Valar Atomics CEO Isaiah Taylor - making nuclear reactors says he doesn't need a technical edge to win. "We want this reactor to be as simple as possible. If we could just staple this thing together from Ikea, then this would be a trillion-dollar company much faster." "There are... two philosophies that we use in building the reactors. We either try to buy things that are completely off the shelf or we make it ourselves." "We're trying to go 100x faster than the nuclear industry has ever gone before. So if we're plugging too deeply into the existing network, it's not going to work that well. We want to use off-the-shelf things and make things ourselves when we can't buy something off the shelf." "The nuclear industry is full of very smart people. It's full of physics people, PhDs, and people who have spent their life doing complex analysis, and they actually want something that is a little bit complicated. It's an ego thing to design something that is complicated and looks very sophisticated... It's our preference that [our reactors] are so simple that somebody with a nuclear PhD looks at it and says, 'That's like a toy,' and it's great because people make toys in the millions."show more

@isaiah_p_taylor The SpaceX model applied to nuclear energy. Exactly what we need to revive this industry!

@isaiah_p_taylor off the shelf until the one part nobody makes anymore, that's usually where the schedule dies

@isaiah_p_taylor @isaiah_p_taylor Very true about ego. I’m an inventor & many times I’ve ended up with extremely complicated prototypes that look wildly impressive & it’s difficult to let go of those complex versions when I find something 10x simpler, even if I know the simpler version is better

@isaiah_p_taylor

@isaiah_p_taylor Bullish on Isaiah

@isaiah_p_taylor I am a pleb investor and I can't wait to invest heavily in @isaiah_p_taylor and @valaratomics This is the mental approach to advancing the world. Keep it simple, go fast, learn fast, stay humble.

@isaiah_p_taylor This sounds like he went to Oceangate Titan school of running a company.

They've earned the word "startup." There should almost be a certification for it, because most companies using it haven't. A business exists to turn a profit. A startup exists to force a change into the world that its founders have decided matters, to will something into existence because they cannot imagine it otherwise, even when the market has already priced it as a failure. And even at an extremely high chance of failure, it's still worth attempting. A serious attempt at a hard problem adds to the body of knowledge whether or not it works. Failure that teaches the world something is not the same as failure. Our job as founders is to think from first principles and not get consumed by the froth of the market. Most things don't exist not because they're impossible, but because there was never historic demand for them. That's it. It's simpler than people make it sound. Someone just has to be willing to do the boring chore for long enough. A three-year-old company took a reactor critical in seven months and used it to power an Nvidia chip. Their bet was never that the physics was unsolved. It was that nobody had tried to manufacture reactors. Every plant on earth gets built as a one-off project. That's what a startup does. It doesn't fight for a slice of an existing pie. It creates the market. (Which is also why market size slides are mostly useless for a startup. The market doesn't exist yet, and there is no honest way to know how big it can become.) Which is why it's hard to watch this generation of AI talent drift toward another B2B SaaS wrapper because "that's where the money is." It isn't. Markets get efficient. When they do, they stop rewarding shallow tech. We have the most powerful tool humanity has ever built. Point it at the problems that have haunted us in perpetuity. Roughly, I think a good startup idea needs three things: > A contrarian bet > Massive execution on it > Being right, about something outside your sphere of influence Most companies manage one. Valar is on its way to all three. Kudos to @isaiah_p_taylor and team🎖️

@isaiah_p_taylor Having a reactor stapled together like IKEA is an insane idea. This is why it’s so dangerous to have these Manosphere start up MAGA Christian nationalism, dummies running the advanced reactor show.

@isaiah_p_taylor Licensing requires safety related components to have a N-stamp, i.e. a much higher level of manufacturing quality and quality assurance program. This is why nuclear plants can't buy these components off-the-shelf and need to go to the "nuclear network" Valar wants to avoid.

@isaiah_p_taylor @geddesthemenace gonna see if these guys have any applicable stuff for us.

@isaiah_p_taylor

@isaiah_p_taylor Anyone who wears headphones that way… knows ball.

@isaiah_p_taylor What looks like the greatest founder of our generation.

@isaiah_p_taylor This is the exact mindset that built SpaceX. You don't disrupt an industry with novel physics; you disrupt it by turning bespoke, artisanal engineering into a supply chain problem.

@isaiah_p_taylor Too many industries mistake complexity for innovation. The best engineering often looks deceptively simple.

@isaiah_p_taylor The best part is no part

@isaiah_p_taylor "staple it together from ikea, make it a trillion-dollar company" is the most honest reactor pitch i've heard in years. most nuclear founders sell physics; this one sells logistics.

@isaiah_p_taylor Everyone has fun using commodity parts until they get hit by a Chinese cyberattack and now you have a nuclear bomb in somebody's backyard 😮‍💨

@isaiah_p_taylor Chernobyl waiting to happen.

@isaiah_p_taylor ???

@isaiah_p_taylor What a f*ing loser this guy is

@isaiah_p_taylor "Simple enough to look like a toy" is really a manufacturability claim. Toys scale because the supply chain is boring. The hard part is holding that simplicity through licensing. At 100x pace, does the real constraint become the regulator, not the reactor?

@isaiah_p_taylor This is the wrong language and wrong person to run something of this magnitude and intensity.

@isaiah_p_taylor damn yall love Shaun he's on TBPN like 30 times a week

@isaiah_p_taylor Always love learning more about a ramp customer. Let me know how I can help

@garrytan @isaiah_p_taylor Why so much LOTR lore in tech

@garrytan @isaiah_p_taylor Absolutely

@isaiah_p_taylor Off the shelf for a nuclear reactor, haha okay read the regs maybe

@isaiah_p_taylor The 'Ikea' philosophy is key for scaling. Simplicity in manufacturing is often the hardest part of nuclear tech, so this approach makes total sense for rapid deployment.

@isaiah_p_taylor 感覺像是在裝修時硬要用便宜的傢俱哈哈

@isaiah_p_taylor Interesting

@isaiah_p_taylor Same debate in software. Build vs buy. Most teams overengineer because it feels smarter, not because it's necessary. The ego thing is real.

@isaiah_p_taylor Perfectionists don't make for a great supply chain. This is a great opportunity for "good enough" people.

@garrytan @isaiah_p_taylor Famous last words