speaking. Then what you do is then there's, like, a whole ecosystem that is essentially, like, you need to drill what are called exploration drill holes, where you, like, basically drill deep down into the earth. You take core samples, you analyze them, and try to figure out, okay, there's, like, actually, like, some amount of metal under there that is economically viable. That's, like, a fairly long process. Generally, throughout that process, they're sort of, like, increasing their certainty about, like, the the resource underground. So they're trying to map out the ore body Right. Trying to understand, like, it's laid out three d in space underground, which is, like, crazy we're able to do that. And then eventually, they get to this point where it was, again, geologists that started this and exploration companies. Mhmm. So they get to this point where they have, like, characterized the resource well enough underground. And as they're doing this, they're raising funding from either the private markets or the public markets. Mhmm. And then at some point, like, the valuation of that resource will kinda peak.
00:14:05 · Ryan Deng
[00:14:05] S0: I