The Exchanges

Q so we go back to materials. Your whole thing is like the winner is going to be able to produce more materials than their adversary. I still don't think I completely understand the way you think about achieving that goal. Is the hardware that you're manufacturing has to be as simple as possible and then you're offsetting all the innovation in software? Is that, is that still the basic thesis?

A The idea is that you build hardware that is good enough, um, and build it, um, in such high numbers that you eventually have economies of scale, but also the ability to overcome any Um, you know, adversary just through pure mass. And the way you achieve that is that you, you need to be able to mass produce, you need to design to mass produce, but then crucially you need software to, um, to allow those systems to first of all, be smart and, and be able to To coordinate, um, but you ideally also absorb a lot of the complexity of the, of the hardware that usually, you know, would be these exquisite systems that legacy primes will make into your software so you can make the hardware simpler. That means that your sensors are simpler and you regain a lot of the accuracy through very good AI algorithms. It might also be that your, um, your manufacturing, um, tolerances are a little bit bigger and you regain a lot of the control and accuracy again Through software that might recalibrate the system as it goes. And, and this is what we do. And that works extremely well, but you have to think it through as, as one unified system. And once you do that, you can go into mass manufacturing. So the, the HX-II is now a mass manufactured strike drone. And like we had to go through like all of those learnings in, in July and August last year, where, um, we had to go from dozens of HX-II per month…

AI assessment note: “absorb a lot of the complexity of the, of the hardware... into your software”

Q a tweet that was interesting, where, and maybe this can tie into the dinner that we had a few years ago, where we had this fierce argument, and I left thinking that we hated each other, and then now we've become friends. But you said something like a 100,000 of your drones could prevent a land war in Europe. What does that mean and why? Why do you believe that?

A Yeah, I said this, I think maybe a year ago or so, and I, I got into a bit of trouble for this because apparently it was deemed to be provocative, but, um, I, I still think that's the case. I think The deterrence that you get out of having a very large number of strike drones at your border, I think is, is pretty, uh, is pretty strong, and the reason is that if you turn up with tanks on the other side, let's say you turn up with 3000 tanks, 100,000 strike drones that are able to navigate without GPS, that are able to find their targets, obviously specifically focusing on tanks, will destroy those tanks, I think, in a matter of hours. It's very hard to defend against.

AI assessment note: “100,000 strike drones that are able to navigate without GPS... will destroy those tanks”

Q corner of the world. Deal is trusted by over 40,000 businesses. Learn how they can help your business today by going to deal.com forward slash Senra. That is deal.com forward slash Senra. Okay, so the identification of what was missing in Europe, right, which leads to this mission that we need a European defense tech company, then the mission comes before the conviction, or the conviction comes before the mission?

A The mission comes first. And the mission is to protect our democracies. And I always say it's, um, it's, it's always a real privilege. I always feel like we have, um, we talk to our new starters every month and we always say to them, you know, it is a real privilege to work in a company. Um, at least we feel that's where the mission is so easy that we protect our democracies. That's what we're here for. Um, and, and lots of other companies, you know, have to spend time and go on an offsite retreat to come up with some kind of mission paragraph that everyone agrees on eventually. And we don't have that. It's, it is to protect our democracies. And we can point out where we're doing this right now with, you know, what we're doing with our deployed drones, for example, in, in, in Ukraine, and it makes everything easier. Um, we obviously never expected the Ukraine war to happen that quickly, but now that we are deployed, it's, you know, it's very concrete. Um, this mission is a, is a, is a real thing. And then the conviction, you know, comes that there need to be these kinds of companies and, and that they need to be built in Europe. And one other reason why we, Are building Helsing is also we, we wanted to build a big company in Europe. We honestly looked at, you know, Spotify as a, as a, as a beacon, as a, as an example of, you know, a large company you can build that is, that has…

AI assessment note: “The mission comes first. And the mission is to protect our democracies.”

Q So how do you go about trying to explain that to them? Like, how do you just make it obvious? Do you just do it through product demonstrations? Yeah.

A I mean, it's like with everything else, you, um, you, you, you do product demonstrations, you show what the capabilities are. We've done this a lot with drones and then, and, and to honestly, everyone's credit, people do get it. I mean, it's like, like people complain about procurement is so slow and, and governments are so slow. Yes. But then when they do get it, it goes very fast. Like the, the, the large, um, striking contracts that happened, happened really quickly. Um, with political support, with, um, support of the procurement agency, and, and they went through all in record time. And now, if anything, I think that the companies, you know, are really under pressure to deliver all of this stuff really fast. So, it's like, we, we, we all complained about it in the past, but it's a bit of a legacy problem. I think, um, procurement has got faster, and, and the realization that these things have to happen is happening faster too. And, and, you know, there will be big, um, autonomous hydrogen programs in Europe as well now. Two years ago, there was nothing. Even one year ago, there was nothing, but it's now happening.

AI assessment note: “you do product demonstrations, you show what the capabilities are. We've done this a lot”

Q to find ways to offset, and that was the original idea. Like, he discovered Apache Corporation, which winds up being this massive oil and gas company, because of the work that he was doing in tax Planning and accounting for relatively small businesses. I feel there is some kind of connection between your first company and your second that I'm trying to get to. Am I just wrong on this?

A So I don't think it was that direct necessarily. One thing that I've always felt with everything I ended up doing is I think is that I ended up doing something slightly different to maybe what the mainstream was. And part of the reasons I've never felt kind of part of the group of the peer group, like I never as a biologist and I did a lot of biology and I loved it, but I never really felt like I was like part of the biology group, and that made it a little bit easier to do different things. That's why I ended up just doing software and simulation rather than go out into the field and watch animals and, um, dissect animals. I never liked that stuff. I wanted to do something slightly different stuff. With gaming, I also never felt part of the gaming group and culture the same way, and as a result, I think we ended up doing quite different games that I remember, like, the pricing for our games was very different to anyone else's.

AI assessment note: “So I don't think it was that direct necessarily.”

Q I heard you say something on Harry's podcast. Did you actually think there's a lot more exceptional people out there than other people believe? Especially if you have a couple thousand employees.

A People. Character and, and, and also performance is not set in stone. So quite often it's also a matter of in larger companies, sometimes it might actually even be harder for people who have a, uh, 10 X potential to, to become a 10 X person. So it's a combination of things. It's probably harder to keep just hiring 10 out of 10 people, but also harder to develop them, but it's still worth it. I mean, the, the, the power law in, in talent is, is extreme and they're very few 10 out of 10 people, but they, Make, I mean, it's a cliche, but like we see this every day, they make a disproportionate difference to the company, so it is worth trying to find these people, and it is worth finding a way to, um, give them a home in, in a company where they can really thrive. We try to do this very, very systematically at Helsing, and we, we make for, I think hopefully for everyone, we, we, we create a, a great environment where they're surrounded by amazing people, but, um, you know, for the 10 out of tens, we, we, we go the extra mile.

AI assessment note: “Character and, and, and also performance is not set in stone.”