Here Come The Space Lasers - EP 62 Baiju Bhatt

**Ashlee Vance** (0:00)
You are in the new version of our studio.

**Baiju Bhatt** (0:04)
Yeah, it's actually really nice in here. It's really nice in here.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:07)
We didn't have items before, and now we got items. Okay, so we make a video show as well, where we go all around the world. So the goal is to like get objects from people as we go and keep decorating this back wall. But there's, so you're gonna be haunted by my metal face. Oh, and for people-

**Baiju Bhatt** (0:26)
Oh, shit, that is haunting.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:27)
For people who are just listening, you're gonna have to go to the YouTube channel or the sub stack to see what we're talking about. Welcome to the Core Memory Podcast, friends. This is Ashlee Vance, and I'm with Baiju Bhatt. How are you?

**Baiju Bhatt** (0:55)
I'm great, man. How are you?

**Ashlee Vance** (0:56)
I'm good, I'm good.

**Baiju Bhatt** (0:57)
I love this neighborhood. We talked about this a little bit before you started.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:01)
Yeah, okay, so we'll get right, super quick, just so people know. I mean, you're the co-founder of Robinhood. You are now running a space energy company called Aetherflux. And so this is some of the background. You went to Stanford, co-founded Robinhood, did that for a while, now are off in space land. But you're saying, so Robinhood, you started in this neighborhood.

**Baiju Bhatt** (1:24)
We had a couple of offices. Well, there were many offices that led up to it, but this one was the important one, in my opinion. So this was like right after, I think we launched the product out of that office. And I'm saying it's like literally on the corner of this building. We launched the product out of that office. We did a big public release there. I was like four or five years there. I remember that was like the really fun, exciting time. Like that, we did options there. We launched crypto out of that building.
Yeah, we did a bunch of stuff out of there. I have like such warm memories of this. I remember like we moved into that building and like when we first moved in, we didn't have like they were still doing construction on it. And so this building used to be the Fry's building.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:14)
Yes. No, we're in it.

**Baiju Bhatt** (2:15)
Yeah. Yeah.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:16)
Yeah.

**Baiju Bhatt** (2:17)
And so I remember when we first moved in, we didn't have bathrooms. So if you had to go to the bathroom, you'd have to go run over to the Fry's and go to the bathroom there.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:27)
Yeah. This is hallowed ground. Some people who listen will know, but we're inside a playground. Global is where I set up my studio. It's in Palo Alto. And yeah, this used to be a Fry's. It was like the Silicon Valley Fry. There was one in Sunnyvale, but this was-

**Baiju Bhatt** (2:41)
This one was the weird one. This one was the really weird one.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:45)
If you don't know what Fry's is, you should Google it and then weep that it doesn't exist anymore.

**Baiju Bhatt** (2:50)
It evaporated?

**Ashlee Vance** (2:51)
Yeah. Yeah, they shut them all, man. It's very sad.

**Baiju Bhatt** (2:54)
Yeah, that was really sad.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:56)
All right, well, let's jump into it. I listened to a few interviews with you. You seem like a very chill, interesting guy.
There's a million different directions we could go. I'll go biographical for a minute. Your family's from India, you end up in Alabama and then Virginia. I think you're an only child. Yeah. Your dad ends up at NASA Langley in Virginia. You're in this space, I guess it's in your blood a bit.

**Baiju Bhatt** (3:30)
It is. My dad has been a pretty central figure in my life. He had this dream of always wanting to study theoretical physics. He was always very interested in quantum gravity and grain unification, which I think continues to be the holy grail of intellectual endeavors in my humble opinion. But my dad, my grandfather, his dad in India was one of the first Western trained eye doctors in India. He had an optometry practice and he was like, all of my children are going to be doctors, right? This is in Bhavnagar in India.

**Ashlee Vance** (4:12)
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