The company building underwater drones for $50,000

Will O'Brien, founder and CEO of Ulysses, joins John and Chris Sacca for a pint to discuss how underwater autonomous robots are scaling up to solve critical ocean challenges. They cover the technical history of Guinness (including the math breakthrough that created Student's t-test), why seagrass is an overlooked super-sequester of carbon, and the engineering required to operate robots thousands of meters beneath the surface. Will also breaks down Ulysses' vertical integration strategy, the reality of eco-pragmatism versus "green tape," and what it takes to sell hard tech to defense and offshore energy sectors. Timestamps (00:00:30) R&D at Guinness (00:05:43) Planting seagrass with robots (00:16:53) Lowering the cost of doing things in the ocean (00:19:00) Landing in a Chinese prison (00:20:38) Works in Progress (00:27:53) Building robots to withstand saltwater (00:31:08) Live use cases for underwater robots (00:46:03) The undersea cable vulnerability Resources: Guinness Quality Standards: https://www.guinnesscelebrate.com/our-quality/quality-standards No Great Stagnation in Guinness by Will O’Brien: https://www.thefitzwilliam.com/p/no-great-stagnation-in-guinness