01:15:50 · John Coogan, Dillon Baxter, Jordi Hays
[01:15:50] S0: So what's the what's the sales strategy? Are you going to, like, restaurant supply conferences? How do you actually get this into the stores that I've seen these sold at? [01:16:01] S7: So originally, we just wanted to make the material and then sell it to manufacturers because it can work on their equipment. [01:16:06] S0: Got it. [01:16:07] S7: And that didn't work. We tried. We had, you know, bunch of big enterprise deals we were working on and nothing ever really got to the finish line. Yeah. And so that's when we said, you know, screw it. Let's just go fully integrated. [01:16:17] S1: We'll do it ourselves. We'll do [01:16:19] S7: it ourselves. We'll make a whole food packaging business. Let's learn everything there is to know about food packaging, which I never really expected to do. And now we've gotten, you know, pretty decent at it. So we sell through food service distributors, we work with companies like Walmart. We work with event companies like Live Nations and Legends Global. And then we're partnered with distributors like Imperial Brady and Bunzl, where then they go sell into the restaurants for us, which a bit more of an efficient way to do it. So we had to take a little crash course in the last few years of how to build a food packaging business on top of a material science business. [01:16:53] S1: Yeah. How has the business been scaling? I see the product everywhere. So I... But I also live in Southern California which is probably like one of your bigger markets.
01:16:53 · Jordi Hays, Dillon Baxter, John Coogan
[01:16:53] S1: Yeah. How has the business been scaling? I see the product everywhere. So I... But I also live in Southern California which is probably like one of your bigger markets. [01:17:04] S7: Yeah, definitely one of our bigger markets. It's been scaling like crazy. The straws and the cutlery which are what we got started with, you know, we're starting to see those everywhere which is a lot of fun. But then with the series B, we've now developed the technology for this new product and technology that I think is going to be by far the biggest one and the most game changing product, which is our new coffee cups and lids. People don't know, but every coffee cup you have has a plastic lining on the inside. So every time you're drinking, it's leaching microplastics into your drink. [01:17:33] S0: Gross. [01:17:33] S7: Yeah. Not not great. [01:17:35] S1: Known that for a long time, but there's really no... There's no other option. It's like I'd rather have microplastics than not have coffee. [01:17:41] S0: What about No. Like a ceramic cup? That doesn't have plastic. [01:17:45] S1: Yeah. Bringing... [01:17:46] S0: You can't bring... [01:17:47] S1: The horror loss from bringing a mug into a coffee shop is just... Again, I'd rather have the microplastics. [01:17:53] S0: Yeah. If a plastic fork gets...... [01:17:54] S7: Great if people can do it. The problem is, like, realistically, aren't gonna do that. Yeah.
01:17:54 · Dillon Baxter, John Coogan, Jordi Hays
[01:17:54] S7: Great if people can do it. The problem is, like, realistically, aren't gonna do that. Yeah. [01:17:59] S0: So... If if a plastic fork gets stuck up a sea turtles nose, this company goes to a trillion dollars. I'm not kidding. It's gonna be crazy. Three to... But... [01:18:09] S1: No. The thing that the thing that I appreciate like... It's such [01:18:11] S0: a... It's it's an unmitigated upgrade. [01:18:14] S1: Well, the thing that I appreciate is, like, the solution came after all of the the sort of, like, drama that was happening, like, at this point, like, closer to almost a decade ago. Yeah. It feels like maybe like eight or nine years ago was like the peak of of of this sort of like focus on we need to switch away from plastic. But then again, there was that gap of like five years where you were just using paper straws. I'm... It still shocks me that, like, more people, maybe a bunch of people did try to go after this category and just didn't come up with with great solutions. But you clearly did and and I'm not surprised that the business is ripping. Yeah. Thank you. When when can we... When am I gonna order Airwon and get one of your your coffee cups? [01:19:02] S0: Oh. [01:19:04] S7: I'm under NDA. So... Okay. [01:19:07] S0: Well, what what are you... So you raised 8,000,000 Top secret coffee cups. What what what are you using the capital for? Is it, building more manufacturing capacity, hiring more people? What's the use of funds?
01:19:07 · John Coogan, Dillon Baxter, Jordi Hays
[01:19:07] S0: Well, what what are you... So you raised 8,000,000 Top secret coffee cups. What what what are you using the capital for? Is it, building more manufacturing capacity, hiring more people? What's the use of funds? [01:19:20] S7: Yeah. So a couple of things as we got in. So, you know, we had the kind of base technology. Now we've developed the ability to extrusion coat paper, which opens up this massive new category. Yeah. So we have to fund manufacturing to get into this new lane. Yep. And then we're also expecting a huge boom in sales with some of the distribution partnerships. So this will help with some of the working capital. Yeah. [01:19:41] S0: That makes sense. Well, I'm glad you have the money. $8,000,000 raised. Let me hit the gong. Dang. Thank you so much. [01:19:49] S1: Thank you for your service. [01:19:50] S0: On the show. Thank you for getting rid of paper straws. [01:19:53] S1: He did it. [01:19:54] S0: He did it. This is, this is an American hero right here. [01:19:57] S1: Somebody had to do it. [01:19:58] S0: Thank you for everything you've done. Have a great day. [01:20:00] S1: Great to meet [01:20:01] S0: dude. We'll talk to you soon. Goodbye. Let me tell you about Codex. Codex is a powerful workspace for getting work done with AI agents. Whether you're writing code, analyzing data, creating content, or automating business workflows, Codex helps you move projects forward from start to finish. Our next guest [01:20:16] S1: Our last guest solves Starson from Stellios Straz. Founder and CEO. Our next guest fixed... Made a new microwave.
01:20:16 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan, Richard Starson, Brian Manning
[01:20:16] S1: Our last guest solves Starson from Stellios Straz. Founder and CEO. Our next guest fixed... Made a new microwave. [01:20:26] S0: Okay. Tell us about it, Richard. Thank you for joining TVPN. How are you doing? [01:20:31] S5: I'm doing excellent. Gentlemen, thank you so much for inviting me. It's hard to imagine a better place to launch a deep tech company than TVPN. Been a huge, huge fan of the work that you are doing and excited excited to be with you. [01:20:44] S0: Take us through it. Introduce the company and the product. [01:20:47] S5: Let's let's do it. Yeah. So we started Stellius with the vision to build the future of high energy power systems in America. We... In The United States, we actually pioneered all of those technologies from directed energy to HPM, high power microwaves to compact fusion, but many of those industries were allowed to atrophy over the years. We are bringing them back. We are innovating, making them better, more compact, more powerful, and making sure that we're building those systems here in The United States of full vertical integration with domestic production and making those systems affordable and readily available, essentially for our warfighter, for the country. And eventually, with our fusion business, we wanted to make sure that America leads in compact fusion and next generation energy sources. [01:21:44] S1: So you are making web... Microwaves to microwave people? Is it... [01:21:52] S5: Hopefully hopefully not hopefully not people. [01:21:54] S4: No. But but
01:21:54 · Brian Manning, Jordi Hays, Richard Starson, Matthew Prince, John Coogan
[01:21:54] S4: No. But but [01:21:55] S1: defense defense is like the first category that you're focused on. What are the different applications? Drones? [01:22:01] S5: Yeah. So it's a... Yeah. Yeah. Great great question. [01:22:04] S1: No. I just wanna be I just wanna be clear. [01:22:06] S2: Just It [01:22:08] S5: is an important question to clarify. Yes. Sure. High power microwaves, so megawatt class, gyrotrons, glistrons, they have a wide range of applications. [01:22:17] S0: Mhmm. [01:22:18] S5: The vast majority of them today are driven by defense. Mhmm. If you're... If if you've got a a thousands of drones flying at you that are extremely cheap to produce, you want to be able to take them down without expending extremely expensive munitions. And, megawatt class microwaves are, uniquely, con... Conditioned and and and capable of taking down those large swarms of drones. So that will be the the biggest application. Counterelectronics, frying electronics on drones, on any, on humanoid robots, or, you know, satellites, as well. There's space space space domain as well. Yes. They can be used for area denial for anything, and they are non lethal to humans, but this is, not, the driving force. [01:23:09] S0: Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.