Dylan Taylor: Voyager, Starlab, and the Future of Space

(upbeat music) - Well, thank you so much for tuning into our first podcast. We are so excited about what we're gonna bring you this season. I am so honored to welcome our first guests on our podcast, the founder, CEO, and chairman of Oedger Technologies, Dylan Taylor. Dylan, thanks for being here. - Slick, I'm thrilled to talk to you. It's always a pleasure. - It's incredible. You're one of these guys who've literally done more in a decade than an entire country, right? I mean, I don't know about that. - Well, I tell you, you are so humble, and I know that that's what we're gonna talk about is your humility but success as well. And I wanna take it back to the beginning. I mean, the origin story of Dylan Taylor, I mean, you are a guy who grew up in Idaho. Your dad is an engineer. He was a professor of engineering. You grew up playing baseball, football, fly fishing, riding horses. I mean, tell me what it was like growing up and I can only imagine the stories that were around the Taylor dinner table. - Yeah, well, first of all, there was a prequel to that, right? So my dad, my parents got married super young. I think my dad was 20, my mom was 19. So when I was born, he was actually serving in Vietnam. - Oh wow. - And my mom and I were kind of, you know, think of almost like a young single mom situation. - Sure. - So I think early years were a little bit scarce. And of course, I think that forms a little bit of your, you know, the way you see the world. The fast forward, my dad finishes his PhD Colorado School of Mines in Golden Colorado. That's the time back to Denver and gets this professor ship at the Inari, to Idaho and actually I really commend my dad because he got job offers at other places like NYU and Columbia. But he's like, no, I'm not doing that. I'm prioritizing my family and it's way to moving to Moscow, Idaho. You know, think of Mayberry, right? It's kind of this idyllic place. And it was a great childhood. I mean, truly, I mean, to your point, lots of outdoor stuff, fly fishing, riding horses, playing baseball, you know, when you grow up in a small town and, you know, probably many of the listeners have, it's really a different experience, right? It's about the relationships, it's about conversations. There's not a lot to do, right? You know, you're up on the mountain having a keger, right? That's your entertainment, basically, which is great. But it's not like there's a professional sports team or, you know, an amusement park or different things that bigger cities have. Yeah, so it was great. I mean, it was a great upbringing. And I would say my passion at that time was seeing the world. So my dad was a professor, as you mentioned, lots of his students were international students. So one of my favorite memories is we have a fourth of the July party and we have people from 10 different countries blowing stuff up. And of course, they're like, oh, this is an interesting holiday and, or Thanksgiving, you know, because they didn't have families so they would come with our family. And so that was a great passion of mine. And then of course, always super competitive with sports and outdoor stuff and baseball, football and all that. Well, you know, I have to say thank you, you know, the unsung heroes for us military members that get to serve are the families that support them. I know that there's many, many folks that serve and, you know, were dependents of active duty or guards, or guardsmen or reservists. So thank you. And of course, you know, your mother being that single mom, if you will, for a lack of a better way of saying it, while dad was off serving, husband's off serving. So thank you for that. I'm sure that that shaped what your outlook was looking forward and for others that have served as well. So for sure. Yeah, for sure. And I think, well, thanks for saying that. I'll pass that sentimental under, she'll appreciate that. Yeah, it is the toughest job in the military family. Special when you're 19. Yeah, especially when you're young for sure, for sure. And of course, the worry and all the things that we could have an entire separate podcast talking about that. And Ray thinks to you and your family for supporting the military. And then of course, now, I don't want to fast forward, but we have to do obviously mention the connection with Matt Kudin, his military service, your co-founder. And we're going to get into that here shortly. But before we jump all the way to getting to voyage here, so you grow up in a household with a materials engineer. Yeah, right. And then you go off and become an engineer yourself going through school. Yeah, well, I wouldn't call myself an engineer per se, but I did study engineering undergrad. It did quite well in my education. But for me, I really-- I need to interact with people. And I was fearful that engineer met your stuck in a lab, working on a project and not necessarily being tied to the grand vision. So I would say about two years in-- because I studied in the same philosma as my dad-- I knew I didn't want to be necessarily a traditional engineer, but I knew I wanted to be a technologist. And I had some really good mentors at the time. And they said, look, engineering is probably the best foundational degree you can get. This is really kind of pre-- now maybe people would say computer science or something like that. But I still think engineering-- and why is that? It teaches you how to solve problems, critical thinking skills. And I also think it trains you to utilize technology in a way that actually has impact. Like, traditional science is discovery, which is great. But the practicality in tying it into something that actually is going to work or that's affordable or that has an impact, that's really the engineering solution. Of course. Yeah, the critical thinking angles that you attack a problem is probably different than a traditional finance major, right, going into business. So you then get into business doing electronics, right? That's right. Yeah, my first job out of school was working for a Swiss electronics company. That was a brilliant role. They created this role. Think of it almost as like technical support where you're interacting with customers, you're understanding what they're trying to design for. And then you're taking the catalog of solutions for the company and you're trying to help them co-create a solution to that problem. So it's one part customer service, one part design engineering, one part sales. So I really, really enjoyed it. Yeah, I was with that company around six and a half years, caught that at the right time. They were just expanding from Switzerland to North America. And so I ended up having a lot of success there. Getting promoted to go back to the world, headquarters in Switzerland. So I did two years over there. And then promoted to run North America, which I later did and moved back to the US. Incredible. So yeah, that international piece that you had growing up translates directly into living overseas and then growing your personal experience in business to then leading a company. And that was your first. I mean, you talk about a rocket trajectory from a leadership perspective. Really incredible. And then you make a bit-- Just on that point, so like I just want to emphasize, I mean, I was ambitious in hardworking, but I was super lucky. I caught that at the right time. So again, your humility comes through doing because it's better to be lucky than good. But we know that you're good. And then also, you make your own luck. Those doors and that luck wouldn't have been there had you not had the resume and the work ethic. And I'm sure the reputation that you grew quickly to take on that next challenge. Yeah. I think there's one key thing that Kuda and I bonded over. I think Matt's got this mentality of, no one's going to outwork me. And I certainly had that mentality, certainly at that time. I mean, now I would say I've got a more balanced perspective. But that's youth, right? And that's what we should be doing in our 20s when we're trying to build our futures. Well said. Yeah, exactly. Amazing. So then you're back in the US and you go on a bit of a pivot, right? Yeah. I would say rooted in engineering with this electronics company and running that company. And then-- Yeah. So what was interesting there? So I went to business school at the University of Chicago. That's where I met my wife, Gabrielle. We were study buddies. And that was transformational. The University of Chicago, you have top flight students from all over the world, super, super smart people. And that really opened my mind to, you know, typically when you're studying engineering, you kind of look at business and you're like, oh, well, that's the easy part of academia. And what it taught me is there's a whole rigor to business. I didn't fully appreciate. And certainly at the University of Chicago, that's the standard. So I met my wife there. So about that time when I got sent over to Switzerland in that promotion, promoted to run North America, they moved the headquarters from Chicago, which is where I had left from to Michigan. And they did that because so much for a business was automotive related. And so as an expat-- and I know you've done your expat assignments-- the logic is, I'm here. You move me here. You move me back to where I started. And so I was like, wait a second. I don't want to live in Troy, Michigan. I want to go back to Chicago. And so that's when I was like, OK, well, maybe I need to make a job change. And at that time, there was a newly minted public company that was in the real estate services group called a cell partners publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. They were just merging with another company called Jones Lang-Wooten, London-based, created global real estate services firm. And they were looking for people who had global business experience with top flight MBAs. They only hired from four schools. They were kind of particular about that. And I'm like, well, this is kind of cool. I don't know much about this industry. And so I ended up interviewing there with super impressed with the leadership. And then I ended up essentially switching industries. Well, incredible. And so how many folks did you oversee in that role? So publicly traded. And you're leading huge teams. Yeah. Well, I mean, initially not. So initially I was there. a global account manager for several accounts. By the way, there's a whole set of stories on that. I can only imagine. Which tie back into JP Morgan and my first meeting with Jamie and all this stuff, but we'll cover that in another episode. But yeah, so I think initially think of it as more global account work. And then later, of course, I got promoted into more leadership roles and then ultimately moved from Chicago to Denver for lifestyle reasons. My wife and I, that's where we wanted to raise our family. It's great. And then one of the senior executives at Jonesling, a cell went to another company, brought me along. So it just ascended. That's really where I cut. I should have mentioned we took this Swiss electronics company public on this Swiss stock exchange. That was the first IPO that I was involved in. And then there were several others. So the claim to fame was really running large public companies or divisions of public companies. And in some cases, they were private companies that wanted to be a public and that's really kind of the expertise I had developed. Amazing. And then you're running call yours. That's right. Is the ultimate as a CEO and another publicly traded company. So now we're building this track record of your experience in the finance side of-- because running a company is hard enough. Talk about running a public company and why that is so different. So with their responsibilities that you have the shareholders. I love it. I mean, a lot of people are like, well, you know, why do it? I like the degree of difficulty because I think it's a standard that a lot of people don't fully appreciate. It's difficult to perform at that level. There's a scoreboard every day. It's not always fair. Just like sports and life, right? But at least you know where you are. So I really like that. I also like the ability to access capital. Because if you're running a growth company, which is really the company's I'm used to running, availability of capital is really your secret weapon. Whoever has the lowest cost to capital and the ability to deploy capital creatively over time, that compounds, and over time, you will win. Right. Well, and again, we're going to talk to Matt Kudab, with his ability just being like a fighter weapon school level guy of understanding how M&A works in the capital markets. I mean, absolutely. It's going to be another fascinating conversation for our listeners to dive into. So we understand your business background. And you mentioned being competitive in sports, riding horses growing up doing that. So you have this core value of adventure in your soul. That's true. Yeah. And so I know that as all of this begins to grow, you've been an adventure also in your private life. And I know you're very humble about this. But this is one of the things that when we first met each other in person, we started talking. And realized we've got mutual friends across multiple disciplines. And one of the folks that was inspiring to both of us as Ed Veecers, I had an opportunity to climb with Ed. I know that Ed and Jennifer on our team grew up with Ed. So it's just really cool, the personal connections there. But you get into Alpine Mountain climbing, which is something that I also enjoyed doing. But I think you shared the story with me that I really want to touch on. So you talk about being on the side of Achengaagwo, which for folks that don't know that mountain, it's the one of the seven summits, highest peak in South America. So can you walk us through your experience? Yeah. Well, I appreciate you saying I'm an Alpine climber. I wouldn't put myself quite in that category. But I do have this sense for pushing myself. I do triophon's and I do kind of long distance endurance things. And a lot of weekend warrior competitions. I love that part of it. And I love the sense of adventure, like you were talking about. So Achengaagwo, I was really fascinated geographically by Mendoza and Argentina and all that. And I'd read a couple of books about that tragic plane crash that happened in that region as well. There's a great movie also, seven years into bed with Brad Pitt. That was shot in that entire valley. So I was really fan, to me, I'm not a box checker. Like, hey, let me do this seven summits. That's not the way I think. But if it's experiential and it's part of a larger theme, I was always fascinated by the Andes. I spent time in Peru. I spent time at Machu Picchu. I did part of the Inca Trail. And to me, it's just majestic. Even I went to the Atokma Desert, dryest place on Earth, on a mountain biking trip. And it just kind of fell in love with the Andes. So that was the context of Achengaagwo. And it's a beast. It's an absolutely beast. And so we attempted, we failed. We didn't sum it. And what I'm proud about there-- and I think it's the heart of your question-- is we turned around. Or I should say, I turned around. The other people in the party chose to wait out the weather a bit. They still ended up turning around. But to me, it's actually back to Ed Veecers. I had read Ed's book. And there's a chapter in there. He's written several books. I forget which one it was. But there's a chapter in there that talks about unsuccessful climbs, risk, all these kinds of things. I think it was in the context of Everest. And his thesis was, I'll never forget this. He said, the people who fail and put the teams in danger are actually the most ambitious, the most goal oriented people. Because they don't have the judgment. They're so blinded by ambition, which by the way, this is my career. We'll talk about how we transition into space. But for years, I was sleepwalking through, I want to run the biggest company. I wanted, it's all about like span of control as opposed to like being thoughtful and conscious about what is it that I'm actually doing? What difference am I making? Of course. And going back to being on the side of the mountain and making that decision when you've got what, 30 to 40 not wins, literally could just pull you off the side of the mountain. The risk that you have to your teammates on the rope. And of course, the desire and the ambition to succeed, because that's always the question for folks about asking about a mountain climb. Well, did you make it to the top? Because if you don't make it to the top, it's seen as a failure, which I would aggressively argue that that's not the case. It is the discipline and the decision making. And you make the tough call, because of course, you want to make it to the top to turn around. And it was in the easy call. Like it was that bad. OK. It was that bad. And there was a group ahead of us. There were four of them. And a young woman lost all eight of her fingers. She kept her thumbs. But in they did not listen. And the problem is it wasn't 40 not wins. Up top, it was 120 KPH wins. So it doesn't matter what you're wearing. It's going to be too cold. You're going to be exposed. And then not that season, but the previous season, with roughly the same kinds of wins. I think there were 140 KPH. Two guys got blown off the mountain. So to me, once I assessed the situation, I'm like, I'm going to base camp. And it was actually an easy decision. Because I had adventures in my mind. I had the commitment I made to my family. Don't take too much risk. So I know it sounds hard, but it was actually a dober-ainer. Yeah. It's a great point of-- we do these things because they're hard. And we want to have the sense of accomplishment. But it's also having the training goal in mind. Hey, I'm going to climb this mountain. I'm going to run this race in 90 days. And so it's a way to keep yourself disciplined during that time as you're training and becoming better. And we want that to overflow into the other aspects of our lives of being husbands and fathers and leaders and all those kind of things. But here's one interesting thing about the way my mind works. I don't know why it works, but I'm happy it does this way. I, golf-- you asked me the other day, you golf. I do golf. I don't golf very well. So let's say I shoot a 110. I'll have 103 bad shots and seven good shots. The only thing I remember are the seven good shots. It's just the way my brain works. So when you think of Ak and Kaguya, I don't think horrible experience, bad weather, miserable, didn't make it. I think of the beautiful experience I had in Mendoza. I think of that unbelievable valley, the walk-up. I think about base camp. I think about the people I met. And I have a very romantic notion of the trip. Even though it was a failure, same thing with Kilimanjaro. That ended up being successful. But there were some really difficult parts of that climb with a few of the people on our team. I don't remember that. I remember the beauty of us all being together on the summit. And that's great. And that is a great segue to your mindset and who you are as a person. That directly translates into your vision for exploration. And I believe in getting to know you, your motivation for creating Voyager. You are an optimist. You are an explorer. And I will use the word dreamer, not from this fictitious idea, but truly of the things that we would put in the category of fantasy, but making that a reality. Then taking your engineering mind and problem-solving mind of how to take something that just seems 2050. Things that we came and think about. But building and pulling that forward to becoming a reality today. So you've had all of the success in business. You're living a wonderful, adventurous life. And then you decide it's time to focus on human space flight, exploration. We'll talk to 3Ls and all this stuff. What was the pivot point? And I know you. had to have woken up one day or had a conversation with Gabrielle and said, okay, we're making a change. What was that moment? You know, I started much earlier. So having all this success in quotes, you know, I really put it in quotes in running these large organizations, making a bunch of money, which I thought was important at the time, which it's not. You know, money is a trap and there are other traps, but that's one of them. I just reached a place where I wasn't feeling fulfilled. I didn't feel it like it was purposeful. I didn't feel like it was meaningful. I didn't really like the people I was working with, you know, select me honest with you. And it was more an existential crisis. Why am I here? I like, why does this matter? And so that was really the reflection. And then, you know, I mentioned this, I think, to a couple people before previously, but you know, I read this book, The Last Lecture, which is also a lecture on YouTube, really gets you to think about what are you truly passionate about? You know, go back in your childhood, really kind of probe those early memories. And for me, it always been space, always space, always exploration. What's over the hill? But this romantic notion of space really is a tool for transformation and or space as a template template for what could be possible. I just was always like fascinated by that, you know, and it's a cliche, but like even Star Trek, everyone's getting along. There's plenty of stuff. There's a new planet to explore every week. Right. So that's really what I was searching for. And there was a guy named Eric Anderson, who's still a good friend to this day, who was doing some of the early human space flights. He was responsible for sending Dennis Tito up. He and I were friends via the world economic forum. I had met him in Davos. We were part of the young global leader group that I was part of. And I said, look, Eric, I'm super passionate about this. How can I get plugged into the industry? And really started as an early stage investor, getting to know the entrepreneurs, the business plans. Then I ended up writing a few kind of seminal articles for space news. And because I had been in these different industries, I could sort of prognosticate. Sure. What was going to happen in the industry and people were like, how? How did you know that was going to happen? I'm like, because these are industry patterns that repeat. So that's how I initially got involved. And then the more I got involved, the more I loved it, the more I realized that was my, my future. And then about that time is when, and that will have a different story of this. I'll tell you the real story. But about that time is when I met Matt and agreed to essentially be his mentor. He was just getting out of the military and he was in business school. And that's when he and I started thinking about, can we create something special? Can we create Voyager? Well, and you've been quoted as the guy that can see around corners, which is incredible because you've got the track record of seeing the market indicators and where it's going and finding that inflection point to make the early investment, you know, to really know when to throw down. And of course, Matt has been a great partner with the way that the two of you interact together is just, it's really incredible to see a lot of luck though on the investment side. It's like a lot of a lot. Again, your humility comes through, but I always appreciate that about you. And so then you decide, okay, we're going to form Voyager. Yeah. We initially, I think, began, you know, more on the investing side, right? With your background, you and Boltman. A little bit that. I mean, I think we probably out of the gates made a little bit of a mistake calling it a holding company because then I think people thought, okay, well, this is a collection of investments. It was really never our plan for it to be that, but I think that's kind of, because we had seated it with some investments that I had made. I think that was a little bit kind of a branding issue. You know, thank goodness we've got branding geniuses like you in the organization now. But yeah, it was always really in addition to be an operating company publicly traded. So purpose built to be a public company. We admire, you know, Dan or her, high co companies like that that were all run. But what we believed was the industry really needed. We were actually really concerned. You know, we looked at the defense side of the equation. We're like, we're getting our clock cleaned by our adversaries and we're falling further and further behind. And the companies charged with building the technologies to bridge that gap or asleep at the wheel. And their order takers, not solution providers. And the entrepreneurs who have the solutions don't really understand how to scale their companies. So we're like, this is a strategic imperative on the national security defense side. And on the space side, very similar. We were inspired by SpaceX and others that were making an impact. But it's like, we looked around the industry is like, who else is like innovating and scaling, right? Those were the two, the two things. And so we said, okay, can we create this best of both worlds? And if we can, the customer will gravitate towards that. The customers will gravitate towards a platform like that. And probably more importantly, the best people in the industry will want to work for a company like that. Sure. And then you look at where we are today, we've got live feeds coming in from the international space station where we have our commercial hardware, have mission manage over 1400 events there. We are the conduit. We are doing a commercial market. And that was again, you doing an investment in order to unlock potential to then grow into past performance into a visionary event and we can't not talk about star lab. Yeah. Right. Well, you know, live on screen we're seeing, I think this is Jessica Meir doing an experiment on the international space station. And so having the service and research expertise led to Bishop Aerolock, PC human rated hardware, only part of sovereign, owned real estate on the international space station. In that really then unlocked when we competed for CLD phase one, commercial Leo destination phase one, I think that's the main reason we won is because we have the services component mission management component and we had demonstrated human rated hardware with the bishop Aerolock bishop being named after the chess piece. And of course star lab, what can we say, right? We've got this mockup at building nine. It's super impressive. It's, you know, three story, you know, building six decks, seven meter diameter, 100% of the research capacity of the international space station. And we've got this great international consortium of partners, you know, Airbus and it's a B.C. Palantir, MDA, you know, Hilton hotels, you name it. So yeah, I'm super excited about that. And you know, we've got this, I think we'll get into it the three L strategy. First, all being low Leo, Lord, orbit, that's where star labs going to be second being lunar. We've got lots of exciting things happening on lunar. And the third is Lagrange, which is really a proxy for deep space. But these stable orbits, about a million miles from earth, that it'll really allow you to do interesting things in deep space. Right. Well, we, we fully understand based on, on the history here at Voyager, everything that can be unlocked in Leo. So let's, let's talk about lunar because we just got to witness Artemis, which was just amazing. I wasn't around for, for the Apollo missions, but I know that we've, as a nation, lived around that legacy. And it's just so cool for us to witness and, and our kids to see the inspiration that this last mission has done with the focus to go back to the moon. So from a lunar perspective, I mean, I know that you get excited about it. And I want to hear, you know, what you, the vision is over the next few years and how Voyager is going to be part of that. Well, back to my dad, so, you know, being an advanced material scientist, he was doing a lot of plasma reactor advanced material work. So he was part of the team that had Moon Regolith, you know, doing a lot of these advanced experiments on what you can unlock. Yeah, I mean, it's come full circle. It's, it's amazing. Yeah, so what can you say about the moon? I mean, you know, you're on your porch in the, I don't know where your summer place is, select, but let's say it's in, you know, the Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee. And you're on your porch and you're looking at the moon and there's lights on the moon. And there's lights up there because there are people living and working out there. And that's where we're headed, right? And I'm just super excited about that. And, you know, it's, it's within our reach, right? So what do you need to have successful lunar commerce? And think of it as the eighth continent, right? That's what I like to think of the moon as. I love it. You need power. You need mobility and you need habitation, right? And all those different technologies we've got strategies for, habitation with our investment in Mac space. Power, we're working on something really big, which I hope to announce very soon and probably about the time that this comes out. And then very similarly with propulsion and mobility, you know, that's a key part of our technology stack as well. And then lots of other, I'll call it picks and shovels technology like optical communications, optical navigation and control. We have this really unique dust coating technology, which helps mitigate lunar dust. We also have some water extraction technology for moon reguleth. So think of this technology stack all being mutually reinforcing and allowing us to live and work on the moon. And having an important role in that, right? And you know, we often talk about the convergence, right? Of all these small pieces coming together and just unlocking the next big step, which we know is a permanent moon base. And being part of that is just incredible. Again, that goes back to your personality of being, how do I take something that's going to happen? It feels like a dream and pull it forward and make it tangible and make it something that everybody can be part of. I do want to touch on, we just had a trip talking to our partners through the Vista program. So can you walk us through Vista really quick? Well, Vista, I think, is a genius idea and I credit you, Slick and Jeff Mamba, and other senior people in the company for really unlocking this idea, but back to research pipeline innovation. So whether it's microgravity, which is a magic laboratory, or it's the lunar environment, how do you create a research consortium of universities around the world who are focused on these research areas that can collaborate with one another and also create experiments or different things that could create ultimately missions and payloads that would go to Leo or Lunar or Lagrange? And so think of this as almost like a research flywheel where the research areas are identified, funding is, in many cases, coming from private industry because they're interested in developing these technologies. Most of the best research happens with consortiums of global universities around the world. Having these kind of almost think of it as a physical science park where these scientists are working and collaborating and cross-pollinating, and that entire infrastructure, ultimately driving commerce and research and commercialization to Starlab and Leo, the lunar infrastructure we're building in Lagrange and Deep Space. So cool. Yeah, it's such a good idea and the universities love it. And if you look at the research areas that are applicable, it's advanced robotics, it's data science. It's material crystal growth. It's bioforma. It's organelles. It's all the things that are exciting in the world to it. It is. And from talking about your life and your life arc, it really just comes back full circle. It does. I mean, to the fact that you grew up in a home led by a research professor from an international perspective with the students that he taught and became part of your life to now building a physical place that all of this research is going to happen. And then having this hub and spoke that goes out across our nation and then with our international partners. I mean, it is a really amazing story, Dylan. I can't say thanks enough for you being here, sharing more about your life and your leadership and all of your experiences and contributing and giving all of that back to now, the next generation because we are going to inspire thousands of young people that want to become astronauts and all of that. So again, I can't say thank you enough for taking your time for supporting us, sharing the Voyager story and we're just looking forward to next steps. Well said, space is the place. Select. Space is the place. I love it. Well, thank you so much for tuning into our first podcast. We are so excited about what we're going to bring you this season. We're going to talk to the other leaders. We're going to talk to other industry leaders outside of Voyager itself and I would just be so excited to take you on this ride.