Tag: Talent

Categories
Startups

Day 1873 and Flying A Micro-Reactor on a C-17

I spent most of yesterday on an airplane. I flew nearly 12 hours along the polar routes to go from Heathrow to America’s west coast. I flew British Airways and was disinclined to spend the many pounds for internet access.

Alas this meant I missed the rollout of the joyful flight of one of my favorite investments. Valar Atomics began its journey from California to Utah just as I too was flying. Me and the reactor I angel invested in were both up in the air like bluebirds and sunshine.

HILL AIR FORCE BASE, Utah, Feb 15 – The U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense on Sunday for the first time transported a small nuclear reactor on a cargo plane from California to Utah to demonstrate the potential to quickly deploy nuclear power for military and civilian use.

The agencies partnered with California-based Valar Atomics to fly one of the company’s Ward microreactors on a C-17 aircraft — without nuclear fuel — to Hill Air Force Base in Utah. Via Reuters

I tear up just thinking of the incredible accomplishments of millions of people coordinating together across centuries that these technologies represent.

It’s easy to think of ourselves as being small in the vastness of time and space. I almost cannot believe I was handed such gifts in this life, but I can claim a small but early part in Valar’s story.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Michael Duffey on board a C-17 cargo plane that transported Valar Atomics’ Ward nuclear microreactor from March Air Force Base in California to Hill Air Force Base in Utah, at the Hill Air Force Base in Utah, U.S., February 15, 2026. On the right, with the American flag and the Valar logo on his jacket is our CEO Isaiah Taylor

Just a little over three years ago I sent Isaiah a message on Twitter. We had a lot in common and I felt a kinship with this young entrepreneur. It was before he had even begun the incorporation work on Valar. He was working on something else, but I trusted his quiet intelligence and admired his humble inquisitiveness. We kept in touch as he mapped out his path.

His lack of ego instantly marked him as special, as it meant he could hear even the hardest criticisms. His fortitude was clear. He could incorporate what was necessary into his mission, a skill usually developed much later in life.

It’s rare to build trust so early on, and yet we both did. I told him I’d back anything he did so long as he was the CEO. Little did I know just how lucky I would end up as his very first backer.

You might think you will have doubts in high risk early stage investing. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t believe in him from day one. I knew he was on a mission bigger than any of us. I knew it and he knew it. For God and country as they say.

That faith was required, as it was tested in rapid succession again and again over the next three years. Chewing glass is part of every startup. Even when you go as rapidly as Valar has gone, there are harsh conditions, brushes with death, and moments of utter joy in between.

Not only did we write a first check in the angel round, but in tight spots before the seed closed we wired follow on within minutes when a concern about a cash flow question arose. We put together special purpose vehicles. Nothing could jeopardize this mission. I’d invest more if I could.

We weren’t always the ideal investors as we struggled to showcase to bigger and better firms our conviction. Not too long ago it was all about being asset light and software as a service. Thankfully the execution always outshone the skeptics and we were ahead of the times. And while the skepticism was fierce, Isaiah never wavered. Neither did I.

Today is day 1873 in my daily writing log. I first wrote about Isaiah on Day 1145 which means somewhere around day 780 or so is likely when we first met. I wrote on day 1510 almost a year ago about their seed round and the first successful thermal testing. On day 1721 they broke ground in Utah.

And you can better believe that I am looking forward to July 4th this year. We promised the president we’d be turning on the reactor, so there is much to be done between now and then.

Even the Department of Defense (War?) is writing swan songs about Valar from the Pentagon Twitter account

At March Air Reserve Base, California, yesterday, a next-generation nuclear reactor was loaded aboard a C-17 Globemaster III aircraft for transport to Hill Air Force Base, Utah. The reactor will eventually head to the Utah San Rafael Energy Lab for testing and evaluation.

The Ward 250 is a 5 megawatt nuclear reactor that fits into the back of a C-17 aircraft could theoretically power about 5,000 homes.

For military use, such a reactor could provide energy security on a military base ensuring the mission there need not depend on the civilian power grid, and in military operations overseas, such reactors would mean U.S. forces could operate without concern that an enemy might cut fuel supplies.

A reactor such as the Ward 250 also means greater energy security for the entire United States. It is firmly in line with President Donald J. Trump’s executive orders to reshape and modernize America’s nuclear energy landscape.

The president signed four executive orders designed to advance America’s nuclear energy posture, May 23, 2025. Those include “

Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base,

” “

Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing at the Department of Energy

,” “

Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

,” and “

Deploying Advanced Nuclear Reactor Technologies for National Security

.”

Michael P. Duffey, the undersecretary of war for acquisition and sustainment, said the partnership between the War and Energy Departments is critical to advancing the president’s nuclear energy initiatives.

“It’s clear to me that advancing President Trump’s priority on nuclear energy depends on close coordination between the Department of Energy and the Department of War,” Duffey said. “This partnership ensures advanced nuclear technologies are developed, evaluated and deployed in ways that strengthen energy resilience and national security.”

The future of warfare is energy-intensive, he said, and includes AI data centers, directed-energy weapons, and space and cyber infrastructure. The civilian power grid was not built for that, and so the War Department will need to build its own energy infrastructure.

“Powering next generation warfare will require us to move faster than our adversaries, to build a system that doesn’t just equip our warfighters to fight, but equips them to win at extraordinary speed,” Duffey said. “Today is a monumental step toward building that system. By supporting the industrial base and its capacity to innovate, we accelerate the delivery of resilient power to where it’s needed.”

Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said that with small reactors like those transferred from March Air Reserve Base to Hill Air Force Base, the United States is aiming for a nuclear energy renaissance.

“The American nuclear renaissance is to get that ball moving again, fast, carefully, but with private capital, American innovation and determination,” Wright said. “President Trump signed multiple executive orders that have unleashed tremendous reform of all the things that stopped the American nuclear industry from moving.”

Part of that effort, he said, will mean that by July 4, three small reactors will be critical — or running smoothly.

“That’s speed, that’s innovation, that’s the start of a nuclear renaissance,” Wright said. By

C. Todd Lopez

, Pentagon News

Categories
Internet Culture Preparedness

Day 1868 and Educating An An Entire Species or Start With Your Family

A viral essay was posted a few days ago by a Matt Schumer meant to help introduce the current state of artificial intelligence tools to people who do not work in technology.

It’s a very compelling piece of writing (or maybe it’s just reading), which I believe is well received by normal people especially older family members or technical skeptics. They are often the hardest to reach because of age and experience gaps and a smooth essay goes down well.

The author is the founder of HyperWrite. His company offers a suite of AI writing and research tools. So yes, his excellent writing and wide reach (over 40 million views so far) were achieved thanks his fluent use of AI for both writing and promotion.

The end result of using tools is an excellent essay distributed far and wide. Or if you prefer, the end product was a tool shaped object which gave people a sense of understanding. That’s valuable.

Don’t let his usage of AI in producing this writing and publishing stop you from taking his points seriously. In fact, it should encourage you to read it and consider if you want to share it.

You too will soon be competing in a world where regular people like Matt are capable of super human feats. Perhaps you’d like the same leverage for yourself and your family.

All of us can learn to work with the amplifying effects of networks and artificial intelligence algorithms with practice and usage. Allowing us global reach and potentially maximizing the potential of our insights and points of view. That should make us feel better about where we are headed and not worse.

I feel it is useful to share the essay with your skeptical family and friends who are either scared, confused, angry or indifferent about the rapid changes because it is the current reality we all live in.

I know it’s hard as a middle aged professional to learn new tricks. I’m in the middle of it too. But we have to educate all of us and it’s going to take some time. I’d rather we get started on it. And on that note my lunch break from Montana’s digital innovation committee is only an hour so I’ll get back to it.

Categories
Community Startups

Day 1792 and Grateful for The Exceptions

This Thanksgiving I am feeling particularly grateful for the exceptions in my life. My world is filled with the exceptionally rare. Rare people, insights, businesses, and outcomes are part of building something genuinely new.

I suspect I’ll have to justify my faith in investing in and introducing new technologies to the world. We are doing a lot of looking back as the path forward looks so uncertain. And I continue to advocate for looking forward with optimism.

We have a lot to integrate and metabolize into human cultural life. We will be forced to address these changes as they change our institutions and expectations over the next few decades.

There is a lot to dislike about the technology industry at the moment. We’ve evolved far beyond “startups” being scrappy zero to one experiments in the proverbial garage. Startups turned into “Big Tech” and that concentration of influence and money has not always lived up to the high expectations we have for power.

We have had multiple cohorts of businesses as a mature industry. And indeed we’ve had multiple generations of people who spent their entire lives building a global ecosystem of technologies, along with the talent and capital to scale it. We may relentlessly start afresh but we cannot avoid acknowledging that we are a power base in our own right now.

Just in my lifetime, we’ve publicly codified our cultural mores, shared decades of knowledge on best practices on the open web and built institutions dedicated to helping people work across the multiple fields and disciplines that encompass “technology” as an industry. Or maybe I should simply call it an economy. It may even be the economy at this point.

Which is a problem. Our capital sorting mechanisms have seen our efficiencies and returns and pushed more resources, human and financial, towards us.

That has frustrated and starved the industrial base that provides us with the infrastructure to build. Let’s not even get started on what it has meant for food, education, entertainment and family.

I began more seriously investing in startups at the beginning of the pandemic. We maintain a small fund with low key LPs and our own family capital.

That is enabled by what we jokingly call the circle of life that is a liquidity event. When a startup sells many people become not just a little bit better off but sometimes twenty or even hundred times better off.

Those outlier events pay for all of the other things which don’t work as well. It’s a hits driven business. Hollywood would say “Thats show biz baby!” Oddly we don’t have a simple way of explaining the randomness of who or what becomes a winner.

Being excellent just isn’t enough. Startups that succeed are often exceptional in all areas and even then it still might not work. That bothers losers more than it does winners because the winners can comfort themselves with the money. But deep down even the winners know it could have easily gone another way.

So this Thanksgiving I am grateful for all the exceptional cases that have come into my life. To even see one is a rare thing. To be exposed to dozens of them is extremely unusual. To be invested in even positive outcome from the very start is beyond rare.

We’ve done so much to make startups more accessible to those with the mindset and discipline to succeed and still so many barriers remain. I see my work as the first check a founder takes as being a small part of the cycle of exceptionalism that builds success.

Just in the past two weeks we’ve had three companies raise large scaling rounds at markups that now place them soundly in the exceptional category. In two cases, I was their very first check, and in the third I was in their first pre-seed round. I qualify it only because I was not the first person to commit which I strive to be.

That is where I strive to be exceptional. I want to be the very first person that sees you for what you will be.

And I am deeply grateful to the founders that allowed me to be their first believer. It’s hard to be a founder. I’ve done it. To be an investor is much easier. You just have to have the balls, the brain and the bravery to say “yes” to something nearly impossible. That I can say yes is something for which I am most thankful.

Categories
Aesthetics

Day 1747 and Hyper Autistic Protestant Work Ethic Beauty Blog

I spent some time being really “in my special interest” today writing about why I think we should give more, and not less, time to beauty. I’ll post it to my new substack tomorrow as that will remain focused in subject matter.

Appearances clearly matter in every facet of life, but we don’t do much to help develop taste even as we face an onslaught of the hyper visual unrealistic world of short form video.

It’s all dopamine drips and quick hits that make it hard to develop taste of your own. At best you found algorithms that suited some things you could enjoy but sincerely held joy is rare. I’ve been able to experience many times and it’s now one keeps going in a cruel world.

I spent so much of my life beating the drumbeat of more access to the secret knowledge of the world only to discover again and again, that even if you offer up to the world pearls, not everyone will want them.

Or as my mother liked to say her Latin teacher said “I’m throwing pearl’s before swine!”

To appreciate the details is to recognize that layer upon layer of irritation worked to a finished pearlescent sheen which seems too delicate to truly show the process. That’s its beauty.

Each layer of culture is built by people who cares about details. And all kinds of details matter. Sometimes the details are financial. Sometimes aesthetic. Sometimes it’s noticing a very specific signal inside a very particular group and being able to admire the elegances.

I myself didn’t think I ever much went in for subtlety of any kind until I spent more of my time in mass markets. I’ve come to realize I was allowed to live without too much push on my own tastes for so much of my life.

And because I care about details, now I know I a stupid amount about the business of appearances because I worked at its heart.

So naturally I’d like to do more to share that knowledge as I realize it is maybe much rarer than I realized.

I intend to do it as a fun addition to my life as I experience so much of life through professional and personal interest in technologies. I’ve got aspirations for a world where we choice to work to be better. That requires a world where beauty can be cultivated in improving ourselves. so you can be certain I appreciate the angles of how we use the existing culturally technologies at hand to create the new ones.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 338 and Effort

The real world rewards talent. It largely doesn’t give a fuck about effort. Sure, we like it when someone with talent works hard at honing their gifts. But if you just work hard it is largely ignored. The end result still matters most. Talent more easily gets the desired outcome.

This is a sort of hard truth that isn’t particularly hard to grasp. Every bit of evidence you have from a young age indicates that we reward outcome. Even if you are in a school system without grades, like I was, we still know what a quality outcome looks like. But we spend all this time and effort lying to kids with this separate system of effort that suggests that working hard and putting in a lot of effort are the thing “good” kids do.

I’m not wild about praising effort and hard work on its own. Sure it matters, hard work honing your skills, even when you suck, has its own value. But not when it comes to what the world expects of us. We inculcate habits and emotional expectations that are basically cargo cults. No wonder kids, after being praised and rewarded for effort for a decade or two, are confused when they get their first job. I’d be fucking pissed if I were that kid. I’d slowly shaped my behavior around one set of expectations only to find it had no bearing on reality.

Why do we spend so much time cultivating the myth that effort matters as much as talent? Why do we praise effort so consistently among our youth when we know that at a job being told “well you work hard but…” is probably a prelude to being let go. You have to work hard and achieve the desire outcome. It’s enough to drive people nuts. It is literally crazy making to contradict reality with all these lessons on effort. We are gaslighting our youth.

Categories
Emotional Work Startups

Day 174 and Easy for You

I’m not normally the type that reads business books. I’m pretty disinterested in management techniques and organizational structures because I suck at it. And I bring up sucking at MBA style topics because as I was doomscrolling I came across an older article from the Harvard Business Review. The headline was “why do talented people not play to their strengths?” I clicked.

It begins with fairly standard case study chit chat about the NFL and I’ll admit my eyes glazed over. Why had I bothered to click when I’m so not the business school type. And then I spotted a nugget that rang so true I swear I’ve got a little tinnitus from the “ding ding ding” bell that rang in my head.

We often undervalue what we inherently do well.

I’ve written in the past about my struggle to accept things that come easy to me. I have had a self limiting belief about the necessity of struggle and it’s inherent morality. Maybe I’m rationalizing pain and hardship because emotionally I need there to be a “why” for having fought through a chronic illness. Surely suffering through and taming a spinal disease has made me a better person right? Or maybe shit just happens.

And maybe I’ve been downplaying all of the many super power and talents I have. I’ve spent so much time grieving the loss of the hard things like working long hours and always hustling that I’ve been ignoring that i can win doing things that feel easy. Because they might just be easy for me but not easy for everyone. Quoting the article.

Often our “superpowers” are things we do effortlessly, almost reflexively, like breathing. When a boss identifies these talents and asks you to do something that uses your superpower, you may think, “But that’s so easy. It’s too easy.” It may feel that your boss doesn’t trust you to take on a more challenging assignment or otherwise doesn’t value you — because you don’t value your innate talents as much as you do the skills that have been hard-won.

Working long hours were always hard for me. I fought to stay up late because I would find myself fatigued and in pain. I really valued that because it hurt me. It was hard for me. Whereas I never valued being at being ahead on news and trends, or my facility at gaining media coverage, or how easy I found it to spot when the market was going to move. I distrust the skills I can do effortlessly.

But I realize now that those are valuable skills. It makes me a good investor, especially in private markets where seeing where the market is going and alerting people to potential is very well remunerated. So next time you scoff at a compliment from somewhere on you work ask yourself if what you did is easy or just easy for you. You might be surprised to find you have a superpower you never noticed.