it was this kind of big picture thinking about electricity and the imperative of electricity and the electric stack and the evolution of global markets, et cetera, that impelled you to get into electric devices? Or was it just something about cooktops specifically that lured you into this? So what prompted you to switch over?

That's a great question.

So basically the storyline, it's like in the mid 2010s, I definitely wanted to kind of start my own company, definitely wanted to work hard.

I was at the company formerly known as Facebook at the time, and I was working on VR headsets and game controllers and stuff like that.

And I'd realized that You know, if I wanted to do something like this, like something of this level of ambition, make a device of that level of awesomeness, well, you needed to do it inside a big company.

And the reason why you had to do it inside a big company was this has now changed as of AI and all this other stuff.

But if you wanted to make a VR headset, you needed to have an app store.

Kind of realization like, oh, they've gotten cheap enough now that EV has entered the viable use case

Yes

...

the fusion of...

So I think Noah was simplifying it a little bit, where it's like the, the housing and crime stuff.

Basically, what ended up happening in California is, like, California per- like persistently incentivizes incumbency over all other things.

So, like, basically, the issue is...

And this is, it's kind of ironic as a, you know, where all the best startups and stuff like that are also here.

Don't mind if I do.

was part of Oculus getting acquired by Facebook and them productionizing

the Rift headset.

And I kind of realized towards the end of the 2010s that this was increasingly the realm of big company stuff.

To kind of rewind, Oculus got started because Palmer...

One of the reasons Oculus got started was Palmer was experimenting, trying to build a VR headset.

I think it was a trailer in his parents' driveway or something like that.

And at the time, a basically hobbyist person realized that, hey, I could actually build a really good VR headset with the parts that were just available from the consumer electronics industry.

determined

we could get a whole bunch of near-Elons to build a whole bunch more great manufacturing companies in America if we just took away a few of those barriers.

Yeah, and I think another example is, look, Jeff Bezos is a great... founder right and like if he had like if it was almost impossible for him to actually build a rocket company like like blue like blue origins operational now ish but like that cost billions of dollars of you know his own money and all sort of stuff to actually get on this level and that's what someone who's like already clearly proven that they can operate a major like international mega corporation at the top, top, top tier.

And he had trouble with this stuff.

So it's like understanding that is crazy.

So then I like to use this one example about this when I talk to people about it.

And it involves tents.

Have you guys been under like a tent for like graduation or like you've seen those tents that cover like turf fields or like in winter or whatever? Big tent.

What the future of, you know, give you a little chance to like pump the company here, the future of impulse, like how will that fit into this future electric ecosystem in America?

Mm-hmm.

... more than there's like a more than, more than the policy side.

But then, the flip side of it is, so BYD makes stuff for other people, and that's like what they do generally.

That's what they historically did.

They just happen to be a nickel cadmium battery manufacturer that just kept acquiring businesses and like bringing them into the fold, until they basically had a car business, a lithium-ion battery business.

And kind of like all of the, all of the, like, IP needed to build any electric, electric device.

Yeah.

... that can actually go and span all of these disciplines with the same people being able to...

Mm-hmm.

There's a Elon tweet.

I think it's actually a reply, but it's buried in the replies, but basically it says, "The factory is the product." And this is incredibly true, where basically your supply chain is how you build stuff.

It's kind of like you're picking a bin of LEGOs, effectively, and those LEGOs may mostly already exist, and you try to minimize the number of new parts you have to make.

Because, like, making a new LEGO brick is complicated and requires you to make a new injection mold in that case.

But if you've got a bin of LEGOs and that bin of LEGOs is expansive and cheap, and then there's a lot of experience with team knowing how to put those LEGOs together, like, you have huge tailwinds and advantages.

So basically, first year or so of the company, we essentially built prototypes of, like, what we expected to need.

Right