Intro
My first conversation with Bryon Hargis, Cofounder and CEO of Castelion. This is a special edition of our show recorded at Reindustrialize. Since then, Castelion has announced a $1 billion Series C funding valuing the company at $13 billion making it one of the most valuable defense technology companies in the ecosystem.
What we cover:
Why Bryon sold his SpaceX stock to bootstrap Castelion and bet two-thirds of his savings on the mission.
Why affordable, mass-produced hypersonic missiles are central to his vision of American deterrence.
Building Blackbeard, winning the first Navy order, and scaling production to thousands of missiles a year.
The SpaceX lessons behind faster hardware development: rapid testing, questioning convention, and knowing when to change course.
Hiring for mission over money and why company culture is built one person at a time.
Watch on YouTube
Timestamps
00:00 Intro
01:00 Bootstrapping with SpaceX stock and crypto mining
07:00 Why Bryon started a defense company
11:00 Building deterrence and landing the first Navy order
14:00 Scaling missile manufacturing in New Mexico
18:00 Meet Blackbeard: Castelion’s hypersonic missile
20:00 Hypersonic vs. ballistic vs. cruise missiles
23:00 Golden Dome and the future of missile defense
25:00 How SpaceX enables America’s national security
27:00 Elon Musk, ambitious deadlines, and moving faster
30:00 Why rapid testing beats over-engineering
33:00 Lessons from SpaceX: Question convention, follow the data
38:00 Hiring for the mission and building company culture
45:00 Growing as a founder and being willing to be wrong
Brought to you by
Intangible: One of the missions of the show is to highlight frontier technologies and the builders, investors and policymakers at the heart of technological progress. Our sponsor Intangible lets you show it before you build it. Intangible is an AI 3D studio. Frontier technology builders turn ideas into scenes they can edit and film, in minutes. No VFX shop, no six-week render queue. Visualize your moonshot product at intangible.ai
The material presented by We The Builders & Suffiyan Malik, including on its website, podcast, social media channels, newsletters, events, and other content, reflects the opinions of the hosts, guests, and contributors and is provided for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing presented by We The Builders should be construed as investment, financial, legal, tax, or other professional advice, nor as a recommendation, offer to sell, or solicitation of an offer to buy any security, investment product, company, strategy, or asset. Discussions of companies, investments, industries, technologies, markets, or other subjects may rely on information from public sources or information provided by guests and other third parties that we believe to be reliable. We The Builders does not represent or warrant that such information is accurate, complete, or current and should not be relied upon as such. Views and opinions expressed are those of the individual speaker at the time of publication and may change without notice. Guest appearances, discussions of companies, or references to investors or investments should not be interpreted as endorsements by We The Builders. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
