Ryan O'Connor, Toan Tran and Anpanman Getting Ready for Launch

[00:00:06] Speaker A: This is the AST SpaceMobile Podcast.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: It will just basically come to your phone and be seamless regardless of where you are. We don't want the user even to know that it's connected by satellite. Listen, the opportunity that we have is very, very, very large.
[00:00:25] Speaker C: Hey everyone, thanks for joining on a Friday evening. I guess this is how Space Mom spends their weekends, hanging out on Twitter with anonymous accounts, Breadman, instead of going out and having drinks. I guess like some of you were suggesting, perhaps we do maybe defer this to another day or time, but This is a day and time that worked for all 3 of us. So, so this is it. But, but yeah, hopefully everyone can hear me. We've got, we got Tone and also Ryan on as well. Are you guys on?
[00:01:08] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:09] Speaker D: I'm here.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Can you hear me?
[00:01:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:11] Speaker C: Yeah. I can hear you.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: Fantastic. Yeah.
[00:01:15] Speaker C: So, so yeah, we, we, the 3 of us figured we would just get together and just have a discussion. Obviously there's been a lot of the, A lot of things that have been going on, a lot of things to look forward to in regards to AST-based mobile. And then of course as well, wanted to talk about Ryan's new tome, his big research piece that he put out this week. But yeah, how are you guys doing? Good.
[00:01:40] Speaker D: Good.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: All things considered.
[00:01:43] Speaker D: Yeah. Good over here too. I'm watching the World Series out of the corner of my eye.
[00:01:49] Speaker C: What's—
[00:01:49] Speaker A: oh, what? 2-2, right?
[00:01:52] Speaker D: Yeah. 2-2. Yeah.
[00:01:55] Speaker C: I totally forgot that that's going on right now.
[00:01:57] Speaker D: Yeah. Not a baseball fan, Anpanman.
[00:02:00] Speaker C: Well, you know, I used to follow baseball. I used to play as well, but then I just stopped watching until, of course, Shohei started playing. And then I just watch his highlights all the time, which is great.
[00:02:13] Speaker D: Right.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: Incredible.
[00:02:15] Speaker A: As someone that, you know, watched Bo Jackson, you know, growing up with season tickets to the Royals. He's the only player, I think, I mean, I think he's even more impressive that has that crazy magic. It's pretty insane. I never thought we'd see a combination of hitting and pitching, you know, the proverbial Babe Ruth of the '20s.
[00:02:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:40] Speaker A: In the modern era. So it's certainly fun.
[00:02:46] Speaker D: Yeah, but thanks for, thanks for having us on, Adam.
[00:02:48] Speaker C: Yeah, no, thanks, thanks for, for joining. Um, and yeah, I will say that you guys prompted this discussion or, you know, this space. And so, uh, I think maybe we'll, we'll kind of shift into the, the, the meat of it. Um, yeah, I, I think, uh, for those who haven't had a chance, um, Ryan did put out his research piece and I, I tweeted it up for, I think, ASTS Investors has also added it to the library of research. But yeah, maybe we can just start off by discussing the genesis of it. Like, what kind of— what made you decide to put together this massive research piece on AST SpaceMobile?
[00:03:31] Speaker A: Oh, well, that's a great question. You know, to the huge annoyance of some of my partners, you know, operationally, who'd prefer I'd be a little bit less Verbose and lengthy. You know, it's, I guess, high level. It is such an incredible story and probably of all the kind of great ideas and the attached investment thesis that I have gone through or, you know, kind of discovered over the years. The unique combination of just kind of recoiling from the idea, at least initially, you know, talking about base rates with the success of Leo-based constellations in the past, SPACs, you know, an active ATM. I mean, you know, in many ways it's kind of tailor-made to make most kind of intelligent investors, at least intuitively at the very beginning, kind of puke in their mouth a bit. I know that was somewhat my own reaction when I was first kind of— the idea was broached with me. Just the fact that this kind of odyssey of learning over the last year and a half has that element of it, I think, is kind of remarkable in what— it's easy to see the optics as one way, but as you kind of Peel the onion back. To say it is so much more than that, you know, really doesn't do it justice. So there was the fact that, you know, it's a it's an idea that was kind of easy to dismiss or hate kind of reflexively. And then, you know, the second element is just kind of the the majesty of the business model. You know, the inherent economic leverage that the partnerships with the MNOs, you know. drive to the business and the kind of tech-enabled hyperscalability of it. And, you know, how that kind of fits in so many ways with, you know, as someone that's been studying kind of great businesses for 25 years, you know, and Tuan has, you know, talked about this in the past, you know, very eloquently. But it is in so many ways, you know, kind of a representative example of everything I've learned in this business over the years to appreciate kind of with a veiled cover that, you know, you just gotta, you know, as Tuan said in his letter, you just kind of gotta squint a little bit to kind of see it. But, you know, when you look a little bit closer and you do the work, you know, the dots connect. And then I guess, you know, in terms of like the practical ability to kind of talk about a name that is so easy, at least optically, to dismiss, that has a very kind of technologically complex angle to the thesis and so much kind of foundational work that kind of needs to be done kind of ahead of time to see clearly. It was quite the— it was ambitious. And so I guess the way I would you know, describe how the process of it was, you know, there's kind of 3 quotes that come to mind. There's the pretty famous quote from Nick Sleep about, you know, how over time, you know, most of their alpha was, you know, essentially a function of their understanding of the deep reality of a business. I mean, Costco is kind of one of the more famous examples with this fund. But, you know, the goal was to do exactly that, to kind of explain, you know, the deep reality of the business and help people you know, connect the dots and see things clearly. The second quote I would kind of fall back on to make it at least easily understandable what I was trying to do is the Druckenmiller quote, you know, that goes something along the lines of having to visualize the situation 18 months from today, you know, and whatever it is then, you know, kind of that's where the price will be, not, you know, the price today. But, you know, it's That's kind of, it's in this case in particular, doing that was a little bit tricky, you know, in the sense that, and then this goes into the third quote, you know, Jobs' quote about, you know, how you can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards. And so if I was gonna succeed in, you know, the hope of helping others visualize the world and AST's place within it 18 to 24 months from now, I needed to highlight how and why we kind of arrived at this moment in history. if we were gonna have any hope of helping people properly connect the dots, if you will. So, and that just gets into like without any understanding with respect to the simultaneous transformation of the space sector, terrestrial wireless and its evolution over time, and the underlying economics of satellite production and launch, recognizing that fact, or put it in a different way, the fact that we're kind of standing at the precipice of the 3rd great communications revolution. of the modern era, uh, and I would define that as, you know, the transformation from a partially connected world to a universally connected world, uh, wasn't easy. So, you know, if you're gonna make, you know, kind of bold claims, you know, like AST is the final bridge to a universally connected world, you really gotta do some work to kind of paint the picture, uh, and provide a foundational understanding of how we got here today. So, um, that's kind of just how it started and began. And it was a hell of a lot of work, but hopefully I did it, you know, if I did it maybe, you know, 10% of the justice that I think it really deserves. I think, you know, hopefully people will like it and it accomplished that goal. But, you know, that's basically kind of the quick and dirty of how I was thinking about it.
[00:09:40] Speaker C: Well, I guess that ends the podcast. No, I'm kidding. You know, I really enjoyed reading it. I mean, it's a lot to go through, and I think what's great is that you tell a story. You talk about different examples throughout history and how we got to this point and go into detail, which draws on, you know, some other work as well. For example, you know, eccentric orbits, right?
[00:10:06] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:10:07] Speaker C: Learning from the mistakes that others have made. And then you talk about why, which is part of the, like, when I remember talking to Abel back in 2020, in 2021, he would kind of go through this in a pretty quick fashion about how launch became really cheap and the consumerization of electronics, which then they leveraged to make their satellites. And obviously it's kind of interesting, like you see all the primes today getting disrupted by companies like Anduril and others who are innovating. And they kind of have a Silicon Valley mindset of, you know, building products that take advantage of scale and consumerization of electronics and all those things versus how the old primes do it, which is cost plus, right?
[00:10:57] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:10:58] Speaker C: And there's no, they don't make trade-offs and, you know, get to market quickly. They just over-engineer stuff. And so I think when you did the research piece, and of course I like liberally quoted from it because there's so many great, you know, you have a way with words. There's so many great quotes out of it. But yeah, it was a very thoughtful research piece and I hope people take the time to read it. Or, you know, one of the things I did immediately was just feed it into NotebookLM so that I could listen to it as well. Just kind of at a high level. But yeah, it's, and going back to what you were saying before, in my own journey with AST SpaceMobile, initially when I read it, a lot of it was kind of a leap of faith where it was like, okay, these like strategic partners are, they have, they're putting their chips behind it. They're developing technology with them. And then it was, that was like initial investment in 2021.
[00:11:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:58] Speaker C: And then it was like over the period, over the course of the number of years, it was really digging in and learning about the company. Because, you know, Abel would tell you, hey, it's just math. You know, like you can, the link, if you have a large phased array, that's very powerful. You can basically close the link budget with a regular mobile phone. And as you hear that and you're like, okay, that makes sense, but then how do I verify that? And so, but over the years, over, and of course, like, Oh, of course. Tone, he actually like learned engineering and he was like, oh yeah, it's true. But then over the years, um, as, as you follow this company and do due diligence, then you actually, like you were saying, connect the dots. And it's like, oh wow, this actually, um, this whole idea of the business model that's optimized for it and the technology. And now's the time because launch is really cheap. or cheaper than it used to be, it all makes sense. And so I, and I think getting over that hump, it's tough for a lot of investors. So I think putting together research like this or like the piece that Kooch put together, or, you know, we have weekly Spaces, things like that, it kind of helps get people over that. And it's funny because like in your introduction, there was this part where it really stood out where you mentioned ATMs, right? And so, yeah, like I think, um, it's like this company goes against convention and, and there's like, there's a history that probably most people don't know, right? Like it's a very unique thing. The reason why I mentioned ATM is that I remember when you joined as an investor and when the company would put out ATM, you're like, there would be this visceral reaction of like, oh, how are they doing this? This is bad.
[00:13:41] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:13:42] Speaker C: And we, and you would, we'd be like, Ryan, calm down, calm down. Like there's, there's a, there's a reason for this. And, and we talk about this normally, you know, it's like back, back in the day when the company did a few marketed offerings and obviously they got, you know, hedge funds entered into the stock and they shorted it or whatever, and they'd have to price these offerings like a 30% discount to the last closing price.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: Right.
[00:14:06] Speaker C: And in Bell's head, he was like, you know what, we're not doing this anymore. We're going to utilize ATMs because, you know, I'm going to make this pact, this unsaid pact with retail shareholders that we're going to, when we need capital, we're just going to do it judiciously as kind of things progress. Because they learned, I think what the company did a total of 2 or 3 market offerings and they were all really bad, right?
[00:14:29] Speaker B: Right.
[00:14:30] Speaker C: And so they're like, we're not going to bail out short sellers. We're just going to do these ATMs. And yeah, people, and you'll hear like smarty pants hedge fund guys like, oh, ATMs are a sign of bad things. But In reality, the ATMs have changed quite a bit in terms of their use and the types of companies that use them. But yeah, I mean, and I'll let you respond, but I think like this company does things that are different. And for those that are from the outside looking in, it probably takes some time to get accustomed and understand why they're doing these things, right?
[00:15:02] Speaker A: 100%. I mean, that is the underlying impetus was basically to tell that story where we can go down the line and look at all of these things that in general or maybe on average imply one thing. And AST in just this magnificent way flips conventional opinion on its head right on down the line in so many different ways. So it was essential to create a a document for the people out there that, you know, really like to firehose information like I do, that someone could sit down and read in a single sitting, even if it is a bit lengthy for a single sitting, and get what I would, you know, call a completed picture. So, you know, I'll give you an example. When I dive into a company and I'm new to it, you know, a lot of people will think through or they'll, they'll read, you know, 5 years worth of annual reports and, you know, maybe they read one, you know, the first year or 5 years ago on Monday, and then Tuesday after lunch they read, you know, 4 years ago and 3 years ago. And then, you know, the following Friday they, you know, knock down another, and then maybe the beginning of next week, you know, the next. Well, personally, I've always hated that, and I always felt that was kind of a way to— it was a really hard way to see things clearly because when you read them all in a single setting, Yeah. You really get a completed picture, for lack of a better term, in a way that you don't quite get if you chop them up piecemeal. So I guess it was an apologetic, if you will, or an apologia to explain to, you know, especially our LPs why we have, you know, taken a large position, you know, where our conviction comes from. You know, call it golden rule investing, where I basically write what I'd want to know if our situations were reversed. You know, in terms of the ATM, I will say this, despite all the scars, and I had just come off another investment that had basically blown up their stock price from what I thought at the time, I, you know, still do, was a kind of a thoughtless introduction of an ATM without any real awareness of capital markets and the dynamics that that brings about. But When I took a step back and you think about space, space is hard. Timing is extraordinarily hard. You know, just getting a feel of the industry and its history, for example. You know, if you were in any other industry and you were evaluating management and they had missed timelines consistently, Right. you would kind of immediately discount, you know, everything they say. In space, when you understand, you know, all of the historical kind of case studies or the relevant ones and, you know, the history here, you realize that it's par for the course and it's just the nature of the beast. And you guys were wonderful in connecting those dots for me and helping me see the grandmaster plan in this respect and in the context of everything they were trying to execute against. And that was helpful. But I would just say this, and I'll pass it back to you or Tuan. When you have a CEO that eats his own cooking, that doesn't have any bullshit RSUs or performance comp type things that truly is aligned in every fundamental way and is being kind of diluted alongside you, quote unquote, it makes it a lot easier to kind of calm down and think through the issue intelligently. And Abel and so many unique aspects of this story, I think it's kind of fitting that they kind of turn convention on their head in so many different ways as you kind of go down the various thesis points and what the handful of variables that I think in the end are going to, or what this business and what this idea are going to kind of turn on.
[00:19:20] Speaker C: Mm-hmm.
[00:19:22] Speaker A: That's my take.
[00:19:23] Speaker D: Yeah. I think, I think, Ryan, you touch on an important point and, you know, this is maybe something we haven't talked about so much in the Space Mob, but about company culture. I think at least for me, like trying to understand culture and its effects was probably one of the last things I learned as an investor. And maybe it takes like the longest to learn, right? Because you have to, you know, you have to look at a lot of companies, see a lot of cultures, and see the effect that it has over time. And I don't know who said it, but I thought this was a fantastic way to put it. Like, if you're invested in a company for 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, culture does not matter. Like, you're worried about, like, you know, more near-term things. If you want to be invested in a company for a decade, culture is the only thing that matters.
[00:20:13] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:20:13] Speaker D: Because that's, Yeah, that's gonna, what will really drive the company's performance and the share price performance over a decade. So I think we're very fortunate here in that, you know, you can't think of a better company culture, I think, for the tasks they have at hand. Abel, you know, clearly is the right kind of crazy. And despite all the timeline slips and, you know, this and that, and, you know, soon trademark, just think of what this company has accomplished.
[00:20:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:46] Speaker D: Right? What this company has accomplished in 8 years, it boggles my mind. It just reminds me of, you know, when, you know, back in, was it 2013, 2014 when the Model S came out for Tesla?
[00:21:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:02] Speaker D: And that just blew my mind too. I was like, oh my God, having worked in, you know, kind of largest companies with a few thousand people and understanding how bureaucratic things can get, that, you know, they were able to produce a brand new car from scratch in, what was it, 5 years? And, you know, look what AST has accomplished. You know, we're about to launch a 90-satellite constellation that will provide 5G broadband anywhere in the world within, you know, a span of a decade. That's just, that still blows my mind.
[00:21:38] Speaker A: For any readers out there that haven't read Eccentric Orbit, if you want to know What they were up against and also appreciate so many of the elegant choices in terms of the business model and how Abel and team have danced around or turned things that destroyed other companies rather quickly to their advantage. It's marvelous what they've done. And not only what they've accomplished, but the odds, what were the odds? I mean, there's the regulatory hurdles, there's just simply the time, there's the fact that most of the other LEO-based bankruptcies all boil down to the fact that one, they weren't vertically integrated, so they would put out for parts and they couldn't even really begin to get going until they had all their parts. And so you have different timelines on the supply chain. And even worse than that, you have to put all this money up front and build the constellation before you see, you know, day one of revenue. And that has been, you know, a hurdle that, you know, almost, you know, basically no one with the exception of Starlink has been able to kind of work through. And, you know, Starlink's ability to do so was largely— I mean, there's a lot of kind of factors that come into this, but their ability to help with NASA and the ISS. But you look at, if you understand SpaceX's historical fact pattern, you understand the industry's fact pattern, you understand how SpaceX was able to break the mold, you really get an idea for what it takes realistically to kind of do it again. And in this case, take it to the next level and really transform the world As far as human connectivity is concerned. And it's just been amazing to watch. And one point that Tuan mentions about the right type of crazy, I mean, that most people would kind of look at one way where at least I saw it differently. It's like there was that, I don't know if it was a Glassdoor post, but it was going around where some guy had recently left and it was something to the extent of, You know, hey, the technology is fascinating. A bunch of really brilliant people work here. But, you know, I can't stand the CEO because he's always looking over my shoulder, sleeping on the floor, you know, yada, yada, yada. And I'm ripping my shirt off going crazy, you know, jumping up and down.
[00:24:26] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:24:27] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: You know, you know, where most people are like, I'd rather, you know, get shot in the head than work for a guy like this. But if you're going to shape the future and truly make a dent in the universe, to use another Jobs quote, that's simply what it takes.
[00:24:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:45] Speaker A: It's the right type of crazy. You can go back and you can look at Jobs, you can look at Gates, you can look at Bezos. If you had a historical fact pattern that would describe all of the great entrepreneurs and execs that, you know, I would put in the category of the right type of crazy, you're gonna see the same similarities, the same general lens in which they operate and view the world again and again. And, you know, I think it fits beautifully with AST.
[00:25:16] Speaker D: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think at this point, based on what Abel and AST has accomplished, they have my implicit trust.
[00:25:26] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:25:26] Speaker D: They come out with an $800 million ATM. I'm like, sure. You know, I'm sure you have a good reason. You want to do a billion-dollar convertible? I'm sure you have a fantastic reason to build. Yeah, let's do it. So I think, you know, and that's the great part about having a company culture and a founder that you can implicitly trust. You're not, you know, you're not reading page 235 of the venture trying to figure out like what's going on anymore. You're like, yeah, okay. You know, I'm sure you want to go launch some satellites. Fantastic. Let's do this. So I, you know, if it, once you look in enough companies and you see cultures, you're able to recognize a special one. And I think, you know, for everyone in the Space Mob, you really should appreciate how special Abel is and the culture that flows from him throughout the company. It's exactly the right kind of culture you need to, you know, hopefully one day build like a trillion-dollar market cap business.
[00:26:22] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:26:23] Speaker A: And, you know, now, To that point, I'll just toss in 2 observations that as an outside passive minority investor that not only speaks powerfully to Tuan's point about culture, but is another way in which you can kind of keep the pulse on the business and its operational evolution being approximately the same as what you believe it to be, is their ability to attract world-class talent. Today earlier, people were tossing around, I think his name's Chip Walcott. I love the fact that his nickname is Chip, but tremendous experience in radar and missile defense programs. And that obviously I think bodes very, very well for winning future programs of record and all that stuff. But You know, you can just go down the line historically. I mean, one of the more recent high-profile departures from AT&T was, I think it's J.R. Wilson, if I remember correctly.
[00:27:30] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: But, you know, he leaves AT&T after 20 years where I think he was like most recently vice president of towers and roaming and in-building commercial strategy and eventually became chief of networks and spectrum at AST. And so, you know, I could walk down that list, but, you know, here you have this, you know, very successful executive, you know, who has decided to make the switch, which highlights, you know, not only I think growing industry faith in AST's potential, but it signals that the company is succeeding in creating an environment where top telecom talent is willing to stake their reputation and career on the outcome here.
[00:28:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:28:12] Speaker A: You know, and then you dive into what he did in the past at AT&T. And so, You know, it tells you, you know, Wilson can execute complex network integration between satellite and terrestrial systems. He can forge new commercial and roaming partnerships with global operators. He will be priceless in accelerating the adoption of, I think, seamless universal mobile connectivity. But, you know, you put it all together and bringing Wilson on board suggests that AST is not only positioning itself for a sophisticated network partnership and commercialization strategies, but it's significantly increasing its credibility and execution capabilities as it aims to, you know, for large-scale global deployment, which is kind of the moment we're at right now.
[00:28:57] Speaker C: Yeah, I think maybe I could go back to one of the things that you said, and then I do want to add to what you just said as well. But going back to delays in space, I think for people who aren't familiar with the sector, which is often The short sellers and skeptics and just normal institutional investors. I don't think they have kind of a, the context of what delays are. And so timelines do slip. And I've mentioned this in Spaces before where when you publicly say, and you, you know, it's to your, whether it's regulators, regulators, by the way, like, and we've seen this in FCC filings, like you're going to be super aggressive with your timeline because you want those bureaucrats to move quickly. So you're going to say, hey, we want to launch 20 satellites before the end of the year because they need to know like you're serious and you're trying to push this thing along. If you were to say, well, maybe we'll launch 20 by the second half of next year, then bureaucrats are going to go slower. So there is an understanding that people have to have around space, which is when you set timelines, it's your suppliers, it's like, it's everything that's coming around. And as we know, like things, when people work on those things, then you're going to give the best case timeline because then it's going to slip. Because if you give a reasonable case timeline, then it's going to slip relative to that. And so I think, and so for these private companies, by the way, for AST to have a quarter or 2 slippage or a few months or weeks, that's nothing. I mean, if you look at like ViaSat and they're getting their second satellite, which is going to be launching, I think in the next few weeks. That is delayed by, that was delayed by 5 years. So like, so, and like if you talked about Elon Musk and Starship, Starship was supposed to land on Mars in 2022, right?
[00:30:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:48] Speaker C: And so like Starship is now maybe getting to a level where they can like land. And so I don't think, you know, Mars is probably closer to, I don't know, take a guess, like 2030 or something. But But when he put out 2022, that's a call to action. That's a call to action for regulators, for his engineers. It's like, let's get pedal to the metal, full well knowing that it's going to take longer than that. And so I think when investors from outside who look at space companies are like, oh my God, look, they missed a deadline or they missed a timeline. And so you can't trust them. It's a boner. It's like, no, no, no, this is just how the shit happens. This stuff is really hard. And it takes longer than you think. And so I think it's how the game is played, period. Yeah. And I think people, for example, and Elon Musk now has the confidence of investors where it's like, oh yeah, timelines are going to slip, but he has to be aggressive to kind of get the ship going to focus on hopefully getting to that point in time, but understanding it's going to slip. And so like if you're a Tesla investor, you know, like, okay, this stuff's going to take longer than expected, but it's going to be good.
[00:31:56] Speaker D: Right.
[00:31:56] Speaker C: And so I think the same thing you can say about AST as well, or any number of companies like Rocket Lab. Like people thought like, oh, Neutron's going to fly in 2024 and now it's 2025. And, but that's, that should be expected. Like it should surprise nobody. Right. And then, yeah. And I think, I think like what you guys were saying too about the right kind of crazy, Abel, I mean, when you meet him in person and Tuan, I don't know if you've met him.
[00:32:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:23] Speaker C: yet, but like, he's just, when you talk to him, it's like, there's this level of optimism, but confidence, like sheer, like when you meet him, he's like, it's going to happen. I'm going to make it happen. I remember in 2023 when I met him in the summer here in New York and he was like, I was asking him all these questions about like, do you think you have enough money? Do you think you can do this? And he's like, it's going to happen. Like, trust me, I have everything. And I was just like, okay. I mean, like, you know, he just has the supreme confidence, even though, as we all know, like, there were periods of time where we were almost at the point of, you know, financial calamity.
[00:33:03] Speaker D: Right.
[00:33:05] Speaker C: But I think like, yeah. And then going back to the right type of crazy, it goes to the employees as well. Right. Because if you don't fit the DNA, You're just not going to make it. And that's okay. Like, not everybody, like we actually had a recent Space Mob member who works in production who interviewed with a company and got an offer. And part of it was, part of the discussion was like, hey, if you go work in this company, like see you in 2 years or 3 years, because like you're going to be working your ass off. And so are you at that point in your career where you want to do that? And it's going to be exciting and it's going to be highly rewarding financially, but then you've got to commit yourself, right? And so like when I came out of undergrad, when I did investment banking, I knew it was like, see you later, friends. Like I'm going to be working over 100-hour weeks. It's going to be my life for the next 2 to 3 years. And I, during that period of my life, I like don't know popular culture. I never watched shows. I didn't listen to music or anything because I was always at the office. But that's what I committed to and I got a lot out of it. And I think that's what, you know, the people at AST SpaceMobile, that you have to be that kind of crazy, Right. And that also exists at SpaceX. It exists at Rocket Lab, any number of companies. But I think I did want to add one last thing, Ryan, what you were saying about employees. I mean, we talked about this too, about how from EMC, if Abel did not do a good job, and there's some people who are like, well, EMC wasn't that good of a company, blah, blah, blah. But the proof was in the pudding, right? Where when he left and he started AST SpaceMobile, all the prior executives followed him. They're all like, hey, you're going to start a new company. I want to work with you because I had such a great experience with you and I believe in what you're doing and you're doing something really crazy, but I believe in you. So I'm going to go do it. And so like, yeah, Chris Ivory came over.
[00:34:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:55] Speaker C: Michael Pollack, Tom Severson, who was the CFO, who then eventually had to retire because he was getting up there in age. Dr. Yao, who's the current CTO. I mean, there was a whole host of basically like the entire senior executive team came over from EMC to AST. Like, you know, Abel obviously took some time off after he had sold the company and then decided to leave. But then I think that's a true testament of the fact that, yeah, this guy's, he's like, you know, hard driving, you know, he demands a ton from his people, but then all the senior executives basically followed him because they wanted to do it again. They're like, I want to go make this magic happen again.
[00:35:36] Speaker A: Amen. I think when everyone follows Patton out the door to his next adventure, there are very few signs that tell you about who someone is, their character, their ability to lead, their technical competence, all of these things, especially in a business as scientifically complex as this to see not just his old team, but all-stars, A-players, whatever term you want to use, come to the company like moths to a flame consistently throughout its entire evolution is a very— it's a poker tell with very powerful signal value. And that's just one element of, you can make this argument or how the convergence of all these things points to something truly extraordinary in so many different ways from so many different angles. It almost gets exhausting. Believe it or not, I probably cut half of what I could have written out of this.
[00:36:44] Speaker C: I believe you. I believe you.
[00:36:50] Speaker A: It is one hell of a story. I would add one point To yours, Anpann, about, you know, what are— I would just kind of amidst this backdrop with the delays and that kind of thing, you know, I think it's imperative that you keep in mind what we're playing for.
[00:37:07] Speaker C: Mm-hmm.
[00:37:08] Speaker A: And should they succeed, whether, you know, we turn the constellation on in 18 months or 2 and a half years is irrelevant. to the long-term intrinsic value of this business, to what it's going to generate in it in terms of cash flows and steady state to its reinvestment runway. You know, it is, patience is always a virtue, but it is an extraordinary virtue here. And one that I don't think I would miss timelines is something I would be, if it was a different industry, I would feel very differently about. But I don't think you can, really know what you own and freak out about these types of things, I think that's an indication that you need to do more work because it's just the nature of the beast.
[00:37:57] Speaker D: Hey, Ryan.
[00:38:00] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:38:00] Speaker D: So, you know, I want to say congratulations on finishing and publishing the tome. It was, you know, a work of tremendous dedication. I never could have ever written this thing because I don't know, I was just not disciplined enough. I would, but I would—
[00:38:20] Speaker A: You had recogency and conciseness.
[00:38:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:24] Speaker D: Yeah. But, you know, I sort of had a passenger seat view of it as you were writing it and sending me drafts. So as you were writing it, what was, what do you think was the hardest part to write or to explain in your tome?
[00:38:39] Speaker A: Oh, good question. Hardest is, is, well, you would probably either be setting the stage, uh, to the kind of this precipice of the final frontier of, of, you know, bridging the digital divide and, uh, making that aspect of it come alive. Um, uh, because there's, you know, you have these kind of triple convergence of, of secular megatrends that all Like interplay with each other simultaneously in the kind of Lollapalooza effect or the compounding velocity that those 3 things bring to the current moment. And then 2, trying to be judicial and respectful of our only kind of true comparable, i.e., SpaceX, or more specifically Starlink. and Musk, you know, who, you know, one of the books that I truly enjoyed on Tuan's recommendation that really brought a lot of stuff alive to me that, for example, Eccentric Orbits did not was Liftoff: The Story of the Early Years of SpaceX. And, you know, the cultural aspects that, I mean, this is all a long-winded way of saying that I deeply admire SpaceX. I deeply admire you know, certainly many aspects of Musk, you know, as an entrepreneur, as a, and a businessman. And I did not want people to think that I was being too cute or patently dismissing all of the very real, you know, virtues of that business and its leader. I mean, you know, I would never argue with its dominance in fixed broadband. I would never argue with its near— or argue about its near monopoly in launch. I would never argue about its having a cost of capital that is essentially zero and the unlimited money machine that that brings to the table. And all of which makes SpaceX and Starlink a very serious competitor that you would have to be brain dead to kind of reflexively discount as not a big deal. But that is, as you peel the onion back here and you understand the history, the way Musk, you know, for the first time ever, as far as I know of, at any of his companies, not just SpaceX, where he went completely against not only his business principles and, you know, historical modus operandi from his past ventures, but, you know, it's just, it was one of those things where you see kind of mistake after mistake and those mistakes compound and This again points back to understanding the history here to how we got to this current moment. For the first time in Musk's history, he didn't build the product from kind of a clean sheet, first principles basis. He entered the space via M&A with Swarm. He repurposed satellites that were made for Internet of Things for D2D, you know, you just, as you, if you're familiar with Musk and his history and at his various companies, you know, you read the specific way in which he went about, you know, building their current, you know, D2D architecture and everything around that. And it's just so inexplicably, you know, divorced from the way he typically operates. And so I didn't want to risk coming off and I wanted to be as fair as possible and give credit where credit was due. And hopefully if I put all those puzzle pieces and they all clicked into place the right way, you would come to the conclusion that I think, I know I have, and I know almost everyone listening to this call has, which is when you really do the work to know the details, You know, it is, uh, uh, it's not that I don't think SpaceX or Starlink can catch up or that they don't have great engineers or all those things, but, you know, uh, based on the merits and the objective evidence, I don't see how they are a material, uh, competitor to the premium broadband and, and the service offerings that AST will turn on with the, you know, the turning on of its global constellation. You know, 4 or 5 years at least, or, you know, something approaching that. And when you understand all of the first mover advantages and how they all kind of snowball into these self-reinforcing network effects, yeah, I think that's an important piece of kind of seeing this clearly. But, you know, I just don't know how they catch up or provide a comparable product before the game is over. You know, i.e., before AST can scale with the MNOs globally, you know, throughout the world. And, you know, that's a really important aspect, I think, to get comfortable with, you know, the idea, its current valuation and its future, which, you know, I continue to maintain that, you know, anything sub $100 billion for this business is, you know, kind of asininely stupid. This is arguably the best business, at least intrinsically, I've ever studied at scale. The question is, can it get to scale? And I think that uncertainty is the primary driver of the opportunity today. The mission isn't finished. And until it is, until people pick up their phones in the desert somewhere, Or how about just driving from their neighborhood into the city and, you know, their phone call doesn't drop or, you know, they can scroll the web, you know, whether they're on the top of Mount Kilimanjaro or, you know, in a rainforest. You know, I remember distinctly, you know, what it was like when we transitioned from, you know, I can still remember putting my AOL CD in the computer in hearing the modem dial-up, you know, go. And I can remember distinctly the first time I used, you know, I used a computer that was, you know, true broadband and it blew my, you know, I remember it palpably. And I think that is exactly what's going to happen. You know, this is a name where no one will understand it until it turns on and then everyone will understand it. And it won't need a 74-page thesis, you know, to, uh, uh, you know, for people to connect the dots.
[00:45:35] Speaker D: Yeah, it's just gonna have a beautiful cash flow statement. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, you know, it's interesting you mentioned that, Ryan, because I, I think, I think for people that aren't in the institutional investing world, this is, uh, maybe this is harder to understand. But, you know, a lot of the inbound I get on AST right now is from you know, smaller funds that are unconventional in some way or other types of long-duration capital like family offices or endowments. You know, the type of inbound I don't get is anything that requires an investment committee. And there are, yeah, there are trillions and trillions and trillions of institutional capital that goes through an investment committee. Like right now, if you're an analyst or PM at wherever, AST is still a very hard pitch to make to an investment committee and get it past the investment committee. You know, a lot of time you're like, you know, why am I bothering? I'm going to go pitch Nvidia.
[00:46:44] Speaker A: Right.
[00:46:44] Speaker D: Right. Yeah. But, you know, but once revenue hits and cash flow hits and you see the economics of this business pan out, it'll become extremely easy pitch to investment committees because, you know, people on the investment committee may be AST subscribers already. And, you know, we joke about the endless rally, but once this pool of investment committee locked up capital starts flowing into AST, it will no joke be the endless rally.
[00:47:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:19] Speaker D: And I'm just very excited for that. That dynamic to happen?
[00:47:23] Speaker A: Well, I mean, it's, it's, there's nothing more wonderful. I mean, there's another name we own that is, you know, a relatively large company. And we had a very close friend's former analyst worked for this. I think they had something like $150 billion in AUM. And, you know, he was prescribed the pitch to the investment committee. And so I talked to him, I don't know, for a couple hours, you know, a couple days in a row to kind of help him tighten it up because, you know, through mutual friends, he knew I knew the name very, very well. And, you know, when I, you know, got done with it, I looked up the AUM. He, the person had made an offhand comment about, you know, kind of their minimum position size, which I think was like $4 or $5 billion. And, you know, I went and I did, you know, just for this single institution. And I, it, you know, was a similar dynamic where we were at a kind of cascade point. It would take them, you know, at 10, 20% of the average daily volume, you know, months to build this position. And as not just one institution, but 2, 3, 4, 5, until it starts to become kind of, career risk to not own it. I mean, this is a technical dynamic that plays out over years.
[00:48:52] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:48:53] Speaker A: And, you know, this kind of perennial or forever bid beneath the equity, it's just the technical factors that are part and parcel of when big money and big institutions get long. It's, you know, it's not like they can, you know, wake up in the morning, put in a market order. and by lunchtime get filled.
[00:49:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:49:18] Speaker A: And, and, you know, we, we still, I mean, I, I don't know what our exact percentage of institutional ownership is now, but when you combine that with how strongly held and tight this float is between insiders, the space mob, people that, you know, can see the deep reality of the business very clearly, it just creates this torque. I mean, you know, like when I first got involved and, and Tuan and I were, arguing with quote unquote smart investors and Value Investors Club. You know, I think I began the whole thing, which is of all the names one can short, you know.
[00:49:55] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:49:56] Speaker A: There is no more terrifying way to get absolutely nuked and have your fund literally shut down based on an infinity squeeze. You know, given the inherent economic leverage and, you know, the power of the business model, the ability to, capital efficiently scale, um, you know, how early it is in terms of the institutional adoption curve and, you know, everything we just talked about. I mean, you know, uh, you got to be positively insane to be short this stock. Uh, that or very, very dumb. Uh, you know, well, there, there are, there are a lot of dumb people.
[00:50:33] Speaker C: I mean, it's, uh, I mean, to answer your question, I think the current percentage of shares held by institutions according to Bloomberg Is 35% and then float is 45%. So when you see a widely held institutional name, it'll be closer to like 90, 95%. Retail's going to be a little pimple. But I do think, so on the one hand, yeah, on the one hand, like they probably will wait for cash flows, but then I think something that will pull that forward is if we do get a Golden Dome Award. Now it's different for a prime to get it like Lockheed Martin or someone else. It's kind of, it's almost like a little pimple, right? It's like, okay, you got Golden Dome and does it really move the needle out of relative to the rest of your, you know, the revenue that you're getting? It probably doesn't move the needle that much. But getting Golden Dome is kind of like for institutions, they'll, what's a pure play way to play Golden Dome? It's like, oh, I need to own AST SpaceMobile. Oh, and they've got this like interesting consumer business too, which I guess I'll learn about. Or, you know, it's, it's one of these types of situations where I think once that award comes, then it's going to be off to the races.
[00:51:44] Speaker A: Well, think about it like this. Think about it like this. There are 2 ways in public markets, or 2 themes, I'd say broadly, where gaining public equity exposure is essentially nonexistent, but yet they are in terms of kind of tailwinds and thematically, the most powerful themes in the markets today, at least ex-AI. One of those is D2D. I mean, there's a reason why SpaceX and Starlink— I mean, I guess OpenAI is the most valuable private company in the world now, but so the second most valuable company in the world, or private company in the world. And, you know, the fact that the second most valuable private company in the world, you know, 75% of its intrinsic value is due to Starlink. you know, AST's only true comparable and not available in public markets. If you want a pure play to DTD, there is no better name for the consumer broadband business than AST. You know, at the same time, and this is what just really blows my head off, you know, the ability to find direct pure play exposure to Golden Dome is also kind of equally as elusive. I mean, you have Palantir and You have one or two ways you can play this, but generally speaking, in order to get exposure, you have to buy Northrop or Boeing, all of these old prime defense contracts.
[00:53:15] Speaker C: A bunch of other stuff that comes along with that.
[00:53:17] Speaker A: Yes. And so you don't really have concentrated exposure to the US defense pivot that is taking place right now, and I think will be a decade-long plus transition as I kind of outline in the piece. And so, you know, you have a day coming, you know, I don't know if it's 6 months or 12 months. I mean, the market usually starts to really discount the future typically like, you know, 9 to 12 months ahead of time where people are going to wake up to the fact that AST is basically a, you know, one of the scarcest, you know, the scarcity of being able to find you know, a publicly traded pure play to not just Golden Dome and the secular megatrend and hundreds of billions that are gonna be put to work towards that effort over the next decade, but to D2D, which, you know, as is kind of the point of the larger thesis, will bridge the digital divide and, you know, connect the unconnected permanently. And those 2 factors, the fact that you know, they're not appreciated or really kind of widely understood yet. Once the institutions buy in, I think you're going to see kind of a simultaneous kind of grand awakening to the themes and its scarcity value markets as a way to get exposure to that.
[00:54:41] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:54:41] Speaker A: And that should be quite exciting.
[00:54:43] Speaker C: You know what's going to be funny to, whether it's in a month, few months' time or quarters, I mean, Not to throw shade at you or Tuan, but it'll be funny to see in some of the larger hedge funds, whether it's like Dan Loeb or I don't know, you pick Ackman, any number, like to see in their quarterly letters like, oh, we started this investment in this company called AST SpaceMobile. And basically they will lift every—
[00:55:17] Speaker D: Oh, good.
[00:55:17] Speaker C: Everything that we've talked about, they will write about it in there and talk about how it's game-changing. This company is going to be the largest wireless carrier in the world by subscribers. And like, it's got dual purpose use for consumer, but also for military applications. It'll just be like mind-blowing. I think for any number of retail investors who are listening to this, who were there early to see, to be invested in the company when it was as little as what, $700 million in market cap. I mean, today we're at $25, $26 billion. I mean, that's pretty crazy, right? Like, and the fact that we all know Scott Wozniacki and, you know, Beth Avalon and, you know, people, I mean, God bless him. Like during the rough times, people were asking for both of their heads and it was like an insane time.
[00:56:04] Speaker A: Right.
[00:56:05] Speaker C: But now they are, the vision, it's come through and they are, I mean, I mentioned that today when I talked about the space, but If you listen to Iridium's conference call, it was like a funeral. It was insane. It was like, I mean, those guys—
[00:56:22] Speaker A: We've known they were dead for years.
[00:56:23] Speaker C: We've known they were dead for years and they were in denial and they're like, you know what? We're going to raise more debt and buy back more stock and issue and grow our dividend and we're going to have a CapEx holiday. We all, by the way, for AST SpaceMobile investors, one of our jokes is like, hey, we have a CapEx holiday. It's like that European What was that meme? It's like a European holiday. But anyway, but I think like, you know, today for Iridium, you know, they stopped their share buyback because they specifically said we need to start spending on our future. And it's like, hey, Sherlock, like you should have did that 5, 10 years ago when you were laughing about direct-to-device and you're, you know, basically paying Tim Ferriss to go spread FUD about AST SpaceMobile, which—
[00:57:11] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:57:11] Speaker C: By the way, no one listens to that shithead anymore because he's been wrong the entire way. But I think—
[00:57:17] Speaker A: What's the conference that he's putting on with the who's who of the dead men walking?
[00:57:21] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:57:22] Speaker A: I laughed out loud when I saw the conference representatives.
[00:57:27] Speaker C: Iridium, Globalstar, BISAT. It was like Battle of the Bastards. It was pretty bad.
[00:57:35] Speaker A: To this point, even outside of all of the dead men walking in the satellite space per se. I mean, the amount of global market cap external to just to them that is going to get blown up. And, you know, there's a lot of, I mean, you know, this is one of those ideas where it's not just about the optionality and the opportunity, you know, long the space, you know, the name, you know, you dive deeply enough into this story. And you realize, you know, even on the short side, it is like a gift from heaven because, you know, the second this thing turns on, you know, there's probably, you know, half a billion dollars worth of publicly traded market caps that should pretty much go to zero overnight. Well, Iridium, Iridium keeps on giving both long and short.
[00:58:28] Speaker C: Iridium went from $35 to $40 to now $18. And Even rumors that they've put themselves up for sale and Globalstar too. Like, I mean, that article about Globalstar was actually quite bearish, but then of course, Jay Munro, who's been trying to get out of that investment for many years, talked about how he thinks he can get $10 billion or more for it. But you notice like both of those companies didn't trade up because no one believes that shit. It's like, why would you pay a premium?
[00:58:57] Speaker A: Good luck with that. Yeah.
[00:58:59] Speaker C: Why would you pay a premium for these companies? Like, let them go, let them get into financial distress and pick them up for pennies on the dollar. Like, if there was real—
[00:59:06] Speaker A: Got it.
[00:59:08] Speaker C: If investors were, if they truly believe that, you'd see these companies trade up 20, 30% on those types of rumors. But truly, like for Iridium's conference call, it was like a funeral. It was pretty, I mean, I encourage everybody to read the transcript or listen to it. And another interesting thing is that, and this is truly like just kind of a contract of the industry, like no one, you don't talk about AST SpaceMobile, never mention them, right? Because like in the Information article, which by the way, like I think Tim Farr anchored and kind of prompted, created that article.
[00:59:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:59:45] Speaker C: There's no mention of AST SpaceMobile between this whole Starlink and Apple saga or whatever and Globalstar. But it's like, hey, you're kind of missing the elephant in the room, which I think is purposeful, right? And then in Iridium's conference call today, Matt Desch did say, he did, or yesterday he did say, you know, hey, some companies that don't have revenue, like we're not being treated like them. Well, yeah, you're not being treated because you're a has-been, like there's no opportunity for you. But then it's funny because like all the analysts, I kept asking them, they were like, well, are you going to put the company up for sale? Or if you partner with people, who would be your order of strategic partners that you would like to work with? Would it be SpaceX? Would it be Amazon? But no one's mentioning AST SpaceMobile, which is kind of funny.
[01:00:30] Speaker A: But they can't.
[01:00:32] Speaker C: In a Radiator Camp, they cannot say the name.
[01:00:35] Speaker D: It's hilarious.
[01:00:36] Speaker A: Because to do so is to hasten their demise even faster. And so they're in this twisted kind of catch-22 where if they even begin to acknowledge that the reaper is at their doorstep, they usher in the period where the dots start connecting with the institutions on Wall Street. I mean, You know, yeah, just chemistry from that point on. And, uh, you know, I'm sure they are, are starkly acutely aware of this reality in a way far better than even we can understand given, you know, the stakes.
[01:01:09] Speaker C: That is a good point because I think, I think everybody can talk about SpaceX and Starlink because it's so obvious. And then it's not as if like everybody has access to go invest in those companies, but then they will not mention AST SpaceMobile because it's like, oh wait, what's this company about? They research it and they're like, holy shit, I need to own some of this.
[01:01:27] Speaker A: Even AST's own partners don't want them talking about, you know, I won't say it, you know, out of respect for the company, but, you know, there's people invested in the cap stack, uh, that, uh, you know, don't want the company, uh, talking about certain, you know, efficiencies and elements, uh, you know, of the way, uh, AST will change the game. Uh, right. So it's not just The dead men walking, the direct competitors. But in many ways, it's, you know, actual investors in the company that understand the reality of what is about to be ushered in far better than most. And I think their dead silence or, you know, their willingness to ask for discretion is, you know, one of the most powerful poker tells. If you can read between the lines, I think it tells you a lot about The state of play today.
[01:02:20] Speaker C: And you bring up a good point. I think people, there are some nuances to this and I think people should understand when it comes to AT&T and Verizon and they're talking about this partnership in particular, they are going to walk a very fine line. They're going to be balanced about it, right? Like on the one hand, AST SpaceMobile, it's their partner. They want to work with the company and foster it, but then And they need a counterweight to Starlink, right? But then also, there probably is some fear that at some point, the balance between their relationship with AST and then themselves, like, you know, they don't want to create something that becomes too big, right? And so I think, and you've seen John Stanky talk about it a little bit like this, where he says, hey, you know, we want many players and we want competition, which is true. Like all these guys want options, right? You don't want to, be tied to just one company. And then all of a sudden they became so powerful where you don't have an ability. It's like when your child becomes stronger than you and the times that you could spank them with no percussion, it was like, oh my gosh, they can now beat me up. So I think people shouldn't freak out when that happens because it's in the interest of, and remember, these are our strategic partners, but then also You know, there are negotiations, like in 5 years we have to renegotiate, you know, the agreements. And so do you, there's a balance, right? And so I think as we kind of go along this journey, when you do hear some of these things from whether it's a Verizon or AT&T and they're like, ah, you know, we want other people out there. By the way, like you can want other people out there, but then once the networks are integrated and you have seamless handover, it does not make sense to have 2—
[01:04:11] Speaker D: No.
[01:04:11] Speaker C: Because Then your phone goes, hey, why are consumers confused? And, and it, the service becomes shit because then it's like, well, which system takes priority and all this other stuff.
[01:04:22] Speaker A: And so, well, there's a—
[01:04:25] Speaker B: yeah.
[01:04:25] Speaker A: Yeah. To hit on what you're saying, it is the abstract benefit of other options that they are speaking to, not the realistic desire to have more than one. Um, you know, why would you add an inferior player? You know, I mean, we could kind of walk down, we can deduce from the facts a lot of kind of self-evident elements of the moat, you know, but at the same time, they also don't want to be kind of bent over with a gun to their head with no negotiating leverage. So again, this is just one of those ideas where developing real context and understanding is everything. You know, I see this with, we've had a large investment in Nintendo for, you know, going on 6+ years. And if you're not fluent in Nintendo speak, it's quite easy to freak out or to misconstrue what in fact they are saying. And being able to sit in a position of understanding where you understand the culture, you understand their messaging, how they think is a tremendous advantage. to not getting shaken out by, you know, again, a lot of things that if this was kind of a normal situation, you know, you would be right to fear or freak out and re-underwrite, you know, the position. So, you know, I don't know where I was going, but I—
[01:05:55] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:05:56] Speaker C: Sorry, go ahead.
[01:05:57] Speaker D: Oh yeah. I'm going to switch topics because, you know, one thing that we learned today that I hopefully will be true is that Indian Prime Minister Modi will announce our launch date for BB-6. I thought, yeah, I thought that— That's pretty badass. That will be, right? If that happens, that's gonna be amazing to see. Yep.
[01:06:20] Speaker A: Well, I mean, when you think about, I mean, you know, that one thing that I hate that I wasn't able to adequately cover and all the members of the Space Mob will kind of intuitively understand, I wanted to focus on the low-hanging fruit, you know, the deals already in place. I make a distinction between the TAM and the SAM, with the SAM being the addressable market day one when the constellation turns on, where you really die. You talk about AT&T, Verizon, the people with exclusive DAs signed. But India. Yeah. Proof of concept and proof point for other countries that have the geographic issues. There are so many elements of proving out the case study that is India and the cascade that success there will unlock in other places throughout Southeast Asia or Africa. from one standpoint, or Canada, we just recently had the Bell News. But one stat that people don't realize is the dispersion of people throughout Canada and the population density there is almost as bad as India. And so, It's not just proving that the service works as advertised. It's showing that in areas where building terrestrial towers and all of the typical things that has ushered in connectivity and the internet throughout the rest of the world, that they're— one of the big insights that I focused on in the piece or at least tried to, is how the physics and economics of terrestrial networks basically create a permanent coverage gap that only satellite solutions can bridge. I mean, even in theory. So, you know, a different way to say it is bridging the digital divide is essentially structurally impossible without non-terrestrial solutions like ASTs. And this has a number of indicators. You know, for example, it guarantees satellite demand, connectivity demand, regardless of economic conditions. And, you know, that says a lot to the stability of the business. But what India will prove has tremendous implications for the reinvestment runway and how all that will play out as Abel goes about connecting the unconnected and delivering on his mission. And I wish I could have spent more time there, but there are tremendous implications with this as a test market. And it doesn't surprise— being familiar with all those implications, It doesn't surprise me at all that, you know, Marai is, you know, wants to announce it. I think he would be dumb not to, if my understanding is correct. So, you know, it's not at all surprising.
[01:09:35] Speaker D: Yeah, I know we've all had our issues with ISRO and sort of their, you know, their public statements that they made and possibly extended timelines. But, you know, once I heard that, you know, PM Modi might be announcing the launch date, I thought, wow, this is actually, you know, hats off to Bell and Scott for seeing strategically how this could play out. This could be very much worth it because, you know, I think it's going to be a huge profile-raising event for AST in India. And, you know, I feel like, you know, the Indians are very active on social media. And so you're going to get a lot of, you know, retweets, you know, postings and all that.
[01:10:17] Speaker B: Yep.
[01:10:17] Speaker D: So I think, um, isn't it, isn't India, it's a good profile raising.
[01:10:21] Speaker A: Yes. And isn't, isn't technically India the largest, uh, wireless, you know, uh, mobile market in the world?
[01:10:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:10:29] Speaker C: 1.2 billion or the largest, or it's probably, or second to, to China. One of those two is the top.
[01:10:36] Speaker D: I mean, I'm not exactly sure, but yeah, I do think India might be by subscribers, but China might be by value.
[01:10:43] Speaker C: I do think geopolitically it's critical too. And for the US administration, the Trump administration, it's going to be important because I think, I believe India banned Huawei, ZTE, and all those guys since 2020. But then India is always kind of a player that's going to, it could either go towards Russia or it goes towards the West. I mean, they kind of pick and choose their battles. And so I think having them on sides for our constellation, but then also for Starlink as well, is really critical for geopolitics because you wouldn't want India to then adopt some of the Chinese solutions that are the 2 constellations that are going to be competing with Starlink and AST SpaceMobile. So I think politically, this is a huge deal. It's probably something that we don't fully appreciate or comprehend, and it's probably worth every single dollar that was spent on that Antonov to send it over, to send the satellite over there and to pay full freight. Or they, you know what, they probably got a decent discount on the LVM-3 rocket because this is a marquee event for, I mean, it's putting aside like, it's not a government customer, but a true US commercial customer. to put an important, the first block, first of its design, it's going to go up on that rocket. It's going to be a huge source of pride for India, and they should be.
[01:12:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they already punch above their weight in space as is. It just fits from every angle. I mean, and when you think about the poor and the The growth and permanent growth and the benefit to the people that will be ushered in from AST, basically turning on connectivity. And I mean, it will be transformational in ways that it's the type of carrot that a politician would dream to be able to dangle towards another country to bring them to their side. permanently from a geopolitical perspective. I mean, it's hard to imagine a more powerful one. And so again, the shoe fits with the larger fact pattern.
[01:13:04] Speaker B: Ryan?
[01:13:07] Speaker D: Yeah. Have you gotten any feedback on your piece?
[01:13:11] Speaker A: So yes, one of the nice things about about kind of putting it out, putting yourself out there. And, you know, originally, you know, we hadn't planned on it, on getting it, you know, the idea was that we would release it to our LPs and then we would release it in sections to non-LPs over time. Well, it got out into the wild. And so, you know, it is what it is.
[01:13:41] Speaker C: It was on Sunwire, right?
[01:13:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Which, by the way, I hadn't heard that name in 20 years.
[01:13:49] Speaker C: I think it got distributed on Napster.
[01:13:51] Speaker A: Yeah, right. The whole ball of wax. Yeah, right. Oh my God. But so we've gotten a tremendous amount of kind of inbound feedback, but, you know, from an investor, you know, from my seat as the PM, you know, one element that is nice about having your work kind of distributed far and wide is, you know, there's a million people out there that wanna pull your pants down and, poke holes in your thesis and point out any of its errors or flaws. And, you know, as an investor, you know, this is one of the most valuable things, this kind of feedback loop that you can have, not only to, you know, building, maintaining, and kind of reinforcing your conviction, but, you know, just to make sure, you know, you, you know, you're seeing what you think you see. And so, One of the elements that I was hoping would come of it, and let's give it time, but that someone would find a flaw or pick apart some element of our reasoning. I make mistakes all the time. It wouldn't be the craziest thing in the world, but much like our Nintendo work in years past, we haven't— it's actually Quite shocking how weak the bear case is or how poorly thought through or kind of just out of their depth, the people that have been skeptical of the name. And, you know, so this is a— having a long-form piece out there, then like, okay, well, point out the false premises, tell me why, and let's work through it. You know, so far, you know, almost every every person that I've actually discussed the issue with that was skeptical or a prior bear is no longer skeptical. And if they don't own the stock, they're considering it. And, you know, of all the things that I look at as a reflection on whether we've done good work, you know, that type of thing, when you have kind of deep skeptics that are very smart, And that don't necessarily suffer fools trying to take the chainsaw out and coming away with nothing. I mean, that's just something that I think everyone at Crossroads is extraordinarily proud of. And that is part of our goal. So you put your work out in the world, in this case inadvertently, but has the effect of either exposing some hole in one's logic or the opposite effect, reinforcing everything that you know. And thus far, we haven't gotten any valid, I think, negative feedback from the broad picture we paint in the actual piece. But let's give it time. But That's another reason why I had to write it is because we agonize over these details. As much as the piece is written in a, I don't know, not triumphalistic, but I try and write how I genuinely feel based on deserved conviction. I've always been bothered by people that will find something really unique and special and the truth is that this is an amazing thing, but they'll downplay everything because they don't want to look like— They don't want to tell the truth. And so I talk in certain sections quite bullishly, but that conviction isn't because we have it. We only get to that place of conviction because we've done the work, because we have tried to kill the idea a million different ways, because we have tried to seek out every thoughtful, intelligent bear we could find, because we've talked to them, because we've made channel checks, because we've talked to the company. And, you know, it's a really nice thing when you kind of, you know, stand there and say, you know, it's like, come on, all comers, you know, let's battle. And no one is left to kind of fight.
[01:18:08] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:18:09] Speaker A: And that's kind of how it feels right now. But there's still a lot of wood to chop here. You know, I'm not one to celebrate early, but I think we're still in the second inning of a story that, you know, as you put it the other day, Tuan, you know, I, this is a name with kind of embedded operating leverage and a total addressable market at scale that is so large. I think it's beyond the creative imaginations of most people because the only way you can see it clearly is by getting deep in the weeds, understanding the business model, how it will, you know, how revenue will scale, how, you know, operating margins will scale, you know, what the business should look like in terms of the unit economics and steady state. You gotta do a fair amount of work to see it. But I think much like one, you know, kind of inverted a different way. I don't wanna be the chump that found Walmart in 1976 and sold it after a double. I don't wanna be the chump that found Microsoft in 1986. and sold it after a triple, or Google in 2003 after the first double. Has it done well recently? Absolutely. But, you know, in the big picture, grand scheme of things, you know, if they win this market and they dominate it like I believe is profitable, profitable, you know, the numbers get silly.
[01:19:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:19:33] Speaker A: You know, and, you know, that was one of the things that I had to really, you know, I spent a lot of my time early is like, Is this actually real? Because it sounds kind of made up when you're not familiar with the details. And it is very, very real. And in a way that I don't think there's any true comparable. You've talked before, and I talk in the piece about Netflix, and I talk a little bit about Facebook being kind of in very distinct ways, you know, analogous to the situation here. But, you know, as you've told me many, many times, you know, this is a company with, you know, that could very easily end up with a billion subscribers.
[01:20:20] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:20:20] Speaker A: You know, with Netflix at 300 million approximately right now, I mean, you know, its EV to EBIT, I think on a trailing basis is like 40, you know? So, you know, whether it's the earnings, whether it's the multiple you describe those earnings, whether you look at, when you look at comparable subscription businesses, you know, Netflix, Spotify, things like that. Uh, this, this at scale will make them look, uh, adorable, uh, you know, a decade hence. And, and that is in itself hard to kind of believe, if that makes sense.
[01:20:54] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I, I think, I think people, um, and this is true for space, like, current shareholders, it's hard when you've, you've made a lot of money from The lows, right? Let's say $2 and you're here now at $25 billion. And there's people like Kirk Svanow or others that are like, oh my gosh, there's no margin of safety. And the stock could go back to $5 and just this kind of like random work, but babble, random babble, which is like, no, you're actually at a point of maturity where the company is about to exit, you know, hit max Q. Like we're about to launch a constellation.
[01:21:31] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:21:32] Speaker C: Cash flows are about to turn on. You're about to get government contracts. And so this is when you, this is when the institutions are like, oh, I can own this. And they buy.
[01:21:40] Speaker A: This is when you press the position, you know, buy the seed.
[01:21:43] Speaker C: Yeah. This is when you press, and then this is when you own the compounder, the multi-year compounder there. If they can grow cash flows by 50, 60, 70, 80% a year, you're going to get a multi, multi, multi-bagger. And this is when you want to hold on for dear life. I mean, this is like, I remember when I was in banking and I remember taking like working on Google IPO and like people were like, oh my gosh, it's worth, at the time I think when the stock was like at $75, this is like a long, long time ago. And people thought it was trading at like maybe 10 times EBITDA. And we were like, oh, it's really expensive. We are such a dumbass. Like, buy the thing. Or Amazon. Like, I remember owning Amazon from time to time and making a nice like 30, 40% and being like, woo, I'm done. Like, sell out of it. And that's like, for a company like this, which is truly, I think we've all caught lightning in a bottle, right? Where we were there and we were basically like, I've talked about this in Spaces before, but Um, now is the time, actually, probably sometime in 2026 under a normal IPO market is when AST SpaceMobile would actually go public. But then because of COVID we were able to get in at Series C, which is kind of nuts, right? And then, and of course we saw all the sausage being made and it was painful and, you know, all those things. But then, um, when the company has, we're, we're now going to have 2 quarters of revenue and then 2 more And then that company would've, in a space mobile in a traditional market, would've gone public in the mid, middle of 2026 at a, what do you call it? I don't know, $50, $60 billion valuation, whatever it is.
[01:23:27] Speaker D: Right.
[01:23:28] Speaker C: But now we are, we're at that point of exit where, um, and you know, when they price an IPO at a $60, it's going to trade to $100.
[01:23:35] Speaker D: Right.
[01:23:35] Speaker C: So, um, but we, we own it.
[01:23:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:23:39] Speaker C: And we own it at that point in time where investors want in. And so this is not the time to drop the football before the end zone. Like, And it's not the end zone. It's not the end zone. It's actually a huge marathon where, yeah, there's going to be ebbs and flows and there's going to be volatility, but we're probably like at mile 2 or mile 3 and we're like starting just warming up still. We haven't even hit like the stride yet. We haven't hit, you know, pace yet.
[01:24:04] Speaker A: Yeah. And I would point out too, I don't know who, forget who in the space mob retweeted it, but it was extraordinarily on point, but it was Peter Thiel talking about, you know, his biggest mistake with Facebook and thinking that, you know, they went from, you know, $100 million valuation to $1 billion to $10 billion to $100 billion. And, you know, his, you know, learnings or his primary takeaway there was, you know, given the network effects, you know, the, when you have a business like Facebook or like AST, the bigger it gets, the better it gets. And, you know, the natural dominance that it asserts snowballs with scale. And, you know, this is a relatively new phenomenon of modern markets, you know, which is in fact ushered in from connectivity itself, which is, you know, kind of wild to think about. But so, you know, that point. And then 2, just as on a human level as an investor, And I will die on this hill. I am far more uncomfortable. And this is a guy that has spent 20-plus years trying to master the lizard brain and invert my emotions to the opposite of what would be basic human nature. I mean, a friend during the pandemic I was talking to and he's like, I bet you're thriving. I bet you love this. And this is a long way of saying is that it's easier for me to be in the depths or, you know, gritting my teeth in a bear market because, you know, it's usually raining bargains and that is kind of energizing, you know, on a very real fundamental level. What most people aren't used to, and, you know, it is, you know, harder for me, it's actually, and it sounds cute and You know, kind of cliché, but it's when your stock's up 300% in a year and you know it's only 10% of, you know, down the runway, not selling, you know, like, you know, as a defensive, highly conservative investor, you know, my brain is like, oh, you know, should I take some off? Should I sell? And that is exactly the wrong reaction, you know, given than, you know, where we are in the S-curve or, you know, the J-curve of the business's growth trajectory. And it is, it's just, it's so much more comfortable for me kind of maybe just as a natural-born value investor to be in the teeth of a bear market or a name that you own that you've done the work on, it's selling off and, you know, that's just fundamentally more comfortable where, you know, when a stock goes parabolic like this, you know, keeping your eye on the North Star.
[01:26:58] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:26:59] Speaker A: You know, remembering the power of its, of its self-reinforcing moats, you know, the, the, the, the TAM, you know, the reinvestment runway, the, the, you know, tech-enabled hyperscalability of the business, you know, the fact that it'll have pricing power. And it is like the platonic ideal of a great business. And that's why I joke, you know, I don't want to be the chump that sold, you know, an inevitable, you know, 800-pound gorilla, you know, in the middle of the second inning.
[01:27:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:27:26] Speaker A: Because, you know, I mean, when I even look back at my own mistakes over, over the course of my career, it is almost universally the names that I sold and did not hold that keep me up at night. And, and that's, you know, if that's hard for me, it's, it's triply hard for someone that hasn't been trying to discipline themselves in this specific way for, you know, over 2 decades.
[01:27:48] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:27:48] Speaker A: So, For what that's worth.
[01:27:50] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:27:51] Speaker A: So not to make, you know, too much fun of the, the people that got pretzeled and shaken out, uh, it's not emotionally easy, but, you know, you have to, you know, keep your eye on the North Star and trust your work and, you know, uh, your reasoning, um, and, you know, have faith in that. And then constantly look for disconfirming evidence, uh, you know, no matter how long you've been involved in a name, that things have changed and That's not easy either, but we are so far from, you know, any, you know, area that could even be conceivably described as maturity. You know, strap in, we're just getting started.
[01:28:28] Speaker D: Yeah. My trick to holding onto stocks now, and this is something I've had to learn over the years—
[01:28:36] Speaker B: Coma, right?
[01:28:37] Speaker D: To what?
[01:28:38] Speaker A: A coma. Right, right, right.
[01:28:42] Speaker D: Yeah, is to just be lazy.
[01:28:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:28:47] Speaker C: Oh, that's true.
[01:28:48] Speaker D: Yeah, because, you know, I, I, you know, I've owned, I've owned over time some, you know, super long-term winners, and I, I, because I thought I had to do work, I'd be in the weeds on like some irrelevant quarterly detail or short-term detail. I'd be like, oh crap, you know what, like the second derivative of their sales growth in the Southeast Asian geography is turning down. Gotta sell it.
[01:29:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:29:16] Speaker D: Right? It's just like so stupid because you convince yourself like this is what a smart professional investor does. Absolutely not. Now you put all your work in at the beginning and you try and find the inevitable businesses. Like the last 3 years, you know, I've, we've, we've all, and you guys for longer, put in a lot of work into AST. There is going to be some point when the constellation turns on and cash flow starts flowing that I will never think about AST again. Because why? Like, are people canceling their cellular subscriptions?
[01:29:52] Speaker B: Right.
[01:29:53] Speaker D: No, there's just going to be no reason to think about this stock. And all you have to do is sit on your hands, don't be stupid, and let this thing compound to a billion subscribers.
[01:30:04] Speaker A: Well, and to reinforce Tuan's point is, so like, you know, we've talked in some of these podcasts of, you know, Tuan was very early to, you know, you saw Tesla very clearly at a point in time when it was very, very difficult to, certainly as a value investor, to kind of hold, you know, stick to one's convictions. But the first time I remember reading your work and kind of being blown away, you know, Tuan was the first person that I ever, that I've ever come across that saw AWS and Amazon clear as day in 2011.
[01:30:43] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:30:44] Speaker A: You know, I don't know if, do you still own Amazon, Tuan? I mean, maybe that's a sore point that you, you know—
[01:30:51] Speaker D: Yeah, so that was a point. I was dumb and talked myself out of it, but you know, lesson learned.
[01:30:56] Speaker A: Yeah, right, right. And I got about 20 of those.
[01:31:00] Speaker C: But yeah, I do think, I think that, yeah, there is, and this goes to, there is a point of not overtrading things and overthinking things. Because I think there was a point in time where some of us in space and, you know, in the Vastar community got a sense that, you know, that this satellite was going to be delayed and that there were going to be some bumps along the road. And so, and I think we started getting some sense of it, I think back in April or May.
[01:31:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:31:33] Speaker C: And if you overthought it, you'd be like, oh, well, you know what? I'm going to— and actually, sorry, it actually became more prevalent, that idea in May. And so the hedge fund guy would be like, shit, we need to sell it and then get short because this is going to be market-moving news and all this other stuff. Whereas it's not really taking a step back and seeing the bigger picture, which is, we talk about this word often now, it's inevitability, right? Like, okay, so it's off by a month or 2 months or 3 months. Like it's inevitable. Like it doesn't really matter. And so those guys, and we saw it in spades where not only did those hedge funds, probably they got the same kind of sense as we did. Not only did they Perhaps sell if they were long, but they went heavy short in May.
[01:32:24] Speaker A: Wow!
[01:32:24] Speaker C: You guys remember that in June, the unidirectional movement of just it was straight up for what, 20 days, 18 days? And yeah, what the only two companies?
[01:32:35] Speaker A: I think there were two companies. You know, Tuan told me this at least that had been up like you know 22 or 23 days in a row, and the other two were like Amazon and Net, you know, like. to, you know, trillion— yeah, Facebook, trillion-dollar companies, uh, which, uh, is good company to be in, uh, as far as kind of, uh, meaningless short-term, uh, data sets are, are concerned. But yeah, you know, like, to sum all this, you know, what we're talking about here, and I think it's unsurprising that, you know, the, the great Charlie Munger, I think, said it best, but, you know, the older I get, uh, I like to think with experience and, you know, the wisdom accrued, the more this, you know, simple comment kind of hits me in my face with the kind of the profound nature of its wisdom. But, you know, when Munger said something along the lines, the hardest thing to do in investing, you know, in intelligent investing is developing the conviction to hold. And, you know, that is, you know, it's like so many of the kind of clichéd Buffettisms, you know, they seem kind cliché and corny and obvious when you're younger. And, you know, with time and experience and it just, you know, you read them and see them very, they hit very different, you know, with time and experience. And I think this is exactly the case with so many people. They're trying to, you know, near-term, you know, they either want to prevent, you know, volatility or you know, they're trying to think through 6 months to a year ahead of time and trying to be too cute by dancing in and out of it. You know, it's like I, you talk, it's like even if most investors found the next Warren Buffett, you know, most of them would probably leave after the first, you know, tripling of their investment under the idea that, oh, there's no way that this guy can continue. You know, I'll withdraw. And, you know, when he's, you know, in the feet, you know, the heart of a bear market, maybe I'll reinvest. You know, the idea, if you're lucky enough to find an inevitable early in its growth curve.
[01:34:46] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:34:46] Speaker A: The absolute worst thing you can possibly do is try and be cute by dancing in and out of the name. Yeah. You know, with just deeply misguided and sometimes tragic You know, consequences.
[01:35:01] Speaker C: Well, that's, you know, when the stock rerated multiple times, there were people along the way who, you know, they were grateful to make 20, 30%. I'm going to sell and I'm going to buy back lower. And, you know, perhaps like this, the stock did go lower. And then, and then of course you have this, there's this gut reaction that people have when they see something down and they're like, oh, I was right. And you know what? I'm not going to buy it. I'll wait until it goes even lower. You know, that mentality.
[01:35:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:35:29] Speaker C: there were so many people who sold out and then they just never got back in, or they were smart and they were like, you know what, I was wrong and I'm going to buy back higher. And they did and it turned out quite well for them. And I think a big takeaway, and you know, this is a journey that everybody's learning. I mean, no two investments are alike and there's some level of pattern recognition, but then this particular company, there's nothing, there's been nothing like it before, right?
[01:35:58] Speaker D: Right.
[01:35:59] Speaker C: I think to what you guys are saying, when you have something this special, obviously you've got to manage your risk. And if it becomes 100% of your net worth, then maybe you should evaluate things well because—
[01:36:11] Speaker A: SPV and drag, basically.
[01:36:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:36:13] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:36:14] Speaker C: But then, and perhaps it'll become 200%, 300% of your wealth because it's growing and you'll make multiples of your current net wealth. But I think the important thing, as you say, is to recognize what you have and where we are about to go and do nothing.
[01:36:31] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:36:31] Speaker C: Just sit on it.
[01:36:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:36:32] Speaker C: Just sit on it. And which is tough, right? Because I think there, we're kind of in this time where people want dopamine hits and they want to move things around. And, you know, to some extent, like I have some trades and other things because I want to stay active, but then AST is kind of at a point where You know, we're at it. There could be some things here and there that we may get wrong or the company has a hiccup or here, but over the long run, it really doesn't matter.
[01:37:02] Speaker B: Right.
[01:37:02] Speaker C: And so just trust, if you trust management, then just hold your shares and just hold on for dear life and just let it, you know, like we say, trust the process and just let it play out because it's inevitable. Like it's the constellation's going to go up. Like you said, they're going to, The cash flow printing machine's going to turn on. And that's when things like, if you think the past, you know, 2 years have been crazy and unbelievable, just wait until they start printing $1 billion, $2 billion, $3 billion, $4 billion of free cash flow. And then all bets are off.
[01:37:37] Speaker A: Right. Well, I mean, as I say in the piece, it's really hard, you know, even sandbagging, almost being trollish in your underlying assumptions. You know, how you get sub $5, $6 billion in EBIT on this business. And when I mean conservative, I mean, I really mean conservative. And I won't, you know, go through all of the layers, but this is a business that, you know, I wouldn't be shocked if it was doing $20 billion in free cash flow in 10 years. I mean, this certainly has that inherent capacity and, you know, You know, it is very hard to do 2 things at once. And I think as a fiduciary, you know, this is essential. It's like, you know, eternal vigilance against risk in all of its forms is essential to survival. And so you have to do something, you know, 2 things at the same time that is very hard, which is, you know, to stay, you know, you know, on the lookout, skeptical for, you know, ways in which you can be wrong where the The story can subtly change, but also detached enough that you keep your eye on your North Star and you have some sense of where you are in the journey. Because if you don't do both of those things, bad things can happen. It's a very difficult thing. most big capital T truths, they're simple to understand, but not easy to actually live out. It's not easy to develop the conviction to hold and to remain appropriately skeptical the entire way. Personally, I have a lot of very smart friends that I have accumulated over the years. And I use them as a sounding board, trying to poke holes constantly. I always want to know where I'm wrong. I want other people that are informed and have some level of operating and domain expertise to constantly critique how we're seeing things. But with a name like this, at least at this point in the diligence journey, It's getting easier and easier, as Tuan alludes to, to take your hand off the wheel, if you will, and just kind of go the Zen man on the mountaintop side of things where you can just, you can kind of make that golden mean between the extremes hold for the center.
[01:40:26] Speaker C: Well, I think part of it is, Also recognizing the signposts along the way and momentum. Like, if you were an early, I mean, we were in the trenches like in 2020 and 2021 where Tim Ferriss was saying, you know, spreading all kinds of FUD that it wasn't going to work. And back then it was hard not, it was hard to not pay attention and disregard whatever you were saying.
[01:40:50] Speaker A: Even agonizing.
[01:40:53] Speaker C: Right. Because of the early stage of the company and the fact that, you know, they had one test satellite up, but then they didn't have BlueWalker 3, which is more of a full-scale satellite. But then as where we are today, um, you know, you have short sellers and people still fighting, but then it's like, okay, well, you know, it's, it's much easier because, you know, Verizon—
[01:41:13] Speaker A: It's your funeral.
[01:41:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:41:14] Speaker C: It's like Verizon signed the definitive commercial agreement, what, 2 weeks ago, a week ago? So they validated everything up to here and then You've got some fudders saying, well, the technology, who knows that they are like Hamid, right? They did one test call. It's not going to scale.
[01:41:29] Speaker A: This is the satellites on mountainside, right?
[01:41:33] Speaker C: They did a test call. It's not going to scale. And it's— I like your laughing, but it's like, wait, wait a second. So you're telling me that Verizon did not do tests at scale of multiple phones? Like you're telling me that they just did one? One single test call and then they signed these different agreements. Like, how stupid do you have to be to make that assertion?
[01:41:56] Speaker A: It is, it's mind-boggling. Mind-boggling. You know, I mean, I actually kind of feel bad for that guy in particular. That was, I haven't heard a howler like that on out. Yeah. But it's, you know, in, in a long time.
[01:42:11] Speaker C: Um, but it's like, okay, we've gone from zero military contracts to 8 contracts. So you're, you're willing to bet that like the tech doesn't work and that it's all a sham, but yet they have, they have all these MNOs, they've got all the, you know, the, the whatever departments in SDA, uh, DIU, you know, Department of War, they've got everybody fooled. It's like, come on guys, like we're past that point.
[01:42:37] Speaker D: Forget about it.
[01:42:38] Speaker A: Is that, is that one of the points I make in the piece? You know, uh, you know, when you have the equivalent of the chairman of the, of the Federal Reserve backing your fintech startup, I mean, This is quite literally a direct, direct, you know, a fully valid analogy when you take both, you know, FCC Chairman Carr and Cruz, who's basically behind, whatever you think of his politics, every major piece of space legislation that, you know, where he sits, you know, I mean, it's just crazy.
[01:43:07] Speaker C: It's crazy because Tim Ferrara still keeps pounding. He keeps using the old trope like the FCC is unhappy with them and they're not gonna approve stuff. Are you fucking kidding me?
[01:43:16] Speaker A: He's delved into derelict patheticness at this point. I mean, his resume there, I mean, I literally, it's not even funny to me anymore. It's just sad. It's painful. I can't even get joy out of it because I feel so bad for the guy. Just so tightly holding on to the shred of reputation that is left after Taking a neutron— There's nothing left. Yeah. I mean, he's literally— a broken clock is right twice a day. His consistent, unbroken squeak of just laugh-out-loud howlers at this point has got to be like a statistical— I mean, it's genuinely hard to be as wrong consistently about everything, both big and small, as he's been for what, 5 years? Yeah.
[01:44:13] Speaker C: I, I never really understood, um, you know how, and I apologize to any engineers that are listening to this call, but you know how some engineers are so rigid and obtuse and they'll never see, they'll never see past, or, or they'll make up every reason to be right about something.
[01:44:30] Speaker B: Right.
[01:44:30] Speaker C: And, and he kind of falls into that. But I, I do think, I mean, it's good because he does serve a purpose now, which is he does convince Kind of, I guess, wet-behind-the-ears skeptics to go short more stock.
[01:44:42] Speaker A: You keep that wall of worry going.
[01:44:44] Speaker C: Yeah, which is good. Which is good.
[01:44:46] Speaker A: I mean, I want to make him our mascot at this point. And, you know, just, you know, I mean, he's actually extraordinarily valuable in several ways. I mean, like, this is the gift that keeps on giving. And, you know, I hope he maintains that last shred of credibility just a little bit longer. You know, so we can buy more.
[01:45:07] Speaker D: Yeah. Yeah.
[01:45:10] Speaker C: I will say, as we, I guess maybe we should probably wrap up here. It's 11:46 out here on the East Coast. But one interesting thing is, this is a nice little nugget for people. Someone did reach out to AC after the convert offering and had asked about the purpose of it. And, you know, we've talked about obviously they want to accelerate the business. But then one of the things that IRR had said back to them is that, oh yeah, Abel didn't sell any stock at $100 because he really believes it's going higher. So I think people should understand that we've talked about Abel not taking salary, not taking bonus compensation, new awards or anything. Like the guy has done one collar transaction to lock in some value, and that collar transaction was You know, 3% of his net worth and it only came into play if like the stock went above a certain level, but he also wanted to protect his downside. But that's 3% of his holdings and that's all he's done. And the stock—
[01:46:10] Speaker A: It's like 30 bits of his holdings now.
[01:46:13] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:46:13] Speaker A: And, you know, yeah, he grew it. You're right.
[01:46:16] Speaker C: You know, like it's kind of interesting because I think whether, and this is no shade on any other companies, but it's just calling facts, right? Like if you look at Palantir, as the stock has gone up, like people have sold and good for them. They earned it. They deserve it. But Abel, and this is the certain type of crazy, he's like all in, like he truly believes. And I hope, I mean, you know, just from a mental standpoint, like maybe he takes a little more off the table at some point because then we can say like, oh, he's a human. He's normal. Yeah. But at the same time, like he just, He's got this vision, and and and that's what sustained him through this entire journey, right? Like he thinks he knows it's going to be ours. Yeah, yeah.
[01:47:01] Speaker A: He knows what he owns far better than than even what we do. And you know, to see an exec live it, uh, and and not take, you know, I mean, you think like I sit there and I think my right.
[01:47:20] Speaker D: Hey, Ryan.
[01:47:22] Speaker C: Ryan got so excited. He, um, I know he cut himself off. Ryan, maybe he has to drop off and come back.
[01:47:34] Speaker D: Right, right. But, you know, I, I could probably finish Ryan's thought, is that Abel is a very rare executive. And, you know, when you think about The people that created tremendous, tremendous amounts of wealth, trillions of dollars, like all the founders, they were not motivated by money. Obviously, like, you know, I'm sure they think money is nice. They'd like to have more of it, but they really had a mission, some other mission they wanted to do. And, you know, Abel, he has a mission, whether it's to, you know, eventually connect the unconnected, You know, that might be it, but he has, he has just a grand vision for what he wants this company to be.
[01:48:17] Speaker C: Yeah. And we're, we're lucky to, I mean, quite, quite candidly, I mean, depending on how you came across this investment, I mean, for me it was, it was a lot of luck. And so, yeah, I think we, we can all count our blessings that, you know, that this community came together and we held on for dear life and we're still here and it's worked out so far. Knock on wood. And, and for sure, we're, we're in the first, first inning of what's going to be a long road of success, I believe.
[01:48:48] Speaker D: Yes.
[01:48:49] Speaker C: Yes.
[01:48:50] Speaker D: And one day Ashley Vance will write a book and he'll have to talk about a bread man and a golden surfer.
[01:48:58] Speaker C: Yeah. That, that dude, by the way, he ghosted me. It's like, uh, 'cause he was like, oh yeah, let's catch up. And then I pinged him a few times and he ghosted me. So Uh, but that said, I think, I think there is potentially something in the works. Um, one of the Space Mob guys is, it has started putting together a potential of the history of Space Mob and, and awesome. Some of us might be working with him on it, so we'll see.
[01:49:24] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:49:24] Speaker C: I don't know. We'll see where it goes. But, uh, yeah.
[01:49:27] Speaker D: But yeah, let's— It would be, it'd be a story for the ages.
[01:49:30] Speaker C: I think so. I think so. Yeah. We'll have a lot of good quotes in it too.
[01:49:35] Speaker D: Right.
[01:49:36] Speaker C: But, um, anyway, all right. Yeah, I guess we'll call it there. Thanks everyone for joining and, and thanks Ryan and, and Juan. This has been great. And as always, like even for me and I'm sure you, like whenever we have these discussions, I learn something new.
[01:49:51] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Thanks for hosting. Thanks for having us on and thanks everyone for listening.
[01:49:56] Speaker C: All right. Take care everyone.
[01:49:59] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:49:59] Speaker A: All right.
[01:50:00] Speaker D: Again.
[01:50:00] Speaker B: Bye. Thanks for listening to the AST SpaceMobile podcast.
[01:50:06] Speaker C: If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review.
[01:50:15] Speaker B: To catch all the latest news about AST SpaceMobile, make sure to subscribe. Thanks again, and I'll see you next time. We're doing something very, very big, and I think with this technology, we can really affect a billion lives. AST SpaceMobile is the only company that has proven technology to deliver cellular broadband connectivity directly from space to the everyday smartphone. People will just basically turn on their phone and be seamless regardless of where you are. We don't want the user even to know that it's connected by satellite. Our role is to bring this into reality Always in partnership with the animals.
[01:51:02] Speaker A: Listen, waffles.