Sebastian Fischer, Wardstone: CEO @ Wardstone

Welcome to another YC Wisdom podcast. We have Sebastian Fiser with us today. He's co-founder and CEO at Warstone.

They're a YC F25 company. So quite excited to dive right in what they do. Uh Seb is an X cruise.

He's an ex Amazon XMIT as well. So very qualified uh guy to fulfill the the mission of Wardstone. It's basically satellites for uh missile defense.

Right. Absolutely. Yeah.

And thanks for having me on, Charles. >> Uh introduction about yourself. Why did you get into this?

[snorts] >> Amazing. Yeah. So, a little bit about my background.

So, uh studied aerospace engineering at MIT. Have worked previously at NASA and Loheed Martin really on the planetary uh science side. Initially, I kind of slowly shifted from kind of academia and sciences over to engineering.

uh worked in drones, worked in self-driving cars, and then this past April, I was kind of really put into a yeah personal life position where I had to yeah start a company. It was like time to take off the band-aid, jump into something and uh I identified kind of hypersonic missile defense as one of the kind of uh you know biggest opportunities to uh to build a company in. We'll dive into the company, but first like why was that the right time for you to launch the company?

Because if you study like your peers like I mean ex like cruise people they might go and launch a startup right because the culture is very entrepreneurial there but um Amazon it's a bit rare exas as well most people tend to prefer a comfortable well-paid uh sometimes academia based job. Why did you decide to launch your own company? >> Absolutely.

Yeah, I think it comes down to the word purpose. So, it's very easy to get comfortable at one of these big tech companies, make [snorts] make a lot of money, go on amazing vacations, have very comfortable lifestyle. But what I was finding is that I was yeah, I didn't I didn't feel a sense of purpose waking up in the morning, going to work, cranking out whatever project I was working on.

So, a big thing that I kind of realized, so Cruz shut down this past April, and I was like, I want to find purpose in the next decade of whatever kind of uh role I go after. And so, I wanted to find something that aligned the unique skill set that I bring to the table as well as kind of, you know, something meaningful to work on that is kind of a a very a deep tech problem as well, >> right? And then why hypersonic missile?

By the way, the demo on your website is uh is quite great. I love it. Let me just share it with the audience while you explain why you decided to go um into that niche precisely.

>> Definitely. Yeah. I mean, even in like traditional startup uh you know buzzwords like it's an unmet need.

There are there is currently no good like high-erforming defensive solution against hypersonic missiles. These are emerging threat threats that kind of US adversaries are developing today. And um yeah, in in the aerospace world there there's no solution to play against defense against hypersonic missiles very well today.

So if that's the unmet need, like we need new tech innovations, new new new new new new developments of of things in order to actually uh be able to play defense against hypersonics. >> Okay. And what are we seeing here?

What's the underlying technology? >> Definitely. So we did Y combinator this past fall.

So Y Combinator is all about launching early, launching often and you know having something to show by demo day. YC is about 11 weeks long. Uh and in these 11 weeks like that's not enough time to do an inspace demo.

Like we will eventually play defense against hypersonic missiles from space. But during this time period, it was like okay, what's the most relevant thing we can do in order to show off that uh one, we can like uh design a system that can play defense against missiles, but then two, like know what can we deliver in in 11 weeks. So this is a video that of what me and my brother built in that time frame.

We essentially went to went out to the Nevada desert. We launched some rockets uh sideways there. We built like a computer vision uh infrared tracking system to measure like where is the rocket now and where is it going to be in the future.

And then we had this high-owered air cannon that we essentially tracked and pulled the trigger at the right time to automatically shoot down one of these rockets. >> Okay. How can you do this at scale?

How can you predict the velocity of an object? Is it that predictable? Because it's all the same missile manufacturer.

How technical is that problem? Yeah, I mean it's it's it's very technical. There's a whole closed loop uh sensing prediction actuation like and and control loop that needs to be essentially solved in real time.

Our vision is that like there will be a constellation of satellites that has this this product called a space-based interceptor on it. These space-based interceptors will be able to detect um hypersonic or other missiles. Um, yeah, know know where they currently are, predict where they're going to be in the future, and essentially close the loop in order to intercept one of them before they reach the US.

>> Okay. And you said this was a growing problem. Are you building like a better Iron Dome?

>> Yeah. So, there Yeah. Let's unpack that whole topic.

So, Iron Dome, that is what Israel currently has that defends Israel from kind of the the the chaos of missile warfare um o over its country. The [snorts] United States wants um its own version of the Iron Dome, but the United States is is a lot bigger and there's a lot more technical challenges in order to protect protect an area as large as the United States. And so, um this has kind of been coined the Golden Dome.

And so that what the Golden Dome does is it will protect the United States from adversarial missile threats that that kind of you know exist today. And so kind of the key difference between Israel's Iron Dome and America's Golden Dome is that the the America's Golden Dome will have this thing called the kind of space defense layer which is a a constellation of satellites that can play defense against hypersonics from space. >> Okay.

And Huh. Who who would launch these missiles? Are we talking about Russia, Iran?

Like who are the main folks that want to do evil >> Correct. [snorts] Yeah. Like you you you mentioned them.

Uh Russia, Iran, China, North Korea. Those are the countries that the the US is kind of like building these systems uh to defend against. >> Okay.

And what do we currently have to protect us against these missiles? Yeah. So we we currently have a variety of layered defense um you know solutions or techniques uh with uh that that that are currently deployed.

If you've seen the most recent uh Netflix documentary on this, it's called House of Dynamite. Uh they actually have a whole uh yeah like dramatic like hour and a half long video showing how parts of this defense system work. And so this defense system, it exists today, but it was kind of designed for kind of threats of the past.

It was designed for specifically like, you know, cruise missiles and what are called um intercontinental ballistic missiles. This this system was not designed for the use case of hypersonics specifically. And that's kind of the gap that that currently exists.

>> Okay. And what would you be a an ideal solution to actually help or at least contribute to that like while there are gigantic players right like already trying to build this corporate player should I say or is Andril the closest to uh building such a thing >> no great question right there are a lot of we'll call them traditional defense primes that are building solutions for the golden dome uh they have uh we'll just say like traditional methods of of of playing defense against hypersonic missiles. Uh what what we call them what we call what they do, it's really like it's called hitting a bullet versus a bullet.

So there's these incoming hypersonics and companies like Rathon, companies like Lockheed um have developed solutions that require skin-on-skin contact between a defensive missile and and these offensive hypersonics. And so what a startup a startup like Wstone we can come in and we what what our kind of approach is is that we are we have appetite for uh less proven um uh concepts to to play hypersonic missile defense that might be too risky for the for these uh defense primes to try out. So we kind of we we have some new concepts of how we think we can significantly bring down the cost per kill um of destroying one of these hypersonics and also um increasing the probability of of actually achieving the intercept >> and what's the cost of launching a hypersonic missile?

What's the cost of destroying one at the moment and what could it be? >> Yeah, so on the off the offensive side is currently significantly cheaper than the defensive side. So on the offensive side, think maybe, you know, single to double digit millions for a hypersonic weapon.

On the defensive side, it's an order of magnitude more. If you look at the cost estimates for uh this this product developed by Loheed called the NextG Interceptor, that costs almost $120 million on a cost per shot basis. Uh and that that's that's kind of what's what's being used right now for for defensive cost estimates, >> right?

And if they [snorts] decide to launch something, I guess it wouldn't be just one missile, it would be many. How does that change your tactic? >> Yeah.

So on on our website, why don't you scroll back to there's this uh visual of the globe and on the globe, maybe a little bit down, a little bit down. Yeah, right here. So there's this globe with red dots that represent the offensive hypersonics that are launched by another country.

And then there's these little white dots and those are the satellites that are equip equipped with what are called space-based interceptors. And then there's those white arcs. And so those white arcs are the space-based interceptors being deployed from the satellites and intercepting the hypersonics before they reach the US.

So you asked about >> what about one one launching versus 10 launching? Sorry. >> Yeah.

Go ahead. >> Go ahead. Yeah.

So one launching versus 10 launching. Um, yeah. So, playing defense, there's this whole capacity topic of like if you need to shoot down one hypersonic missile, that's a significantly like smaller, simpler um constellation of satellites than if you need to defend against a larger number.

And so what we're showing here is that like we have we've built a simulator where we essentially have been able to size how large of a constellation do we need in order to defend against uh what's shown here is about 10 missiles launched concurrently. If another country launches for example 100 concurrently like that's a bigger uh constellation that we would need to deploy preemptively to defend against that that many. What are the advantages and disadvantages of launching a counter missile from ground or satellite from space?

>> Yeah, so kind of the the biggest advantage of having this these space-based defenses are that you have access inside of the country, right? It's like these satellites fly roughly 400 km above the ground, but they are above Russia. They are above China.

We don't need to wait for these missiles to make it to Alaska before we can actually shoot them down. We're able to to destroy them earlier in their kind of what's called threat profile and and like drastically improve the the probability of intercept uh before there's like you know some some evasive maneuvers for example that these missiles could could deploy further along in their mission. So that's why uh controlling space is the new de facto geopolitical race, right?

>> Yeah. So there's the whole topic of like if you can build this the if you can build this constellation, the first country that builds this constellation all of a sudden has like a massive geopolitical like you know poker chip on the table. Like they have the abil like we're not relying on mutually assured destruction anymore.

like all of a sudden if we have the ability to play defense against any uh missile missile threat from another country um it's it's a very powerful negotiating chip. >> Yeah. Yeah.

For sure. [sighs and gasps] Um [clears throat] you're uh your your company right now like how far are you in terms of prototyping and is that something that's really expensive are you raising to finance the first prototype? >> Yep.

So we are we're currently raising our seed round. We're kind of wrapping that up. I'm announcing kind of the the amount we've raised and everything later this week.

Um, in terms of like yeah, tech progress, what what we showed you there, that was kind of this last fall. We are um we have some exciting new tech demonstrations coming up kind of in late April. We have an awesome uh launch, a suborbital launch scheduled in the Mojave Desert.

And so I can't wait to release that footage as well. And then yeah, we have space ambitions kind of in the 20 2028 2029 time frame to actually like you know uh bol bolt our solution onto a host satellite and do the inspace um intercept demonstration as well. >> Also this kind of technology a couple of years ago my brain was like rocket science.

It still is to some degree but am I wrong in thinking that this has become easier in the age of AI? >> Okay yeah let's talk about AI and how this fits in. So AI kind of really there there's the whole topic of like designing aerospace systems with AI.

There's a lot of like you know speed that gets introduced into the the engineering and development side of whatever it is writing code making design decisions like doing you know reviews of your work and so like there's definitely some some increase in speed that we've seen on the development side due to AI. Then there's the whole topic of like AI in the loop of decision- making. So in space like like or let's just say like these decisions in order to deploy countermeasures against hypersonics like that is a very rapid decision that needs to occur.

If you if you put a like traditionally there's like a human in the loop that would say like yes let's deploy counter measures in order to to shoot down this incoming ICBM. there's not enough time for these hypersonics [clears throat] to like wait for a human to make a decision to actually yeah deploy the defensive countermeasures. So what we're really trying to get to is not only have AI in the loop to make the decision to play defense but also make the defensive capabilities so cheap that there's no like cost hesitation of like making sure if this is a good idea or not to deploy this defensive countermeasure.

So there's like the combination of automated decision- making of using AI to you know use sensor data to classify the object predict where the object is going to be in the future and make the decision of like you know um deploy deploy interceptor or not and then there's the cost side of like make it cheap enough where the AI can be you know it doesn't need to be whatever it is 99.99% correct if it's 95 and um it's cheap enough it's like it's it's okay to air on the side of uh being being trigger trigger happy on the defensive side >> and is that comforting to you as an engineer to know that an AI and code would actually make this this the decision instead of a human and what about if we switch from defense and take that to the attack side of things is that still converting. >> Yeah. So a couple of answers here.

So yeah on the engineering side right we are reaching a a place in tech development where yeah AI is making life or death decisions. You see it with Whimo on the streets in San Francisco of like these cars are operating in very you know in environments where like decisions matter on a life or death kind of basis. And so like we will need to de develop defensive uh kind of you know AI that like also makes life or death decisions on like should we put up this defensive capability or not.

We we haven't touched the off offensive side at all. The whole decision of like like I don't think AI is going to make offensive decisions. we'll just say for a while.

Like there's kind of there's a big threshold of like um anyone being allowed to pull the trigger for any kind of offensive decision- making. >> I wouldn't agree with that one. I think uh Palmer Lucky is just one uh $1 million dollar lobbyist away from getting these regulations accepted.

Uh what do you think of Andreil? >> Yes. >> What do I think of Andreil?

Super impressive company. They they've done amazing things. This is this is what you shared with me is is news to me.

I think I got to get up to speed. Um >> No, no, it's not news. I'm saying it's it's we're we're that close to it.

I mean, Trump, Palmer, Lucky, dude, it's not it's not far from happening. >> Okay. >> Do you agree with that?

Like I think that's a problem actually when you have AI and too much testosterone and ambition with a president that doesn't have you know like much worries and can finance offensive military AI. I think that's really concerning and not just for the the enemies, right? Like for for us as well because that can be hacked or Lucky or Elon can just decide to have from one day to the next their armies of bots and try to dominate the world.

There's nothing stopping them from doing that. >> Yeah. So there's ethical and legal considerations that that go into any sort of offensive AI weapons development.

Um and then there's right the whole topic of like accountability and responsibility for the decision maker as well. Um and so like that's probably there's probably many you know PhD thesis of topics to like unpack there. >> Right.

Right. I think there's a lot uh of of governance there but just like dialogue generally speaking is good. Right.

Talking with fellow founders and trying to install sense into them. Uh because some fields it's good to have all that ambition and that testosterone, but others when it has when it you're playing with human lives like you mentioned needs a bit more uh thoughts going into that, right? It's not just business and deploying.

It's actually thinking of the consequences of your actions because the end of the day, you know, do you want to be a a trillionaire that kills a thousand people a day? Probably not, right? Like uh you want the the right to equilibrium there.

um YC, you decided to go into YC. That's a pretty interesting decision. Uh why did you make that decision?

>> Yeah. So, my experience with YC is that it's it's an amazing environment for first-time founders, right? So if you've never started a company, I think it provides the perfect amount of structure in order to set goals, you know, achieve milestones, meet with well-connected like group partners.

U immerse yourself in an environment where there's other builders like like working on, you know, similar goals as you yeah is 90% AIB B2B SAS. There's a lot of, you know, companies that are not touching hardware at all. I'd say there's about 10% that are kind of working on more deep tech, more hardware side.

Those are the people I I kind of ended up hanging out with a little bit more. I think there is a community of deep tech hardware founders within YC. Um, and I would I would recommend it as like, you know, any other founder that's looking to do a hardware company.

>> And then you decided to launch with your brother. I guess that's a good decision because you trust in your brother. You know him a lot.

How's that playing out? Yeah, I'm I'm impressed. We'll put it that way, right?

So, with with family, right, you never working with family, you learn a lot about them, right? It's like you see family on holidays, you you you know, you do fun stuff with them, but actually digging into the details, flexing the education that we've both had and being able to like, you know, unpack and solve problems together, like there is a lot of Yeah, we'll just call it like um family success culture that comes through that. like it it really like like we are able to like uh come home for for the holidays now and be like, "Hey, look, we crushed it together.

We're a team," >> which is a very different family dynamic from beforehand where it's like, >> "Hey, what are you up to?" Like, you know, cool to see that you got promoed at work or like whatever else it is. So, um I'm I'm a big fan and I I encourage people to kind of uh look for working with family. Would recommend.

>> I would say I encourage smart people. uh for most people like don't do it but if you're smart and you know what you're doing uh because for you guys for you YC founders and someone of your caliber most rules don't apply to you right like I guess most of our audience are smart but I would say like generally don't do it but if you know that your brother's a beast and you have like similar ambition uh I mean you have established trust you have established experience you know what to expect right you know you will get along which is super important even the startup and money aside. So yeah, that's interesting.

Uh you also have Gary Tan as your uh mentor as your partner. How's Gary? How's it to work with Gary?

>> G Gary's awesome. Yeah. So Gary was our group partner at YC.

That's who we met with on a weekly basis for for group office hours. And you know, amazing advice and amazing rolodex, right? He knows anyone on the West Coast and beyond.

And so, right, his ability to make introductions and uh help us find whatever it is, mentors, advice, inroads with with potential customers has been uh incredibly helpful. >> What's next for you this year? What are your main objectives?

>> Yeah, so like like I said, like we we've raised we've raised our seed round and now it's about it's about hiring, building out the team. Uh we're settling down in the Elsagundo neighborhood of Los Angeles. Um, and so there's this whole thing of right, um, acquire customers, build out the company, uh, ma make progress on the the the tech development side as well.

And so like we're really like going to be start like starting to ramp up the company and expanding it, uh, um, outside of just kind of my brother and I. >> Nice. Seb, thanks for being on.

Where can people find out more about you and your company? >> Yeah, uh, check us out wardstone.space. That's where we are online.

Uh, also you can feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. Um, and then also we're we're hiring and so we need kind of the the smartest and the brightest engineers of our generation. So if you have a background in aerospace, electrical, sensors, guidance, navigation, control, propulsion, like uh we we need talent like you.

So uh don't don't hesitate to say hello. So that was Sebastian and Charles