S8E2: Sampriti Bhattacharyya the CEO and Founder of Navier Is Changing Maritime Transportation through Electrification and Nautical Autonomy

2014, the Malaysian airline gets lost. People are talking about robots taking over human jobs and all of that stuff. We are talking about going and living in Mars and all of that stuff. Yet we do not know how to find a massive airplane that gets lost in the ocean. That's crazy.

Welcome back to Season 8. Clauds, how we doing?

Madison McIlwain. So, well, can't believe it's 8 seasons of The Room Podcast.

It feels like just yesterday we were getting started in the middle of COVID and had this vision for sharing the future of founding stories to let other founders be in the room where it happened. And so much has changed for us since August 2020 when we first had this inception. You're now a founder and co-CEO of Priv, which is a startup unlocking and disrupting recurring revenue for e-commerce brands.

And Madison, you're crushing it in venture. You're now a partner overseeing investments at DefyVC, an early-stage venture firm in the Bay Area, and of course, an investor in Pryve. We're just two women navigating our careers and asking the people who inspire us to shed light on their stories. Unlocking Access starts with a conversation context, and as a reminder, we open the door to moments in technology history that traditionally happened behind closed doors. With our guests, we unpack the experiences that led to their success and look towards the future in their verticals.

And we hit an incredible milestone at the end of last season with Spotify sharing that we were a top 5% global shared podcast in the technology sector. And so we wanna thank you for being a loyal listener and helping us achieve this milestone of amplifying more equitable voices in the room where it happens. As you look towards season 8, get excited. We're excited. We have some incredible founders from the founder of Superhuman, the founder of Incredible Health, Webflow, Ty Haney with her new business TYB, and more. So join us every Tuesday where we sit down with leaders, founders, and funders who are changing the way it's always been done. You could expect themes across, of course, generative AI, navigating your startup in a downturn, the creator economy, and more. So be sure to hit subscribe, like, and follow so you don't miss any Tuesdays in the near future. And one quick note, since season 3 in 2021, we have been delighted to work with our partners, Cooley and Silicon Valley Bank. This season is no different, although the events of the past few weeks have brought Silicon Valley Bank into the forefront of our ecosystems conversations. Now known as Silicon Valley Bridge Bank, SVB. Thank you. And now a short message from our sponsors. The following message was recorded prior to 3/10/23. Support for The Room comes from Silicon Valley Bank.

What's next? What if?

Now what?

Silicon Valley Bank understands these questions can keep founders up at night like Claudia. For over 35 years, Silicon Valley Bank has helped high-growth companies through scalable financial solutions, plus insights and expertise that many other banks just can't. Which could be why 50% of US-based venture-backed tech and life science companies Bank with SVB. Learn more at svb.com/next. Silicon Valley Bank. Built for what's next. Cooley is a global law firm built around startups and venture capital. The firm has been devoted to entrepreneurs and investors, partnering with both to transform breakthrough ideas into successful companies. Cooley works with thousands of entrepreneurs and newly formed companies to ensure that they are structured for growth and long-term success. Since 2005, Cooley has been ranked the number one most active law firm representing VC-backed companies going public. Learn more about the firm at cooley.com and also at cooleygo.com, Cooley's award-winning free legal resource for startups. What do the Malaysian airline flight disappearance, the moon landing, and flying boats all have in common? Sampreeti Bhattacharya, of course. Sampreeti is the CEO and founder of Navier, and in today's conversation, we sit down with her to unpack how these moments in history have informed her company Navier and her passion for sustainable and efficient watercraft technology. Growing up in Kolkata, India, she didn't immediately know what a founder was or even think she could ever be one. However, a fortuitous TV show special outlining man's mission to the moon changed her whole view. Sampreeti went from there to reach out to over 500 companies in the US in an effort to land her first internship. With 4 responses total, she yielded 1 internship that got her on her first ever airplane at 22 to the States. Through this journey, she ultimately found herself at Ohio State and then MIT in a PhD program where across both she studied aerospace engineering and mechanical engineering. And after an informative additional internship at NASA, she launched her first full-fledged startup of HydroSwarm. It was in building this initial oceanic automation that Sampreeti gained the skills and conviction to launch Navier. Navier is a first-of-its-kind hydrofoil boat, which is primed to revolutionize the boating industry with advanced technology that delivers unparalleled speed, efficiency, and comfort through their embedded proprietary autonomous platform. In this episode, you could expect insights and themes on the power of persistence that don't defy physics, overcoming bias in the deep tech sector, and the future of maritime transportation. Let's open the door.

Simpruti, thank you so much for joining us on The Room today. It's such a pleasure to have you.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Of course.

We always like to start at the beginning with our guests before we dive into the founding story of Navier. Would love to learn a little bit more about where you grew up and how that shaped your view of the world.

I grew up in Kolkata, India, in West Bengal, and it's a very unique historical city. It's a very special place, I would say, and, and very different than what is here. Very different society. And the community is a lot focused in art, literature. It's a very creative culture, I would say, and The other thing about Kolkata is that really I have taken a bit of it with me even today. I guess I have it in me is the strong community feeling. People really care for each other. There is a strong bonding and sharing between people around you. And it's a, it's on the water too. It's a very special place, but it was very different growing up there. You did not hear about startups, hard tech, building things, none of that.

Well, in that vein of kind of early identity and not having startups be every third word as they are in Silicon Valley and many other cities in the US. Did you always think you were going to become a founder?

I didn't know what a founder was, but I was a creative kid, I would say, who liked writing, was curious, would read a lot of books, and most importantly, I think I was an explorer at heart who just wanted to go out there, build and invent things. So I think what I thought I wanted to be was a scientist because to me it was the person who invents the world, invents the light bulb.

And so while maybe you didn't know what being a founder was, you were going to be an inventor, a disruptor. That makes sense that your sort of early spirit has manifested itself in what your company is today. But before we get there, you attended undergrad in your home country of India at West Bengal University, and then went on to do an initial master's program at Ohio State that got you into the US in aerospace engineering. How did you find yourself moving halfway across the world for school? That must have been such a big shift.

Actually, it was not such a straightforward story. So I grew up in Calcutta, Kolkata, India, and at the age of 15, we had just had cable TV and I started watching Discovery Channel and got inspired by all these documentaries on exploration and on NASA and just to see what human race is doing. That was just so inspiring. But I was like 15 or 16. I had no idea how to get to America. Long story short, I was not the most stellar student, so I did not get into a top university or school. So I ended up what you would call it pretty much a community college out here. And when you graduate out of those colleges, the best you can be is maybe you work in a call center. There was not much of expectation out of me. Maybe a housewife, maybe work in a call center, maybe in IT at the most. But then when I was just starting out college, I heard of a thing called internship. And even I was not in top school, I was a little bit weird, so I had my own hobbies and passion about learning about the universe or like astrophysics. And it's very weird. It's not common among Indian students. And what happened is I heard about a thing called internship from a guy who was going to the top school in India. It's like the IIT. And I heard, what is an internship? And he was like, you get to ride an airplane, you get to fly out across the country to America, and you get to work in a lab. I was like, wow, that was exactly what I thought is that life of the scientist. You know, I want that, like invent things. But you heard that you only have to be from a top school in India to be able to do that. So I was 20 years old and the first time we had computers and internet at home. And I went back and I Googled internship America National Lab and anything that said internship, I emailed. I want to do an internship. I'm interested in like Mars and robots and all this. Look at my project that I'm doing, a sun tracking solar panel. I've tried to redesign the Mars rover. All of these things, and even the AT&T store that said internship, I actually applied because I had no idea what to apply to. So after 260 emails in the first week, there was nobody to reply to, literally. I have this thing when I have something set in my mind, I'm like, I just don't see, like, from the physics of it, it is not impossible. There must be a path. So anyway, I was like stuck in my room, not going to school as such. I just was laser tunnel focused on this. After over 540 emails, there were 4 replies, 2 interviews, and 1 worked out. That was an internship from Fermilab, the Department of Energy, high energy physics. Of course, it traces back to a conference that I snuck into in India, in my hometown, when some physicists visited, and that's how I got to know about all of this. But yeah, one in over 500 emails that got me on a plane ride, my first airplane ride ever, to America with $200 in my pocket, and I don't know what the hell internship is. And I got to come to Fermilab to really work on internship, on first real hands-on engineering experience. That was like not a straight to India to Ohio State. It was first to Fermilab, and I then I went back again later after finishing undergrad to do a longer-term co-op there. And then before I went to BC, actually I went back to India thinking I wanted to get married. So that never happened. So there's a lot of things before actually I made it to America to actually do grad school.

It's fascinating because from a resume, LinkedIn, it's easy to think, oh, it was just this step. It's never a straight line. That's such an incredibly inspiring story. So thank you for sharing that. Digging in a little bit deeper, you then went on to MIT for a PhD in mechanical engineering. I'm assuming after you decided not to go home and get married, tell us a little bit more about that decision and also what the core focus of your studies were as a grad student.

Oh, at 22, I definitely went home to get married. That was my goal more than anyone's, but it just didn't happen. And I thought that was my worst failure. You think of startup failure at 22, I thought that was the biggest failure in my life. It definitely made me more resilient. But after that, I came back to US, did my master's doing aerospace and worked on nuclear engineering and applied to 5 grad schools for, you know, PhD. Like, I wasn't optimistic about it that I will get in, but, you know, one day I was in my office at OSU and a letter came and it was the acceptance from MIT. And I still remember crying because from a community college in India, coming to MIT is unbelievable. I don't— I did not know of anyone who did that. I was never considered a stellar student. MIT was just a dream. It never seemed that it something real. My core focus at MIT, I was building and designing a new kind of nuclear reactor while at OSU, and I went to MIT. I wanted to continue working on nuclear reactors, so I ended up working on underwater drones for the nuclear reactors, like boiling water reactors that go on submerged systems. That eventually became like the foundation for my company, HydroSwarm, and such.

What inspired you at such an early age to work on like these massive problems like nuclear energy?

I was really curious and I wanted to learn. I think it was the desire to know the truth in a sense. When I worked at Fermilab, whether that was on particle accelerators, is understanding how the universe came to be here. But while working on complex machines, what I realized was that when I found that the particle accelerators that I was working on has a huge application to be used as a what we call accelerated-driven subcritical reactor, which would be a breakthrough. It would change America's energy dependence on foreign countries, right? Would really make America energy independent. So the fascinating thing about working on hard problems is that hard problems are very hard, but if you can make it work out, then it changes how we perceive the world. So when we look back, you know, I, if you think of the Apollo mission, the microchip, the computer, The World Wide Web. There are really hand-counted few things that have altered the trajectory of where human race is going. So that's what inspires me, that if you can build something that might be hard, but if you build it, it fundamentally changes how we perceive the world and for good, it's worth working on. Even if the chances of failure is high, a small percentage it works, the effect is like massive. And I think that's what, you know, inspires me. Get going.

I mean, this perspective absolutely makes sense knowing now that you sent 500 emails to get your first internship and applied to 5 top grad schools to get into MIT. I absolutely love hearing about how you put yourself in these ecosystems and in these communities that were innovating at such scale. Do you yourself have that impact? As well. You alluded to your first company, HydroSwarm, as being an extension of some of the work that you were doing at MIT, and of course also OSU. Could you just walk us through a little bit of the aha moment that led to HydroSwarm with your first company?

I always thought I wanted to be an aerospace engineer, and I studied that at Ohio State. Then I, you know, went to work at NASA for a bit, flight controls, love it. Like, I like flying machines, Awesome, rockets, all of that, big machines. But it was at MIT when I was working on underwater drones initially for this boiling water reactors, and it was 2014, the Malaysian airline gets lost. People are talking about robots taking over human jobs and all of that stuff. We are talking about going and living in Mars and all of that stuff. Yet we do not know how to find a massive airplane that gets lost in the ocean. That's crazy. And the physics of the problem is straightforward. There's a black box, there's a ping happening. Why can't we have a bunch of distributed sensors that could pick up the ping and locate the airplane? And then you realize in the air you have aerial drones on which you deploy sensors. Why don't we have something similar underwater? And realize what you had, it was, you know, want maybe massive single drones that are millions and millions of dollars. There's no way to scale them. So I felt, wow, today we actually have technology to understand the ocean. 70% of the world's real estate is ocean. There's trillions of dollars in economy, and we do not have the right tools for the job to understand or utilize this resource in a way that can benefit humanity. So that led me to start HydroSwarm, and I really wanted to build the, you know, expand humanity beyond the frontiers of land.

Currently you're working on Navier and HydroSwarm. This is a predecessor to what is your current startup. Walk us through the transition from HydroSwarm into Navier.

As with every startup, I went through the failures of the startup and I can highlight a bit. HydroSwarm did not work out. I started the company as a foreign national while still in school. It got a lot of traction, attention, but I could not drop out because of visa reasons. Then I lost my IP because you're a part of MIT, it was complicated. The IP was given to one of the most massive defense company. And as a result of which, that made my startup very hard if I don't have rights to my own IP. That made it super complicated and out of grad school, there was ups when I started it and there was a lot of downs after. But being who I am, I think once I'm convinced of an idea, I guess I never give up. I was convinced that maritime is the frontier. I saw what happened with the technological advancement, whether that's in electrification, autonomy, that is cheaper, faster sensing, computing, scalable manufacturing, that, that had so much effect on the evolution of land and air vehicles. It was obvious if you apply those technology to maritime, this would be a huge game changer essentially. So that literally, I knew that I would, even I was just closing down Hydrostorm, I just wanted to change direction, or you would say, but But I think my underlying motivation remains the same, which is building America's next generation maritime company, or really the world's.

Well, that's an excellent transition into Navier, your current startup where you are CEO and founder. Maybe share a bit more about your mission specifically with Navier, and what is your core product?

At Navier, we are building the next generation maritime company, and we often say that our Our mission is really to make the waterways as accessible as highways. What we are building at Navier are marine vessels that are not only cleaner, but are step function more efficient in terms of operational cost. And the thesis is that if you can move things on the water at the cost, speed, and convenience as landborne option, then water is no more an obstacle but another highway. We used to move on the water, and at the turn of the century, automobiles became cheaper and faster, and then the highways were built, the cities were built around it. Now we are at another point where all these coastal cities— San Francisco, New York, you name it— like have become congested. You are thinking of digging tunnels or making helipads for air taxis, but the waterway is severely underutilized because we have now solved this physics of this problem, that is how do we move on water in a scalable, effective, cost-convenient way. So that's really the thesis and the core product. We just launched our first product, Navier 30, and Navier 30 is the world's longest range electric boat and America's first all-electric hydrofoil boat. And you know, we have a very stellar technical team, and we really wanted to focus on this performance efficiency and really building the next generation vessel that is not just a tiny bit of like improvement, but it's literally a game changer that is 10x more efficient than any traditional gas boat you have there. And to me, that is like, will fundamentally change how we see the waterways.

I'm just totally thrown by this concept of could our waterways be highways? As someone who grew up in Seattle and then has lived in the Bay for the last 5 years, really, I'm super accustomed to living between large bodies of water in Seattle. It's the Puget Sound, Lake Union, and Lake Washington. And you take all of these bridges to get from point A to point B, which have become, as you pointed out, so congested and are not doing anything good for the environment and to that effect. And this is really changing my own assumptions around what would it look like to get from point A to point B to actually use the water to your advantage. Rather than an obstacle that must be overcome. With that framework, I suppose, you know, I've actually been on the N30 boat on dry land, not yet on water, and it's a beautiful, beautiful boat. And first of all, congratulations on having your first official launch of that boat. I think both in Maine, over in Miami, as well as the Bay. Could you just, taking a step back, tell us a bit more about the boat build from inception to launch, which I believe happened in almost a record 2 years.

Yeah, it did. It's probably one of the fastest builds of any vessel of this complexity and size. I'm not aware of other vessels that have been built so fast. I think part of it is the learning through doing, right? I've built stuff before, seen what worked, what didn't, what failed. And when we were raising for Navier initially, everybody is scared of hardware. Even though people live in a the only physical world, like everything around them is physical stuff. The people are just scared of hardware. And I'm like, somebody is building that, you know? But anyway, when I was trying to raise that and everyone was like, well, you'd need $50 million. You would need all this top talent from Tesla production to build this machine of this complexity, a flying boat, and 5 to 7 years to build a full-scale plane. And if you look at the data in hardware, that makes sense. You're like, companies go public without an actual product and they're worth billions of dollars, right? But I wanted to challenge that because my goal is not about, okay, that hype. My goal is actually building something, putting out in the world, and changing the world. And we wanted to see, okay, how do they do things differently? Because in a traditional company, you would want to raise a ton of money, hire a huge amount of team, and get everything ready and build this, right? What we did is that we kept the core team very small. And then I found who is the expert in each part of this. So what is the shipyard? Rather than building the boat in-house, right, and hiring a bunch of people who are in carbon composites and stuff, and the hiring itself would take very long, I found, okay, what is the best shipyard that can do this job, that I can do carbon composites? Who is the best person who has built some of the best foils in the world? Like somebody from America stuff. I called Paul Beaker. The lead naval architect of Team Oracle, the one that, the boat that won America's Cup. And I say, hey, I know you really, you design all these fancy $40 million boats, but think about this. If you can help me build this boat that can lead to next generation transportation on the water, like I could call it pitch while bigger. And we were yet to raise real money back then. And then you find all of this, who is the best in aesthetics? That's a European design firm. And then the core team, which is really the control system integration, hire the best people, right? And that took me time. You know, we have a really good engineering team and from alumni of MIT, Berkeley, CMEO, and they work the coordination and working with all these different teams. It's, this was the most audacious project I've ever undertaken. And it was unreal when I saw the boat. The first day of getting ready for a sea trial, I think it just was magical.

Oh my gosh. You are fearless, Sanpreet. The amount of cold outreach you've done that has yielded just incredible results is really inspiring how you took this approach to turn what was a lot of people's skepticism on their head and say, I think we can do this a different way. And I guess in that vein, there's the prototype of the boat that is out there. It is on the waterways. And you spoke to a Forbes reporter last year just around the more public launch of the boat itself, and that production is already sold out for the next line of boats, and that there's over hundreds on the waitlist for the boats itself. This is such a distinct kind of go-to-market strategy, which we talk a lot about on this podcast. How do you get your product in the hands of your early customers? How do you think about go-to-market when building and scaling such a physically intensive products like the N30.

I want to differ because I have seen how the other usual conventional approach play out. I think of building Navi as literally a 3-step process. And if you remember in the movie Martian, how they say, well, when you're stuck there, what do you do? You solve one problem, then you solve the next problem, and then you solve the next problem, then you get to go home. Well, home would be, you know, the perfect exit. The way I think about it is the first part of this problem is a technology problem. 90% of all of our efforts was put into that. We are not thinking about how do we get hundreds of LOIs and partnerships of 10 years down the future will happen if you build this. No, let's make sure that we actually have a product because again, you have to have a high conviction and I think it's not on anybody else. I have a high conviction that I know if I build it, it will work and that future is possible. So I'm not going to get distracted by making renders, CGIs, and chasing LOIs of 10 years down when you do this thing. So being very focused is super important. The first phase was proving out the technology. The second phase is really, now it's a production problem. Now how do we go from like building this boat, which cost a lot in-house when we made it, you know, custom, to something that is scalable to hundreds and thousands of water taxis? Like how does that— this is really building something, it's really a production problem. And if you can Tune that, like how the cash flows would occur and how would that whole process look like. It's a very interesting problem, but that is now, would be my 80% focus in this phase of the company. Once you solve that, then you're thinking about the operation problem. It's not that you don't do other problems when you're doing this, but at any phase, because as a small startup, you really have to focus on one big problem that gives you tremendous ROI. So it's better to have that going into that. And so operation is that once you have built it, now how do you scale? Now you have figured out your secret sauce stuff, like how do you build, meet your margins, and can actually distribute this. Now how do you actually operate and scale? So these are the three phases of problems. People will ask you when you fundraise or whatever, random things, because they think that is important, but you have to stick to your gut and know, you know, what you're focusing on.

I love this framework of what is the actual question we're solving for here. And how are all the other questions that are legitimate questions, but ultimately distractions given where we are in this phase of building. I think that principle is incredibly important when building a startup. It is actually something that one of our former guests, the founder of Coda, Shashir, coined Eiken questions. And I think it's derivative of actually a math equation, but I'm not gonna be smart enough to remember which one. And that idea of, well, what is like the meta question? How does everything we're doing today serve the goal of this meta question. And so as you're describing this process that you go through, I'm just reminded of this framework. To date, you've raised over $10 million in seed funding from the likes of NextView Ventures, Liquid2, and Sergey Brin, the founder of Google. First of all, congratulations. That's incredible. We're curious, as we think about the supporters around your ecosystem, who was the first person to say yes to Navier?

Before I started Navier, actually, I was working before I thought of building the big boat on the autonomy and edge computing for marine assets. That is basically modernizing existing boats, making them autonomous, making the controls and so on. So the end goal was always the same, the building the vertically integrated maritime company. There's a saying, be flexible on the details and be rigid on the vision. So that was a bit what I had to go through the experimentation process there. But the first person who said yes was Charlie Songhurst. He's a pretty well-known angel investor. He has invested in lots of well-known companies, but he likes big ideas and he just thought that whatever you'll do, I'll back you because I think you'll just make it work.

So it's nice to reflect on who are those early people who had conviction in you and had conviction in your idea, but you shared already in our conversation some moments where you had to have that belief in yourself first to even get to the open door to turn the next page. And I'm taking a step back, you know, unfortunately there's just not enough women in tech. but especially in deep tech that are building in the big ideas and big spaces that you're playing in. What advice would you have for women or anyone who identifies as underrepresented in this ecosystem on how to launch a company such as yours?

When you're a brown Indian woman with accent and you go in and then say, I'm gonna build a flying machines and boats, first of all, you're gonna go into a room, people don't see you as the most likely person who might be building something crazy wild or something that is likely to be successful. And as a woman, even if you're educated, you often might get discounted as being academic or like, oh, would she know about business? That's actually a very common thing as well. There is no easy answer advice. It is, we are at a point that we have to work triple hard to create outliers and data points. But what I would suggest is it's not just a founder, it's the community as a whole, I really want to see more women on my cap table. And I think it would be cool to see more women investors, you know, also getting comfortable with investing in women who are doing hard tech and not shying away from that and saying, you know what, I only do like feminine stuff and all of that. I think there has to be effort on both sides, right? Women companies usually receive even lesser valuation, even Women VCs can actually do a better job there, right? So they, there is work to be done on the both sides, which can make things better for the community in general.

Well, I think the more stories we share and the more like female or underrepresented founders get out there, speak their truth, share a little bit more about their vision, certainly hopefully we're moving in a positive direction. As a fellow founder myself, you've mentioned this, it's not always a straight line. Like things don't always happen the way that they are played back after the fact. And building something is really difficult. Launching, go-to-market, all All of that is super difficult. Could you share us a moment in your entrepreneurial journey building Avia where things just didn't go as planned?

I think to be honest, nothing ever goes exactly per plan. I mean, there is always something that will not go as you plan. And because if it did, I think life would be very boring. And I think it is the things that are unplanned, even the things that are not always at that point may seem like the worst thing ever. And you never know, looking back, maybe it would be the best things, right? When I think about my entrepreneurial journey, I don't know where I want to start it. If I started way back, you know, not getting married, that point seemed like my worst failure. I thought my life was over. And looking back, wow, if it didn't happen, then, you know, I wouldn't be here. I would have a very different life. I don't know whether that life would be more sparsely or not, but it would be a very different path. So there are lots of, you know, actual moment was the Hydra storm was one of that. And I was definitely very confident because it was clear, the market was ready, everything seemed aligned, but there was lots of things that I did not plan. I did not know I could not drop out of school to run this company, that there are limitations as a foreign national. Sometimes things will not go as planned, but I think one thing I'm learning is how to be a little bit more nicer to oneself because as entrepreneurs, we are very self-critical and it's important to be kind to oneself, especially if you're a high achiever.

Totally. I think being Type A, like perfectionist, always wanting to be in control in, you know, building something that is cutting edge and not an established thing, like nothing can be exactly what you think it is. And so maybe it's okay when things don't go to plan.

So thanks for Perspective is very important, right? It is very easy to compare. I had a very different path to coming where I am. If you start comparing that, and it's very likely you are in the circles you are in, then that can make you feel not so great. So it's important to step back and always remember where you came from, what are you doing, and then be kind.

Absolutely. I'd love to shift gears a little bit and dive a bit more into the future of electrification and clean energy and AI and just some of these like really cool things that you're building and are incredibly relevant, especially during this time. Embedded into the N30 nav system is a full autonomous navigation with autopilot technology and one-click docking. Tell us, did you develop the software layer in-house? How do you think about AI in building Navier?

Autonomy was like one of my key passions. I mean, I used to build underwater autonomous drones and stuff, but that was really the thesis back then. So the autonomous navigation, autopilot, this is all built in-house. Our first product, Navia 30, is coming with one-click auto docking for all those who dread docking their beautiful boats. And even very trained captains, some days you have one of those gusty days in the bay, it can get very challenging.

I know my dad will appreciate the one-click docking for sure.

I know, right? All of us, even no matter how expert, might need it every now and then. It's really the first in the industry with this kind of a feature. As far as full autonomy, of course that's not being released in the first boat, but that's obviously the end goal because if you think of what makes water taxi scalable and cost competitive is making it autonomous and it's also safe and on the water it's very different than on the land. You're going fixed route, fixed marinas. The problem is, I would say it's a step function, let's say easier in many ways than land. Of course, there could be crazy guys on jet skis that you have to watch out for, but overall, in some ways, it's definitely a more solvable problem. So I actually think that autonomy on water, it might be easier to see faster than what you see on the land. Then on the AI side, of course, you're thinking of autonomy. I mean, you are using the technologies very similar to what you're using in autonomous cars, just that somewhat different set of sensors or combination of various other sensors that are needed that are specific to marine. But in terms what's happening in AI, of course generative AI is going to open a huge realm of possibilities, especially in terms of training data, which is a big issue for when you're doing autonomy. And with generative AI, you can use to generate more synthetic data, for example, mimic more real-world scenario, develop better simulations, because if you can train in a very realistic simulation environment, you can save a lot of cost, for example.

Yeah, that's incredible. And in terms of other just innovations, I did see core, like M30 is unlocking more efficient clean water transportation through electrification. That's one way that you're innovating. Autonomous is another way that you're innovating. Why is it so important now in innovating in maritime transportation? Could you share with our listeners who might be a little bit less familiar with what's happening in terms of the geopolitics of the ocean, why now is so critical?

If you think about in the history, I mean, the oceans are not marine vessels in America have played such an important role in civilization, and we get enamored by outer space. I personally love space, but we forget the importance of our ocean, of our coastal regions, and especially in America. I mean, coastal cities were built, right? There are early people out here who came to America on ships. But if you think about, as you're focusing on the next phase of innovation, especially from the perspective of country like US. You are putting effort in getting ahead in the space race. You have so much effort in getting ahead in terms of land vehicles, automotives, right? But we have not talked much about maritime, and maritime has a huge importance in terms of geopolitical importance, in terms of national security, like sustainability, environment, access to resources. So much of our natural resources are out there in the ocean. You're seeing what's happening in the South China Sea, the Arctic, and many other countries are quite ahead. But with the technology we have today, I mean, we have to get ready to build the right kind of innovation that puts America ahead in maritime. And the time is definitely now as we are thinking that what does next generation civilization even should look like? Like, we just don't utilize our waterways like shipping and All of this cost, like, being driven by if we cannot produce this effectively, then we are always relying on other countries, and that put us as a massive disadvantage. So I think it is super important for American manufacturing and American innovation to get ahead in that. Otherwise, we will always be reliant on other outside resources.

I love this just reframe around the conversation we're having on space and, oh, what if we go live in space and how can we get there and space travel. And we actually have a lot going on here on Earth. And what could we be doing to reimagine what covers the majority of our Earth, water, and how could that actually change all of our lives for the better and change our planet's ecosystem? With that, with all that's going on with Navier, you definitely don't have any shortage of exciting things. But as you look ahead, what is next for Navier and what is next for Sampreetii?

What's next for Navier is getting more boats out on the water as we are starting production. Setting that up is a fun process too. Like hard problems are also often fun, but it's really growing into the phase 2 of this and that's super exciting. Just the idea of building fleets and lots of boats and seeing them out on the water, see people out on them gets me out of the bed and into the warehouse and say, let's go.

I can't wait till I can call a Navier boat. From my phone and just get from point A to point B. I see that in my future. And what's next for you personally?

I love being in the Bay. I'm very involved in building good communities, and for me is to see this through for the next year. That's really a big part of my mission, to see this boat on the water and see if we can change how people perceive the waterways. If we can make that happen, I think it'll be very magical.

We're excited for this future as well. And thank you so much for spending the last hour talking us through your unique story to America, to graduate school, and then ultimately to changing the face of maritime transportation. Our closing question is one that we ask all of our guests and are looking forward to your answer. As you think of the many people that have touched your life or the many things that have touched your life over the last years, who's a woman that has had a profound impact on you and your career?

So I admire many women and, you know, there's not one single person that actually ever impacted me. It's basically events in history that have. So talking about women, I would say Kalpana Chawla, for example, she's an aerospace engineer and Indian origin. She was one of the first women that I saw on TV and went to space and she looked like me. So in that sense, you know, representation counts. But when you think of Beethans, actually, it's a full mission to the moon. I think seeing that people can literally and figuratively reach out for the moon, that what's possible. When I was 15, that just blew my mind. And the sacrifices people did to make that happen, that really, really inspired generations of people after that to do hard things. And I really I think that it's important to do things that are not only just hard problem, but something that also inspires awe, wonder, and curiosity among other people.

I love that. It's not just one person, but people and events that have shaped history. And I have no doubt, Sunpreeti, that you are on the track to also shape history in a very similar way. And so I can't wait and see what is to come with Navier. Hopefully get out on the bay sometime soon together. And thank you so much for taking the time today to share your story with us.

Awesome. I'll see you guys on the flying boat.

So excited for that.

Thank you so much, Amrit. Thank you.

Thank you so much for joining us at The Room Podcast. If you want more from The Room every week, subscribe to our newsletter at theroompodcast.com/newsletter. We'll be back next week with a new episode Tuesday, 10:00 AM Eastern, 7:00 AM Pacific. See you in the room.

All opinions expressed by Claudia and Madison and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of The5EC. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.