Intro
Ian Cinnamon is the Cofounder and CEO of Apex Space. He was previously at Zynga and Palantir (after selling his company). He joined Palantir after selling his weapon detection company to them which had gotten impacted by covid since all live events came to a halt for ~1 year. Interestingly, my final year project in electrical engineering was also weapon detection using Computer Vision - which I take no credit for since my teammates did all the work, I even back then thought I could just support on the BD/research side since my dad was working in the security administration function.
He is the second member of the Palantir mafia on the show to have started a billion dollar company. The first was Cobi Blumenfeld-Gantz. Both backed by friends of the show at XYZ Ventures.
The company was valued at $2.3 billion as of their most recent fundraise which was led by Glade Brook and Washington Harbor. Their early investors include Andreessen Horowitz, XYZ Ventures and Point72, all friends of the show.
We talked about his idea maze and choosing the right thing to work on in the middle of the crypto-craze in 2022, in that time he joined Village Global as an EIR to figure out what he wanted to pursue. I am a big fan of exploration and taking your time to decide what you want to go all-in on. Recently discussed the importance of this on the show with Ali Tamaseb (GP at DCVC and author of SuperFounders) as well, he conducted thorough research on billion dollar founders and companies and one of the things that is common is the fact that billion dollar founders take time to decide what they want to pursue. Another example that comes to mind is Qasar Younis of Applied Intuition who took ~2 years before he locked in the idea for Applied Intuition. Matt Angle at Paradromics was in his PhD and was thinking about it for ~4 years or more before starting the company. Brandon Sorbom at Commonwealth Fusion Systems also spent an ample amount of time working on the idea including at first starting a nonprofit dedicated to research before doing it as a startup.
Watch on YouTube
Timestamps
00:00 - Introduction
01:22 - Moving from software and AI to the space industry
02:12 - Using computer vision to protect public safety
04:37 - Learning from the flat, fast-moving culture at Palantir
07:54 - Deciding to build the last company I would ever start
09:59 - How SpaceX made rocket launch reliable and frequent
12:10 - Stepping away to incubate a new kind of satellite business
13:56 - Building the Ford Model T of the satellite world
15:15 - What is a satellite platform?
16:43 - Partnering with Northrop Grumman for missile defense
19:12 - Understanding how much room is actually left up in space
21:19 - Choosing the right altitude based on what a satellite does
24:13 - Shifting space tech from custom crafts to a volume game
27:25 - How factory automation helps America win the current space race
29:46 - Closing
