#48 - Three Breakthroughs: Tech Bro Cities, Making Money in Space, and AI Recruiting Is Already Here

A utopic city in California, moon caves, and AI hiring. We got a good one for you. Hang tight.

But also, you know, given where we invest, Mike, it's like the perfect showcase for the future of energy usage, energy storage, how you actually bring these somewhat theoretical advances in technology into everyday living. Investing in space isn't just sci-fi anymore. There are real use cases.

Careers are going to be made. Legends are going to be made. The most valuable companies in the world are eventually going to be ones that master space. So we're going to play, that's for sure.

Hello, welcome back to this episode of The Tech Optimist. We have a 3 breakthroughs episode for you today, and we have the classic hosts behind this episode and behind this segment of the show. We have Mike Collins, founder and CEO at Alumni Ventures. And then of course we have his partner in crime for this segment for a few weeks, Michael Perry. He's a partner at Alumni Ventures. And then you'll probably recognize my voice. My name is Sam and I'm the guide, editor, and narrative curator for this podcast. So I'm going to give you a little bit of snippet on, you know, what the two are talking about today. So first topic that they bring up is about the California Forever utopia city. Now they sort of talk about then what it means to build a utopia city, how it affects, you know, new technologies and new investments and new companies that could spring up because of this, all this new needed technology. And it's just, it's a cool conversation. And then second breakthrough we talk about The network of caves on the moon. So then these guys talk about how important it is to invest in space in the future and how important it is to get into the space sector. And we sort of talk about lava tubes. So that's also a cool thing to sort of look forward to. And then the last breakthrough today is AI and hiring practices. I know Mike and Mike kind of talk about what that means for the future of hiring and, you know, any potential biases that are there or that could come up, um, you know, with a sort of AI technology being the brain behind it all. So I'm going to stop yapping and let's get right into the episode. Hang tight and we hope you enjoy. As a reminder, the Tech Optimist podcast is for informational purposes only. It is not personalized advice and it is not an offer to buy or sell securities. For additional important details, please see the text description accompanying this episode.

Hey, and welcome to this week's episode of Tech Optimist 3 Breakthroughs. I'm joined today by Mike Perry in our Chicago offices, and I'm Mike Collins. I'm, uh, the founder and CEO of Alumni Ventures. And on this show, I get together with one of our, you know, one of my colleagues to talk about interesting technologies that are happening and are potentially investible for us. So Mike, how you doing?

Doing great. Excited to talk today. I feel like we have a lot of timely subjects to discuss, so I'm happy to kick it off if you're okay with that one.

Yeah, what do you got?

All right. So first, in recent news, I really want to talk about this exciting development that could change the way how we think about urban living and urban planning. So I want you to imagine a community that's going to combine all the cutting-edge technology that you're hearing about in terms of sustainable practices, you know, just modern living. Really fascinating to me. And, you know, not surprising, fascinating to Marc Andreessen and his family.

Yep.

As they're aiming for a new subdivision near the proposed California Forever utopian city. So in my mind, you know, a lot to be excited about here and a lot to just like think about what this means for policy, engaging community. So at a high level, what's going to make this unique is first and foremost, it's going to go beyond just building homes, right? It's really about Integrating smart technology and sustainable infrastructure to just straight up enhance quality of life. So you can imagine this neighborhood where, yes, your houses are energy efficient, the streets are designed to reduce traffic, there's abundant green spaces, you have a sense of communal living. But also, you know, given where we invest, Mike, it's like the perfect showcase for the future of energy usage, energy storage. how you actually bring these somewhat theoretical advances in technology into everyday living. So for me, you know, I saw this and I was like, super cool, you know, kind of mantelpiece of what it can do. But I'm really hopeful that it'll start to pull through into just like regulatory thinking, the future of what planning looks like in cities, even rural planning. Yeah. You know, there's a lot here that I think we can lean on into and say like, this is gonna be the future of living, right? All these innovations we've seen and we've invested in will need to find their way into everyday life. And it's fascinating to see some of these early groups that are coming together and saying, here's an example of this. We're gonna be the first to do it and hopefully we can replicate from there.

You know, what I love about this is experiments are good. Right. And, you know, we've had a long human history of kind of utopian societies that, you know, usually don't pan out as utopian.

Yeah.

But, but it still, you know, moves the ball forward a bit. And I think we, you know, have seen with big technology shifts like the automobile, some real positives. And then there's, you know, some things that the kind of suburban trend and the kind of the gutting of some of our cities and downtown areas. And, you know, it's, you know, the railroad and how it impacted certain towns when the highways came by. Yeah. And, you know, that's, again, that's the story of progress. And with all these technologies that we're so excited about, from, you know, self-driving cars and distributed grids and, you know, innovation in energy, it is going to impact how people live, where they live. And, you know, we need people trying new stuff and learning— or learning from things that work and tossing out things that don't. And whether, you know, um, these particular things I think are, are powerful in that folks with money and folks with power and folks willing to push the envelope are trying radical new approaches. And, you know, that frankly is how it moves it ahead for everybody.

Yeah.

So it's like, I wish we had— I wish we had more of these experiments going on in more places and at different scales, um, because I think there is a lot of potential in where we live, how we live, urban density issues. This whole suburban McMansion thing has some real drawbacks. And so, I am all for it. So, it's one worth watching.

Yeah, definitely. I mean, at the end of the day, at a minimum, it's going to force the engagement at a community level. How do we think about this stuff? How do we engage with one another about it? So definitely there's going to be— yeah, yeah.

These are tradeoffs of values, right? Kind of thing. And so, you know, and then money and cost and affordability and access and all of that, all of that matters. So thumbs up for more experiments for sure.

Yeah, for sure.

As far as experiments go within city planning and architectural representation and design, Some of you may know from listening to this podcast that I have an architectural background, and part of my education in Boston. Within that education structure, there's a lot of learning about architectural history and sort of failed projects or attempts, right? And one of my favorites that I've seen firsthand is Eero Saarinen's 1948 Yeah. Landscape design that surrounds the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri. So I personally have seen it in the museum underneath the arch is a massive architectural model, right? It's a to-scale model of the city and what Eero Saarinen wanted to design along with the arch. Again, spoiler alert, it never ended up happening, but just seeing a physical representation of someone's idea in this utopic kind of environment that he wanted to provide the city of St. Louis reminded me of this breakthrough that Mike brought up. So I also found a really good journalistic-style video by TechCrunch that kind of digs into this breakthrough a little bit more and a little bit more about the story behind this utopic city and behind, you know, California Forever, this other company that's involved in this sort of utopic thing. So I'm going to play that really quick and then we're going to do an ad and then we're going to go right back into Mike's breakthrough for this episode. So hang tight.

Over the last several years, a hotshot crew of billionaire tech investors have been trying to build their very own utopian city through a real estate developer called California Forever. With supporters like Michael Moritz, Reid Hoffman, and Marc Andreessen, this project sought out to create a walkable city that could house up to 400,000 people, building on 60,000 acres of land north of San Francisco. But the project hit a serious speed bump last month when California Forever withdrew a ballot initiative pulling voters on the new city, instead opting to file an environmental environmental impact report and try again in 2026. Andreessen might not want to wait though. TechCrunch learned this week that the venture capitalist's family is planning another community in the area as well, using land that his wife's real estate mogul father, John Ariaga Sr., purchased decades before his death in 2022. Ariaga Sr. bought up land in the Bay Area and built office buildings before Silicon Valley was even a thing, laying the groundwork for his family's fortune. California Forever is doing something similar. TechCrunch reporter Margot McCall writes, California Forever's strategy mirrors Ariaga's. Both targeted cheap agricultural land, both operated largely in secrecy, and both set out to establish metropolises before there was any obvious demand for them. These developments sound amazing on paper. They're walkable cities with lots of green space, good schools, and effective public transit. But the California Forever project has been controversial among existing residents, of Solano County. Congressman John Garamendi argued that there is not enough space for 400,000 residents and that the nearby Travis Air Force Base could be negatively impacted. Plus, the developments could strain local water supplies and raise infrastructure costs. So it's probably a good thing that California Forever took a step back to figure out how to address these issues before putting the proposal to a vote. The Arriaga family's development plans are a bit less intrusive. The land totals around 730 acres, and the plan thus far is to build 1,000 homes. The end goal of building this development would be to sell it, whereas California Forever seems intent on developing some sort of techno utopia. So is this a situation of a son-in-law following in his father-in-law's footsteps? We'll have to wait a few years to find out.

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All right, Mike, what do you have?

Yeah, this— I mean, this one's a little dated. I mean, we're here, what, 28th of August, and this came out a few weeks ago, but I'd just been meaning to talk about it, which is, you know, basically finding this cave on the Right.

Okay, I remember.

And, you know, is that a thing or not? Who knows? We've also had, you know, the astronauts kind of get stranded in space, having, you know, we're going up for, you know, a couple weeks, hon. No, I'll see you in February, right? Kind of thing.

Yeah, can you imagine that? I'll be back. I'll be back over the weekend.

Yeah, yeah. It's just like, I'll do that next week. Yeah, exactly. So, um,

okay, so in regards to Mike Collins's breakthrough, um, we have an article from NASA directly that's titled New Evidence Adds to Finding Hinting at Network of Caves on the Moon. First off, that's just a bonkers concept, right? I had thrown the Article header a little bit earlier, but I wanted to read a little bit of this article for you guys because it is so cool. And then also as well, there's a really cool YouTube video that they shared on this article by NASA 360 called Lava Tubes: Science Beneath the Surface of the Moon, which is about only a minute and a half, which I also wanted to share. So that will come up right after this. But a snippet, um, you know, from this article, um, written by Lonnie Skettman, um, this came out in July of this year. An international team of scientists using data from NASA's LRO, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, has discovered evidence of caves beneath the moon's surface. In reanalyzing radar data collected by LRO's MiniRF, miniature radio frequency instrument, in 2010, the team found evidence of a cave extending more than 200 feet from the base of a pit. The pit is located 230 miles northeast of the first human landing site on the Moon. The full extent of the cave is unknown, but it could stretch for miles beneath the surface. The Mini-RF is operated by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. LRO is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Launched in June of 2009, LRO has collected a treasure trove of data and its 7 powerful instruments, making an invaluable contribution to our knowledge about the Moon. NASA is returning to the moon with commercial and international partners to expand human presence in space and bring back new knowledge and opportunities. That's that sort of technology that I mentioned a little bit earlier. But here's that YouTube video that I was talking about. And then after that, we're going to do the last ad. Again, this video is really cool. Hang tight. We'll be right back.

The moon originally was a big ball of magma. Through time, as the crust formed on the surface, the magma on the interior also slowly leaked to the surface. A lava tube is essentially a cave, an enclosed tunnel through which lava flowed, and if it was able to drain out, you now have this open cave through which you can conduct some interesting scientific experiments. Here on Earth, our research team studies lava tubes as a means for better understanding how we can explore and understand From some of our high-resolution images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, we can actually see pits on the surface of the Moon, and it looks like these could be extensive lava tube networks. So they could be pathways that are tens to hundreds of meters long, they could be kilometers long. Understanding lava tubes, where and when they formed on the surface of the Moon, is just a really exciting scenario. These caverns have been forming for billions of years. been protected from the space environment. So this really would be an ideal place to try and collect samples that tell us not only about the Moon, but about the solar system in general and how it's evolved through time. Our next step's starting to plan robotic exploration of the Moon again, and this might involve observations that would help confirm the presence of lava tubes or some of these subsurface void spaces. They may even be accessible by robots or in the future maybe even humans. To me, it just makes them a very interesting and exciting aspect to studying the surface of the Moon.

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But it's the bigger picture of space and investing, and people kind of— because there's some pretty high-profile people and some, you know, billionaire space tourism going on, I think people are, you know, They've lost the line a little bit that this is actually a very important place where real innovation is taking place and infrastructure is being built. You know, I was with a group of very young venture capitalists just starting out in their careers and, you know, they're all looking to make their name in something.

Yeah.

Right, kind of thing. And You know, if you're 26 and looking to be in this space for the next 40, 50 years, it feels early, but it's not. Space is definitely one that would be on my recommended list to get to know, figure it out, figure out where the technology stack is, where it's going, who's going to make money, who's going to be kind of, you know, a pioneer that gets killed. It is. There are things that are not 40 years away here. Yeah. There are people that are making money in communications, making money in materials, payload. It is, and it has legs, right? I mean, one thing about space is it's an almost infinite possibility of new and investing and And I, again, probably beyond my life, but in future generations, you know, it's a little bit like I went through the phase of like, oh, we're going to do an internet fund or something, right?

Yeah.

But it's just like, okay, that is just imbued in all investing now. I just think again, space is going to become one of the places that everybody just is like, what's the next thing in space? What's the next thing in space? What's the next space? And so it has, I think it just has long legs. And a big tail. And so, I just, you know, we're an active investor in it, you know, but you want to talk about a couple of things?

Yeah. I mean, from your—

I'll put a couple. We'll have Sam put up more on our screen.

You know, I think what's fascinating and you're communicating this in the way that I too engage, you know, my peers or folks that are generally interested. It's like, Investing in space isn't just sci-fi anymore. Yeah. There are real use cases. Yes, I think you default to, you know, the defense use cases and, you know, the primes that are there and how you could potentially disintermediate or innovate around it. But you're also seeing, you know, turn off gravity and go manufacture, you know, new pharmaceuticals in space. That's known research, right? There are, you know, clearly the amount of materials that you could bring down to actually say, hey, this is a more sustainable way of mining potentially, right? There are— the whole point is there are equally as many commercial use cases as I think there are government. And we're only starting to see that. And, you know, I think of the work like Pete and Drew are doing on the strategic fund, right? Like really putting a name out there for ourselves, getting in high-caliber deals, but also, you know, AV and— in a whole, being able to describe what these deals are, why we're excited, in a way that resonates with the everyday person.

Yeah,

I think the more we can do that, and certainly our peers in the industry are doing the same, I think it'll just exponentially grow what we're able to accomplish in space beyond, you know, putting on your sci-fi hat like, oh, what else are we going to do out there? It's like, it's very real things and very real benefit.

Yeah, and that's again what we, we're trying to do here at AV is just With the goal of democratizing and bringing more people into this asset class, part of our job is to just share our excitement about real businesses that make real money that can be a great investment and really fascinating technology that just is improving things with you know, communications or data or understanding of science that leads into making human lives better.

And I mean, yeah, a little bit of a scary use case, but like astronauts are stranded in space right now. Yeah. Now we have a lot more optionality, a lot more, you know, service providers that we can engage with to, you know, that's a very real-time, I think, interesting use case, but it's, you know, it's demonstrating just what we're doing up there, the capability of intersecting both public and private sectors to not only innovate but partner together to just accomplish whatever mission it is that they set their minds to.

Yeah. And again, I'm writing a paper right now on, you know, just some of the areas we're investing in that are seeing kind of geometric changes. Right. And obviously we're seeing— we've seen that for a long time in compute.

Yep.

I think, you know, and another chart I looked at recently was just kind of payload costs getting— what does it cost to get something in space?

Yeah.

And we're on kind of the Moore's— a Moore's Law kind of thing, which is just, you know, more options, more commercial stuff, reduced cost. You know, Elon's done amazing work there. And, you know, I think NASA is pretty happy that they didn't Sole source something when it came to moving people around up there. So again, again, the role of the private sector and innovators and risk takers and capital and the profit motive, the stuff works. There is a role for government and there's a role for the private sector, and that includes in space. Yeah. And we are just— again, careers are going to be made, legends are going to be made. You know, the most valuable companies in the world are eventually going to be ones that master space. So we're going to play, that's for sure.

Okay. And of course, just like this last 3 Breakthroughs episode, I have been requested by the internal AV team to supply some of those companies in the AV Port Co that are, you know, within this sector. within the space sector and are doing some really amazing things in like space and just space technology and stuff. So we have had Impulse Space on the podcast before. That was an awesome episode if you want to go back and listen to that. Um, but that was with, uh, Tom Mueller, um, SpaceX's first employee. It was a really cool conversation around SpaceX and everything. But Impulse Space is a startup that specializes in developing advanced in-space transportation and propulsion technologies. Um, You know, they have their technology, their key products like MIRA, Helios, and just general rocket engines. And then we also have another company called CCM Astro, which is a startup that specializes in developing advanced communication technologies for aerospace applications. And their core technology is they design and manufacture software-defined phased array communication payloads. And these systems are used for airborne platforms and in-orbit satellites and spacecraft. So their technology optimizes radio communications between space, air, and ground assets. Their key products are the Nightingale series, the Compact, the SDR-1001 phased array systems. And then another company, the last one we're going to talk about today, is called Axiom Space. They were founded in 2016, and they are a pioneering company in the commercial space industry that focuses on a few areas. So they focus on space station development, human spaceflight services, research and innovation, spacesuit development, commercial— and commercial space access. So they're developing the world's first commercial space station known as the Axiom Station. And this plan kind of includes constructing modules that will initially attach to the ISS, eventually detaching those modules to form independent, fully commercial space stations, Targeting late, you know, 2026 for launch. And they're aiming for completion by the late 2020s. So super exciting, super innovative stuff coming out of all 3 of these companies. And we definitely recommend giving them a dive if you're interested. But let's round off the episode with the last breakthrough, and then we'll go from there. All right, hang tight again. Thanks.

Okay, Mike, what's your third one?

All right, talking about careers and stepwise functions and change. You know, this is fascinating for me. It's an area that, you know, I like all things that sell into, you know, employers or benefits. I think they're really nice solutions that could be bought, not sold in that space. But, you know, the AI day of reckoning is coming, I think, in transforming hiring practices. So we've seen numerous companies in the space. I'd say any day you're kind of browsing the broader internet, you're going to see something about, you know, a new AI interview software and how it's going to fundamentally change how companies are evaluating candidates. Really, you know, also raising important questions, I think, about fairness and effectiveness.

Yeah.

It's been top of mind for me, you know, as you can see in the earnings and everything going on at the economy lately, you know, missed the mark quite a bit on jobs.

Yeah. I

think a lot more people are sitting on the sideline saying, I'm applying to a bunch, I'm not seeing anything. And I think that's a really fascinating topic to think about because there's definitely a growing trend in using AI-powered interviewing. So these are going to do everything from, you know, automating the early stages of the hiring process so it could analyze video, interviews. It can assess candidates' responses, body language, even tone of voice to provide insights, right, into the suitability for them in the role. So, you know, face value, for sure, very fascinating, going to provide incredible operational leverage, making hiring way more efficient and really being able to identify, you know, the best candidates. However, I'd say, you know, this is a trend that's not going to come without its challenges. I think we're going to face a lot of critique and argument around how AI systems are reinforcing, you know, potential biases and, you know, disadvantaging candidates based on, you know, it could be appearance, accents, or other factors like totally unrelated to job performance. So this is one, you know, we're monitoring from an investment standpoint. And just one I enjoy engaging people about because it is one of these core, like, is AI going to do too much, right? Is a human in the loop a good thing? I think this is a prime example of that.

No, I think it's a great microcosm of what is going to be an area of constant discussion over the next 10 years, right? And this is one very in The near term and in the now, right? These things are happening now, you know, and listen, it's walking a line, right? I argue there is so many— first of all, hiring is such an art.

Yeah.

And so full of bias already that the bar is actually very low to have a more fair, more equitable, and more productive system. using software, right? That, you know, that this is humans judging other humans, um, is one of the most fraught, biased, rich things that you could ever ask a human to do, right?

Mike, wasn't it one of, uh, this is a topic for another day, but do you remember, it was like years ago, the, the study that was published about judges and how they're like, I need to see the person. And they're like, actually, that's not meaningful whatsoever. And if anything, it actually brought more bias.

Yeah, I mean, the example that I'm familiar with, I believe, was a music competition. And, um, I think it was on gender, right? And, and what they found is by putting the person behind a curtain, that the results were very, very different. Yeah. And so, I'm inclined to think that this is an area of rapid improvement very quickly and a great application for it.

Yeah.

I mean, we are, Surely the software will not be perfect. The AI will not be perfect. But like self-driving cars, the standard should not be perfection.

Yeah.

The standard should be materially better than what the alternative is. And we have just known from study after study, people make their decisions very— on hiring.

Yeah.

Very emotionally. very much a preference for hiring people like them. And not just in physical characteristics, but in style and body language and posture and all of this kind of stuff. And so, sign me up.

Yeah, I'm with you. You know, I think there's I think it defaults real fast to like, oh, you know, policymakers and industry leaders are going to have to come together and collaborate around this because, you know, it's going to be— you have to audit for bias and clear standards. And you could just take that same argument and reframe it a little bit. And you're like, yeah, but you could also tune this to identify things that you would never do anyway.

I mean, I'll just give you an example of that, which is, you know, I think that there is huge bias toward You know, going to fancy schools.

Yeah.

Right. And, and, and, you know, that, that is probably an area that is over-indexed in our society.

Yeah.

Right. And it's like, you know, oh, Mike Collins went to school X, Mike Perry went to school Y, that there's all kinds of biases that kind of get carried along with that. Most of that is Yes, there's applications and credentialing and all that does go on, but it's over-indexed probably, right?

I agree.

And could an AI system, you know, look at work quality, those kinds of things? And so I just think this area of evaluating, of recruiting, of coaching, which is another thing that can be on the positive side, which is, you know, how does Mike work with Joe?

Yep.

Okay. You know, this employee is struggling. How can an AI coach them to, you know, present better or those kinds of things? So, you know, at the end of the day, I've said this, I said this to my board recently, which is I think there's— and this was in the context of leaders of companies using AI themselves.

Yeah.

In the context of having an AI assistant, right? that helps them with their jobs, whatever that is. And I basically said, I think very shortly there's going to be 2 types of founders, 2 types of CEOs. There are going to be AI-assisted and former.

Yeah.

And so, you know, I think that that's the world we're going to work in. And very just bringing it right back to this point is if somebody is heading up HR, people and culture, You know, the career move is to get really good at picking these systems, using these systems, balancing these systems out with kind of human touch and editorial, letting the computers do what computers do well, letting humans do what humans do well.

Yeah.

So yeah, I think it's a fascinating area. And like you point out, I think it is a microcosm of conversations we're going to have Over and over and over again, um, in the coming years, but very exciting stuff. All right, Mike. Excellent. Awesome. Good conversation and we'll do it again next week.

Yeah. Talk to you next week. See you, Mike.

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