From the Trading Floor to Deep Tech: Taking Career Leaps with Luca Ferrara | fAQ podcast S3 E8

[00:00:02][music] >> Hi everyone and welcome back to the FAQ podcast where we have casual conversations >> [music] >> with extraordinary people across science and technology. I'm your host Hidenori Bradley [music] and today's guest is Luca Ferrara who's the general manager for the AQ navigation team right here at Sandbox [music] AQ. Luca and his team are working to address a huge problem, the vulnerability of GPS systems to things like jamming [music] or spoofing.

[00:00:27]Now to solve this they're building technology sensors to read the unique texture of the Earth's magnetic field to help vehicles figure out exactly [music] where they are. Now what's interesting is that Luca did not originally start out in deep tech. He actually studied international economics in college [music] and then spent the early part of his career in finance and then getting an MBA. So in this episode we talk about his transition from a corporate job to the startup [music] world and the internal conversations he was having with himself before making that step.

[00:00:59][music] Lots of cool insight here. Luca has such a refreshing grounded perspective [music] on how to take scientifically complex ideas and turn them into commercial reality. I think you'll get [music] a lot from this conversation. I know I did. Let's listen in.

[00:01:16]So Luca, I think the last time I got to sit down with you and just have a casual chat was on a plane to Portugal.

[00:01:26]I think we just happened to be on the same flight and just happened to sit in the same row.

[00:01:32]That was a few years ago, right?

[00:01:34]>> That was and Stefan, another colleague, was also sat in our row and I think we were the only three people from the company on that plane.

[00:01:42]Which I've been trying to think about the probability of that happening that all three of us were in the same row.

[00:01:48]And I think it's like pretty much impossible if those things are uncorrelated. It has to be that Navon gets like like booked us all at the same time or something and then just stuck us next to each other. There must be because the probability is just so low.

[00:02:04]Yeah. That is the last time I remember.

[00:02:07]Yeah.

[00:02:08]Maybe you can help me understand the probability of that happening. I do remember I was you know excited that we had this company offsite in Portugal and so imagine my delight and surprise when I I walk onto the plane and there you are and there is Stephen and I'm like wow I think that's my window seat. Hey guys can I join you? So that was really cool. You know one thing I didn't ask you on our on our plane to Europe >> [snorts] >> is just a little bit about your background and I thought maybe we could start there if you don't mind reminiscing way back. I would love to hear just you know where did you grow up Luca and what was your life like as a kid?

[00:02:47]Yeah so I I actually grew up in Orlando Florida which you know most people readily associate with theme parks and for good reason.

[00:02:58]And so my you know my father is from Italy so is my mother.

[00:03:04]He's a surgeon and he you know was in a private practice in Orlando and I think I got exposed through him to like when I was really young I was really into the sciences. Even took AP biology as a freshman which is probably common nowadays but at least at the time it felt a little less common.

[00:03:24]But you know so I was very into the sciences and I kind of had a pivot later in high school more into the liberal arts. So I joined the speech and debate team. My school had a pretty good speech and debate team.

[00:03:40]So I got to travel around the country go to national tournaments at these schools.

[00:03:46]I thought it was really cool because I you know most students they get in a bus and they go across town to play another team and then on this debate team you could like go to the airport with your teammates and then you flew to Harvard to attend like a debate tournament and you got to see Boston.

[00:04:04]So you know as a 16 year old that's just kind of a dream.

[00:04:08]So and there is actually such thing as debate camps believe it or not.

[00:04:13]I attended multiple of those. So that was a bit of what it was like growing up. I I started off maybe with the sciences then kind of moved into liberal arts and that that informs what I studied in college.

[00:04:24]You know when I studied in college was really oriented around at the time when I was graduating high school at least my thought was I wanted to work in something related to international affairs maybe in a governmental organization or not and so I went to Boston College joined their international studies program studied economics and political science.

[00:04:43]And that kind of was my trajectory when I was studying for the first couple years until I decided maybe I should get a law degree before I do anything next.

[00:04:53]And so I got I was like oh well let me try and find an internship while I study for the LSAT.

[00:05:01]And I got an internship at this investment bank called UBS.

[00:05:05]And I ended up having an internship on their trading floor.

[00:05:08]And I just got like really caught up with the buzz of the financial markets.

[00:05:14]It just felt so different than the like shadow externships I done shadowing judges or lawyers and stuff like this.

[00:05:22]And I was like wow this is really cool.

[00:05:24]It's like I'm it's like I'm following in real time what's going on that I'm studying in school around international relations international economics but there's a different angle to it right cuz financial markets you're really you're reading the newspaper every day but you're doing it with the intent of allocating your capital efficiently and you know managing a risk. And so I thought that was really interesting and that led me to change plans again and stay in finance for a while.

[00:05:51]Um I did that for about 5-6 years before I decided uh I really wanted to uh advance myself in that field and explore other fields potentially. Uh so I got an MBA. I chose University of Chicago because it has a good background in finance and economics um in general their economics program is pretty well known. That bleeds over into the MBA program and the culture there. So I was really happy to go there. And when I was there I got exposed to tech um because uh there was a lot of uh product management uh product management was really taking off as an MBA job.

[00:06:28]And so and so was so was like strategy and analytics. So I used my time during my MBA to uh at that point in time I kind of felt like what I was seeing as a trend at the time people were calling it data Do you remember when like data science was a thing?

[00:06:42]>> Mhm.

[00:06:43]>> Right? And No one says data science anymore, right?

[00:06:46]Like nobody's a data scientist. At at that time in 2016-2017 like data science was still a thing. So I was like, you know what? I'm going to like learn Python, get get an online certification in in data science from DataCamp. I'm going to take grad grad courses that are available here in statistics, also in Python, and learn about big data and machine learning, and really make my MBA as technical as I can because I kind of feel like why not? I'm in a full-time educational program. How can I future-proof my career?

[00:07:16]That ended up informing what I did after, which was uh a strategy and analytics role at Google. I got an internship fell in love with the Bay Area, really enjoyed applying data analytics. I did some like statistical analysis um for Google Cloud on like sales person productivity over time. You know those growth charts when you're a kid that say like, "Hey, you're you're on chart. You're You're on track." I've been looking at these with my daughter all the time. Okay, she's like, you know, 40th percentile weight for her age.

[00:07:46]>> Yeah.

[00:07:46]>> Imagine that before, you know, um an entire sales force of people. How productive are they given their tenure?

[00:07:53]And that was a pretty useful piece of analysis, I guess. So, I ended up getting hired.

[00:07:57]And um after about a year, COVID comes uh and I started looking for other things that I could get involved in at Alphabet. And so, I found a 20% program at uh at Sandbox. And so, that's kind of the whole trajectory there. Growing up, always very curious, exposed to the sciences young, kind of switched to liberal arts, but I've always been interested in a lot of different fields. And there's a kind of a statistical analytical bent to to it through the time.

[00:08:25]>> Right, right. And I'm curious, Luca, um back in high school when you did make that pivot from science, like you said, you took AP biology and then you joined debate camp.

[00:08:37]>> Okay, was there something that happened?

[00:08:39]What caused the pivot?

[00:08:41]>> I'll be honest with you. I I worked super hard to be like top of the class.

[00:08:45]And I think it just burned me out as a freshman in high school. I was like, "Oh my gosh, how am I going to do this three more years?" Like, "How am I going to do this in AP Chem and then AP Physics and then this and then that?" It It just took so much effort. And so, I was like, "You know what? I'm going to dial it back and find other ways to like, you know, try and try and make my make my candidacy for college better. So, I think that there's some cautionary tale in there about like, you know, pacing yourself.

[00:09:14]>> That's good to hear. So, you kind of give the the nice trajectory from like your your early days all the way up to your time at Sandbox. I do want to talk about Sandbox and and what your team is doing.

[00:09:26]So, maybe just for listeners who aren't too familiar, can you tell us in a nutshell, what does your team AQNav do at Sandbox?

[00:09:34]>> Absolutely.

[00:09:36]What we're really doing is addressing uh kind of a big problem in the world with respect to a piece of infrastructure that's kind of taken for granted. Um and this is like the global positioning system, so GPS.

[00:09:50]Basically, as a technology, GPS has been a huge boon for the modern economy. It allows devices all over the world to be synchronized in terms of their time and it allows a device just by listening to the signals coming from space to be able to figure out where you are with high levels of precision. So, increasingly high levels of precision.

[00:10:12]So, this this as a piece of technology really enables a lot of things.

[00:10:15]Uh and so it's been rapidly developed and deployed across the world. The issue is that the way it's designed um for for various reasons, the signal when it comes down to Earth is very weak and it's often unencrypted. So, it's it's easy to jam it, so block it.

[00:10:34]Think like uh you know, white noise on a TV. You you can't see anything or even to mess with the signal so the wrong thing would be, you know, like uh uh an unintended message would come or an unintended solution to your position would be calculated.

[00:10:51]And what, you know, why is this happening? Well, the ubiquity of the GPS system, the utility of it meant that it became integrated into all sorts of systems.

[00:11:01]And a lot of those systems are military systems.

[00:11:05]And so as a result, kind of what we're seeing as a de facto strategy in the world is for certain militaries um certain, you know, militaries particularly which don't uh adhere to international norms are basically using GPS jamming and spoofing indiscriminately in areas that are shared by commercial like civilian aircraft as well as military aircraft.

[00:11:29]And so there's a bleedover. So, um essentially, that's the problem statement, which is to say, we've created this really useful system.

[00:11:37]It's at risk. The satellite system itself is even at risk. Uh, it can be it can be attacked through cyber channels in a variety of ways, and it's actually fairly easy to physically, uh, attack those satellites, too.

[00:11:52]So, of course, that's a very serious thing, right? So, you have to put this in the camp of very low probability events, hopefully, but with very high impact. And there are but there are people, military planners, and and governmental planners that think about these types of, uh, contingencies.

[00:12:08]And so, what do we do about this problem statement? What we do is we basically find another way to listen to a signal that's globally available, and have that help you figure out where you are. And it turns out that that's Earth's magnetic field.

[00:12:21]So, what we do is we take sensors. They happen to be quantum sensors in in some cases, meaning that they are very accurate and sensitive.

[00:12:30]They can listen to this signal.

[00:12:33]And we use software to to compute a solution about where you are based on that signal by comparing it to known maps.

[00:12:41]And this all happens passively. It's immune to jamming and spoofing.

[00:12:46]It's globally available. It doesn't depend on weather. It doesn't depend on where you are. And so, um, asymptotically, it has a chance of being actually as accurate as systems, uh, similar to GPS. So, we think that's a very compelling addition to, let's call it, um, an ecosystem of navigation solutions that the industry is re-exploring now that GPS has become under threat.

[00:13:09]And we're really focused on, um, providing that capability to defense users and commercial users over time.

[00:13:18]>> Yeah, is this like just I'm trying to think of, you know, everyday things people might think about. Is this analogous to how, you know, birds and whales uh, migrate over the over the planet, is it sort of similar? Is it like biomimicry in a sense?

[00:13:33]>> from the Audubon Society and Scientific American that actually present this as as kind of like a reasonable conclusion. Um it seems to be the case that there's there's evidence that a variety of like ocean-going animals and uh migratory species do use Earth's magnetic field. Not only Earth's magnetic field, but also potentially even the anomalies in Earth's magnetic field that we use.

[00:13:59]Meaning what we're actually using is kind of a texture of what Earth's magnetic field looks like cuz it you can imagine from if you zoom out really far away, it looks really smooth.

[00:14:09]And then you zoom in, it has texture to it. Think like mountain ranges and things like that. That texture, which is invisible to the human eye, is what really adds a lot of information. And so it actually it seems to be the case uh or at least it's plausible. Let's say it's plausible as common proven.

[00:14:26]Seems plausible there's like, you know, sea turtles are navigating this way as an example. That's how they end up getting to the same beach even though they've traversed thousands of miles at sea. So uh how else can they do that? There's no visual markings. So um and the and the seafloor's too far for them to see. So yeah, maybe we're just copying what, you know, sea turtles do. But, you know, biomimicry is kind of cool.

[00:14:49]>> Yeah, it's it's very cool. It's fascinating, actually.

[00:14:52]>> Maybe we should just put a sea turtle in our box and tell and just tell it to like, you know, how to take us where we want to go.

[00:14:58]>> Exactly. Just bring sea turtles with you on your next flight. That's how you navigate.

[00:15:02]>> navigating people to the same beach, though. Everyone would just end up at the same beach.

[00:15:06]>> So, um so let me ask you a question then because this is a very technical challenge. And then I I know your team has to communicate with the pilots, right? They're going to be flying and and testing these things out.

[00:15:22]So, as someone like you have your career has kind of been balanced between real-world impact, but also like the the technical aspects and the scientific and mathematical aspects of those things.

[00:15:35]So, what what have you found is the hardest part about being the bridge between that, you know, theoretical math, physics, quantum, and machine learning and like the commercial reality side of things?

[00:15:50]>> It's a fantastic question.

[00:15:52]You know, let me start by saying this.

[00:15:54]When I first got introduced to the project, I was not a navigation expert and I didn't know much about quantum.

[00:16:00]It turns out that you don't the those aren't the important factors when it comes to this as a product.

[00:16:06]And the reason for that is that what this thing actually does is highly understandable.

[00:16:12]You're getting a position.

[00:16:13]You're So, the the output, if you look at it as a black box, the box is simply telling you where you are with some level of precision.

[00:16:22]Your phone does that. It gives you a blue dot and sometimes the blue dot's big, sometimes it's small.

[00:16:27]We we immediately know what that means.

[00:16:30]My value proposition is I can provide that dot to you, a smaller dot to you in situations in which in the past you wouldn't have it.

[00:16:40]Now, when you're in the developmental phase where you're you need to tell people like how does this work and how are we testing it, what are we testing for, that's where it definitely gets complicated. And you know, we get a lot of good questions. You know, how good are these maps that you're referencing?

[00:16:54]And the answer is well, it depends. And then we have to be able to say how good is the navigation for a given map.

[00:17:01]Or how do you get a you know, how do you even how does this sensor that you have work? And how is it able to get a clean signal? People who understand physics know that there's a lot of electromagnetic noise that gets generated by all sorts of modern environments, any electronics, anything where any power system is going to generate a lot of magnetic noise. And so, uh our system needs to be able to filter out that noise.

[00:17:26]Now again, the techniques might be very complicated in in the sense of advanced advanced neural advanced uh neural networks being used or advanced signal processing techniques that might be considered classical or deterministic, but are still very complicated. Um you know, all those different things it can really require a pretty rigorous uh education to understand.

[00:17:50]But, what's useful is that you you know, it at the end of the day you're like, there's this noisy thing at the beginning. I apply a process.

[00:17:59]It's my job to do that process correctly. At the end of that process, we get this clean signal at the out on the output. And it's pretty understandable to say, what I do is I put these sensors on your plane, I process a noisy environment so I can get a clean signal from it.

[00:18:14]And then I compare that clean signal against a database. I'm taking measurements and comparing it against the map. And when I do that I can give you an answer about where you are.

[00:18:24]Sure, there's quantum sensors involved.

[00:18:26]There's lasers. There's AI. There's space weather. I mean, uh there's a lot of like cool technical stuff, which is part of the reason why I got sucked into this whole thing. But, fortunately as a product and uh this there's simplicity.

[00:18:43]GPS jamming and spoofing is an obvious problem.

[00:18:47]We're not even the only solution in this space, but there's a lot of consensus around this problem.

[00:18:53]So, you the problem statement's clear.

[00:18:55]People want a position solution that's more resilient.

[00:19:00]Magnetic navigation pretty clearly provides some resiliency.

[00:19:05]And at the end of the day it's just doing so, you know it just taking measurements comparing against a map.

[00:19:11]>> I appreciate the way that you I mean I I like the word you said simplicity. So, you're like yes, it's technically challenging and actually want to ask you about that. But at the end of the day the the idea is simple and so I I appreciate the way that you've you've broken that down.

[00:19:26]Okay, just for listeners Luca, can you help us understand like how severe the challenges, you know, like the noise to signal ratio? I know you guys have some good analogies.

[00:19:40]It's like, you know, you're in a really Well, you you can give me a better analogy, but it's like maybe you're in like a house party and it's really loud and there's a lot of music going and someone way across, you know, on the first floor downstairs is like whispering and you guys are trying to hear that conversation. Like how hard is this?

[00:19:56]All of the noise you have on the flight and this faint signal you're trying to identify.

[00:20:02]>> If it was easy, we would have far fewer PhDs on our team, I think.

[00:20:07]>> Yeah. [laughter] >> It's obviously quite hard.

[00:20:11]Um Uh it's doable, but it's uh it's hard.

[00:20:14]You know, our our reason for being is that it's hard enough and uniquely a unique enough problem that if we focus on solving it, that's something that is beneficial to many and not worth their time to specialize in solving.

[00:20:28]Um if they could solve it trivially, then they just would. Uh and so I think uh the real problem is that there's a there is Let's say this. Um two two camps of problems. Conceptually, first principles. Imagine there was no engineering required.

[00:20:45]We lived in a you know, it was just a simulation only.

[00:20:48]If you had a If you had a perfect magnetic map, meaning there was no difference between the map of Earth's magnetic field and Earth's magnetic field.

[00:20:57]It's just one-to-one, right? You just say what Earth's magnetic field is in any place and that's exactly what you measure.

[00:21:05]So, there's no sensor involved. There's not a map to compare to.

[00:21:09]Then, uh the challenges around magnetic navigation would be the fact that Earth's magnetic field will be weaker at higher altitudes and stronger at lower altitudes. It'll have more gradients in some areas and less gradients in other areas. And the the statistical challenge there would be how do you manage that uh effectively to be optimal.

[00:21:31]That would be a tractable issue, but it would you would be no longer worrying about some of these implementation challenges.

[00:21:38]But, that you that will always exist.

[00:21:41]That's like the physics. Now, let's let's start introducing the challenges.

[00:21:44]One is the the first layer is that you don't actually just perceive Earth's magnetic field.

[00:21:50]You have to sense it indirectly through some mechanism.

[00:21:54]A quantum sensor is a is the best thing we've built today to be able to do that with high fidelity and accuracy and low low drift errors.

[00:22:02]So, it's a very good instrument for doing this. Great. So, you're getting closer to taking a an actual measurement of Earth's magnetic field with the sensor.

[00:22:10]And then we those same types of sensors get used by survey companies to make the maps.

[00:22:16]That's still an approximation of Earth's actual magnetic field, right? Because we're just taking measurements.

[00:22:22]And so, now you have measurement error in two places.

[00:22:25]So, let's say there was no noise on the aircraft at all.

[00:22:29]If you were just taking a clean quantum magnetometer and flying it around and comparing it against maps made by other magnetometers, you would still have you have introduced one layer of difference between the theoretical performance and actual.

[00:22:43]Okay, so what's the next layer? The next layer is that you put these magnetometers on an actual plane, and it's the equivalent of like listening to music in a studio or a well-insulated closet with good audio, uh you know, qualities.

[00:22:58]And instead now there's like other noise, other music in the in in the thing. And that's what the different electronic systems on an aircraft might be, or if you're in a car, the engine, or if you're on a ship, the entire hull is made of steel probably. So, you have interference, things that warp. So, now you can't just take a measurement and say that's Earth's magnetic field. Now, you have the sensor itself and all these environmental factors that get in between you taking a clean measurement of getting back to that first principles, right? And so, the engineering challenges really are around how do you model these uncertainties, these errors, and reduce them where you can, and then get to a solution that works.

[00:23:39]Sometimes the answer is like walk closer to the person who you're trying to listen to across the room, right? Like maybe if that person is talking to you, just, you know, walk over to them.

[00:23:50]You might get a lot of leverage from that. And that's the equivalent of saying put the sensor in a more quiet location.

[00:23:56]Okay. So, that's that's that gives you a lot of leverage.

[00:24:00]The next thing is like maybe lean over and listen more closely or watch their lips move, right? That might be looked at correlated signals, correlated features of the signal you're looking for, and start to try and figure out, you know, what it is this person is telling you.

[00:24:16]And so, that would be signal processing, let's call it. And then you get added boost there. But, the point is there's um uh you know, what if the music changes?

[00:24:26]What if, right? Or all sorts of stuff. So, you need to be able to make this an adaptable system, and that's that's the rub. And in in a production environment, you're you're inherently not going to be able to reduce the trade space, let's call it, or the space of different situations that you'd be in. So, making it robust is is the hard thing.

[00:24:47]>> One thing that I appreciate about the the narrative you're sharing here is that although we're talking about the the technical aspects now, you mentioned earlier that um you didn't come into this project with a background already in quantum or in some of these these um technicalities. And and even you you told me early on and I know you've spoken about this other uh um in other videos on online that AQN kind of started for you as a 20% project back in your time at Google. And so [snorts] there was a you know a time where you're like, "Hey, I have some free time." You know, Google has this 20% program where you can spend some of your time on a different project besides your your main job. And then, you know, our team spun out of Alphabet and at some point you had to make that decision, right? To make that transition. And I know that you've touched on this in in a few other places, but I would love to just hear a little bit more about the internal conversation you were having with yourself around that time as you made that jump. Like knowing your background coming from the finance side and economics working alongside PhDs doing like, you know, quantum sensing and all of these things. What were you thinking? But I don't mean that in like a what were you thinking? I mean, >> [laughter] >> what was going on >> days.

[00:26:09]>> through your head?

[00:26:10]>> Um Look, I I think at the end of the day it just didn't feel like I didn't feel like work. Uh I was kind of drawn in by my natural curiosity. And I everything I was learning about the subject matter just felt like it was uh implicitly or sorry, like intrinsically rewarding.

[00:26:27]Um you know, nobody forced me to do the 20% and nobody forced me to stay on or put the amount of effort in it that I did. I just I genuinely felt like the more I learned about this and the more I learned about what quantum was and what it wasn't and how AI was applicable in this space and how it wasn't and about the GPS program and all the different cool technologies involved and once you start what really did it for me was like going beyond just the research and then going out and talking to the people who wrote papers. Um at the time, there was an Air Force researcher, Dr. Aaron Conciani, who lent me a bit of his time to help me learn about the subject. I was very grateful for him uh to him for that.

[00:27:07]There was the Air Force uh there's um a Department of the Air Force AI accelerator through MIT that had a public data set and a a research team there that was trying to, you know, get more open-source involvement. Having that gave me a team to get, you know, we you know, when I worked internally, we we we used that data set to turn around some results using neural nets and shared it with them and they gave us feedback and uh helped us understand the problem more. And I think what was really exciting was going out and actually interacting with the field a bit and seeing how we could move the ball forward. You know, uh we weren't the only people in the space.

[00:27:42]Uh you know, uh like I said, the reason a person like me and MBA can be involved is because it's not pure science. It's at a it's in that gray zone where enough of it's been de-risked that with enough time and energy and execution, it can go over the valley of death and become a thing.

[00:27:58]But you when someone like me gets involved, the core science has been figured out. It's more about how does this get productized? How do we commercialize the innovation, right?

[00:28:08]I found that to be really interesting.

[00:28:10]It was a part of what I'd studied in business school around entrepreneurship that I really enjoyed. In my commercializing innovation, uh I had a I had an uh an entrepreneurship professor at Booth who I spoke to when I was really needing to make a decision about this.

[00:28:26]And I was like, I uh you know, I I worked so hard to get my MBA. I worked so hard to get a good job at Google.

[00:28:32]Like, why am I even thinking about leaving for this navigate? I'm not I don't like, am I crazy? Like, why am I going to a navigation thing? Like, we're spinning out. Like, I don't even You know, I know in theory what this all means.

[00:28:44]But uh I He told me like something really interesting that stuck with me. His name's Gregory Bunch and um what Professor Bunch told me was your career is decided by only a few moments of very high leverage where you have these forks in the road that are not easy to predict when they'll come and will be very decisive in terms of maybe deciding what branch of possibilities you end up down later.

[00:29:11]And it's a way of framing, you know, maybe a carpe diem mentality of saying like don't let those moments pass by.

[00:29:18]And so my my thinking at the time was this, you know, at least if I'm going to take a dip into entrepreneurship, at least I have a I've had a seat at the table before spin out. I know the team, I know people I know the technology.

[00:29:34]Uh so and you know, to some extent because we were capable of raising a decent amount of money, it wasn't the same as me striking it out alone and trying to raise a seed raise a seed round you know, get into some type of accelerator and then be the fund you know, be the CEO and fundraiser, have to do the all of that.

[00:29:56]So, it was the right environment for me to maybe zag instead of zig and I'm really happy that I did because um it's been a super rewarding experience in many ways.

[00:30:08]But at the time I was like I really had to think about it cuz you know, MBAs aren't cheap.

[00:30:14]>> Right. I mean, clearly you made the the right decision at least from Sandbox's perspective and I and I hope from yours.

[00:30:21]I really like what you said um early on like at some point it didn't feel like work which is so cool. I mean, I feel like that's that's the dream, right? To be doing something that that you love and that's also really high impact. Um were there other any other professors, mentors, colleagues that you've come across over the years who, you know, dropped another piece of advice or just something that again, fundamentally changed the way that you approach problems.

[00:30:52]>> Yeah, let me just say I still haven't felt like I go to work every day. Uh and that's why I love coming to Sandbox. I mean, it I just have that feeling hasn't hasn't left. So >> Yeah.

[00:31:03]>> I used to always show up to work like really feeling like it was work and, you know, I was transacting with a corporation my time and effort in exchange for a paycheck.

[00:31:13]And that's fine, right?

[00:31:15]But I've since being at Sandbox it's just felt so different. So So start with that. But yes, other folks, I've been very fortunate.

[00:31:25]I think partly even just conversations with our CEO, right, our founder Jack.

[00:31:30]You know, Jack always has some sage advice about how to think about problems differently or me into Sandbox was Fernando, one of our leaders, and he always had a way of asking me the right question or challenging me to think differently. I'll I'll tell you like early on I was doing a lot of the research around HQ now for him cuz he was managing a portfolio of different things that were happening and he didn't have the bandwidth to go deep on this.

[00:31:58]And so I and then he helped guide me in terms of like, you know, getting traction for it and ultimately making the case for my conversion to Sandbox.

[00:32:07]And he has a way of asking you really insightful questions that challenge your It's kind of frustrating honestly cuz he doesn't always have the answer, but he has the right question that gets you to the answer.

[00:32:19]And it's one of those, right? Like, "Hey, well, why why is it that you think this is going to take 6 months?" Or "How would you do this if you only had 2 weeks?"

[00:32:27]Right? Um challenging your assumptions around how long a thing takes and not taking what people say and maybe thinking from first principles and uh I think that's very important in entrepreneurship and with new ventures and innovation in general is to at some point you can't live in la-la land, right?

[00:32:47]Like you have to be grounded in reality.

[00:32:50]But sometimes reality is very different than what people are making what people say, right? So, the reality is that a thing may actually be doable if looked at a different way or if contextualized different way or if you were more efficient about the way you did it than maybe what a person is going to tell you if you ask them directly, right? And just acknowledging that like what you hear and what what people say is not reality all the time. Like you need to find the facts yourself in some way. And that's kind of like a scientific way of thinking, right? Like you don't just take somebody's ar- And it's also a debate way like it also helped that I did debate, right? Like you hear somebody say something, they're making a claim, how are they justifying that claim and what is the impact of that claim? Can you pick that statement apart and understand that there's if certain assumptions of that argument are not true that something else could be true.

[00:33:42]And that kind of helps you understand where to look next in terms of wherever you need to go and and in terms of maybe research you're doing or exploration of an idea, in my view. So, he was really good at helping me do that.

[00:33:56]>> You know, yeah, the ability to ask the right questions I think is itself a really important skill. And I love how Fernando did that so skillfully to the point where you're now our general manager.

[00:34:09]>> He can still do it. He can still >> It's awesome. He can still do it.

[00:34:12]>> I'll get a ping from him and I'm like, "How did he think of that question?"

[00:34:15]>> [laughter] >> Nice. I love it. I love it. Well, hey Luka, maybe just to start wrapping up, I want to end with one final question.

[00:34:22]Maybe a fun question or you can steer it in whichever direction you like, but uh just to get to know you more.

[00:34:29]If If had unlimited time, resources, whatever you name it, what is just something you really want to do? You know, like you're on vacation, you've got some free time, your brain is clear, and you're like, "Man, I've always wanted to uh you know, hike Everest or something."

[00:34:49]I don't know. Uh >> Too cold.

[00:34:51]>> plant some roses. Too cold. Okay. So, what's the thing that you want to do, Luka, that's in the back of your mind?

[00:34:58]>> Let me just Let me just caveat by saying this this answer like vacillates wildly based off of >> [laughter] >> all sorts of different things going on in my life. Um >> Yeah.

[00:35:07]>> But, to answer that question uh today, I would say if I had infinite time and and resources were of no consequence, I would really love to visit every country of the world.

[00:35:19]>> Oh.

[00:35:19]>> Um If there's no resource constraints, could it be from like a mega yacht?

[00:35:23]That'd be nice. Um >> Nice.

[00:35:26]>> Uh you know, that would be pretty cool. Uh but, particularly like islands and remote islands, I just think it'd be very cool to like visit a lot of the islands of the world. There's so many of them, particularly in the Pacific. I don't know, that'd be really neat. Um >> Mm.

[00:35:40]>> You know, doing some kind of around-the-world in however many days tour, I think would be top of my list.

[00:35:46]Um And then, you know, there's there's there's plenty to see, so I think a world tour.

[00:35:54]>> Well, I do hope that your dreams come true uh and that you'll be able to visit on a mega yacht or whichever mode of transportation you prefer, maybe on a plane with AQ Nav uh safely getting you there.

[00:36:04]>> That'd be ideal.

[00:36:05]>> So, >> [laughter] >> thank you, Luka. I really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to chat. I'm glad uh we were able to learn a little bit more not just about what your team is doing, but also kind of the origin story of AQ Nav and also of you.

[00:36:19]So, thank you so much for your time.

[00:36:22]>> Thank you. It was a pleasure talking to you and a lot of fun.

[00:36:27]>> All right, everyone. Thank you so much for joining me on the FAQ [music] podcast where we have casual conversations with amazing people across science and technology. I'm your host Titan A. Bradley, and if you'd like to be notified about [music] when our next episode is coming out, we try to aim for every other Tuesday, be sure to subscribe to YouTube, Apple Podcast, Spotify, whichever platform you're on.

[00:36:47]All right, that's all for now. Thank you again [music] for listening, and I hope to see you next time.