Juan Orbea

Technology has changed the nature of the threats our society is facing, but the defense industry is still generally approaching these questions with a twentieth century mindset. Before we can make meaningful progress in the space, we need to reconceptualize our approach to the question.

Relationships don’t form at random. 5 conditions contribute to the depth and speed at which they form:A context for frequent, repeated interaction with a new group of people (e.g. a new school, job, church, club, dorm, living situation, etc.).A high degree of overlap between relationships in the new group.A transition period where people are open... See more

Founders Fund recently hosted a panel on defense: a conversation at the intersection of the U.S. government and the technology industry, or D.C. vs. Silicon Valley. Moderated by Dan Primack, and featuring Chris Lynch, Heather Podesta, and Trae Stephens.

One of the biggest challenges for nuclear fission is economic: New plants take years to build and cost billions of dollars. A number of factors contribute to nuclear fission’s economic challenges, which have only increased over the past few decades. In addition to the obvious capital costs, onerous regulations stretch out the development times for... See more

A popular misunderstanding of smart contract technology is that smart contracts work “automatically” without human intervention. Smart contracts are just passive object code stored on the blockchain. This code is called by miners/validators when users request it to be called by offering to pay miners for making such calls. In other words, smart... See more

Amazon is the example I think of most often, because its not actually some magical event that gave Bezos any unfair advantage. It was simply appreciating the present as it was. I would also argue there were two examples of Amazon's journey that represented an arbitrage opportunity in terms of TAM. 

Crossroad #4 – First JobThe professional relationships you form during your first job are the seed of your professional network which influences the arc of your career — from how you think about work, to how you’re known, to the geography where you have advantaged job access for a long time.