Better Tools, Bigger Companies

Techno-Industrials start with the challenge they want to solve, and use every tool at their disposal, including some at the cutting edge and even some that they have to create themselves, to solve that challenge.

Techno-Industrials are addressing larger markets than most software companies can.

They use whichever tools they need to provide better solutions to key bottlenecks with better unit economics than incumbents.

They are more capital efficient than most investors expect.

And they have to be more strategically sound than the average software company.

But a

Techno-Industrials , on the other hand, are the ones riding exponential curves. They’re integrators as much as they are innovators, incorporating a number of technologies that hit just the right spot on their curves to be practically and economically useful in solving a particular challenge (new or old) in a better way.

Boeing is a dominant airplane manufacturer today because its 707 used a jet engine to cut travel times in half way back in 1958.

Solar and batteries are getting much cheaper. The cost to sequence the human genome is falling precipitously. SpaceX is driving down the cost of launching things to space. Capacitors are on their own Moore’s Law-like trend. Blockspace has dropped from dollars to less than a penny per transaction. The price of intelligence got cut in half just last

Building a skyscraper took all of the tools required to build a house, and many more besides: structural steel, safety elevators, fire-proofing, raft foundations, electricity, lightbulbs, plumbing, telephones, and ventilation systems. Each of those had its own history of technological development, and all came together to make skyscrapers possible.

Toolmakers operate at the very bleeding edge, coming up with brand new science and technology, with a primary focus on the science and technology themselves.

Or take Earth AI. What’s the Why Now for Earth AI?

When Roman started the company in 2017, machine learning had finally gotten good enough that it was possible to analyze huge amounts of data to identify mineral targets just as the amount of new discoveries using traditional methods plummeted. While the company’s drilling rigs don’t rely on cutting-

Anduril and Power Laws

When Anduril launched in 2017, it was famously met with a ton of skepticism. Some of it came from the fact that investors found defense distasteful, but a lot of it came from a lack of knowledge about the defense industry.

Competing with the five Defense Primes? Yuck. Hardware? Yuck. Selling to the government? Yuck.

What Andu