Castelion Hypersonic Missiles and Crunchbase’s AI Powered Predictions | E2088
This Week in Startups
Jason Calacanis
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 22 February 2025
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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Today’s show: Jason interviews Bryon Hargis, CEO of Castelion, about the United State’s hypersonic technology gap with China, how we’re catching up and what it will take to win the hypersonic missile race. Alex interviews Jager McConnell, CEO of Crunchbase, about their newly released, scary accurate, AI powered predictive models.
Timestamps:
(0:00) Episode teaser(1:14) Introduction of Byron Hargis and Castellion's mission(2:20) Significance of hypersonic munitions(5:55) Impact and challenges of hypersonic systems in defense(7:16) Castellion's development and cost of hypersonic weapons(9:39) Squarespace. Use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at https://www.Squarespace.com/TWIST(12:28) Shift in defense contracting and venture backing(18:25) Sales strategies and founder insights in defense startups(19:38) LinkedIn Jobs. Post your first job for free at https://www.linkedin.com/twist(21:10) China's manufacturing capabilities and defense paradigm shifts(24:37) Role of automation and robots in manufacturing(28:58) AdQuick. Visit https://adquick.com/twist and mention TWIST to get $1000 off your first campaign.(31:37) Crunchbase's transition to predictive insights(38:01) Crunchbase's technology stack and AI models(41:36) Financial implications of AI-first model for Crunchbase(48:43) AI integration challenges and financial performance(52:50) AI-driven predictions and their accuracy(54:24) Future prospects for Crunchbase: Acquisition vs. IPO(55:22) Upcoming guests: Vlad from Robinhood and Raul from Superhuman
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's honestly sad. What quantity do you think is a large quantity of missiles to order in a year right now in like in the U.S.? If you're talking about a reasonable size, like long-range missile? What is a large quantity? |
| 0:13.0 | Four to five figures. Thousands to tens of thousands would be a large quantity of missiles. Way less. |
| 0:20.0 | Hundreds? Way less. Way less. Hundreds? Way less. |
| 0:21.5 | Way less. |
| 0:22.4 | Dozens? |
| 0:24.4 | Our highest-end systems, we're not at the capability of producing dozens per year, |
| 0:28.7 | but that is like their ultimate eventual output when everything is working. |
| 0:32.4 | Yes. |
| 0:33.3 | It's pathetic. |
| 0:34.9 | This weekend startups is brought to you by Squarespace. |
| 0:38.2 | Turn your idea into a new website. |
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| 1:14.1 | Hey, everybody. Welcome back to this week and start. I was very excited for our next guest. His name is Byron Hargis and he's got a startup in the defense tech space. It's called Castellion, and welcome to the program, Brian. |
| 1:29.0 | Hey, Jason. Thanks for having me. |
... |
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