Why Australia’s defence needs tech founders: Vu Tran of Black Sky Industries on building missiles with a startup mindset.

There is a more than 0% chance that there is a world where my kids will have to grow up. In a time where they'll, as they become adults or fighting age, they may have to pick up a gun, not because they want to, not because they want to join the army or serve the country, but because they have to. What are the lessons from Go One have you taken and brought into Black Sky intentionally? I think I'm a pretty good leader but I'm a terrible manager. Omega I'm not a terrible manager, Omega said I hate managing. It's probably a better way to quit. Usually that makes the best managers. Yeah, hate managing. I just generally hate managing for a bunch of reasons. The one reason is just they'd be responsible. Wow. Now we were talking to the UK Ministry of Defence. When we said, "Oh look, we operate the largest private launch language in the world." They said, "Three million acres. Is that right? That's about half the size of Wales." And we said, "Yep, that's about right." Wow, that is just mind boggling scale. I could probably teach you in two weeks. Had a fully integrated build from scratch with three Allen keys and screwdriver. Build one of our missiles in four hours. Wow. Welcome back to Wild Hearts. I'm your host Mason Yates from the Investment Team at Blackbird Ventures. Get this quote, "I'm in defence not because I want to, but because I feel like I have to." Voo Tran still sees patients every week as a GP. He built Go One into a billion dollar business. Now he's building missiles. Let that sit. Because when Voo looks at the world, his kids micro up end. He sees a future that might ask them to pick up a gun, not by choice, but by necessity. So he left us to build black sky industries. Australia's first company making scalable, solid rocket motors and guided weapons. Not to start wars, but to make Australia and a kidnap. Small, underestimated, and far too prickly to bite. This is just a taste-art for what's to come at sunrise. Blackbirds love letter to founders. An incredible festival with the best investors, operators and founders coming together to build a creative nation we want to live in. If you don't have your tickets yet, head on over. The link is in the description. And let's dive right into this episode. Why are you juggling so many hats? I'll be honest, mate. I really enjoy it. I love it. Like, you think, like, general practice is one of those things that you'll never see me give up. I really love it. I could not do it full-time. Full-time general practice is a nightmare. Because no one ever comes to a doctor and says life is great. Right? They come in and they go, "They've got a problem." I don't know if you remember. In the early 2000s, there was a show called "Thank God you're here." Where there's a sketch show. And the community opens the door and they don't know what's coming through that door. And that is generally what general practice is like, except for the fact that it could be anything from someone needs a prescription to domestic violence and mental health issues. Right? Like, it's a pretty damn big spectrum and cancer and a whole bunch of stuff in between. So it's really tolling if you were to do general practice five days a week. I take my hats off. How off to anyone else who does it. But I really enjoy it because I've had these patients for almost 10 years. You know, it sounds a bit wonky, but it's incredibly grounding. Like, despite all the shit that I get to do, you know, I get to sort of see my regular patients who I've known for 10 years. They don't know what I do. Where's your GP? I need to go. Yeah. So when I go and chat to them, you know, like, I get to just remind myself that my last pretty fucking great, right? Like a pretty damn good life. Like, if you want to catch me at my absolute worst when I think the world sucks, it's at like nine o'clock on a Thursday night. And then if you want to catch me at my absolute best, it's probably a 10 o'clock on a Thursday night or on a Friday morning, where I'm like, holy cows, I have so much perspective. Like, I think it was last Sunday. Yeah, last Sunday because I just come back from the Osfitness Expo down in Melbourne, which is a completely different. Wow. And got back to Brisbane at like 10 o'clock and I rolled out of bed at seven o'clock when I saw my patients and I just went being wrecked and being like, and I had two patients. One who was like under the age of 40, but I had to tell him he had cancer. And I was like, you know, by about in the afternoon, when I had finished off, I was like, man, in fact, life is shit. Like, why am I telling a young, like, he was a dad like me. He was got young kids and you know, tell the guys got cancer, right? And I like, man, last sucks. And then I kind of have to kind of slap myself in the face and be like, hey, I'm not the one who's being told they have cancer, right? That's it. Is that it is. And be like, I'm going home to my kids and I've got to like, I get to do all this really cool shit. So from my perspective, it's just one of those sort of reality checks, which I've always found incredibly useful. Wow. That is a seriously interesting perspective, especially in the context of why you decided to start Black Sky. Like you have this like almost daily reminder of life and death. Well, but also just like a connection to, you know, when we live in tech, we're living a real fucking privilege bubble. That's awesome. Like, I'm a general practitioner in a, where are you? You'd see me or where are you based? Sinif. So I'm a general practitioner in Logan, which is the equivalent of the Western side of the city, right? Very low socioeconomic. Working class, very, very multicultural. And so for me, it's like, you know, it's where I grew up. It's the people that I know. But the other side that it comes back to is that like, you're reminded of just what normal people have to experience outside of the white collar tech sort of world. Like people don't know what I do. But they have conversations with me and they go, man, this Trump stuff is going to be worse. And just like, what happens if the US doesn't come to our rescue? Now, this is what Asian to say to me, not knowing that I do black skying. Wow. So they're GP because GP's a trusted advisor. You don't mean like you trust your health care, not just your health care, but the health care of your family members. So, you know, it's, it's such an amazing insight that you get, right? Which is super useful. But ultimately, like, I love it. I really, really do enjoy it. If I wasn't worried about all this, you know, I'll call it World War III occurring. If I wasn't worried about global conflict, I'd be doing health tech. You know, that's where I'd be spending all my time. But I think that's the area that I can make the biggest impact that's getting. You said your end of fence not because you want to, but because you feel like you have to. I feel like that's the perfect segue to ask you, like when did this moment become like a part in concern to like a moral obligation? I'll zoom right out to the macro and bring it into the micro for you. That's okay. I'd love that. I'm the child of Vietnamese refugees, right? So my mum and dad, Flood Vietnam, post-Blood Vietnam War with their three kids, my three siblings. I'm the youngest in my family by 10, 12, and 14 years. So I've got an incredibly privileged life. I was born here in Australia. I grew up as a kid in the 90s post-Burland War pre-September 11. It was the most awesome time in my eyes to grow up as a kid in Australia, right? So the opportunity to not worry about what the world was going to turn out like as a kid. You don't really think about it. And in fact, my parents didn't really think about it because everything was better than what they grew up in. So if I'm into Australia, it was a godsend for them. The challenge I think about is that six years ago, I had my first child at my daughter, right? My six year old daughter now. And then three years ago, I had my son. So I've got two kids, a six year old, and a three year old now. And I mentioned to you before I grew up in the 90s, and the age gap between me and my daughter is 30 years. What, 2025 is to hers? What 1995 is to me? My biggest concern is, what does that next 20 years look like for her? And do you have kids, mate? Do you have kids? No, my kids. What are six? Yeah, if and when you are anyone else decides that, kids, your whole perspective really does change. Because you think about what's the world they're going to grow up in. And I think that there is a more than 0% chance that there is a world where my kids will have to grow up in a time where they will, as they become adults or fighting age, they may have to pick up a gun, not because they want to. Not because they want to join the army or serve the country, but because they have to. You know, we're about to go down to summarise at the end of this month and you know, tend this great conference and, you know, breed together all these amazing people and get to talk to them all. I can almost guarantee you that five years ago, in Keirb and Ukraine, you got a very similar conference to sunrise where you get a founders and capital allocators and great thinkers. And today those same people attended that conference in Ukraine five years ago. They're either dead, holding a gun, or have had to flee their country. Now I sound really, you know, extreme saying that. But if you think about all the events that have occurred over the last few years, that statement unfortunately has become sort of scarier and more real every single time. So don't get me wrong. I don't, I'm an optimist and that I don't think what will three will occur. But I'm also a realist in going, there's a chance that it may occur. Right. And the challenge I run into when I built Go One with my my match from high school, so it got to go a great company and go one. You know, we built it to, to that sort of, you know, a multi hundred million dollar revenue company from Logan from here in Queensland in the online learning space. Education something we were incredibly passionate about as founders, which were in the four of us. You know, build something that makes a difference and you look at the chose corporate learning as that area of focus on. The missing piece of the puzzle that no one focuses on when it comes to, you know, education. And those are really great companies. And for me, my role has always been a custom side on the growth side of the business. But there was a point there where I sat there and thought to myself, you know, I'm truly worried about where the world's going. And if I look back and the world does go to shit, if I can say that. And I've just sat there optimizing an Octowin funnel in a SaaS business by an extra half or two or three percent, which potentially results in tens or hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue. I just wouldn't be happy with myself. So it was about trying to go, well, it's one thing to be worried about it. The question is, what are you going to do about it? And so for me, you know, you get all these signals that keep happening. So, Mason, I'm just saying there's not just one thing, there's both all different things, but these signals a chair and I still remember there was a dinner where I sat down with my co-founders and I just said to them, "Guys, I love this business. We built it. You know, you will read the newspapers, go one started in 2015 when we went through White Com and so this year marks 10 years since we went through YC but Andrew and I started our first business together, what eventually became go one when we were in grade 11. We were 16 years old, right? I'm 36 years old now, so we've been doing this for 20 years, right? So we've spent our entire adult lives building go one. Yeah, there was a certain point there where I looked at it and I go, "This is a business that will thrive and survive and do incredibly well with all it out me." And the one thing I came to learn to myself from the go on journey was that I freaking love the early stage. Flip side of it, the one thing I'm not made for is corporate. Right. And so for me, you know, as go on became a bigger, better, awesome company, I also realized that what I love is like being at the cul face, you know, to use a military term, I'm not used to being general, give me a gun and send me to the cul face, right? So I said to my co-founders, I said, "Look, there's a shotcloth on how long I'm in this business pool." More importantly, you know, there's some stuff that I think that's really personally important to me that I didn't need to pursue. And that was in the defense space and I got a really good make, like Nicolay choose the fat who started Black Sky Aerospace, who about three years ago, you know, was stinky about focusing more on defense. And I said to him, "If I leave go one, let's double down and let's go for this." So he has made car for myself. So Blake's an ex-army pilot who's worked with explosives for over 20 years. Carls been in manufacturing for a long time based in Victoria and logistics and he's an ex tanky, he's an ex tanker too. And so me, I'm the only one not from defense. So, you know, three of us got together and sort of the rest is history. We decided, you know, we're really going to take go from aerospace and building rockets. The really, the area of defense, no one else wants to touch, which is the tech people turn they'll call it is lethality and explosive ordinance. But really, it's missiles. Right? That's what it is. So to go from rocket's aerospace to missiles with extremely thality. So, you know, I don't know if this is a compliment or not. But I remember Steve Bass just saying that our company is the most lethal company in Australia, which I don't necessarily think is a good or a bad thing, but it's more so to point out, you know, my eyes I think it's a bad thing because it means that a company that's essentially three years old and it's current form, you know, has no one else doing this in our space in our country, which if you think it's a population of almost 30 million people and a defense budget of 60 billion plus dollars, we don't make anything that actually is pointy. You know, it's the euphemism I use for this. Jerry's help. So that's a very sort of high level answer as to sort of how I got into this position. But we honestly, it wasn't one thing. It was several things that kind of added up and added up. And I'm firm believer like the world gives you a whole bunch of signals. And those signals just got stronger and stronger and strong that and stronger to the point where it's like, all right, either do it now. I don't know. Yeah, I totally agree. This was just before the war in Ukraine. And then when the war happened in Ukraine, it was fun like, holy shit, that's a really strong. You're like, okay, yeah, this is why I shouldn't this is interesting. Like I remember having you chat to my co-founders when Trump was in power the first time and this is not whether or not your pro Trump or Andy come this is just, you know, if it Trump's first term when Trump had a trade war with China, right? Do you remember who the collateral damage was when Trump had a trade war with China? Henfolds wine and WA rock lobsters. That's right. Yeah, it in 2020. 2017, 2018, 20, whatever it was, 2020, like all I'm trying to come back to is that when two great powers go to war or face off against each other, they're not necessarily taking pot shots at each other. They're potentially trying to inflict damage on their allies, trying to make an example of their allies. And the Asia Pacific, the biggest ally the US has is us is Australia. You know, so in my eyes, you know, one of one of the things that I was thinking about is just again, what world are my kids going to grow up here? And, you know, what am I going to do to do something about it? You know, get off my house and do something about it. So just see me are optimizing your ass ass sales funnel. No offense to anyone who works in SaaS, but I think if you think you've got the ability to do it, then you should at least give it a go. One of these unreally passionate about is I want to bring great founders into defense tech. You know, the reason why I'm keen to do this podcast with you and talk on stage and do all these different things with anyone who will give me an audience to do it with is during how do we bring more founders into defense tech? Because, you know, pretty much the table I want to give them is the world is wall, you know, come on in. That is such a beautiful summary. Oh my God, what a life you've lived. Hopefully there's a lot more to it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's still early days. You're in the early innings. I was thinking what I'd like to do is basically thread some of what you've just said and frame it into sort of three parts around like what are most people get wrong about defense? What is like, how did you arrive at missiles or lethality to use your word? And you mentioned go on and I'd love to spend a bit of time like learning about the principles that you've taken into black sky and what's been deleted. So starting from the top, one thing that stood out to me was like from a the conversations that you're having as a GP to be the like world news of trade wars in Ukraine and how that emotionally impacted you. Like at the same time, like what is Australia's defense capability like obviously it feels like we right off the back of the US. And I guess I'm sort of curious like what are we all sort of getting wrong about it? Where you want to start, man? What are you? What do you want to start with it? Let's start at the level of consciousness for Aussie citizens. So I think there's probably two or three things that I can kind of unpack for you first of all. There's there's a perception in the reality, right? I think that perception has changed a lot over time when the way people view defense, way people view defense companies. And the reason why I say that to you is I'll start off very simply. The first thing people think about when it comes to defense companies is they think of the defense military industrial complex, right? And I think people rightfully are suspicious of the defense military industrial complex. Because when they think about those companies, they're not thinking about Australian companies. They're thinking about US companies. And the reason why I say that is let's break it back down for you first. Australia spends $55 billion a year on defense. It's going to go up to about $65 billion in the next year or two, right? So let's call it $60 billion. Now that's $60 billion is if you stack up Australia globally when it comes to global spend on defense. We are ranked about seventh or eighth in the world when it comes to our military spending, which is insane because our military has about 40 or 50,000 personnel. Now we spend more money than most of the rest of the world on defense, but half a dozen countries yet we only have one company in the top 100 companies by revenue in the world when it comes to defense industry. So we have one company in the top 100. Think about every other industry we participate in and we spend money on as an economy. We have one company in the top 100 globally when it comes to revenue. Yet we spend more money than most of the rest of the world. Now what does that tell you? That tells me that we spend our money overseas. We spend our money buying from foreign prime. So the term that we use when we talk about large military companies, manufacturing and prime companies that get these big contracts, they're called primes. So Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Ray Theon, Airbus, these companies are all large US primes. Well, Airbus is French, but these large US primes. So one of the things it comes back to is that during the 90s, what happened was you had a consolidation of defense companies, post-thefall of the Bill in War. So as a result of that, you had this massive proliferation of defense companies post-war war two. Start to consolidate as defense budgets got smaller. And that's all the peace dividend post-war war two and then post-thefall of the USSR. So as a result of that, you have all these massive companies, all these small companies, sorry, all consolidate into this handful of really big companies. And I'll send you this really great diagram from a company called Andrew where they show that consolidation. Now the problem with that consolidation is you end up with, you know, I want to say a monopoly, you end up with less competition. Now, governments will continue to spend money on defense, you have less competition. And most of the contracts will run off what's called a cost plus model. Now I come from a SaaS world, right, where we build a great product, they're right on their merits and the customer buy them according to how they need to use them. And we pay for the R&D, the VCs, the companies themselves pay for the R&D, we bring the product to the customer and the customer chooses what they want to buy. On a cost plus model, what happens is they get a lot of these multi hundred million dollar or even billion dollar contracts. And on a cost plus model, it's just the markup, which means whatever it costs to build the thing plus our 10 or 15% or whatever the number is. Now the challenge you run into with that model is that what's the incentive to do cheaper? What's the incentive to do it faster? What's the incentive to innovate when it comes to doing it, right? And the reason why these guys love selling half billion dollar airplanes is because I can mark up everything from the nuts and bolts to the glass that we use on the end of the line. Now the challenge that it comes back to is that the value to taxpayers in CREB, terribly low. So that's the first step there. That's the challenge. I like to describe, you know, the military industrial complex as it was or as it is is really good at making money during peacetime. But during times of escalating risk of conflict like we've had in the last few years and that you're going to have over the next few years. What we need is cheaper, faster and more stuff, right? Now, the one bit of technology that has evolved significantly in the last five years when it comes to war, especially in Ukraine, but in other regions as well, is drones. So you have a whole bunch of these large, slow-moving companies that are used to selling half billion dollar pieces of equipment to now a world of drone warfare, where there might only be a few grand per piece of equipment. So if you had a company that's used to selling something for $500 million with a 10% profit per item, it's suddenly having to make money from $1,000 with a 50% profit. They just not get up for that world. So part of it is that there is an opportunity here where there's almost this sort of, you know, the easiest term a lot when they talk about AI. There is this phase shift in technology, which the large and commoner primes are having their large and common sort of military industrial complex. They're having their code act moment where the smaller companies like us and a whole bunch of other companies have the opportunity to have a punch through and make a difference and be able to do something. The second part of it is that you have more of these founders who are coming through, who are coming from the tech scene. So Parmalaki, who's the founder of Andral, was also the founder of Oculus. He's the modern day Tony Stark or Iron Man. I figure what you will of his politics, but at the end of the day, the guy founded Oculus when he was 19. Sold up with a few billion bucks to Facebook and then founded Andral, which I think is about to raise a few billion dollars at a $24 billion valuation after getting a $14 billion valuation this time last year. So what Andral is to defense tech is what I think Salesforce was to SaaS. Sales force managed to convince enterprise customers to buy from startups and cloud-based technology providers. Well, in mind from IBM and Oracle, what I think Andral would do is start to convince governments to start buying from startups and small defense tech companies because we can move faster. We can operate in the field of emerging technology. Now your question is, what is the average punters view on the street of defense, right? Or defense industry defense tech? I think it shifted. So I think, you know, when I graduated high school, everyone wanted to be an engineer. Everyone was in Queens. I want to go work in the mining industry or work for a defense company. And then it became really uncool to work in the mining industry or for a defense company. And I think it's become more acceptable to work in defense now as the world has changed and as the risk of conflict has increased. Right. So what do I mean by that? Well, both sides of politics have in Australia, we're about tech to election, have policies and views that are very much supportive of defense industry in Australia and us building more stuff here. But more importantly, the Greens have just released the policy around the fact that they want to see more weapons and more defense products being got to Australia as well. So regardless of what your politics is, whether you vote red, blue or green or anywhere under tween, there is a consensus across politics. And I view politics as just a reflection of what the community you're thinking most of the time, that defences in the incredibly important focus for us as a country and that making things on shore when it comes to defending the country is incredibly important. And that policy was released by the Greens, I think, going about two weeks ago. And I bring that up because I'm just trying to point out that regardless of what your flavor of politics is, every single side is doing this is something incredibly important. And you know, when push comes to shove, no matter where you stand, I think everyone will sit there and go, we value the way of life that we have today. Yeah, we've got a whole bunch of problems that we need to fix. But push comes to shove. No, the way of life we have right now, the quality of life we have is much better than where you would get it in most other places. So I think the view on the street is actually reflected by the policy you're seeing put forward by all the major parties, especially coming into an election. They wouldn't be putting forward unless they thought it's popular. And then the second part that I would come back to is I think about my interactions with my patients and general practice. My patients do not know what I do, right? Very few, if any of them know what I do. And the one thing about being a general practitioner is you get to be a trusted advisor. You get to hear firsthand what people are talking about. You get to do the first two minutes of small talk before you get into what their problem isn't what they're seeing before today. How are you doing today, buddy? What's been happening? Oh, man, you see what's in the news yesterday? Do you see what's going on here? Oh, we need this sorted out. Yada, yada, yada. That is my first two minutes of banter, not me initiating it, but my patients initiated for me because some of these patients I've had for over 10 years, almost 10 years. So one of the things it comes about to for me is I hear firsthand from my patients. Then volunteering that things they're worried about is, you know, you feed more recently, you know, Trump becoming more nationalistic when it comes to the US, which they're entitled to do. Has that repercussions where I got patients down in Logan saying, what does that mean for us when it comes to the US coming to our defense? If the proverbial hits the fans, you know, what are they going to do? And that's that's which the question I've had patients raise with me where again, they don't know what I'm involved in defense, but they genuinely are, you know, the average punt from the street. A guarantee is thinking more about sovereignty for Australia than you probably think there. What you've shared there is kind of like the collision of or dovetailing of, I guess, the impetus to buy and having a stronger reason to sell. What's the aim of the buy? All of the, like, upstream top down, like multi variable factors. And then the opportunity to hand that black sky has, you've been in so something. Well, can I put it to you this way? The debate that has often had right now across countries all across the world is what percentage of GDP should we spend on defense is a 2% 4% is at 6% right? I want to call bullshit on that question as a Australia, it's the wrong question to arts. The question we should be asking is what percentage of GDP should defense industry be contributed? Right. We should look at it of going, we have so many allies that would benefit from us creating an industry where we could provide these goods to. And I'm not just talking about weapons. I'm talking about all the different things defense material needed. And we should be thinking not should we spend two or three percent of GDP on defense. It should be going, how do we make sure defense industry actually forms 2 to 3% of our GDP? You've had the job creation, the technology creation, the industry creation, the benefit that is created for us in doing so. But the other great thing is if we create an awesome defense industry in Australia, it makes us incredibly spiking or prickly when it comes to anyone who wants to attack us. Right? The way that we describe that strategy is what's called the Akidna or the Palkypine strategy. Right? People call it Palkypine strategy or adaptive for Australia or called the Akidna strategy. If you think about the Akidna and you think about what it looks like and it's covering all those spines, it doesn't have all those spines that are either in kill something, right? I never, this is sick. Yeah. Those spines aren't there to go out and kill something, right? Yeah. Those spines are there to make sure that when something looks at it and says, I wonder if I want to have a bite out of that animal. It says, fuck no, I don't want to touch that thing. Look at all those spines. Right? But the challenge we have, the Akidna term, we're pretty spine-less right now. We're actually relying on our allies to protect us and primarily the US, right? So if you think we're in a world where the geopolitics is changing, where the US is becoming much more nationalistic and they're saying, we got to look after ourselves and we can't necessarily be the police force of the world. That's one thing. And on the other side of it, we're sitting here going, well, we're relying on the US for everything, not just to defend us, but all the stuff that we need, we buy from the US as well, right? So if COVID taught us nothing, we need to be more self-aligned on a whole bunch of fronts. As a GP, I didn't have enough bloody rubbuck loves and masks during COVID. You know how scary that was? I still remember back to 2020. It was March 2020. I'm watching the news. People are dying in Italy, doctors are dying in New York City. I don't know if you remember, they're like, cold room vans with people's bodies and doctors were dying in Osville. And I stepped back from going on and I was in general practice all my under in that time because I needed just all the doctors out there. And I remember going, in fact, we don't even have enough masks, right? And that's crazy. Like, that's a pandemic. What happens when there's someone who wants to block us, right? And wants to stock us from receiving goods. And I sound very paranoid in doing so, but it's just how do we make sure we're prepared? The other thing I kind of just winded all back for you is we're talking about the porcupine or the kid nut and having all those spikes, right? And how those spikes are for defense, not offense. They call out the defense department, the defense department for a reason. One of the really important things it comes back to is this is just to illustrate it to you. About four weeks ago, five weeks ago, I like to describe it as we had some foreign ships go missing and decide to do a full circle of the country, right? A Chinese missile cruiser and a few other boats and probably some submarines underneath it that we're not publicly aware about. Decided to do a lap of Australia. Go down the east coast. I think 150 nautical miles of Sydney. So they'll closer to you than I am to you right now. They were doing why fire exercises off our east coast, which is well within their light and legal to do so. And they decided to do a lap of the country. Go down past Tazzy, past South Australia and pass our naval submarine yards in WA and head back north home, right? Now that lap, they might have just been doing that for a bit of sight signal while watching. You want to read it the other way around. It was also sent a very strong signal that we can reach you anywhere and we can also, that's what we can do with two or three ships. What could we do with the whole fleet to actually blockade anything coming into Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, any of our ports, Newcastle, whatever it might be. That's the very hawkish way to view it. The other way to view it, and this is a cold hot bath, is that one missile cruiser, one Miss Alcruiser, right? Sorry, I'm getting you paranoid. and my kidney parallel. So I'll show you this at the huge. They didn't talk about them in the news. And I know this because it was just that of defense problems. That one, Missile Cruiser. So on board a ship, you have what's called a cell which fires a missile over. I think it's like a pod that shoots a missile. That missile cruiser, I think, I'm gonna use round numbers here, had about 120 Missile cells on it. Right? Now, imagine this. Take every single boat in the Australian Navy. Add up every single Missile cell of every single boat combined. And I think we might have maybe a dozen more Missile cells than that one Chinese boat. Wow. If you take out the boats that are currently in dry dock, I believe the number is that that one Chinese ship had more Missile cells than every single active Australian Navy ship combined. Wow. That is just mind boggling scale. So you're questioning around why Missiles? Yes. Well, that was going to be my segue in like all of this context. Tell me more about the wedge unique. First of all, think about going, okay, well, okay, defense is a problem. What is the biggest baddest problem? What is the problem that twofold? One is such a massive vulnerability for us as a country. The two, no one wants to touch. And the answer is lethality. You can't have a defense force without weapons. Yet the irony of it is no one wants to touch it. Right. Hmm. And I have this debate all the time. I'll talk to some BC Funds to Invest in Defense. And as far as I'm aware, Steve Baxter, who's got beaten zone, is the only BC Fund that will actually invest in leafality. There's a lot of funds who will invest in defense tech. But he's the only fund to invest in leafality. In full disclosure, I'm, Steve is not an investor in Black Sky, but I'm an LPM in in in in beaten zone because I believe in what he's doing. So just kind of want to put it out there just in case it only pulls it up. But the answer is because no one's investing in this space. Right. No one's investing their time, energy, or effort, or money into leafality. Now, it is one of the most important things where it comes to a defense force. And no one's investing in it. So I'm going to break this down to a few things. So one, why does one invest in it because they don't want to touch the pointy stuff? That's scary. So for me, every single hour I have that I'm not spending with my family is an opportunity cost of spending time with them. Right. So if I'm going to pursue something, you know, personally, the way that I view it, especially my life from Go One, which I'm happy to talk about in tech. But it's got to be worth it. Like it's got to be something that moves the needle. Right. It can't just be cute or cool. It's got to be something that I genuinely feel will make a difference. You know, so let's go chase the hardest problem. The problem no one else wants to touch, which is leafality, which is building new stuff. Like, which is building weapons. And why missiles? Well, Blake has been building rockets for a very long time. And those rockets are used for aerospace to, you know, put things up into love, not all but what we call sub-album launch. Up to 100Ks up in here. Mate, the difference between a rocket and a missile is we aim that rocket at something, put a wallhead in it and something becomes a missile. Right. So the thing for us is there is a very fine line between rocketry and missiles. That's what that's the first thing I'll say. So the most important thing we focus on, like, Sky is yes, we can build the full kidney caboodle, the full missile. But the area that is our secret source and thing that is most important that we do is something called solid rocket motors. Okay. Now I'm just going to give you a 101 on solid rocket motors because I'm not a rocket scientist, but I'll give you the sort of background on it. A solid rocket motor is the oldest type of rocket motor that exists. So when you see rockets that were launched in around early world war, let's start late world war two and pretty much almost any missile and rocket that was launched in the last sort of 70 years by the last say 20. Most of you use what's called solid rocket propellant. So the old shovels that would go up into space use solid rocket propellant. The missiles that you see being used across the world, mostly a solid rocket propellant. Only in the last few decades are people started using liquid propellants. So that's what SpaceX will use. That's what rocket lab will use. Gilmore's, who's a Blackbird company up here in Queensland, they'll use what's called a hybrid rocket motor, but they'll use liquids as well. So liquids are awesome for things like reusable when you want to be able to throw them all those sorts of things, but they're terrible for storage. So, you know, and they're highly volatile. So the great thing about solid rocket motors and why they've used them in defense for a very long time is because they're highly stable once you cure them and make them, and you can transport them super easily. Right. So that's the reason why defense will always use most of the time. Solid rocket motors with the exception of what we call cruise missiles, also types of cruise missiles. So that's the sort of the role of solid rocket motors. But I'll say to you remember I spoke to you before about the consolidation of defensive stream. The back. In the US and across the allied world, there are literally two major players of solid rocket motors, air jet rocket dine and Northropron, and both of them have a backlog of solid rocket motors in the tens of billions of dollars. Wow. Not hundreds of millions. Not billions, tens of billions of dollars. And they're years away from the unclear. The second part of it is they're both American and it's virtual due awfully. Right. So the ability to come into that space is incredibly important. The second thing I'd say to you is that to illustrate the importance of solid rocket motors and again, interpret this however you wish, they shared to stop the war in Ukraine and Russia in early 2023 because they ran out of rocket motors. That's not a good thing. I'm not talking about enabling war, but I'm just talking about how critical rocket motors are to the supply chain. And so for us, this is an expertise that Blake has spent over a decade building up. And unfortunately, and as much as I came in with my hat from TechGuyne, sure, man, surely anyone you just get together and mix this stuff. But there are Venn diagrams of just circles on circles on circles on circles, which really helped me understand the fact that you've got to really thread the needle to know how to make these things. You could have the infrastructure to be able to do it, the experience to be able to do it. And probably at least fortified different Bellas expertise to get a thread to make these things. And the thing is, we're really fortunate in that not only did we figure out how to do it, and we'd be doing it for a long time in the civilian aerospace world, we figured out how to do it at scale. And that's super important as well. So you've got people who dabble with it, but be out of transition from being able to do it at a hobby level, doing a scale is very, very different. And sort of the thing that I love coming from the SaaS space is I get to ask for the stupid questions. But the one thing that we know from dealing in SaaS is that unless your product can scale, it's a shitty services company. And so ultimately, my job in Black Sky is to ask the question, how do we make 10, 20, 30, 50,000, 100,000 of these? And how do we scale it? And if it can't scale it, let's kill it. And so this is kind of where the traditional tech startup, startup sort of mindset is super useful in this space, which is why now I mentioned to you outside of our conversation, I'm super keen to see founders come into this space, but in particular, second and third tongue founders. Because there's a whole mentality we can bring to this space that I think can be quite transformative. I don't think we need the change, but I really do think that we can be catalytic when it comes to bringing it up. The product is super clear. You said that you've proven that you can scale it. Now, my brain goes back to start small show that you can build a prototype and progressively build up. Like, what did you learn? How have you been able to prove that? Like, I love you to unpack that statement. We have proven scale. So let's go back to the looking at the constraints first, right? If I look at this typically, how about this? What have I said to you that there was a term that is growing by a trillion dollars every five years, it's going to grow by another trillion dollars? There's super low competition and the cost of capitalism is incredibly high because normal lending to this space. Right. Hang on. And that sort of statement actually exists with almost every banking Australian. Why us? That is so interesting to then have that at the top. Yeah. So the thing that you feel to think about is that for a traditional small business to go and get access to capital and growth capital, borrowing money is not an option. The bank's won't give you a credit card, let alone give you a loan to build your business even if you've got great unit economics. That's the first part. So there's opportunities for private capital to come into this space and buy low, on low multiples, on really good businesses. In a growing term, it's going to add a trillion dollars of term over the next few years, is huge. That's just the pure capitalistic side. Right. But I guess what I'm trying to say is, let's start at the top and work our way down. The market is there and it is growing. And you don't even need to have alpha. You just need to ride the beta. You just need to ride the wave and go to good enough product to get into fence and get some traction. And so that's the first part. The second part that it comes back to is going, well, we'll put aside the scale and let's talk about getting the MVP, you're getting your product and getting it tested and proven. I think what a lot of companies don't talk think about is they think so much about the technology. They don't think about everything that goes around the technology. How do you prove it? How do you iterate on it? How do you actually keep improving the product and get to a point where you can show the customer it working that it's not theoretical that it's actually practical. Right. That for me, it's is where Blackstar has been very fortunate. We operate three test ranges at the moment. We'll probably put a fourth online very soon. Where our guys are out there testing rocket motors on a weekly basis. Because of Blacks experience in rocketry and what Blackstar Airspace was before we became Blackstar Industries, we actually operate our own launch ranges, our own test ranges, and we have, on one of our ranges, we have the ability to fly. Summaries to some set seven days a week. Right. At at Fargaminda, which is a little bit wet right now, 'cause they're getting a bit of flying, we have a launch range that is three million acres. - Wow. - Now, we were talking to the UK Ministry of Defense when we said, "Oh, look, we operate "the largest private launch language in the world." They said, "Three million acres, is that right?" That's about half the size of whales. We said, "Yep, that's about right." And so, UK Ministry of Defense, they were saying, "Well, we said to them, how many people do you have in Wales?" And they said, "Oh, they said about two and a half "million people in Wales." And they said, "Cool." They said, "How many do you have in Fargaminda?" We said, "Five." So, "Wait, you've got five million people in Fargaminda." So, no, no, no, five people. Right, and that blew their minds because they don't have that scale of land to test things on, right? So, again, if I talk about Australia's unique positioning to do a lot of this stuff, I'll billy to test some of this stuff, the space we have, to be able to play around with these things is huge. And it's a natural advantage we have that others don't have. And at Blackstuy, when you talk about sort of scaling proof of concept, MVP, minimum viable product, and then moving to what we call low rate initial production, or LRIP is the term they use in defense, low rate initial production, we were able to have the infrastructure to be able to do that without waiting on someone else to be able to help us test it. So, the waiting time right now for Walmart, which is the defense range down in South Australia, I believe is around about two years. Manuel, start up, it's gonna die if you have to wait two years to test your product. 100%. Now, I need to be very, very clear with anyone who's listening to this who does have a product that needs to be tested on a range, because we get asked all the time. Because of the nature of what we do, it's really difficult for us to allow third parties to use our ranges, because I get asked about this every single week, which is why one of the things I'm encouraging the Queensland government to do is to build Queensland ranges that the government helps operate or gets a contractor operate that allows defense startups to be able to use. Right? But, just sort of fast forward to the point I'm trying to make is that the step to get to scale is first of all, be an approved product, and not enough defense companies think about how they're gonna prove their product. That's the first one. The second step is actually to find it customer as you would in any sort of circumstance with a startup who is actually willing to tell you what they need and to be able to be that first customer for you. Right? And the thing we're lobbying with defense every single time I talk into them is to say, we don't want you to be up biggest customer. You should be up biggest customer. What we need to do is be up best customer, right? Because the first question that when you go to an allied nation, you say, we want to sell you our sludge, which is what our solar rocket parent initially is, and they turn around and go, who else is using you? You need to be able to say your home country is using you. Right? It's a really important thing. So, from my perspective, it is that ability first of all to be able to show you can test and prove your product beyond the theoretical. It's about a show at working in real time. Then it's about to find as you would in any other business, eight, an initial customer who wants your product and you find that useful. And the third step is every step along the way in what you're doing, scale is not step three. Scale exists from step zero. So one, though, I think of scale as a platform, I don't think of it as a step. That's probably a better way to look at it, right? It's the foundation in which you execute everything. So when you're initially choosing what time to pursue, you're looking at the size of the market and going, is there a big enough time there to sell into scale into a market? Right. That's the time, sweet. Then as you're building out the product and choosing what product to sell into that market, you need to make sure that it's the product that can scale. Right. If you're making custom made Bentley's, where the world wants a whole bunch of Toyota Corollas, like man, you should be doing that. You should be thinking, you don't want to be going after a custom made Bentley where the world's saying, I want Corollas. You got to figure out from the start, you're making a Toyota Corolla. So therefore, every single decision you make in terms of the investment of time, in terms of your design process, in terms of the materials you use, in terms of the application it has, is based on, how do I get 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, a million of these into service? And so I think scale is a mindset. It's not a step. I don't think it's built the MVP, then get it into service, and then scale it. I think you've got to have scale in mind, right from the start, from determining the business case as to whether the time is big enough, through to how you design and build things, through the materials you decide to use, right? The example I would give you is that, I don't think I'm breaching any confidentiality by saying this, but the way we've designed some of our systems is that I could probably teach you in two weeks, how to fully integrate, how to build from scratch with three Allen keys and screwdriver, build one of our missiles in four hours. Wow. Now what does that mean? Well, I'll tell you what that means. It means that we've designed it in a way that you don't need to be an aerospace engineer to be able to assemble this. That's step one. Because if shit is the fan, it's not about aerospace engineers building these, it's about how mom and dad's coming to the factory and helping us build these. That's the first. Number two is we've chosen materials that we can source from here in Australia. Because again, if shit is the fan, and we need to build 50,000 of these, we need to make sure that we have chosen materials that allow us to scale. And number three is that we need to make sure that at the application and the usage of these is that we're not building something where we've got five or 10 of them in the storage shed. We got 50 or 100,000 of them in a storage shed if we need to, right? Which means that not only should we be able to source those materials in Australia, but they need to be in sufficient volume that we could actually, you know, the Prime Minister comes to us tomorrow and says, "Voo, Blake, Carl, here's the keys of the country." And we have a pathway to be able to make shitload of stuff very, very quickly. Now, that is not a mindset that your typical defense technology founder in the startup night will think about, right? But I guarantee you, if you've come from the SaaS world, that's what you think about, right? You're not building this product. If you realize that you're building a SaaS product and that the term is only going to be 15 people, right? And those people are going to pay $200 a month. So really your term is going to be 15 times $2,500 a year. Like, that's not much of a business to y'all pursue. You could be really surprised how many defense founders build some amazing, cute, awesome, pretty tech. But it isn't applicable to the real world. Again, it's a custom-made, handmade Bentley. It's the Swiss watch, right? Where people are wanting a Toyota Corollas and Cassios. Right. And that is the thing for me is that, and to go back to that discussion I have with you before about major primes or the US military industrial complex. They are so good at building Swiss watches. But when the whole world needs a whole bunch of Cassios, that's just not what they geared up for. They're not geared up to produce them. They're not geared up to sell them. They're not geared up to market them in that sort of way. And so that's why I'm trying to say, and I'm a broker and record on it, but like, I really want to find great founders, your guilt businesses and understands, scale in different industries. And I say, come find a problem in defense and help us fix that, help us solve that. And at the same time, building all some industry, building all some business, build your next exit, but also at the same time. Again, like me, make sure your kids are in a situation where they're having a family country. - What are the lessons from Go One have you taken and brought into Black Sky intentionally? - So to any founder who has, and if I think about my sort of journey, Go One, and I said to you, I spent my entire adult life up until that stage, you know, first 15, 20 years of my life, build and go one, like, adult life, build and go one with my mates. There's so much stuff you learn, the most important stuff you learn is what not to do. But I want to think about some of the things that I think about, I'll break into two areas, the learnings, but also some of the mindset that I've learned. Right? I'll urge anyone who has stepped out from business, sold their business, exit a day business, to restart a business as soon as you can, because you will find it so invigorating, least most of the time, because there are a whole bunch of things that you'll be able to not realize you've learned that you'll actually be able to apply. So the first thing I'll share with you from a mindset point of view is that, man, how much you don't sweat the small stuff? Right? So there's so many things that, you know, your fellow co-founders in a new business will freak out about if they haven't found the business before. And you kind of sit there and agree, yeah, it's a problem, but it's not a big deal. You know, we've been through a lot worse than Go One. Right? So from a mindset point of view, I think you really learn not to sweat the small stuff. I think very much intertwined with that, is you learn to value your time a lot more. So as a result, I'm not sweating the small stuff. You also value your time, and you go, this is a good use of my time. This is a bad use of my time. You also learn what you're good at and what you're bad at. And for me, early on as a founder, I used to think, man, there's so much stuff on bad at, and I need to work on it, right? Like, I think I'm a pretty good leader, but I'm a terrible manager. And Megan's not a terrible manager. Megan said I hate managing. It's probably a better way to put it. Yeah, I hate managing. I just genuinely hate managing for a bunch of levels, reasons, but one reason is just I'd be responsible for other people's outcomes. I like helping people to see outcomes but I'd be responsible for it, right? So perhaps that's just my maturity and not yet being more mature managing yet. And I fully acknowledge it. But I used to think to myself, I've got all these weaknesses, and I need to spend so much time working on them and trying to get better at all these weaknesses. And what I've done to realize is, fuck it. Like, I should be doubling down on my strengths. not trying to patch up my weaknesses, right? I should be taking the things that I think I'm really good at. So it might be things like communicating, motivating and team, communicating with customers, thinking strategically, looking at scale, thinking about how we break down processes into actually achievable outcomes. There's a whole bunch of things that I think I'm uniquely good at that I breed to the table. And instead of just focusing all the stuff on shitter and trying to get better at that, I realize like actually this is what I breed to the table in Black Spire. I need to then surround myself with the team who's good at all the other shit. And so what Black Spire gets out of me is what I'm good at, not necessarily what I'm mediocre at, if that makes sense. And so that's a really big mindset learning that I wish I knew early on in my journey and go, that's the first part. In terms of practical things that I bring out, you know, I mentioned all those things just then, but I'll give you one really good example. In Go One, we sold to HR, so I dealt a lot with HR. And I think anyone who's scaling business knows, particularly if you're on a leadership level, particularly for founder, is there a certain point in your business where you go from being a CEO and executive, a founder, what it is to an HR manager? That's it. Every single founder who may be listening or who talks to you will know that most of their time at some stage in growth is chewed up a hedge up, right? And one of the concepts I always wanted to do in Black was very much sort of helping pioneer this in my thinking as well. Well, so I always wanted to divorce HR from people. And that sounds crazy, but let me run with this for a tick. Isn't it crazy that the same people, the same area that's responsible for your onboarding compliance training, pay role, and disparate actions is also responsible for your personal growth, personal development, mental health, and your development as a human. Like judge during execution and everything in between, right? So what we did in Vice-Guy was we've got an amazing ex-Navy captain. He's worked across three militaries including the Australian Navy. He's one of the best personal people that you'll need. He headed up innovation for Navy and Australia. He's retired. And we've said we put him in the role of what we call the MIC. So in term, we call him the MIC. And MIC stands for mentor in chief, right? That's what his role is. Now, his role in the MIC is to help you develop as a person, not as an engineer, because he can't help you become a better mechanical engineer. But his job is to be able to help you become a better human, to be able to progress through the stages and mature as a human through life, because a lot of our team is incredibly young. But he has nothing to do with improving your performance directly as an engineer, right? He's got nothing to do with your performance reviews in terms of as an engineer. He's got nothing to do with trying to help you upskill in dealing with certain new techniques or understanding new areas of engineering. His pure thing is to be able to help you develop as a person and as a profession, right? And by having fully divorced from HR, HR, we have completely, again, our team's only met up with 30 people. So why is HR is one person, right? But those roles are fully divorced. And in fact, the MIC answers directly into the CEO. And what that allows us to be able to do is to be able to very strongly not just improve culture, but ensure that culture is something that is actually focused on throughout the organization without it just being another burden on HR. And the second part of it that it comes back to is it allows us to be able to get feedback directly to latest the CEO from the call phase without going through a HR filter. Now the complexities that that brings in a lot of people who may be listening, who have experienced it, will know that actually having that barrier between the call phase and CEO and having HR in between no matter how well mean we'll have with our, give me a real challenge. And so that reach to structuring has been really important for us. What are the results that we see from that over the last 12 months? Well, one is that we've found people or we call self-select to leave Black Sky. So instead of me saying to you're underperforming, you need to leave. Part of how to steal his role in as our Mick is Steve tells people understand whether or not they're the right fit for Black Sky. Well, for their performance, well, before they get to the point where, you know, that we're having to tell them to leave or they're, you know, or they're leaving the half. So one example, it's that ability to help people understand on a regular basis and to reassess, am I doing the right job, am I working the right industry, am I working for the right company, am I working the right role, right? And helping them understand that on a regular basis and having a role that's focused on helping them do that also means that there's a bit of a safety net to catch them into it if they're for we and gives them opportunity to work out whether or the right business for them or not. Right, let me put them company teams and what everyone called it. That for me is transformation. That's me something that I wish that I could have done back in the day ago one, but it's something we were doing, Black Sky and something that I see is truly beneficial and I'm not even the CEO. So that's one example. That's a beautiful example and I have to ask this question. I'm not sure if you have the time, but yeah, you were responsible for customers ago one as one part. And with defense, you've sort of outlined like the antithesis of a good customer. Like what is a good customer, someone who is easy to reach, immediately sees the magic, like quickly signs up and says thank you over and over again. And I'm curious, what have you learned from Go One to like accelerate the transition from being a bad customer to a good customer? I'll break it down to you. I love sales. Yeah, but I mean sales in the form of just getting a deal done, right? One of the you'll learn from these I'm going to go off in tangents, but hopefully bring it back for you, right? The best doctors know how to sell. Now sales has a really bad connotation with it, but if you kind of hear me out in the definition of what selling is, selling is communication and be able to tell a story and be able to engage with someone as you do on the podcast to you. So good doctors sell. And what do I mean by that? One of the best sales I can make in the next few months is in general practice when I have a patient come in and see me and they're sick. They're sick as a dog. Running nose cough, sore throat, and they're terrible. What they're likely experiencing is a violent infection where anybody, no matter how much I give it to them, they're going to not do anything that probably give them the trots or maybe build a antibiotic resistance over time. The patient just wants friggin antibiotic so they can get better because that's what's in their mindset, right? As I've got a choice of either giving it to them, giving it to them and just being like, "Ego bugger off, too." Not giving it to them and making them feel crap about it, or three, taking the time to explain to them, giving them an understanding of what's happening or what they actually need to do to get better, which is rest, take their foot off your gas and give their body a chance to recover. And have them walk out of that room after five to ten minutes, again, it's a short consultation, after five to ten minutes, and understand that they will be perfectly capable of getting better themselves. Feel happy with the service I've given them and not need a single medication outside of some panel of urine to make them feel better. That for me is a say, right? I'm walking out, understanding where I'm coming from and buying in to my professional opinion as to why I think they need, right? We've all met good doctors and bad doctors, but I can guarantee your perception of a bad doctor isn't based on their medical knowledge or their skill, or is actually based on how they communicate it to you as a person. So sure. And the trust they own from you. That same skill set I think is highly applicable to selling, whether that be to selling a piece of software in learning management, or through to selling a new cell. Right? And what do I say that? Narrative is incredibly important. Understanding the customers incredibly important. Understanding your product and service and what you're selling is incredibly important. Knowing how to sell is actually not that important in your barricade. You know, the analogy that I would give you is if you wouldn't, if I wanted to go out and buy a car right now, right? What's more important to me? A slick salesperson who knows how to communicate and in my trust, or someone who understands my needs and understands the product they're selling incredibly well. And I'll say to you as the buyer, I want the latter. I want someone who understands me and understands the product they're selling really well, no matter how good a slick salesperson they are and they understand all the tools and tactics. Right? So ultimately for me, what it comes back to is that whether you're selling into defense, you're selling into SaaS and the enterprise, the SMB world or the mid market world, your ability to tell a story, understand the customer, and understand the product you're selling are two or three of the most important things there. Tell a story, understand the customer, understand yourself, why what you're selling. Those tools are applicable whether or not I'm trying to get someone to convince someone that don't need any bodice, convince someone to buy a software or convince someone to buy a guided weapon, right? They just have different sales cycles, so I had to strive to be in a higher touch. But the parallels between doing an enterprise sale and trying to do a tender or trying to sell a guided weapon, they just have different restrictions. Right? That's right. But ultimately the way to engage and tell a story is the same. It also means that trying to sell something to someone that they don't need, something that they don't need to someone is also true. If you're trying to sell something to a patient that they don't need or they don't think they need, then you're going to fail. If you're trying to sell something to an SMB to a mid market customer, an enterprise customer in SaaS, that they don't need, you're going to fail. And if you're going to sell something to defense that they don't think they need, you're going to fail. So the rules are pretty simple. It just comes down to communication, understanding yourself and understanding the customer that comes on to. And I think it's very, very basic. Everything else just comes down to technicalities. And what are the rules around contracting and all that sort of crap, which again, they're all coming to their logistics. Their logistics, they're not just a set, they're all logistics. It's like, "Okay, cool. You and I want to date now what are the logistics for figuring that out? You want to buy our product? What are the logistics and figuring that out?" But those logistics don't come into play until I've won your heart mind as to "I'm the right person for you. I've got right product for you." And most importantly, I'll be able to fulfill those requirements and they he looks like a legend as opposed to having this fall over and you be left holding the bag in front of your superiors. Now that is applicable to SaaS and that is applicable to selling defense. So you have my heart in mind that was honestly and on our thank you so much for coming on and I'm pumped to see it sunrise. Now I always been, I'm really looking forward to it as well. Thank you so much for joining us on this latest episode of Wild Hearts. If you want to learn from other ambitious people that are building, designing and creating the world that we want to live in, then please hit the follow or subscribe button. It would mean the world to us here on the Wild Hearts team. We have an insane producer, Melia Rainer, an incredible editor, Annie Jones from Walk of the Day One and our marketing and content support is provided by Jonathan Bleckley and we couldn't do it without them. If you're searching for investment, please, my dams are open, far me on LinkedIn, I'd love to help. And so with that, we'll see you next week Wild Hearts.