#49 - Ian Laffey, Cofounder & CEO of Theseus

drones and then also missiles all have

GPS. Anything that's been built for the

military in the last 30, 40, 50 years

does its navigation with GPS. I want to

make a drone that flies without a GPS

should use Google Maps to like

fingerprint where you are. We built

that, put a picture up on Twitter, and

then slept for like 18 hours. I like

woke up, open my phone, and tons of

people from Ukraine, tons of people like

associated with the White House very

quickly became clear we needed to do

this.

This is Ian Lafy and he is the

co-founder and CEO of Thesius. And

Thesius is basically building a little

box that sits on the underside of a

drone that makes it so uh drones can fly

into like GPS denied environments and

basically fly without GPS. Um do you

want to just talk about what that is and

why it matters?

>> Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So,

yeah, you want drones to do things

autonomously. You want them to do things

without needing an operator to control

them the whole time. Uh, and in order to

do that, they need to know where they

are. Uh, because if I if I'm trying to

go from A to B and I don't know where I

am at A and I don't know where I am at,

you know, A plus one, then I can't get

to B.

>> I know that you like went through a

hackathon and basically let's start off

there. How did that hackathon come

together? What did you build and like

what came out of it?

>> Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So, um, yeah,

Sasha, my my co-founder, he, uh, he was

at he was doing a PhD at Yale, and one

of the guys that put the hackathon on

was also like they were buddies from

school. Um, and we did our undergrad

together. Uh, like we're we're very good

friends. Um, and so he I think I'd seen

it on Twitter, but I wasn't like

planning on making the trip down to LA.

Um, and so he Yeah, he messaged me and

he's like, "Oh, dude, do you want to go

to this?" Yes, definitely. Um, neither

of us knew anything about hardware

really. We both have like software

backgrounds. He's got like an AI

background. Um, and so like we got to

find somebody there that like knows

their [ __ ] with hardware. Um, and so we

went down there. We met Carl. He's he

just knew a ton of stuff about drones.

Um, and he's like, "Yeah, let's I want

to make a drone that flies without a

GPS. Uh, should use Google Maps and uh

should like fingerprint where you are."

I'm like, "Dude, that's like [ __ ]

sick idea." Uh, and so we, yeah, we

built that. Like honestly, the early

version of it, the prototype was like

super like it just wouldn't work in any

sort of real environment. Like it was

like very much like, okay, you're in an

urban environment. Like you're matching

features to satellite maps that are up

to date. Like it's it's basically

playing on easy mode. Um, but we made

that. Um, I've done a lot of hackathons.

Um, and yeah, they always kind of like

results. I I don't do them anymore

because anytime I do a hackathon like I

get a new job. So

um

>> you let go and eat your ass up. It's all

good now.

>> Exactly. Exactly. So um yeah. So so we

did that. Um uh like basically didn't we

we did sleep for a couple hours actually

uh in the middle and then like went

presented the thing. Um we didn't win

the hackathon or anything like we talked

to people and like oh okay cool. Um, and

then yeah, I like put put a picture up

on Twitter and then slept for like 18

hours. Uh, and I I literally woke like

when I went to sleep, the tweet had like

maybe like six likes and I'm like in an

Uber like to my Air.

>> It's over. It doesn't work.

>> Yeah. No, I'm just like, "No, dude."

Like I need to pass out. No, at the time

I'm like, "Dude, like six likes.

Banger." Like this is like sick. And so,

um, yeah, I just like go to sleep and I

like woke up. Uh, the first thing I see

is like a message from one of my friends

from college. He's like, "Dude, like saw

that tweet. You were pretty cool." I'm

like, "Oh, okay. That's weird." like

this guy's text me in a while, like

cool. Um and then yeah, I like opened my

phone and and I saw that and I was like,

"Oh shit." Um that was my first reaction

like [ __ ] Uh and then pretty quickly I

was like, "Yeah, we um we really got to

do this." Like a lot of like very

serious people um are messaging us and

like want this and like want it uh

yesterday.

>> I think I I heard you say something

along the lines of someone from Ukraine

actually messaged you just after that

video.

>> Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. 100%. So we had

like tons of people from Ukraine, tons

of people like SOCOM people, tons of

people like associated with different

government agencies like the White House

and stuff. So I mean not like anybody in

the White House but like oh hey in the

White House you know you need to do

this. So, um, yeah, it very quickly

became clear that, uh, we needed to do

this. Like, yeah,

>> one thing I really liked was kind of the

iteration velocity where you're just

thinking about going super super hard

and really really fast and you're not

also trying to like vertically integrate

everything. You're trying to find parts

off the shelf and then put them together

to make them work. Um, how did that

coming out of the hackathon, you realize

the thing doesn't really work. Um,

>> how'd you go through that? Yeah, break

that into a couple parts. The reason

that we um knew that it didn't work is

we were lucky enough to talk to people

in Ukraine during the hackathon and

they'd been dealing with this problem

for a while cuz their GPS's are all

getting jammed. Um and like you know,

just to dive into that for a second

because it it's like such a everybody's

heard the term at this point. It's kind

of like buzzy, but it's like um you

know, when you're over there and you're

driving around like you've got Google

Maps, it's like, "Oh, I'm going to

McDonald's." and then all of a sudden

your phone says like you're in Iceland

and you're like, "Oh [ __ ] dude. Like

where, you know, where are we going?"

It's like it's literally like in the car

driving around like anywhere. Um

especially as you get farther east like

you're just going to get your GPS

knocked out like all day every day. Um

so we talked to these guys who had been

experiencing this for a while. Just to

be really clear too, the reason they do

this is like um drones and then also

missiles like all have GPS. So like

anything that's been built um for the

military in the last 30 40 50 years like

going back to Tomahawk missile Turkcom

does its like a large part of its

navigation with GPS and especially the

terminal phase of navigation with GPS.

So that's like the difference between um

I'm going to blow up like you know this

block and hit somewhere in the block

with with a payload and like I'm going

to blow up like this building. I'm going

to come through like the front door and

like you're going to die. So that's

that's why they have to jam it. And so,

um, it's like super easy to jam.

Ukrainians figured it out. Like, I mean,

every nothing you figure out. You just

like blast. It's known bands. You just

blast a bunch of radio, uh, interference

in there. Um, and and no more

positioning. So, they had that figured

out and they took one look at what we

were doing and they're like, "Guys,

like, we've tried this. This isn't going

to work." Like, you know, it's like

you're flying over like fields, so like

what are you going to how are you going

to match features over fields? Like, um,

things things explode. They change like