Conquering Everest, Space, and Startup Investing

You built that with the same group that built the Titan submersible.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Very, very different. Film director James Cameron, he told me before I made that dive, he said, you don't get that many second chances, especially when the stakes are very, very high. That first deal that you do is critical. It doesn't help. It's essential. Your track record sticks with you for your whole life.

You went on the Blue Origin. Was that your most profound experience out of all of the things you've done?

No.

Welcome to The Deal Table. Today's guest is Victor Vescovo.

Victor Vescovo is a seasoned venture capitalist and private equity investor with over 30 years in the business. He co-founded Insight Equity and raised over $1.5 billion. He's now focused on cutting-edge investments in exotic technologies.

Victor is a true explorer in every sense of the word. The former U.S. Naval commander. He's been to the depths of the 5 oceans. He's been to the summit of Mount Everest, and he has flown in space.

It was a great conversation. Hope you enjoy.

We can talk about Titanic.

I know we can talk about— there's so much to talk about with you that it's like if you go down any road, you're almost doing a disservice to the audience because there's so much to talk about. But one of the things that, that struck out to me when we're doing research is like, you've got the financial component with your private equity and your venture capital world. You've got a day job, your day job. You've got the technologist side of you in which you're trying to push forward technology and you've got the exploration side of you. Now, for me, I'm looking at that. Does the money drive the tech so you can explore, or does the tech drive the money so you can explore? Does it explore? Like, how do those three components interweave each other with you?

They're not causal. It's more like a triangle where they all reinforce each other. So I strongly believe in technology development and hopefully doing things technologically that will advance us as a species. But at the same time, as any good investor, I want them to be successful and have them make money so that I can then fund the other activities that I do in exploration and non- financial technology development, particularly marine research.

Yeah, because I— and that's another thing is like, because you were a mountaineer.

Yeah.

Space, ocean. But it seems like the ocean side of things is where at least most of the visibility is, right?

Mountaineering is more of a quiet endeavor, and many people do mountaineering, but that's what I did primarily more in my 20s and 30s when, you know, I had the ability to do really extreme climbing in that is less an opportunity the older you get. It just becomes much more dangerous. So the ocean provided a great deal of opportunity because most people don't realize 71% of planet Earth is ocean. And of that, 75% of it is completely unexplored, which means that half of our planet is completely unexplored. Even though we have complete maps of Mars and the moon, we don't even have that of our own planet. And so I saw that as an opportunity. And back in 2015, I couldn't believe we hadn't been to the bottom of 4 of our world's 5 oceans. And yet just at the edge of technology, that was possible. And so I took it upon myself and built a team. I helped design and build a submersible. I piloted it because that's what I do. And we undertook that mission. And so it was going into the ocean because it was a big opportunity that I thought could be served well by my particular capabilities. And I was in the Navy 20 years, so I had a natural attraction to the sea.

Also, it doesn't seem like there's And again, I don't want to speak out of turn, but not much technology opportunity in mountaineering versus like the oceans.

Not really. It's much more direct is the, I guess, the right word. And it had been very well approached by many other individuals like Yves Chouinard and The North Face and Black Diamond. There's a lot of people applying that technology, but there's, it's not like going into the deep ocean, which is extremely technical. Some people even say going to the very bottom of the ocean at 11,000 meters in many respects is more difficult than going to space. And it is along certain axes. Going to space is really hard. It's also extremely expensive. So I'm not a billionaire, so I can't build my own rocket yet. But I did have the opportunity to do something in the ocean that was revolutionary.

And then one more thing before I let, you know, Lane actually jump in on this conversation. I mean, I think this is going to be one of those episodes like, give me, give me.

Right.

But like up until recently, more people have been to space than up down the bottom of the ocean.

Yeah. When we started our project back in 2016, 3 people had been to the very bottom of the ocean, and I believe a small double digits had literally walked on the moon. And I think maybe more than 20 had been to the moon, either in orbit, on the surface. That is no longer the case. And most of the people that have been to the bottom of the ocean, I took them there. Over 17 people at last count. I've been down there 15 times now. So we were able to produce technology that allowed us to repeatedly and safely go to the very bottom of the ocean. I think— I mean, there is an analog of, you know, having reusable rockets because none of the submersibles that ever dove to the bottom of the ocean ever did it twice. They never did it again because it is a brutal environment and just destroyed equipment. But this submersible that we built was designed for survivability and repeatability. And I'm very happy that we opened up that technological door because now there's a system and a technology that allows us to go to any place on the seafloor repeatedly and safely. That door didn't exist before.

And your submersible, which has a great name, Limiting Factor— I'd love to hear your comments on that— is unique in that it can repeat and it has a titanium hull, as I understand. But you built that with the same group that built the Titan submersible.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Very, very different. Okay. Yeah, that's an important distinction. So the group that I worked with for over 5 years to design and develop the limiting factor was Triton Submarines.

Right.

And actually Triton Submarines and myself were highly critical of OceanGate, which was the company that was designing and building a very different type of submersible based off carbon fiber. Right. Not titanium. And we were warning them that that was a very capricious, unpredictable material and that while it might survive a couple of dives, that eventually it would fail and they would kill people.

Right.

And there was a lot of negative interaction between all the different parties. And the leader of OceanGate, Stockton Rush, just would not listen to reason, we believe. And he was operating in international waters. So there was nothing we could do to stop him. And two of my friends were on the sub when it imploded. And so, yeah, that happened.

Interesting. And your technology is different, as you said.

Yes, mine's made out of titanium and probably cost an order of magnitude more. And we tested it in more severely. It was just— it was done the correct way, right? Even if you just look at the— at the cockpits of the two, right, machines, they're quite different. For example, he used an Xbox controller to control his sub. Okay. I used a repurposed stick from an F-16 fighter. Yeah. That right there tells you the difference in level of technology and reliability and cost. But I had no compunction at all diving the Titanic any number of times with no technical issues.

So I read where you've mapped a good bit of the ocean floor and you talked about that a moment ago and that you spent— not only have you been to the deepest point, but you spent something like 4 or 5 hours there.

Well, cumulatively, I think I've spent over 24 or 25 hours at the bottom of the ocean. The longest I ever spent was 4 and a quarter hours. And I was actually with a Brit named Hamish Harding, who I went to space with. Right. And he unfortunately, he died on the Titanic. Wow. Yeah.

There was a great visual from the article I read about that, that dive, your dive, that said that you took a break to eat a tuna fish sandwich while you were exploring the ocean.

I was once asked by a reporter if I'm superstitious, and I said, really? I was 20 years in the Navy and operate in the ocean. You think I'm superstitious? Just a little. So it started a tradition when on my very first dive to the Challenger Deep, the deepest point in the ocean, I thought it was appropriate. So I took a tuna fish sandwich, some chips, and film director James Cameron, he told me before I made that dive, he said, you know, one thing I wish I had done that you should do is at the end of your dive, just turn everything off, turn off the thrusters. Yeah. Just hover right above the surface. Just relax. Take it all in.

Right.

Understand where the F you are. Yeah. And I did that. And so literally on my, on my first dive to the bottom of the ocean after, you know, almost 4 hours on the bottom, turned everything off, turned off the thrusters, ate my tuna fish sandwich and just watched the bottom of the ocean drift.

And lived in that moment.

It was pretty cool. It was 5 or 10 minutes. There actually was a major scientific aspect of doing that, which I didn't realize until later. By just sitting there and not having my thrusters on and just focusing on the environment, it turned out that I was very slowly drifting. The scientists told me there would be no current at the very bottom of the ocean. It was too deep. The water was too dense. Energy couldn't get down there, but it was unmistakable that I was just ever so slightly drifting. I came back up and I said, yeah, I was drifting. They said, no, you weren't. I said, let's look at the video. Yes, I was. And the conclusion from that was there was actually water circulating at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, which the climatologists didn't fully account for, we believe. So that could have impacts on climate models for water circulating into the deepest and coldest parts of our ocean, which has to do with heat retention, carbon sequestration, all sorts of things. So even those small moments can end up having significant potential effects. Yeah.

One of the sort of disappointing aspects I've read about your journey was that you get to the deepest part of the ocean and there's a plastic bag and candy wrappers.

There were no candy wrappers. That's a good example of how the media will create something out of nothing.

They did create that.

It was in the article. Yeah. Yeah. It was published in the BBC that I saw candy wrappers at the Challenger Deep. And that happened because someone accidentally at a PR firm for the people filming the expedition saw that there were candy wrappers at a different trench and they made a mistake and it got into the press release that they released that I never got to look at. And then it was republished by the BBC. Right. So it's just an interesting example where in the so-called factual record of history, on my first dive, I saw candy wrappers when I continue to insist, no, I didn't. I did see a I did see a piece of human contamination. I never said it was a plastic bag, right? It looked like plastic. It was definitely man-made because it had lettering on it. Yeah, but I don't know what material it was because I wasn't able to capture it. Right. But that's just an example where whatever you read— right. And I've learned this from now firsthand experience and from actually being in a war, that what you read, I've now learned, is often similar to the truth. But not the exact truth.

Right.

Interesting. One more question. I'll let Ryan get back at you. We met a few— we met a couple of months ago, and your name, Victor Beskov, was somewhat unique. And I picked up the Sunday newspaper, the Dallas Morning News, that, that week that we met, and it was talking about the woolly mammoth revival. Yeah. The Colossal Biosciences here in Dallas and It caught my attention not only because of the story itself, but it identified you as an investor and it said the famed explorer Victor Vescovo. And I thought, wait, I just met this guy, you know, let me, let me learn more about him. So last night before our interview today, I turn on the national NBC News with Lester Holt and one of the lead stories is the woolly mice that are now part of the biosciences. You spoke to Ryan and I earlier about investing in things that sort of change, you know, the human experience, advance the human experience. And I'm assuming this is one of them.

Yes.

But you're also an investor and you said, I want to— I want to figure out how to monetize that and make money at it as well. How do you monetize— they call it de-extincting. How do you— what's the commercial application of that?

There are several methods for monetizing that technology and allowing it to be sustainable. The first is really about the tools. The headline is de-extincting the woolly mammoth and the other animals that we're going after. But to actually bring the woolly mammoth back from extinction, you need a set of tools, genetically based, that are revolutionary. Yeah. They will have massive applications for any type of research, including medical. Yeah. That's just the headline. But the very simple way is if we can de-extinct woolly mammoth, how much would you pay for a ticket to take your son or grandson to go see a woolly mammoth? Yeah. Or a Tasmanian tiger or a dodo bird? Right. I know I would pay $20 to see a dodo bird walking around.

I haven't seen this movie though.

That's dinosaurs. And we can't do dinosaurs. They're too— you're not going to see velociraptors running around the malls anytime soon. These are animals that typically died, usually because of humans, within the last 50,000 years. So we have their DNA. Pretty pristine so we can make this happen. Dinosaur DNA is very fragmented, very, very difficult. I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm just saying that's a long time down the road. We have a lot of work to do. So there's that revenue model of simply de-extincting animals and putting them in zoos and people will pay and, you know, hopefully invigorate people's interest in STEM and science or education. There are also countries and high net worth individuals that are willing to pay exorbitant sums for de-extincted or critically endangered animals, which are even easier to sustain because they're alive or have their pure DNA.

Sure.

There are some critically endangered species that governments will pay enormous sums to ensure their survival. But really at its core, Colossal Biosciences— and I know the CEO very well, that's one reason I invested. I believe very strongly in him and his team. It's a conservation company. If you can de-extinct an animal, That means that any animal on Earth, particularly mammals, which is what we're focused on, you can ensure their survival, right? It's like a seed bank, but now for animals. Not only that, if you get the tools advanced enough, you could have something like a white rhinoceros. And I think there are only 2 left in the world. They're going to go extinct without our help. But theoretically, you could create not just clone more of them, you could artificially inject some degree of differentiation into the DNA. So from a single animal, you could create a healthy population. That's down the road, but that's one of the big advantages. What value do you place on being able to preserve the biodiversity of our planet, particularly with mammalian species? Right. I don't know how to value that. Right. I know it's not small.

Right.

And Colossal just recently finished a financing round where it was valued at over $10 billion. It's the first Texas venture capital-based company to reach $10 billion in valuation pre-IPO.

Interesting.

So we're very proud of that.

There's an interesting group of investors named Paris Hilton.

She was very early. I think she just liked the idea, as many people do. Yeah. But then I think on subsequent financing rounds, you got people with a little bit more financial and technological— Sure. —potential background. And we were, you know, heavily looking at the financial and the technical model. And that's what got me involved.

Right. Fascinating. Sounds like in that situation there's a money versus duty type, you know, spectrum. Like, do you do this because you're trying to make money off it or do this because it's the right thing to do?

Both. Ideally, in venture capital, there's an overlap. And I think very successful venture capitalists, they're not just being charitable in investing in companies. They also think it's a very good business. I say no all the time to very fascinating venture capital ideas. Because I don't think that they'll work financially or because I think they're a bad technology. But you want both. And there are more than enough opportunities where you can be selective and do both.

So one thing I was going to go back to on the tech side, because like with space technologies, you know, obviously it took the government push in the '50s and '60s to kind of push that forward. Anecdotally, there's so many examples of how that technology from— because like, why are we spending all this money in space? It's like, well, look at all these technologies that you have in your home from the space program. What, what is that in the ocean world like when you do? Because I know you're spending all this time, this money, this effort to explore the ocean again, probably because it's— you think it's cool, but also there's a financial background or a financial basis for that. What technology? I mean, you mentioned earlier about the climate change and the currents, how that can impact the planet. But what, like, financial technology examples come from ocean exploration?

There isn't yet. There ever? Not ever. I'm just saying my efforts in marine exploration, I put in a different bucket than my venture capital investments, particularly in space and aerospace and defense. Marine research unfortunately does not have a high profitability model. So for me, I put it in my charitable contribution bucket. I'm on a very strong push to develop technologies to map the seafloor much more efficiently. There's no money in that at all. That's purely to donate to the open source on a pro bono basis. And the reason why, unless you're drilling for oil in the ocean or you're fishing or you're doing tourism, there really isn't a lot of strong revenue models for the blue economy. I know a lot of people disagree with me on this and a lot of people are putting a lot of money into so-called blue economy, but I don't see it. I have made no investments in so-called blue economy marine-type VCs because I just don't see the venture model. But I'm obviously deeply involved in marine research, but on a charitable basis.

So when you're pursuing these technologies, because obviously you're highly into the technology world, especially with ocean exploration, is it specifically because you want to— I saw a video earlier about how when you discover like a shipwreck and all of a sudden, you know, CBS News is reporting on this long-lost ship and this Medal of Honor winner and they're retelling that story. You had mentioned in that article that— or in that video about how, you know, that's why you do it, is to retell stories that need to be told.

Right. But there's no money in that. Right. But I believe it's something that certainly needs to be done. And I'm extremely proud of the fact that now the two deepest shipwrecks ever recovered were both U.S. Navy vessels that fought like hell. One of the most ferocious battles of World War II. That's great because the previous one was a freighter that sank off the coast of Argentina. Not quite as exciting a story. And that's one reason that I do it.

So one thing I was talking to Andy this morning, and, and he's sitting over here somewhere, and he was talking about how like one of the coolest things about knowing you is that you just have this uncanny ability to see around the corner when it comes to technology.

And sometimes I get hit by a bus, but yeah, sometimes it helps.

It's the danger of corners.

Well, yeah, the The wins outweigh the losses, right?

You hope. Yeah. You just need a good batting average in investing.

Yeah. So what, what, what's been, what's been the best hit, I should say?

The most successful investment I ever made in private equity was actually a steel and aluminum tanker trailer constructor. And that was more of a classic business case where we took an underperforming company, part of a larger one. We bought it, we saw its value, we invested some money. We grew it, we, we bought a competitor, we did some other add-ons, and it's where the private equity formula, you know, worked almost flawlessly. And it was more than a 10x deal. That worked great. I've had the opposite happen where everything went wrong and we lost money. But again, it's about having a good batting average. But I really didn't do a lot of technology when I was in private equity. I did more industrial, more turnarounds, but that's a great way to really understand finance and, doing buyouts and, you know, hopefully making a significant amount of money for your investors and yourself. Venture capital is much more of a high wire act. You have to be much more careful. You need more experience or you can lose a lot of money very quickly. It's very, very easy to get really caught up and emotionally attached to the technology, but that's only a very small component of successful venture investing.

So you had mentioned, well, not here, but like in prep for this, that your first deal that you did fairly successfully on, Do you think that's what, like, if you get a win like that helps you go to the next, you know, the next, next versus like you get hit in the teeth, it's like, hey, let me go work at Starbucks or something.

Yeah. Sorry to tell people out there, but that first deal that you do is critical. It doesn't help. It's essential. If you take 7 figures of money from other people to invest in a company and if it even goes sideways, That's a bad outcome that will stick. Your track record sticks with you for your whole life. It's going to be a heck of a lot harder to raise money in the future for people to trust you. Yeah, you can argue, oh, I was young, I made mistakes, and, you know, let me try again. It's a lot harder than you think. The funny thing about business in general is that when you're not successful or you're not getting the traction that you think you should and you don't know why, have no doubt whatsoever. People talk, people do reference checks. And if things aren't turning out your way, it's, it's not just because of fate. It's often because maybe things didn't go well previously. Conversely, if your first deal does extremely well, like I was extremely fortunate that mine did, it was in oil and gas refining. That opens doors. It opens doors to another one. Well, then people saying, well, yeah, here's some, some more money. We had 2 in a row. That were extremely successful. And within 18 months after that, we were able to raise a $250 million private equity fund. Okay, that's how it works. It's extreme on both ways. So that first deal you do, don't think of it as a get up at bat and if I win, I win, if I don't, oh well. It's really important. Sorry, but that's the world we live in.

People like winners.

Yes.

Well, yeah, you don't get that many second chances. Especially when the stakes are very, very high. But that actually dovetailed well with my other endeavors in exploration and mountain climbing. You know, you're hanging off the face of a mountain with a rope and the weather's coming in. It's not like you're going to get a do-over. You've got to do that situation right the first time. I've almost been killed on mountains because things went sideways. So the stakes are very, very high. You have to take extremely well-thought-out, calculated risks. You're never going to have perfect information. That's what war teaches you. You're operating in a very high-stakes environment with imperfect information, with incredibly tight time scales. You make the best decision you can with the information you have, and you cannot be afraid to say, not today, not this deal, not that target. You have to be able to walk away, but not walk away from everything either and do nothing. It's a— life is about balance.

You know, with all of your explorations, you know, you would appear to be a risk taker. But, but what you're talking about is the management of risk.

People say the same about stunt people. Yeah, they look at what stunt people do. Oh my gosh, that's so dangerous. That's so risky. You talk to any stunt person and I love them and they are assiduous about calculating the risk. How can they mitigate every risk? Right. But in the game of life, there are 3 types of risks. They're the known knowns. All right, I'm going to go drive my car. Okay. I know I need to put oil in it. You do that and you mitigate that risk that it's going to run out of oil. Then there are the unknown unknowns. Oh, I'm going to go drive my car up in Alaska in winter. I've never done that, but I can read a lot and I know the challenges I'll face and I will mitigate those risks even though I've never experienced them myself. Then there's the third category, which is the really tough one that everyone always underestimates that can kill you, kill an investment. Do the unknown unknowns, as Donald Rumsfeld so famously put it. Right. Those are the things that you don't know, that you haven't mitigated the risks for, that come and bite you in the butt. Right. Those are the ones that stuntmen fear, as they should, incredibly highly. And those are the things that happen in investments that end up unfortunately not having them work out well.

You summited Everest. And we talk about risk. Over 400 people have died climbing Everest. 300 bodies are estimated to remain on the ascent to Everest. Pretty morbid stuff. That's got a, you know, if I were in your shoes and I were a climber, that would weigh on me of how do I overcome the risks that, you know, that affected these people? Is it true that on your ascent to Everest you're stepping over dead bodies?

That's extreme. You're not stepping over bodies. Usually they're— frankly, they're off to the side. Yeah, but yes, you see them. But people often don't appreciate what it's like, particularly on summit day on Everest when you're at Camp 4, right? You're in an area called the death zone. And that's not hyperbole, actually. You're at an air pressure where if you did nothing but sit down and rest, you're just dying more slowly. You are not recovering. So you cannot stay up there indefinitely. You're on oxygen and all this other type of thing. So the issue is that when you're in that zone, you are hypoxic, you are sick. Usually you don't climb Everest healthy. You're exhausted. You have absolute tunnel vision. Bodies over here, that it doesn't even really register. I could barely recognize the people I was with. You are completely immersed in the immediate personal environment and going up and staying alive. Everything else is secondary. That's why when people ask, Oh my gosh, how could you leave someone by the side of the path that may be struggling or dying? You're like, there was someone there, right? I didn't even know that. I didn't realize it. And even if they were struggling, how could I really tell? I could feel worse than they look, right? And just trying to keep yourself alive is so difficult, much less help someone else. I asked my lead Sherpa when we got down later, I said, how many, how many people would it actually take to rescue a single person above Camp 4, right? And he thought for a bit. He said about 10 or 12, because you would have to do it in rotation because it's so exhausting and you have to protect everybody. He says it's a major endeavor. That's why they don't recover the bodies up there.

Yeah.

What are you going to do, risk your life? Yeah. To try and bring down a corpse? A corpse? Yeah. That makes no rational sense, right? You're literally risking your life to bring back a piece of inanimate matter. And that's why we all kind of agree and we even sign documents sometimes down low that if we die on the mountain, you know, do not bring us back down, shove us into a crevasse. That's where we belong. And we all agree.

You agree to that?

Absolutely.

Right. So Krakauer's book Into Thin Air chronicles a story about people with wealth that are buying Sherpas, carrying them up the mountain. Is that a fair and accurate description?

At the margins, yes, that happens. Yeah. There are people so obsessed with Everest, and I was for some time, that people that should not be on the mountain from a technical standpoint, a health standpoint, will throw money at the problem, as people do in life. And there are some Sherpas that will try and get them up. Yeah. That's how people get killed. Yeah. And not just people get killed, but it puts other people in danger. I didn't summit Everest on my first try. On my first try, I got up halfway to Camp 2 and I got frostbite on my fingers. I could have kept going up, but my guides warned me, you may lose the tips of your fingers, you may have more difficulties, and it's more dangerous. And I'm a pretty rational person. And I talked to them and said, well, I really use my fingers a lot. I type a lot. Right. But it also would have put my team in danger if I had gone really sideways up there. They would have had to potentially abandon their summit bid to take care of me. And that's not fair. Even though it took me a year, year and a half to train, it cost an enormous amount of money to go on that first attempt. I now look back and say I made the right call. I said, I'm done. Yeah, I'm going home and I'll try again. And that was one of the most difficult decisions I'd ever made because it was so hard. They kept going up, right? And some of them summited, right? And I walked out of the Khumbu Glacier Valley alone, defeated, feeling like I was this, this big. I went back 2 years later and I was able to summit. Excellent. That's the way you do it. Yeah. And if you don't, you push it, you can get killed.

All right. Limiting factor.

Limiting factor. My wonderful submersible.

Tell me about that name.

It comes from a science fiction series by Scottish author Iain Banks. One of my favorite— I love science fiction. And one of my favorite series is the Culture series by him. And in the series, the ships, the spaceships that travel interstellarly, they are artificially intelligent. They're far more brilliant than human beings. They name themselves and they have unusual names. One of the names of one of the ships in one of the books is called the Living Factor. So all the vessels that I had on my expedition, I named after ships from the science fiction.

Okay.

Elon Musk did the same thing for his drone ships upon which the Falcon rockets land at sea.

Yeah.

One of them is called Just Read the Instructions. Another one is called Of Course I Still Love You. Yeah. My Ships Were the Limiting Factor, The Pressure Drop, The Learned Response. So it's, it's a fun tip to science fiction because I've never talked to Elon, but I think we would both agree that science fiction is a highly, highly underrated force for advancement and good in the human condition, because authors have the imagination to show us where we could go one day. Yeah. And you get some budding engineers reading good science fiction, they'll go, hey, I wonder if we could make that. Yeah. And that makes the future become a reality. Yeah. Like de-extincting dinosaurs. Exactly. That started with Jurassic Park. I have no doubt.

Yeah.

You know, all this exploration, like, there's got to be lessons that you take from that and apply that to business, apply that to the investing side. Like one of the things that you just said about, you know, keeping yourself alive versus, you know, helping others, you know, obviously not to sound like that. I'm not trying to make it sound so crass, but that's basically just the paraphrasing of it. What are the lessons that you've got from that exploration world, from the mountains, from the seas to the space that you can apply to your investing world?

Oh, there's so— there are so many. But the biggest one— and I was an intelligence officer for 20 years in the U.S. Navy. And so if there's one thing that has commonality across all those dimensions, particularly in investing, is you've got to do your research. You know, investing off gut, while there is a place for that, you need to know what you're talking about. And you can't overcomplexify things either. Ward taught me that, which is you can make things really complicated. You can think technology is the solution to this or that problem. There are basic principles that you need to follow. They're not complex, but that doesn't mean they're easy. First, preparation through collecting information. In the military, we call it intelligence preparation of the battlefield. It bears remarkable similarity to looking at a marketplace. Where would this new company fit in the ecosystem? Very importantly, not just what are they going to do, what are their competitors going to do? Gaming all that out in your head, just like you would a war. Or climbing a mountain. How am I going to approach this mountain? What if the weather goes sideways? How will, how will I adapt to the changing circumstance? How do I have an escape route if things completely go to hell? Those are all preparation, but people seem to get exhausted by doing preparation, but it's essential. The second is adaptability. No plan survives contact with the enemy. Classic military saying. Same is true in business. You can have your business plan, you can have all these other things that you're going to do, or we're going to do these awesome things with technology. But the world will throw you curveball after curveball and you have to constantly adapt. That's why I love the quote by Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel, who said, "Only the paranoid survive." And one of the keys I look for in CEOs of the companies that I invest in, do they have that humility? Do they run a little scared? Do they understand that they are not the smartest person on the block? And if they do believe a lot of their own press, that's a very strong danger sign. And so there's that adaptability I think I mentioned, but also you have to have a very good read on people. But by the time you get to the level of C-level executives and high-end investors, people up there are really good at telling you and appearing what you want them to be. Even today, after doing private equity and venture capital for 35 years, I give myself a 50/50 shot at recruiting C-level executives and having them achieve the expectations that we both set out. It's just really hard. People are tough.

So where's that balance though? Because you obviously, if you're looking for that humility and knowing that they're not the smartest in the room, But you also want that killer that, that is just— that has that confidence that's going to take you across the finish line no matter what. They're going to die trying. How do you judge that balance?

It's rare. You— referrals are great. Probably the best way is people that really know them and will talk to you honestly about their character. And everyone has positives and weaknesses. You're never going to have someone who's perfect on everything. They don't exist. So you want to pair them with people that compensate for their weaknesses, etc. I love engineers. Shocker. But the reason why is because they're very mathematically inclined. They can take themselves outside of their own emotion, their own intuition, and look at the math. And the math will often tell you the truth. You have to listen to the truth as well. But engineers that know how to relate well to people that also have that intense drive tend to be extremely effective chief executive officers or C-level executives. I do not prefer to get involved with so-called vision CEOs that, you know, have the boom mics, that walk on the stage, that are very kinetic, that really motivate people. I'll put them as head of sales or head of marketing, but not as CEOs. And I'm not going to name names, but you can imagine any number of CEOs that fit that archetype. Those have been some of my least successful investments ever. Is when I was younger and I got, and I got bought into it. No, give me the semi-boring, intense, engineering-esque individual that knows how to work with people well, particularly in a team environment, and then will drive it to conclusion. Those are the best CEOs.

But how does that— because again, not being in this world, I would assume like somebody who's a technologist or an investor in technology the Elon Musk, the Hughes, you all have this like, you know, bigger than life type of personality. When you're— if you're most of your investment— well, I'm gonna say most of your investments, but at least you're driving your public side is aerospace and technology. How does that boring CEO mesh with that type of investment? Does that make sense?

Yes, it does. But you're conflating the two. You don't necessarily have to be a a very large ego, big personality to be an intense and effective CEO. There are quiet CEOs. Those are some of the most effective and most dangerous, the ones that are very, very intensely focused on the mission and the team. And it's not about them. It's almost in a way they are putting the company and the mission and the technology first. They're just a vehicle for doing that. And they really deep down, that's how they view themselves. And that in a way, they also say, if I'm semi-expendable, I have built a team that could keep carrying this forward because that's what I care about. Those are the CEOs and the leaders that I tend to be attracted to. I hope that I'm similar in that way. Well, yeah, I mean, I was the poster boy for diving the ocean and developing this technology, but I think anyone that knows me knows I don't care about celebrity. I honestly don't. I care. I love the technology. I love doing the thing. I love strapping in a submersible and doing a mission that's never been done before. That's what motivates me. I don't care about celebrity. I don't depend on it for my livelihood at all. It's useful, which is why I do it, and people are interested. So I'm like, okay, sure. But you want leaders that actually are not motivated by the celebrity or by the money, but by the mission and truly in some respects enjoying a team environment to achieve that.

Yeah, because I was just thinking about like the, you know, for lack of better words, like the sex appeal of like, oh, look at me, I'm flashy, I'm this and that. And then the technology, like, oh, it's.

A cool, cool world.

But what I'm hearing is like, hey, pull out your slide calculator and, you know, slide rule calculator and, you know, your pocket protector.

And like Elon did when he started Tesla. They don't have a marketing department at Tesla. That tells you volumes about what he's like. He's about building fascinating things. And yes, he gets an enormous amount of attention, but I really don't get the impression that he seeks it or ever really wanted it. Or the same with Andy Grove of Intel or any number of other successful CEOs. Steve Jobs is a very interesting case because he was part of that, but I think he was the exception that proves the rule. But I like to study more his partner, Steve Wozniak. Who really drove the technological development of Apple in the early days. Very quiet, nerdy guy, you know, spoke well, but he was all about the product and all about the engineering. Those are the people about— in fact, I was on a venture capital call a couple of days ago where I had two brilliant scientists from MIT, and they have— I won't get into the details— a brilliant technology, but they had not thought a whit about the business plan. Well, how are you going to fund it? What's the revenue model? They almost looked insulted that I asked them these questions. And yes, their technology would be revolutionary if and even maybe when it works. No question. But with absolutely no thought of how they would monetize it, they were asking for $15 million to build a capital expenditure project to build this technology. Yes, if it was built, it'd be a big deal. I didn't invest. I never even talked to them again because they were so insulted by my questions about the business viability of what they were doing.

Well, I think I saw not recently, but a couple of years ago, Sam Bankman-Fried, that whole situation where people were just throwing money at him. And it was like the— I think it was case of like the Emperor's New Clothes where it's like, well, or Theranos or— yes, like, hey, let me just— because someone's— Steve did it. I need to do it. Joe's doing it. I got to do it. I don't want to miss out.

Herd mentality. And then all the time in investment, was it Chopra?

One of the All In podcast guys, he was saying that he actually was doing those questions and they basically— Sam Bankman-Fried's team cussed him out. And then, you know, they lost billions of dollars and then went to jail. And it's like doing your due diligence, doing your research, be prepared.

There's a great quote I heard from a movie once. I can't remember what it was from. It says, when people are cussing you out, and really coming after you for criticizing them or castigating their business model, the likelihood of you being correct is sometimes directly proportional to the intensity with which they're trying to prove you wrong. Really good minds and people will say, that's an interesting point. Let's look at the numbers or let's look at the situation and talk about it. That's what I like. And then one of my most powerful rebuttals to anyone that's questioning a viewpoint that I have is just show me where my math is wrong. These are my assumptions. This is how I get to my conclusion. And I break it down as much as I can. Where, where is this not correct? And we can disagree. And that happens sometimes. Okay, you believe this, I believe that, and there's no real way to determine who's right. Okay, fair, fair enough. Now we're going to take a calculated roll of the dice. But when they can't find fault with the logic path, or the math or the assumptions involved, you know, there's an issue.

Well, that's the Shakespearean.

Thou dost hast too much.

Thou hast too much. Exactly. Shakespeare. Well, reading of Shakespeare, he, he pretty much knew everything about the human condition. It's awesome.

You, you went on the Blue Origin in its 20th mission and you've been to both poles, skied across one of.

Them, both of them.

You've been to the 5 deepest points in the oceans. But what I hear is people that go to space, it is a different experience and that it changes their, their, their view on humanity.

It's called the overview effect. Overview, a documented psychological phenomenon called the overview effect.

So was that your most profound experience out of all of the things you've done?

No.

Okay.

Because I won't put one as supreme over all the others. They're all just so different. Going to space is like going to the most intense wild rock concert you've ever been to. I mean, you're strapping yourself to a 10-story bomb effectively. Yeah, right. You're launching up at vertically Mach 3 and then you're floating and then you're seeing the Earth below you, right? A yellow sun on a black sky. It's just awesome. Yeah. You're with your friends, you know, and then you come screaming back in. It's just wonderful, right? And yes, seeing the Earth from space has a greater or lesser effect on certain people. For me, it did have some effect where, you know, you don't see borders. Yeah, you see the incredibly thin line of the atmosphere, and it makes you realize we're on a very fragile, gorgeous planet. And it does put that thought in here, like, gosh, I'm go— I'm now— I'm going back to that place. Why do we treat each other so terribly? Why do we pollute it so badly? You do want to take care of it better because you just see how breathtakingly how amazing this rock is and how unique it is. Yeah, this blackness and emptiness of space, it hits you at a deep level. Conversely, going to the very bottom of the ocean is very different. Slow process, very quiet, very dark. You can only see 30 meters. It's quiet. You feel that pressure psychologically, you know, 16,000 pounds per square inch at the bottom of the ocean. You can go up into space And with proper supplies and radiation protection, you can stay up there for a year, 2 years, even longer.

Right.

You cannot do that at the bottom of the ocean, which is why it was so hard to get to. If you stayed at the bottom of the ocean, that environment, corrosive saltwater, that pressure, the freezing temperatures, it will slowly destroy whatever vehicle you're in.

Right.

You can't do it and you'll run out of oxygen. So you can only visit the bottom of the ocean, which makes it feel very ancient. It's like you're climbing into the pyramids. So it's a much more subtle. When you go into space, you get a sense of, I'm a small point in an enormous universe. When you go to the bottom of the ocean, it was like, I'm a small point in time compared to this vast expanse of geologic time. And it doesn't care about me. And so they're all very, and then of course, climbing mountains or skiing to a pole is just, a physical, brutal beatdown. It teaches you about your own mortality, saying, you know, Mother Nature saying, I don't care at all if you live or die, but I'm going to beat you some more anyway, you know. And so they're all very different experiences, each one very formative in their own way.

There's a word that I just thought of as you were talking about is solitude, is it feels like the exploration, you know, space— well, maybe not space, but like mountaineering skiing to the poles, being in the ocean. It's like you buy your— well, you're the only solo diver to the Titanic. It's like solitude just comes to mind.

When you're— well, it can be. I mean, these experiences are so intense, even if you're with people, they're very personal and they can be, you know, very self-focused. Obviously, when you have huge events happen to you, it's like, imagine It's a terrible analogy, but it's what came to mind. Imagine being in a car wreck. When you look back on the car wreck, there could be other people in the car with you. That's a really personal experience. So you're going to remember it from your, you know, your own unique perspective. Right. It's similar in a way, but they are very different experiences. I did a lot of the diving solo, especially initially, because it was— I was the test pilot. I was going to take another crew member with me. But also it changes your risk profile. If I was in my sub solo and I was testing it, I would push the boundaries much further than I would have if I'd had someone sitting next to me because my primary responsibility is to the other individual. The crew always comes first. So yes, there's a degree of solitude, but you can also do them together. Like when I went into space, I was with, you know, 5 other amazing people and it was a kind of more of a group experience. So you want to do both. You want to share it.

You could probably take that same mindset when it comes to money. Like if it's just your money versus— Absolutely. You know, absolutely.

Investing in it because right now I have no fund. I invest in venture capital completely for my own account. I have a family office of one. That process and my decision-making is very different, to be quite frank, than what it was when I was representing at the fund level as a GP, my investors in industrial private equity. And it's true now at Insight Equity, where I previously was, we were the largest investor in our own fund. So it was a way, it was a hybrid. Yes, we had other investing partners, but we were the largest investor. So we did have a lot of skin in the game. But I have seen— and I won't name names, but I have definitely seen other private equity firms that don't have a lot of skin in the game. They're basically accumulating assets and they're just trying to get a reasonable return for their investors. But in a way, they're playing the fee game. Get as large as possible, as quick as possible, so I can generate a lot of fees for my firm and myself.. And if, hey, if things work out great, wonderful. But if they don't, I'm still good. And my investors, they're taking the risk. That's one type of private equity. Then there's the other where you put your own money at risk.

It's kind of like the whole, you know, swing 10 times, hope to hit once or twice versus like if it's your own money, you're trying to hit 10 times.

Yeah, you try. Yeah. And you maybe are a little bit more careful and maybe you're— you usually it characterizes it by you're a little bit more conservative. Because the losses hurt more when it's your own money than when it's someone else's money.

You know, it's funny, is I just— I've been doing a lot of baseball references and I'm not even a baseball fan. I keep saying swinging and take a bad— I'm like, that's not even me.

It is like that. I mean, the— there's a great test when you do a significant investment, when you're thinking about making it or not making it. A good question I've often asked myself is, how am I going to feel about this investment the next day? Am I going to be like, oh God, what did I just— or will I be pretty excited? Like, for example, just a month ago, I was given the opportunity. I was able to get into the capital structure for SpaceX. So that's not something you can go buy on the public market, but I was invited in by a group. And yes, I made an investment in SpaceX at a valuation that I thought was very attractive. The next day, I was extremely excited to be in the capital structure. If you ever have apprehension that tomorrow, I don't know how I'll feel about this, probably shouldn't do it.

I want to return to the intersection of sort of your passions in exploration and finance. There is companies that have been established to commercialize deep sea mining and lunar mining.

So, and asteroid mining, right?

So it's not just a concept now. There are companies and a lot of them are out of China and other countries. For someone who's been to the bottom of the ocean and been to space.

How do you feel about that? It's interesting. All right, let's take the three in order. Deep sea mining, lunar mining, and asteroid mining.

I haven't heard of asteroid mining. That's a new one for me.

I'm invested in asteroid mining. Okay, well, so we got to get.

On the science fiction. Yeah, yeah, it's all in there.

Yeah. Deep sea mining, I'm strongly against. There are enormous environmental arguments against it, but I've become known for not talking about those. I let the environmentalists talk about those issues and they're real. And I think they're significant, but I've attacked it more from a technical standpoint, a technological standpoint in terms of substitution as well as financial. To cut it to the chase, I believe that deep sea mining is a technically very difficult project that is being substituted out by new technologies and is designed to address a battery metals problem that existed 10 years ago. Yeah, I think that it's moving forward based off of inertia and that the world has passed that opportunity by, and yet they're still trying like heck to make it work. But I don't think it will. I really don't think it will, and that they're massively underestimating the technical difficulty of mining nodules at the depth of the Titanic. Yeah, so I'll put that aside. Yeah, lunar mining is interesting where people want to go to the moon to mine water. Because water you can split with energy into rocket fuel. You can act as a base to the other parts of the solar system. It's an interesting concept. The major issue I have with that is that the demand for that fuel and their products are primarily government, and I'm not sure I like to rely for my business models on government or academic. That's why I don't invest in the ocean typically, is because most of the money that people are chasing are government contracts for environmental surveillance or exploration or their NGOs. And that money is very fickle. It can come and go. Just look at what Doge is doing, right? Asteroid mining is different. I actually have invested in one of the leaders, AstroForge, because I believe that is a technical problem that is exotic as it sounds, just as landing rockets on barges at sea seemed exotic 10 years ago. I believe that eventually we will land on asteroids and be able to mine pure metal so much more cost-effectively than we can here on Earth. Maybe this company doesn't. Maybe, you know, who knows? But as Neil deGrasse Tyson, the famed astronomer and scientist, has stated, said, yeah, the first trillionaire is going to be this person that figures out asteroid mining because it just obliterates the economic model of mining on Earth. So that's where we get the metals from in the first place is from space. They come and they impact the Earth and then mix together. Just go to the source, right?

So when you say— I think so— when you say you're into like exotic technologies, is that what you're referring to?

I would consider asteroid mining pretty exotic.

Because that was one of my questions.

Yeah, we launched a satellite. It was basically a reconnaissance probe to go and look at an M-class, a metal-type asteroid. This was 3 weeks ago. And we lost the satellite within a couple of days. It was a cheap satellite. But one thing that was fascinating, I talked earlier about the different types of unknowns, especially in space technology. The unknown unknowns are vast. The only way you get to identify those risks is by doing it. I think Elon pioneered that with SpaceX where, hey, let's land a rocket at sea. You know, the only way they were able really to figure it out was to keep trying, and then, oh, that didn't work, that didn't work, and then fixing each of those problems in turn. They're doing it now with Starship. It's the move fast and break things model, and that's what we're doing at AstroForge. And we lost a satellite, but we learned so much.

I think that's one of the cultural things with SpaceX, at least publicly, that you see is, is they celebrate failure because that means they're still pushing the envelope, and then they've finally hit a limit, right?

I think NASA had the opposite where they were just always trying to mitigate every risk that they possibly could. So they threw money at the problem, they threw time at the problem, and yet that third category still will bite you. Look at the Starliner. How much money did the government and Boeing spend on the Starliner thinking that, oh, you know, this is much safer and will be much more likely to succeed than what SpaceX does where they throw up rockets and stuff and they blow up. Well, no, it didn't work. You, you can't throw enough money at a problem or even time to eliminate all risk. And space is really hard.

So you talk about Neil deGrasse Tyson. I think you said it was Neil deGrasse Tyson that said the first trillionaire would be the one that figured out asteroid mining. Where does being a first mover come into play in your world? Like, do you— to be it or would you rather be the guy that's.

Like second or third? Highly overrated. Highly overrated. I can't say it enough because most entrepreneurs, they get so enamored with the idea of being first mover, first mover, you know, grab the territory. Yes, that can happen. I think NVIDIA is a good example of that where they were the first ones and they went in with both feet to AI specialty chips and now people are gonna use that as the example. But look at Google. I was there in the first internet boom in the late 1990s. There was AltaVista, Lycos, Yahoo, all these other search engines. And then a year, year and a half into the real internet boom was this single search box that said Google. And we were all going, what's this? Type something. Wow, this works pretty well. They were not the first mover at all, but they did have the best technology and the best user interface. It's not necessarily the most important thing. It can be important, but it— no, people overemphasize it way too much.

What's funny about that is I reference AltaVista every once in a while and you just get blank stares.

It's just great.

It was 25, I mean, 25, 26 years ago. It was a leader.

Yeah.

People have no clue what I'm talking about.

Right.

And I'm not even talking to like 12-year-olds. I'm talking to people like my own age. They just completely forget.

Or look at Tesla. It was not the first electric vehicle. But Elon Musk, he even didn't start it. He bought it from someone else who started it and it didn't work out. But he had a relentless focus on making it work and then scaling it. He had another great quote, and I know I'm quoting him a lot, but he's a, he's a pretty brilliant guy. He said, you know, making one of anything isn't that hard. You know, making a really cool prototype, not that hard. Make 10,000 of them perfectly and then service and support them. That's hard. And that's what you do in business. It's not building the prototype or showing your tech. And too many entrepreneurs get focused on the bloody tech and showing me the demo, showing me the prototype. No, show me how you're going to build a sustainable business that can then survive being assaulted by your competitors and any other number of entrepreneurs that are thinking just like you.

Yeah, the Walter Isaacson book about Elon Musk is brilliant. And I think one of the things that showed me is like, at least I'm paraphrasing heavily and probably messing up heavily, is like, even though he's the richest human being right now, it's like when you're reading this book, it's like every step he's almost bankrupt because he's just moving his chips in, moving his chips.

Yeah, his chips in, operating at the ragged edge of risk.

Yeah.

You know, and the problem is you 2 things in risk management. In order to achieve great things, you have to risk a lot. But the boundary of risk, it's often very difficult to tell if you're on the side of it where you're going to win and survive, or if you're now past it and you're going to lose all your money or even die. And that line shifts all the time. And so sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. But I think Elon has done an extraordinary job. If he has a superpower, he has an intuitive sense of where that line is and riding it right at the edge. And that's why he's the richest man in the world.

You, uh, you referenced your 20 years as a naval intelligence officer, and I suspect that informs some of the way you, you view things. But I, I do want to recognize that you've had a U.S. naval ship named after you, the Victor Baskova. What's it like to have a Navy ship named in your honor?

That was really, really strange. I was, uh, parking my car at Tom Thumb here in Dallas. And I look at my phone and it's a call from D.C. and it's the Secretary of the Navy. And he said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I have some good news for us. Yes, sir. And he said, yeah, we're naming a ship after you, an oceanographic surveillance ship that's designed to hunt submarines. Yeah, that's awesome. And I think I blurted out, I said, but I'm not dead. I mean, because, you know, it's unusual. To be named for a living person. But he said, no, no, it's appropriate. The first ship in this class of vessel was— is going to be the Don Walsh. He was the first person to the bottom of the ocean.

Right.

And the first American. I was the second American. And so he said, yeah, it's appropriate. So it's an extraordinary honor. I'm still trying to get my head around it. But yeah.

Do you think it's related to your recovery or discovery of the two naval ships?

I think it's all blended in. It's the ocean exploration. It's being the second American after Captain Don Walsh, which is the first of the class. The name of the class of vessel is the Explorer class. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I'm— what a fit. I've been fortunate to be honored by the Explorers Club. But yeah, finding the Johnston and the Samuel B. Roberts and being a naval officer. Yeah, it all goes into the mix. So I guess it fits. There was a huge debate about whether or not I'm allowed on the ship because of superstition. So interesting. I think they've decided that, yeah, it's probably okay. Yeah, we'll see.

I wonder what's left for you. Is there a frontier that I'm missing? Space, ocean, mountains?

I'd love to go into orbit. I'm working on an— of all things, I'm working on an aviation project. I've been a pilot since I was 19. I'm trying to develop a high-altitude aircraft that would be very, very fuel efficient. So that's just something I'm doing on the side because I love flying. And yeah, but through the venture investing, I keep trying to identify fascinating new things that also have strong business viability and doing what I can to help them along. Right. Because if they don't get money, they're not going to get any progress.

Right.

Where does education fall into your world? Because like, you know, Stanford, MIT, Harvard, like, I mean, you could say those like the big three. Like, how do you think that shaped your trajectory?

I think it was very, very helpful. I mean, I was very fortunate. I went to a wonderful high school here in Dallas, St. Mark's. They trained me really well and I ended up testing really well. So that's how I think I got into some of the institutions. But I think that education is critical because when you're in it, you're not realizing what school is trying to do. I mean, I was a kid, I was like, oh yeah, I'll study math, I'll study English, I'll study history. Why am I doing this? I don't need to know that. It's not about the material so much as teaching you how to process large amounts of information. Into patterns and then making your own patterns and drawing conclusions from it. Being an effective individual, learning how to speak well in public, all these social skills that you need as an adult, they're actually trying to teach you when you're in junior high and high school and you don't really fully appreciate it until later. But for example, in this entire discussion that we've been having, How many times have you heard me say, uh, or, um, or stumble over my words? It's not an accident. I was trained that way intensively through years of debate at my high school. And I think that now when I speak with people or I'm on camera or this, that, and the other, it comes through. Because if you speak relatively smoothly and well, your credibility level goes up dramatically. For no other reason than how you are speaking.

Well, I can't quote who came up with the science of it, but like when it comes to presentation, out of a— there's 3 ways to receive a message. What you look like, what you sound like, and actually what you're saying. And the science behind it is like 55% is your physicality, like 35-37% is the vocality of it, and very little, 7-8%, is what you're actually saying. So if you never admit to being wrong or if you, if you make a mistake and just never acknowledge it, no one else will as well. And if you, if you do the ums, the ahs, the, you know, that you do come off as, as not like what I'm doing right now, stuttering, you know, but like, but if you can actually project strong leadership and use your physicality, that's how you become president.

I agree. Or are you just an effective human being? Right. But it also applies to written communications, even text communications, every type of communication that we have. And we live in a communication-intensive world now, even more so than it used to be. All those forms of communication you can perfect more and more. In writing an email, I sometimes write emails 3, 4, or 5 times and edit them severely so that they are as effective as they can be, especially if it's an important email.

I've had to learn that I need to pause. And then with even with people in the room, I'm like, hey, pause a little bit because maybe you're not being as clear as you think you are.

Yes, people have a tendency to try and fill up dead space and say too much. And sometimes the most effective thing you can do when speaking or interacting with people is just pause, look them in the eye, Slow it down. And you'll notice what just happened. People tend to focus now on what you are saying. That's what you want them to do. But if you speak too fast, you're engaged and you're just all over the place. It's just noise.

I think on that is when you have so much excitement about what you're doing, I think one could learn from you because you do some really cool— I mean, obviously I think Forbes labeled you as a walking bucket list or something like that, you know, like a poster child sort of having a bucket list.

Ryan Gumbel called me a Vulcan.

But it's like when there's so much excitement about that, it's like, how do you pause, slow your heart rate down.

And convey that self-discipline? I think the most important virtue that a human being can have is self-discipline. If you can control yourself, physically and mentally. Really, all life is about is pointing in what direction you choose to go in. So yes, you can be as excited as you want, but there absolutely needs to be a filter between what you're feeling and what you convey to the rest of the world. You're not being two-faced, you're being controlled. And anything that is affected is controlled. You don't hop into a car, turn it on, and just let it go wherever it wants to go. You keep it under control and directed. People should be the same way with themselves, but they are not. They tend to be wildly undisciplined and things happen sometimes randomly, whatever. But the most effective people tend to be very focused and very self-disciplined. Now, one can take it too far where you're so disciplined that you build a straitjacket around what you do in your life. I know a couple of Marines that were that way, but, uh, but one can take it too far. There's a good balance.

You talk about communication and, and the importance of, of how you communicate, and one of the things I struggle with now is this polarization around political opinions, and it's difficult to have conversations. And so for me, I've stopped conversing with a lot of people, at least on, you know, sort of a wall where let's just not My mother used to say, you don't— with proper company, you don't talk about politics, religion, or sex, which is all people do now, right?

Exactly.

And so you talk about this communication-rich environment, and it's just, you know, it just seems like this yelling all day about political discourse and, you know, an opinion. I don't know if you have any tips for me on how to better address this, but I feel like I'm not having conversations with people that I'd like to have for fear of creating conflict?

I don't think there's an easy answer other than just don't have the conversations. Yeah. At the end of the day, if you and I were going to start having a political discourse about Trump or Harris or any number of things, we probably could have a constructive dialogue and we could agree to disagree about things. Right. What has happened, I believe, is that on both the left and the right and the sideways, people are having less and less tolerance for constructive debate. Right. And therefore there's really nowhere to go from there. Other than just saying it doesn't look like it'd be a productive or healthy conversation. So let's talk about something else. Right. And that's all you can do for now. Right. I do believe, because I love history, that it's like a pendulum swinging. All societies go through periods of intense polarization and then renormalization. We do not live in a unique time. Everyone loves to always think that we're in the most unique, special, catastrophic, wonderful time in human history. And it's just not the case. History goes in cycles. This too will end. Donald Trump will die one day. Right. And we will be back to hopefully a more normal situation, because whether you like him or dislike him, he's a quite energetic figure that has had a profound impact on the American political— I was trained as a political scientist. Yeah, he is. He's a unique individual, again, whether you like him or hate him. But eventually that level of beta, as we say in business, that volatility will become lower, right? And when we do, hopefully we can come back into the middle and have more productive discourse.

I think from my point of view is recognizing that you're talking about don't let 0.0001% of somebody's personality dictate the rest of your relationship with that person. And, and that's what kills me so much is is, is I don't know anybody like in my inner circle, but, you know, second or third degrees where, oh, I don't talk to that person because they voted for Biden, or I don't talk to that person because they voted for Trump. And I'm like, but you were friends for 20 years, that's your family or whatever. And, and it just so— it confuses me so much.

It's interesting, they were friends for 20 years. Is that a real friend who will, because of a political viewpoint or what they've said, is going to drop you as a friend? That would surprise me. I have very close friends I've known for 40 years, and we are very different politically. And in that case, we don't talk about politics anymore, right? And yet we are still keeping the friendship.

Just absolutely.

This is— in fact, we had, we had an ex— like adults, we had an explicit conversation saying, because we had a little bit of interaction at one point where I didn't know quite where he was, he didn't know quite where I was, and it went It was going off the rails really quickly, and we both, out of respect for our true friendship, said, it's obvious we have a different perspective. Let's, let's just not talk about it for a while, right? Like an adult. Maybe, maybe we'll come back to it eventually, but let's just— it's not important. It's not what we do. It doesn't directly impact our relationship. It's just this thing out there. So let's keep our friendship. And we have.

Yeah, I think it's like Alta Vista where it's like this thing right now is the biggest thing on the planet right now. But in 10, 15, 20 years, no.

One'S going to remember it.

Right.

And are you going to regret your decision to shut off your friends and your family because of a political issue that is now no longer in effect?

So as we get closer to an end here, one of the questions I'd like to ask you is, what do you think your God-given— whatever, whatever spirituality you believe, what is your number one skill set that you are the best in the world? That whatever you believe came down, touched you on the shoulder and said, this is your genius?

I will never say that about myself. I know I steadfastly refuse it. I will— whom the gods would destroy, they first make proud. That's from Oedipus Rex. And I learned it in high school. Yeah. You know, oh my gosh, I'm reading Greek theater.

We went to very different high schools.

Oh, great. But the point is, I believe that the moment that you become a bit self-confident to an excessive extent, arrogant or what have you, that is the first step to destruction on any number of levels—personal, business, technological. And I have been in way too many situations where I could get really hurt on any number of those fronts to ever trust my own press. No, I believe I I have certain experiences. I tend to think quickly. I tend to be very measured and calculating in how I deal with issues. I think I'm a good pilot. I'm not a great one, but I'm a good one, which translates into a lot of other different things that we haven't talked about. But I just think I'm reasonably good at several things, but I'm not a genius. I'm not an Olympic quality athlete. I'm not a Nobel laureate quality academic. But I am persistent and I'm very, very practical and I try to be very balanced and measured. And just for reference, religiously, I'm a Zen Buddhist, which probably shouldn't be a surprise.

And I know you're an avid reader. What are the top books that you have either would recommend or what are you reading now?

We spoke about science fiction earlier. My favorite book probably ever is Dune by Frank Herbert, which now people know about because they made a very good movie of it.

How many have you read? All of them?

Of course I have. All of them, even by his son, which are not as good, but they're still good. The main premise of the book Dune is about the primacy and capability of human beings. And I tell people over and over again, if there's one thing I've seen over and over and again in my life is that human beings, people, vastly underperform their full potential. They limit themselves, other people limit them, but human beings can do so much more. They look at my life and go, oh my gosh, how did you do all this? It's like, I don't consider myself dramatically unusual. I've just really applied myself to do a lot of unusual things, and I've said yes a lot. But that's the point of the book Dune, is that they outlawed thinking machines. Human beings were forced to develop capabilities in thought and physicality that would bewilder us today. So it's a great message about the potential for humankind. So there's that book. There are, you know, history books. The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire is an amazing book about how societies come up and come down and revitalize themselves and go back down again. I love history, so I could reel off any number of history books. And the last one I'll mention for history is The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman, which is the first book you read when you study political science. And it's about how in the world did we have up to that time the most destructive conflict in human history. And when you read that, you go, oh my gosh, it pretty much happened for no reason. That's just going— cannot happen again. Yeah. And it's a great cautionary tale about human society's ego, ambition, and blind loyalty. And those are important lessons.

Yeah. I just finished that about 2 or 3 months ago.

Oh, well, good for you. Yeah. Great book. Again, sad book.

It's about World War I, right? The, the, the, like, the lead up to it is just like it's almost very similar to like Chernobyl or Three Mile Island where it's just mistake, mistake, mistake, mistake, and then World War. Right. Yeah. I have one more thing, but I'd like to end on it. So if you have anything else you'd.

Like to— No, you finish.

Well, I'd like you to dig into Be Curious. What are your thoughts on that? Because I know that's one of the things that you love to push.

Yeah. One of my great heroes in life who unfortunately passed away a little over a year ago, Captain Don Walsh, first person to bottom the ocean. Someone once asked him what exploration was to him. He said it was curiosity in action, which was such a succinct and perfect way to explain it. And it's true. I think that being curious is in many respects, apart from its survival, the essence of being human. Imagine if we were just concerned about survival and we're not curious as a species. We'd be no different than our pets, really. And so I think that curiosity is really a defining characteristic of who we are, and developing technology to enhance our survival, but also just for its own sake, I think is an incredibly rewarding and important part of the human condition. And that's why I've, in many respects, devoted my life a lot of it to it. And I've done it in my own vector in marine science because I think that's where I could have the most effect. But other people have other vectors in media, producing film or documentaries or developing medicines or being in politics and trying to have good outcomes for us as a society. Everyone needs to make their own choice of how they think they can most impact the world. Be curious, how they can do it. Do your research to try and figure out what works and what doesn't, and then be just a good, balanced human being in going about doing it. Last thoughts?

No. Victor, thank you so much for, for joining us today. It's been a fascinating conversation. You are a special and unique individual, and we appreciate having you on The Deal Table.

Thank you for the invitation, letting me share my views. Thank you. Thanks.