Apr 7, 2025 · 1h 16m · my-first-million
7 Wild Business Ideas for this $3 Trillion Dollar Frontier
0:00 / 0:00
▶ Watch on YouTube →
gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
On the My First Million podcast, hosts Sean Puri and Sam Parr interview Ulysses founder Will O'Brien about the untapped $3 trillion ocean economy, exploring how autonomous robotics, marine geoengineering, and cultivated seafood are transforming maritime industries. Alongside frontier business models, O'Brien shares his contrarian perspectives on hard tech entrepreneurship, parapsychology, and personal operating frameworks.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 47.1% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 4.2 Guest teaching 5.5 Guest disagreement 1.8 The hosts pushing back 1.7
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 56:10 Will defends startup credibility against host skepticism
When Sam questions whether young founders without industry background will fail against incumbents, Will directly rejects the doubt by pointing to his firm's hard revenue and inviting him to see real ocean robots.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 53:50 Sam questions founder hubris against deep incumbentsSam pushes back on the optimism around young tech founders, arguing that eight out of ten times large incumbent primes succeed and inexperienced founders crash.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 1:06:25 Will details the Ganzfeld protocol and parapsychology statisticsWill gives a precise and detailed explanation of parapsychology research methods and statistical deviation rates to demonstrate his thesis that consciousness acts like an antenna.
The host holds their own ▶ 18:15 Shaan deconstructs the defense contracting business modelShaan demonstrates deep domain insight by breaking down how defense primes profit on cost-plus contracts, explaining why that created a structural incentive for inflated budgets.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The $3 Trillion Ocean Economy Thesis | 2 | 6 | 2 | 2 | The hosts open by framing the ocean as an overlooked $3T economic frontier and ask basic clarifying questions about maritime statistics. Will educates them on global coastal reliance, contrasting developed food supply chains with coastal developing economies. | |
| Sam Parr's Custom AI Coaching Workflow | 2 | 7 | 1 | 2 | Following Sam's mid-roll workflow segment, Will breaks down his startup Ulysses and the critical ecological role of seagrass. The hosts repeatedly ask him to simplify the technical jargon and explain why governments pay for autonomous restoration. | |
| Hardware Tailwinds, Defense Tech, and Saronic | 7 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Shaan takes command of the conversation, detailing US naval fleet sizes and explaining how Anduril disrupted legacy defense primes by rejecting the cost-plus contracting model. Will complements the analysis with his perspective on maritime defense vehicles. | |
| Subsea Cables, AI Data Centers, and Ocean Security | 4 | 6 | 2 | 2 | Will explains subsea data infrastructure, undersea AI data centers, and geopolitical vulnerability with foreign cable cutting. Sam brings up historical 1980s telecom boom parallels while asking for clarity on cable dimensions and redundancy. | |
| Technology Windows and the Evolution of Founders | 8 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Shaan delivers an extended explanation of James Currier's technology windows theory, citing historical examples from railroads and automobiles to AI and robotics. Will agrees and describes how his founding team operated without legacy maritime biases. | |
| Cultivated Seafood and Wildtype Salmon | 3 | 6 | 1 | 2 | Will introduces Wildtype and cultivated sushi-grade salmon, explaining how cellular aquaculture avoids microplastics and parasites. Shaan probes whether the cost profile matches previous expensive lab-grown meat ventures. | |
| Treasure Hunting and Marine Geoengineering | 4 | 7 | 2 | 1 | Will outlines the economics of deep-sea shipwreck salvage and the controversial history of iron ocean fertilization for marine geoengineering. Sam adds personal color by referencing his friend's treasure hunting expeditions. | |
| The Mind, Body, and Spirit of Modern Tech | 6 | 5 | 2 | 1 | The hosts and guest discuss the cultural shift in tech from scrawny nerds to hyper-masculine physical fitness and western wear. Will articulates a philosophical progression of tech moving through spirit, mind, and physical embodiment. | |
| Taking Moonshots and Finding Niche Monopolies | 5 | 5 | 3 | 4 | Sam challenges the hubris of inexperienced startup founders tackling heavy industrial and defense sectors where incumbents usually win. Will pushes back by citing his company's real revenue traction and the strategy of dominating niche local monopolies first. | |
| Steve Irwin and the Philosophy of Pure Passion | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | The conversation shifts to an admiration of Steve Irwin's unbridled passion and singular dedication to conservation over material wealth. The group shares a clip and compares his drive to entrepreneurial obsession. | |
| Conspiracy Theories, Parapsychology, and Non-Local Consciousness | 4 | 7 | 2 | 2 | Will explains why conspiracy minded thinking aligns with exceptional founder traits, before detailing parapsychology research like the Ganzfeld experiment. The hosts listen intently while sharing their own encounters with anomalous beliefs. | |
| A Summer in Nepal and the Five Essential Desires | 2 | 6 | 2 | 1 | Will recounts his experience teaching English in a rural Nepalese monastery and how he synthesized Buddhist desire reduction into five core priorities using a rosebush pruning metaphor. The hosts react with humorous dating banter. |
Statements from this episode (18)
O'Brien: The global ocean economy represents $3 trillion in annual spend
“The ocean economy right now is like already massive. It's not like, you know, the future space economy is going to be massive. Like the ocean economy is massive. It's like three trillion dollars in like annual spend in different ways, right?”
O'Brien: Three billion people rely on oceans for primary food source
“Three billion people rely on it as their primary source of food, a billion as their primary source of income.”
O'Brien: Ancient software dominates ocean tech across shipping, defense, and fisheries
“It's just like, it's the same old, like stagnant incumbents, large scale incumbents offering solutions that, you know, are rolling on like ancient software. And there's just like very little innovation going on there.”
O'Brien: Seagrass captures carbon 35x faster than rainforests
“It is 35 times better than rainforest at removing carbon. It supports about it holds about 20% of the carbon in the ocean, supports about a quarter of the world's most critically important fish stocks, and it's called seagrass. It's basically just grass in the…”
O'Brien: Ulysses Generated $1M First-Year Revenue with Five-Person Team
“So, you know, in our first year we did a million dollars in, in revenue, just kind of like, you know, first, first year, five person team based here in San Francisco.”
Puri: Anduril has reached a $20B to $30B valuation
“And they've built now a 20 to thirty billion dollar company doing this.”
O'Brien: Saronic's trajectory could deter China from invading Taiwan
“They're, you know, gonna make the South China Sea a hellscape and make China now wanna cross that that, that, that ocean and keep Taiwan safe if they keep going on the path they're doing”
O'Brien: AI companies will soon fund subsea internet infrastructure buildouts
“And now you're seeing a transition to the build art being coming from Fang, from like big tech and soon I think it'll be like the AI companies.”
O'Brien: Foreign actors cut about 11 subsea cables in the past year
“I think in the last year about 11 cables have been cut by foreign actors”
O'Brien: Only about 600 active subsea telecommunication cables exist globally
“Like as in like, there, there's like an insane amount of data that goes over them, but there's only about like 600 active.”
O'Brien: Seven of Top 10 Most Valuable Companies Have Hardware Components
“The top 10 most valuable country companies in the world right now. It's like seven out of 10 of them have like a hardware, like an extreme, like hardware component, right? Like the biggest companies being built today are hardware companies.”
O'Brien: Wildtype's cultivated salmon has no heavy metals, microplastics, or parasites
“They're still going, undergoing FDA approval, but like, yeah, no, none of these nasty heavy metals or microplastics in them. You know, it's reducing pressure on fish stocks. You know, this is good stuff. It doesn't have any of the nasty like parasites that you…”
O'Brien: Hundreds of ocean shipwrecks contain over $1B in gold and artifacts
“There is actually like, you know, hundreds of wrecks out there in the ocean today that potentially have, like, more than a billion dollars on them, right? Like, gold bullions that, like, the Spanish were bringing back from their conquests”
O'Brien: A Billion-Dollar Company Will Emerge in Marine Geoengineering
“I think there is going to be, like, a billion-dollar company built in, like marine geoengineering of some description.”
O'Brien: Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are using TRT to get jacked
“Look at Bezos and Zuckerberg. They're getting jacked. Like they're doing TRT.”
O'Brien: Steve Irwin is my role model over Steve Jobs
“Steve, I think is like, and it's so funny, you know, people say Steve on a podcast, and the tech, it's like Steve Jobs. It's like, for me, it's like Steve Irwin.”
O'Brien: Traits of conspiracy theorists mirror those of great founders
“A lot of the traits of, like, conspiracy theorists are, like, those of, like, a, like, a great, like founder.”
Parr: Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia insisted to me that aliens are real
“Joe, look, You're worth, like, ten billion dollars. Like, if there's Illuminati, like, you are either in it, or you're friends with the people in it. Tell me one thing that, like, you guys talk about, and he looked at me, he goes, aliens are real.”