I was going to say today I'm with Will Wiseman, but you've kind of kicked us off already. Will is the founder managing partner at Kitty Hawk Ventures. Kitty Hawk is a Seed stage frontier tech fund that was birthed at Singularity University where Will was the executive director. Will has been at Foundation Capital, Maveron, I found out you were the founder of World Raps out of college. Lot to cover, thanks for being here.

I'm so glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Awesome, so usually I'd like to start with something like Kitty Hawk, seems like the relevant topic, but I feel like for Kitty Hawk it's relevant to hit a bit about Singularity.

Yeah, let's do it. What do you want to know?

Well, you were Executive Director for 10 years. I want to know all the kind of crazy stuff. I wonder about what you were exposed to, what was really exciting there, give us the basics.

Yeah, yeah, so my background is kind of a mix of entrepreneurship and venture capital. I was at this crossroads where I was frankly exhausted from taking some swings at being an entrepreneur and I was thinking about the things that I really love, and I love learning, and I love being around extraordinary people. So, I had this really cool opportunity to join Singularity in its early days, there were about 13 people in the organization at the time. It was founded by Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis. Ray had written this book called The Singularity is Near and it talked about how more and more technologies were becoming information technologies. They were growing exponentially. You know, this is written probably 20 years ago. Peter had read the book, realized that there was no place people could learn how to think this way and to get exposed really to what was happening at the forefront of all these different technology areas, and so started Singularity.

And so Peter had read the book, realized that there was no place people could learn how to think this way and to get exposed really to what was happening at the forefront of all these different technology areas, and so started Singularity.

Okay so, Singularity, perhaps wrongly in my brain has a little bit of “technology is taking over mankind” or something.

Yeah, so there's a lot of definitions for singularity, so I mean, I will tell you there is, you know, there's a transhumanism element. The basic idea is that things start moving so quickly that humans can't keep up with it. In hindsight, Singularity University should not have been named Singularity and should not have been a university.

It was not an accredited institution, so probably not the right naming. But this idea was that, Technology was about to enter this extraordinary period and we were going to be able if you understood it you could know kind of where it's going and Ray has become one of the most I think he's now actually the chief futurist at google because he's understood the exponential growth of these technologies and what would happen from a price performance perspective when certain technologies or products or services might be available built on top of these technologies.
There was this belief that if you understood how technology was growing and kind of what The next wave of technologies would be that you would be very well positioned to, you know, do well from a business perspective, but also this real focus on how you would leverage these technologies to solve some of the world's biggest problems.

It was just this, like, really Incredible ecosystem you know, we would put on these executive programs and summits and incubators and you would have the kind of who's who coming through the doors there.

And that has then turned into Kitty Hawk.

Yes, exactly.

But I told you I want to talk about some of the crazy stuff. Not crazy stuff but just the exponential stuff, moving our world forward. I have particular areas I'm really interested in. Let me throw some out there and tell me if, like, we have mutual overlap. Like, longevity and just, like, what we're seeing there. Fascinating to me right now

Love it. Love it. Amazing.

So talk to me about, like, what's exciting?

Yeah. So, Peter D. Maness is super passionate about longevity. I spend a week with him every year. We go on this longevity learning trip and went on one in August where we were back east and met with David Sinclair and George Church and Dean Kamen. And I don't know, like. longevity is it's one of these things where, it's kind of like fusion energy a little bit. You know, it's like it's almost here. You feel like longevity. There's a little bit of that. Yeah, but this was a fascinating trip, though, because people were talking about how there's this notion of longevity escape velocity where you're gaining more than a year of life for every year that you're alive.

That’s what I said, we’re getting younger instead of older.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But yes, but that's like, there's a real belief that we're within kind of eight to 15 years of hitting that and George Church on this trip said that, you know, there's no reason that he can think of that humans can't live forever, which was like George is one of the more like rational, really data driven scientist.

He and David Sinclair, again, a little differing kind of viewpoints and how they think about some of these opportunities, but really, really interesting. David's working now and animal studies, with primates where he's basically they're able, they think to kind of use a master switch that will potentially stop and then actually revert your cells back to an earlier state and they've been showing this with mice that you've probably been following this where they're, they're able to basically take older blind mice and they're able to turn their eye cells back to kind of a more juvenile, juvenescent state and restore their vision.

And I think that same mechanism works for all sorts of different use cases and will work for primates and then eventually in humans. And that's something where really it's not just about slowing things down. It's really about bringing you back to a healthier, younger state. And so some wild stuff going on, some of the scientists are talking about it in terms of software that is no longer functioning correctly. And so it's really about rebooting your software system or editing your software system to get it working correctly. So it's all code, right?

I mean, is there anything that either you're doing or you think people should be doing more of?

I would say the two more important things, so of all the learning I’ve been through, yeah, sleeping, no alcohol, sorry my friend. Uh, sleeping very, very well. You know, surrounding yourself with love and community, super important. You're like right in the thick of so many people and surrounded by so many people who love you, so that's your fine there. And then you get into supplementation and there's all sorts of things that people are doing. And then metformin, rapamycin, you know, there's peptides, people are doing stem cell treatments now.

And some of this stuff, you know, it's really hard to tell at this point. What it's really doing. They've done mice studies and that looks like actually it helps extend can have an impact on life extension, but we haven't done the same studies yet with humans and a lot of these things. And so they're sold most of them is supplements, and it's a bit of a leap of faith as to whether or not it's gonna help or not. And there's like differing viewpoints on all these things. I mean, the intermittent fasting thing is another thing that people are really passionate about.

Dude, ozempic is every freaking where I know that's not fasting, but whoa, my God, that's sweeping the nation.

Yeah, unbelievable. And now they're starting to be a little bit of concern about that and people are maybe starting to move away from that and you know, I try to you got to exercise. You got to sleep well and some of the other stuff we talked.

No, I want the shortcut.

Yeah, we, we all do. I don't, you know, I think we're going to see it in our lifetime, I think in the next 10, 15 years and all this stuff is being accelerated with AI. And so it's, uh, there's some, big things happening, whether it happens in the US first, I'm a little dubious of some of these things will happen probably outside the US. like stem cells down in Panama and other places where it's

I didn’t know stem cells were big in Panama, again, sorry, I don't

They're huge in Panama.

Yeah. Yeah. You got to get down there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, and is it because of different

It's different. Yeah, it's regulatory issues.

Yeah, no, I was stalking you and your wife's Chinese, right?

She is.

That’s a whole different ball of worms of like U. S. versus China right now.

Yeah.

yeah. I mean, that's been,

Yeah. I'm used to kind of, yeah, well, it is. I mean, these two, you know, the two kind of superpowers, right?

And what they're doing over there, I mean, so many parts of the world, well, I shouldn't say so many parts of the world, but like Shanghai right now has been communicated to me as like, this is what the future looks like, and the US is just not able to move quickly enough in so many of these areas. I know we're like starting to onshore a lot more, and I think that's good, but just the speed and the investment that's happening, and the commitment that's happening in some of these other countries like China, it's going to be very hard for us to keep up if we don't kind of change how we're operating and, kind of taking care of people here.

And do you think that’s due to a centralized government?

I think there are advantages as well as disadvantages to having a centralized government, of course, but in an environment where things are changing so quickly, it's easier for them to all of a sudden decide, you know, what? Solar is important and the whole country, I mean, I've had times where I've been there and like, one visit, all the scooters are gas powered, and the next visit, all the scooters are electric powered. Someone made a decision and that's just the way it is. what's interesting though, what I've learned from my wife, there's just certain things like.

They can't control who's leading the country and my wife's now a US citizen But they don't talk about politics because they can't affect it and so some of these things are like this is how it's going to be and there's no one protesting about it, it's like okay grumble grumble, but onward and so you can see these transformations that happen so much faster in a place like China than can ever happen in the US where it's I think too much about the individual and individual rights.

So you think the U. S. has too much about individual liberties and that prevents us from making progress as a whole? Am I putting words in your mouth?

I think I think it totally depends on the issue. I think, you know, yes, with gun control, like, does that, I think that does not serve us well. it's about the individual's rights as opposed to the collective. Impact that it has on society. It's very clear, you know, where one should be on that issue, but things like, China really realized that AI was going to be incredibly important and really the most important technology going forward and they made massive, massive investments in it. Same thing with, you know, studying quantum and fusion and so the US is just, I think, where we used to be a lot more willing to make these massive investments, we just have not led that way. So literally, if you have, uh, you know, if you in China, if he believes that AI is important. AI is going to be a central focus and for AI to bubble up to become critically important.

So many things need to happen and so many people need to be involved and there's so much partisan politics that it's really hard to get the right things to happen for the country or infrastructure, for example, in the U S. I mean, it's embarrassing parts of L.A. are like a third world country, right? And you go to some of these other countries and you're like, oh, this is what a smooth road looks like and what a functioning society looks like in terms of infrastructure and, you know, again, there's lots of amazing things about America for sure, but we're falling way behind in terms of infrastructure and just kind of the quality of life here but there's things that trade offs that

So okay, so a little bit of individual liberty tradeoff, you know, um, that,so, okay, so a little bit anyway, yeah.
But tell me about, stupid question, what is exponential growth? , does it double every couple of years? Is that like a Moore's Law that's just stuck in my head? Or like...

So it could be something, you know, doubling every two months, or twelve months, or six months. But the idea is just this notion and this insight that exponential growth in its very early days is like incredibly deceptive. So something, you know, in the early days of whether it's I don't know integrated circuits or whether it's digital cameras and their capabilities. It's terrible, right? They're so small. No one takes it seriously but what happens with the power of doubling is as you start to get to a few doublings like the last, you know, I think it's 30 W step one foot and then grow that exponentially 30 steps. You've gone, I think, like to the moon or something. It's something crazy how this notion of doubling accelerates so dramatically in the last few doublings, and so it's just this sense of, okay, things are very deceptive in the early days and then the power of doubling really starts to become apparent and people all of a sudden start to notice the technologies and what's happening and whether that's robotics now or artificial intelligence.

Those are things that, you know, have been working on our solar cells and been working on for a long time and people kind of discounted them. Then all of a sudden, you start to hit this knee in the curve and people are like, holy shit, this is powerful This is big and by that time it's like it's too late because the doubling is just so powerful

Is it? I feel like the more I talk to investors, everyone says, yes, my investing success depends on timing, and I'm either too early or I nail it, but rarely are people actually too late. I actually feel like a lot of times, VCs are sort of more on the cutting edge than they think, and they're still doubling to go,

Uh, my two cents would be, it depends on, the investment and the type of thing, like, you know.

So get it right.

Yeah and, we're talking a lot of times about the underlying technologies, right? And then there's all sorts of businesses that are going to be built on top of them, and what, like the price performance of computing is that keeps doubling and, uh, you know, with Moore's law, all of a sudden that enables new businesses that you might not have thought of. And so, like with Ray being such a great predictor of the future, it was because he kind of understood where the price performance of computing was going to go. And once you got to that point in that capability, it would make be able to enable a certain type of service or other product built on top of that.

So, what are some of the applications that are getting you really excited now?

In terms of things that I'm like really excited about and interested about. I mean, I was down on Tuesday meeting with a fusion energy company and I'm not an investor there.

Tell me about fusion energy, and where we are.

it's really amazing. I mean, I think like something like 3 billion from venture has now gone into fusion and much of that over the last three, four years.
And what do we have to show for that

So we've got a lot of different companies now that are focused on it. You know, there's kind of two or three primary fusion reactor technologies. And we've got companies like Commonwealth or TAE like there's a few bigger companies that are in Helion that are starting to kind of rise to the surface, some with similar technology, some with very, very different technologies, but some of these companies think that they're within kind of two to five years of having their first commercial reactor available, and there's plenty of skeptics out there.

I think it's still further away, and a lot of people kind of joke about, you know, fusion is always 10 years away, right? But this is The US government did a fusion reactor test where they for the first time were able to generate more net energy than went in but it's very deceiving because that's just at the plasma level of that one reaction as opposed to how much energy went into running the whole plant and how much energy do you need to come out for actually the whole plant to make sense?

So there's still a really long way to go but I think it's probably going to happen in the next kind of 10 or 15 years. Anyway, like I'm in general incredibly optimistic and excited about and kind of have this abundance belief and mindset that you know, we have more than enough right now to take care of everyone on this planet and technology is only accelerating and now it's a matter of how do we get humans out of the way and, you know, some of the governance issues out of the ways maybe that allow humanity to kind of realize it's real potential.

That is an interesting point of view. So, we have the technology, we just need our bureaucracies and our structures to support the delivery.
Yeah, I mean, there's no reason in this day and age that anyone doesn't have shelter and access to, you know, great education and a healthy diet. I mean, it's really just decisions around how resources are allocated, and I mean, it's still like three and a half billion people on this planet don't have regular access to say the internet.

And yet you're investing in this, I don't know, I was going to say in the science side of things.

Yeah, I don't think of it that way. I think like I'm a to borrow a phrase from obvious ventures, a world positive investor. So, we're an impact fund, non-concessionary impact fund. What I just kind of realized is that all our companies that we invest in are kind of world positive companies that are trying to move the world forward. So just this last year we've decided to become an impact fund and non-concessionary just means like there's no trade off in terms of financial performance.

And so, that means like everything from, uh, Paul Stamets, who founded Mycomedica. I don't know if you know, Paul is a mycologist, so focused on psychedelics. If you ever saw Fantastic Fungi. Yeah, so like I was just up with him up in Canada, learning how to forage for mushrooms two weekends ago. Yeah, yeah, he's so

Bring anything fun back?

We weren't foraging for psychadelics, we did see he showed us like I'll show you these pictures afterwards. I mean, it's just mind blowing. Some of the mushrooms that we found out in these old growth forest, but he also found like some of the deadliest mushrooms in the world growing like side by side with psychedelic mushrooms as well. And they look almost identical. And you just realize you got to be super careful with this stuff. But like Paul, someone who has dedicated his whole life to mycelium. Um, and psychedelics. it's fascinating.

It's a whole other area of medicine that. You know, we had been exploring for a long time in the past and then got shut down with Nixon and now is really having a renaissance and I think it is exactly what the world needs right now, you know, we just, it's like, we're in this place where her humans keep hurting other humans and we have to kind of heal people and break these cycles and psychedelics have the opportunity to do that in a way that nothing that I've ever seen can

Totally, hurt humans hurt other people and happy ones happy other people, something like that.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Interesting. No, I really, I really enjoyed. Greg Cuban is an investor in LA who just invests in psychedelics, and he runs a podcast called business trip.

Awesome. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think you were telling me about him actually. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. but you know, it's, it's almost like it was crypto and how crypto was in the early days. Like if Scott's so frothy around psychedelics and a lot of folks who weren't here for the long haul got involved in both on the entrepreneurial side and investor side. And now we've kind of gone through a bit of a a low period for psychedelics and, you know, The best companies are continuing to thrive and it's uh, I think a little bit more of a rational marketplace now But super exciting.

Wow.

Yeah

Um, did you do MDMA? yeah Interesting.

Unbelievable. Incredible.

I mean, I used to like when I was going out to clubs, but
you know, it's, it's just a whole different experience. I mean, you're, you know, it's much higher dosage. Yeah. Uh, you're wearing eye masks, you're lying on a sofa. There's a guide there with you working with you. I mean, the critical thing is like, you gotta do these things in a responsible way. 'cause they're really powerful medicines. And so working with the right people, being able to, you know, really focus on integration, which is kind of like, what are your learnings and insights coming out of it? And then how do I. I mean, I have just seen the most unbelievably radical transformations with people in the most beautiful way.

Have you seen any cool, like, content, speakers, anything lately on the psychedelic side? Or, let me open that, not just on psychedelics, anything. I feel like you meet so many good people Will.

I mean, so, I don't know about that, but, uh, it's nice of you to say so there's a guy named Azza Raskin who is, I just listen to him speak. I've heard him speak a couple times and he just blows my mind. He is working on using AI basically to understand and communicate with animals, whales.
Um, that stuff is totally is so cool.

I mean, the whale stuff,

The whale stuff, it's unbelievable.

And you think about like they pass on their learnings, through song. And so like you have 30 million years of insights around the earth and other species and how they interact, you know, how they view us and the stuff he's working on, like, could be so transformative for humanity to all of a sudden realize that, you know, not just whales, but cows and cats and dogs and all these animals are cognitive beings with feelings and, and hopefully causes us to interact with animals that are in a really different way. And that stuff's coming.
Yeah. The AI being able, so I have a huge beehive in my backyard. Oh yeah. And the beehive, like they do this little dance where they're like, go up, go over there, do this, like, right. And I have a beekeeper who mostly comes and oversees like the complicated stuff, but I swear he like understands their dances, but I feel like an AI could totally understand what's going on.

For sure. For sure.

Yeah, my mom is. My 83 year old mother is a bee keeper, took it up later in life.

Oh, amazing. That's cool. That's very cool.

So when you're meeting these founders, and you're looking for very mission aligned founders, like, how do you suss it out? Like, do you have questions you like to ask? Like, what are you getting into?

So I feel like. This isn't the case with all the deals that we, companies we invest in, but for a lot of them, we've got a good chunk of time to really get to know the entrepreneurs. There's not a lot of VCs, you know, knocking on their doors, and so some of these companies will spend a year getting to know the entrepreneur and getting to know the area.

The businesses like if there's just such diversity in our portfolio, there's always some learning that has to take place for us to figure out these, uh, you know, problems that they're focused on and understanding the ecosystem. But it's really just about connecting with people right and trying to really understand them going for walks like, you know, really what makes them tick and what's driving them. And because we both know entrepreneurship is so fucking hard, right?

I've been an entrepreneur and yeah, but I've taken a bunch of swings and, you know, slept on sofas for nine months at a time, you know, trying to make a business survive that that ultimately didn't. And just the lowest lows of my life were as an entrepreneur.

And so trying to see if someone really has that kind of grit and perseverance to be able to power through those hard times. And there's so many entrepreneurs that, I don't know, just do not have . There's many that do, but there's many people who just, they're not either built for it or don't have the right passion about it. It has to be something I think that you're so passionate about it. You know, I have to make this happen, right?
Do you have advice for founders for when they are facing those low low moments, and like how to get out of it? Maybe that’s just life advice
Yeah, I think I mean, I view one of the most important things that I do is trying to be a coach and kind of a mentor to my entrepreneurs and having really transparent conversations with them about my own challenges when I was an entrepreneur and, you know, that it is a marathon and that you really got to think about it in those terms.

But its like a sprinting marathon sometimes It's like not one of those, like, lazy 10 minute mile runs.

No, no hard. I mean, it is it's a 24 7 marathon, but you got to somehow find ways to take care of yourself mentally and physically. And a lot of times, if you're a solo entrepreneur in particular. You can't really talk to your employees about your problems. Most entrepreneurs are really fearful about talking to their board and I, I try to develop a relationship that's, you know, I'm an investor and I'm a board member and have certain responsibilities that come along with that. But I'm also here as a human and a friend and try to be, you know, supportive and guide these people in their own growth and their own learning. And and so just trying to have those conversations it's so hard.

But being able to say, I slept on a couch. For a while, I don't know your whole story, but like, I was trying to make the business work, and I got to I'm sleeping on a couch, and I had to, at some point, maybe it was a different journey, I went through my MDMA therapy, like, being able to, like, to be pretty open.

Yeah, I try to be really open, when I was going through this entrepreneurial low point, this place, a buddy let me sleep in his office and he had a,Toilet in there, but no shower and like every day I would have to bike to the gym to shower and I did it for like nine months and you know, it was really really hard.

That’s close to homeless.

It was pretty close. Yeah. Yeah, I worked at a, this was after I'd worked at a venture firm and one of the partners at the firm was, was like, what are you doing?

You went from Foundation Capitalist sleeping on a couch or something?

Yeah. It was along, along those lines at, yeah, a little, yeah,

Yeah. Yeah. It was brand name.

Yeah, it was at Foundation and then Maveron and, and then on couch
I mean, it wasn't quite like that, but it, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But it was. So after Maveron, I was working on this business and it was actually one of the partners from foundation was like, you know, you don't need to take it all the way to that level.

I mean, I just felt like I had raised money from people I really cared about. I didn't want to fail and sometimes you kind of get lost in it as well. And so knowing when to let go, yeah, to have the perspective, but also felt like I gave it nine months. I went 18 months without a salary. Like I did, I went as hard as I could go and I was getting to a point where it was like no longer healthy for me.

And when he said that, that was, it was just a really good reminder to like, okay, level up and time to put this to rest and soft landing and move on to the next thing. It was really helpful. So I try to share those stories with my entrepreneurs and let them know about my journey and, you know, like with everyone, when you're looking on the outside, sometimes it looks a lot brighter than it is, but for all of us, life is hard, right?

And there's, we all have different things we're dealing with and different places in our life that you know, ups and downs and friction points. And, you know, so little about what's really happening with, most people. And so being able to think, share a little bit of that and, you know, my journey has been one filled with lots of ups and downs

How long have you now been like, I'm a VC?

So I started Kitty Hawk in did my first investment in 2015 while I was Singularity. So it was really like a side hustle for me for a while, uh, for about three. I was doing initially a couple of personal investments, then some small SPVs. I did about eight deals. I did do eight deals in total, packaged those up into a synthetic first fund that I called Kitty Hawk One. Use that to go then raise my first fund, Kitty Hawk 2, uh, at the end of 2018 and built a portfolio of 25 companies while I was at SU before jumping out in January of 2020.

But OK, so it's still, you know, new enough in your life that you're like, I am fundamentally I'm a V. C. Like, what's your view of the V. C. world?

Yeah, I mean, I, I think it comes down to the people I am willing to back, and I just like things that are different. We've done a couple SAS companies, but like, I'm not interested really in SAS and it just doesn't get me excited, but I get excited about, you know, MDMA and maps, a company that I think could have such a, be a beautiful business, but could really change the world.

Or this company I started to tell you about sky that I went to go visit this weekend. Yeah, they're building these giant airships that will reside geostationary in the stratosphere at about 65,000 feet and like those are really, really, that's a hard problem. The U.S. government's tried to build one of these spent like 12 billion in Google Loon. And it's like, you know, very capital intensive, lots of technical risk, although pretty clear path on the technical challenges ahead, but most VCs would have, you know, no interest being part of that. And so I put together a big SPV and a fun investment for us to invest 15 million dollars in this company and lead this first financing. And ultimately it was a 62 million financing and Carlos Slim came in and a bunch of, you know, interesting people. But like, that's a company I believe that if he's successful. That could be a 50 to 100 billion dollar business. I mean, it's just this whole new layer of infrastructure up in the sky

Yeah, it's super cool. I think I have a competing investment, urban sky in the space. Um, so changing it back to you. What is abundance 360?
So Abundance360 is a conference. It's really a year round membership program that Peter Diamandis started. It's now owned by Singularity University, but it's about 360 or so entrepreneurs who are part of this.

People come from all over the world and like Singularity was about giving you exposure to what's happening at the forefront of these different technological areas, but it's also a lot about mindset. And so there's a bit of kind of Tony Robbins, I would say in it. And so it's this, how do you shift your mindset to realize the opportunities that are in front of you and.

You know, one of my big, big learnings over life is that everything is mindset, right? And what you think you're capable of is what you're capable of. And so if you can, it's one of the powerful things about psychedelics is you can quickly change the lens at which you look at yourself and the lens at which you look at the world.

And all of a sudden your reality and what is, you know, the potential in front of you changes. And so part of, there's no psychedelics at A360, but there is a lot of talk about mindset, abundance, mindset, exponential mindset. And he brings these people together to kind of continue on this journey together

Are there things from joining, meeting these amazing people where you're like, like almost like personal hacks, like, or exercises they lead people through on like how to change your mindset without doing drugs?

Yeah. For sure. So, you know, one of them, uh, is around how long are you, like a longevity mindset. So, uh, when do you think you'll die? At what age?

98.

98. Okay, so that's pretty good.

100. I think if I get to 98, I might as well get to 100

Might as well push it through to 100. Exactly. So, but if you think about all of a sudden, I don't know how old you are, but let's say you're
I'm a late bloomer, I think that

Me too. For sure. You know, so we're maybe approaching mid age, right? But all of a sudden, if you think about maybe I'm going to live to be 150.

So if you can shift that, okay, I'm going to be 150 or I'm going to be 200, I got a long journey in front of me you start treating your body differently, right?

You start thinking about growth and learning in a different way. So, all these things start to shift. Like I'm just beginning. Like when, if you think you're going to die at 70 and you get to 50, you're like, I'm in kind of the downward slope, but if I'm at 50 and I'm going to live to 150, I'm just beginning. And so I have to think about things in a really, really different way. So I found that to be super, super powerful.

Mmm.. I love it. We're getting close to time. And I have a few of my favorite personal questions. Well, what did your parents do when you were growing up?

My dad was an entrepreneur, actually, so I was, uh, you know, in that environment from the earliest stages.

What sort of entrepreneur?

So my dad was an aviation entrepreneur, actually. So he created the first company to ever manage corporate jets. So kind of outsource flight departments and for companies and high net worth individuals, they would basically manage the planes, provide pilots and then kind of expanded into things from there.

And you, was world wraps, did it grow bid?

It got up to 20 units

Stores?

Yeah, 30 stores. Yeah, 30 restaurants. Yeah. Yeah, we started initially in San Francisco in the Marina District, and little 650 square foot hole in the wall on Chestnut Street, and did it with three of my best friends, and who are still great friends, and yeah.

Did you do this out of college?

I did this. So at a college I spent two years trying to get into the venture business actually and couldn't and then I joined into it in their early days.
And then I left there to go start world wraps and It was basically this insight around so we were living in the marina, my, founders and I, and you had either kind of traditional fine dining or you had fast food in this whole quick service category sector didn't really exist.

And so it was like these, you know. Really fancy meals that were being wrapped up inside these tortillas, mashed potatoes and salmon or paella, things like you wouldn't normally expect. And people would have them at the tastings, love them, but then we try to explain them to people and we were calling it a burritos at the time, and people would just get caught on the Mexican Burrito and around the burrito and realize that we needed to create this new way of talking about it. And so I had this breakthrough to call it a wrap and people have been wrapping foods for, you know, ever, but the notion of calling it a wrap was a new thing. And anyway, turned into a pretty exciting journey and raise some venture money and, uh, was ultimately not a financial success, though we ended up getting a venture squeeze. And so I've been on the, you know, the vent, the VC pulled out like a day before we were supposed to wire funds and totally decimated the company. And we had to fire sale it and, you know, heartbreaking after years and years, but, you know, learned a lot from it and.

But you made those world wraps a thing!

Yeah, it was super cool. Super cool.

Will, what adjectives do your friends use to describe you?

I don't really like to talk about myself very much, although I guess here I am what would my friends, I think my friends would say I'm a great friend, you know, someone that they could count on, reach out to, concerned, you know, thoughtful person adventurous, like, intellectually adventurous I don't know, someone trying to really live life, like, get as most of as I can out of this, this short journey and I do believe it's a short journey and that we're incredibly lucky to, you know, be here and be on it and, you know, the stuff we get to do and the people we get to interact with is like incredible and so I feel super lucky.

Yeah. no, I feel like a lot of people want to be moving humanity forward, but I appreciate that you've got that front and center of Kitty Hawk and all of what you're doing. So thanks for coming on the show and talking about.

Thanks for having me, Minnie. Awesome to get to chat with you.