Moving to LA tomorrow and wanted to properly introduce myself, currently dabbling with hydrocarbon synthesis hardware! Would love to meet anyone working on side projects, in energy, or just a mutual, will let X do its thiiing! Got my first paying job at 14 as a maker’s lab instructor, lots of 3D printers & laser cutters. My first job was actually on a ranch at 11, scooping a whole lot of poop and riding wild horses, but I was paid in injuries, not dollars. (Yes, that’s an alligator-infested lake in Florida & I’m maybe 12.) Went to an art-focused high school with a whole lot of painting and minimal STEM, but I was allowed out of school at 11am, so no complaints. I could focus on side quests! I kept myself entertained with polymer science, a hobby I picked up at the maker’s lab. I’d make all sorts of bioplastics out of seaweed, chitin, bacteria, you name it. If it was a starch/protein/cellulose, I’d be making plastic. At 16, I crossed paths with a polymer science prodigy who joked he’d meet me personally if I fixed one of his MIT postdoc projects. He was synthesizing a polymer out of egg albumin. I made some egg plastic that evening and our journey of working together began! I owe much to this mentor of mine. I’d send samples of my materials to his lab, he’d test them to keep me entertained. We worked on quite a lot together; hydrogen storage, lignin-based materials, biodegradable nonwovens, etc. I got very comfortable diving into subjects I had no prior experience in! I went to UIUC for Materials Science & Engineering. COVID hit. Nine of us came together, mentor included, to develop an at-home COVID test out of a repurposed glucometer. We called the company Virex Health. I knew nothing about amplified electrochemistry. We were acquired by Sorrento Therapeutics for a little over $20m in the first 13 months! I was 21. I had taken a break from school and did not go back :) Went on a ten day trip to Dubai, fell in love with the city and chose to stay. Joined a solo GP as he was starting up a new fund, COTU Ventures. We raised a ~$55m Fund I, invested in 22 companies in the Middle East, built an office, team. I spent quite a bit of time in Saudi Arabia expanding us there, plenty stories! We took early-stage to heart, writing high conviction $500k-$2m first checks into companies a few months old, in a region that is generally old school and very risk-averse. I knew VC wasn’t for me long-term, I missed being an engineer, so I left. Came back to the US to explore the hydrocarbon synthesis space. Built an electrolyzer and a direct air capture unit over the past couple of months to get a better grasp on costs. Not fully convinced the unit economics check out with the current energy landscape. Cheap solar doesn’t tend to coincide with regions overpaying for hydrocarbons; riding purely off of green premiums scares me. Figuring out ways to de-risk this aspect. Spending the next few months building prototypes, exploring ideas, meeting people. Care most about solving tough problems and working inhumanely hard. If any of this is interesting, please reach out! Would love to talk :)

Keith, a longtime mentor of mine, is hiring a Chief Commercial Officer at Nuceptive. He’s previously started, built, and exited multiple companies across his career, in deeply technical industries. Great opportunity to help take painless adhesive wound care devices to market with a team who's done it before. Reach out.

Hard to believe it's been almost a year. Ivo Janssen is still with us and still in need of a part of someone's liver to raise his son to adulthood. Ivo.la has more details. It's pretty crazy that he's lived with PSC into his early 40s, most patients require a transplant by their late 20s at the latest. Please share this and increase his chance of finding someone with the right set of matching properties.

I love you @JosephLillard_. To have watched you go from having to Google what I&C stood for to running all of instrumentation & controls, managing an incredible team of engineers and operators, learning the intricacies of such complex systems so rapidly, to moving heaven on Earth on a near daily basis, solving all problems that come your way, with absolute relentlessness, has been a privilege. The @valaratomics Ward 250 Reactor is the first reactor to have gone critical outside of a national laboratory on US soil in a long, long time. On their own site, which did not exist 9 months ago. In under 3 years since founding. You inspire me every day. I am so happy to know you & love you. To many more adventures together. I don’t think our lives will ever be boring. Next up, power. And a trip somewhere pretty & far away!!

DM a guy on X, move to El Segundo together within days, get engaged exactly a year later at the @valaratomics Erebor NYE party with a Hastelloy ring the boys made that day 🥳 I love you @JosephLillard_

Just a man and his base station

Company mandated Twitter post

Forward deployed engineer

American Airlines needs to die

Torrance Electronics is the goat

First day in tiny 500 sq. ft. office & a heck of a lot more cowboy engineering

Engineers do best in windowless dens

If your first test is not on a plastic utility cart in a borrowed parking lot you’re doing it wrong

The Tesla UFO hum has got nothin on a 650 hp Z06 vroom

Hey X friends, anyone have a drone I could borrow? Doing some surface mapping work, prefer LiDAR, but photogrammetry could work worse case! Lemme know, thaaaank you!! Would mean the world!

New blog is up!

Neon Valar Ep. 1

I'm excited to announce a unique career opportunity @terraformindies. I'm looking to hire an exceptionally talented person as my Technical Chief of Staff. Why? Up to this point, Terraform has focused on our beach head product - synthetic natural gas. Now, it's time to take our unique process to knowledge to every other industrial vertical, and there are only 24 hours in a day. My Technical CoS will help share the (joyful) burden of modeling the global economy and then setting out to rebuild it from the ground up. This role is the job I dreamed about for my entire 20s, a front row seat during the formation of an ambitious start up, working with and for an incredible team. The Technical CoS is not a glorified triager of emails. They will assist me and the rest of the executive team on deep technical analysis, fundamental industrial chemistry research, market analysis, technical writing, and every other aspect of building a successful hardware company from scratch. This sort of job would be Type 2 fun for most people, but I guarantee excitement, challenge, and a high rate of learning. Job posting below, please forward it to people who can take the fullest advantage of this opportunity.

I am performing terribly