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Will O'Brien

Co-Founder and President, Ulysses · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutiveoperator@willobri ↗LinkedIn ↗ulysses.eco ↗

He co-founded Ulysses, a marine robotics company developing modular, low-cost autonomous underwater vehicles designed for ocean restoration, commercial, and defense applications. Before Ulysses, he led growth and government affairs at the micromobility startup Zipp Mobility.

16statements → 12claims → 7claims resolved → 57%fully supported → 3.56/5average certainty → 2.25/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated → 7said about them ↓

4 supported 2 partly supported 1 contradicted 5 not checkable as stated how the 12 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

3 predictions · 9 assertions · 2 opinions · 1 insight · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 12 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 7 are resolved, and 5 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Will argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
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”
Will O'Brien Apr 7, 2025 ▶ 25:34 7 Wild Business Ideas for this $3 Trillion Dollar Frontier

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
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.”
Will O'Brien Apr 7, 2025 ▶ 31:02 7 Wild Business Ideas for this $3 Trillion Dollar Frontier

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
100% certainty 3
67% certainty 4
none yet certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Will O'Brien on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Will O'Brien said on My First Million that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Prediction Not checkable as stated
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”
Will O'Brien Apr 7, 2025 ▶ 21:19 7 Wild Business Ideas for this $3 Trillion Dollar Frontier
Assertion Supported
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”
Will O'Brien Apr 7, 2025 ▶ 25:34 7 Wild Business Ideas for this $3 Trillion Dollar Frontier
Prediction Not checkable as stated
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.”
Will O'Brien Apr 7, 2025 ▶ 45:57 7 Wild Business Ideas for this $3 Trillion Dollar Frontier
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Will O'Brien Apr 7, 2025 ▶ 51:27 7 Wild Business Ideas for this $3 Trillion Dollar Frontier
Assertion Supported
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?”
Will O'Brien Apr 7, 2025 ▶ 3:42 7 Wild Business Ideas for this $3 Trillion Dollar Frontier
Opinion
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.”
Will O'Brien Apr 7, 2025 ▶ 4:38 7 Wild Business Ideas for this $3 Trillion Dollar Frontier
Insight
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.”
Will O'Brien Apr 7, 2025 ▶ 1:01:15 7 Wild Business Ideas for this $3 Trillion Dollar Frontier
Prediction Not checkable as stated
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.”
Will O'Brien Apr 7, 2025 ▶ 24:12 7 Wild Business Ideas for this $3 Trillion Dollar Frontier
Assertion Contradicted
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.”
Will O'Brien Apr 7, 2025 ▶ 31:02 7 Wild Business Ideas for this $3 Trillion Dollar Frontier
Assertion Supported
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…”
Will O'Brien Apr 7, 2025 ▶ 39:47 7 Wild Business Ideas for this $3 Trillion Dollar Frontier
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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”
Will O'Brien Apr 7, 2025 ▶ 41:09 7 Wild Business Ideas for this $3 Trillion Dollar Frontier
Assertion Partly supported
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.”
Will O'Brien Apr 7, 2025 ▶ 3:56 7 Wild Business Ideas for this $3 Trillion Dollar Frontier
Assertion Supported
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…”
Will O'Brien Apr 7, 2025 ▶ 11:17 7 Wild Business Ideas for this $3 Trillion Dollar Frontier
Disclosure
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.”
Will O'Brien Apr 7, 2025 ▶ 13:26 7 Wild Business Ideas for this $3 Trillion Dollar Frontier
Assertion Partly supported
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.”
Will O'Brien Apr 7, 2025 ▶ 27:50 7 Wild Business Ideas for this $3 Trillion Dollar Frontier
Opinion
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.”
Will O'Brien Apr 7, 2025 ▶ 58:34 7 Wild Business Ideas for this $3 Trillion Dollar Frontier

The other half of the tape: Will O'Brien's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 7 times in 1 episode on My First Million. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Shaan Puri 7

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0041812025episodesmentions
0112025episodes it came up in
0040.5812025episodesmentions per episode
2025 7 mentions in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
7 Wild Business Ideas for this $3 Trillion Dollar Frontier Apr 7, 2025 36m
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