"Ocean is the new space" - 7 Wild Ideas for the $3 Trillion Dollar Frontier

**Sam Parr** (0:00)
That episode was a whirlwind.

**Shaan Puri** (0:01)
Yeah, we just recorded with our buddy, Will O'Brien. This episode was like my favorite conversations, living in San Francisco, where you run into a weirdo who knows a lot about something you know very little about, and you get way smart. In like 45 minutes, your mind gets blown like five times, and you just get smarter. So this is a get smarter episode for me.

**Sam Parr** (0:19)
And it wasn't just about like the business and the ideas that he talked about, but the mindset and how he thought about just like the philosophy of life that I was inspired by.

**Shaan Puri** (0:27)
Yeah, exactly. So, okay, what are we talking about? We're talking about how the ocean is the new space, how there's companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin, all these companies that are doing cool shit in space. He knows a lot about companies that are doing cool things in the ocean, which is something I honestly didn't know anything about going in. Now I'm pretty fascinated with. But then we talked about the conversation toward the end gets really fun. Conspiracy theories, why conspiracy theorists make for great founders, his summer living with monks in Nepal and what he took out of that. It was the end is really good. So get there to the end. I promise you, you will enjoy this episode.
All right. What's up? We got our friend Will O'Brien here. And Will is an Irish guy who talks my ear off about the ocean. And I honestly wasn't thinking about the ocean at all until I saw maybe a tweet of yours, which was basically saying the ocean is the new space and how there's companies like SpaceX and others that have built huge $100 billion plus companies about exploring space, about putting satellites in space, about reusable rockets and that there's an opportunity for a similar wave of disruption for startups in the ocean. And I love that idea. Honestly, I'm never going to do it. So I'll just put that up front. I'm never going to do something like that. I think 99.9% of people listening to this will also never go do that thing. But just from a, I don't know, just as a fan of the game, just as a founder, I kind of love the theory and the intellectual idea here of what is the opportunity. And then if you're one of the rare few hardcore founders that can go do this, you know, this is going to be right up your alley. So that's my interest in it. Sam, I'm curious from your perspective, are you the same as me?

**Sam Parr** (2:13)
Dude, I won't even go on a cruise ship. Like, I was at a party the other day and the want liner or the ice breaker was something you're deathly afraid of. To me, it's being in the ocean to where I can't see land.
So like, I'm not even gonna be out there. But yeah, I agree with your premise.

**Shaan Puri** (2:34)
And Will, did I kind of frame your argument right as to like the potential that you see as far as the business opportunity of building startups that are focused on the ocean?

**Will O'Brien** (2:45)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, the framing is like, you know, something like this. It's like, you know, everyone is like here standing on Earth, like looking towards the stars.
And absolutely, we should be doing that. And we should be going like, you know, full pelt with like trying to go interplanetary, trying to put a base on the moon and take the dark side of the moon and then go from there and use that as a line going to go to Mars. And we should be trying to fly supersonic as well. But then, look, if you're trying to build a startup, like you're always asking yourself, like where, you know, what is everyone else looking to do? And like, where is everyone else going? And where is, like, underrated? And I suppose, you know, I grew up by the seaside and like in the southwest of Ireland, I've always been obsessed with the ocean. If I wasn't like on it, in it or near it growing up, there was something wrong in the same way that you're afraid some of it. And yeah, I'm kind of like when I'm away from it, I feel something wrong with me. So I've always been thinking about it. And I mean, if you just like look at it in like, you know, fundamental terms, like the ocean economy right now is like already massive. It's not like, you know, the future space economy is going to be massive. Like the ocean economy is massive. It's like three trillion dollars in like annual spend in different ways. Right. It covers like 70 percent of the planet. Three billion people rely on it as their primary source of food. A billion as their as their primary source of income. And then, you know, while we have like, you know, robots and Mars and, you know, these like low cost drones going in our skies, the technology like in our oceans, like still pales in comparison. Like, you know, you look at like the ships that are out there today, like much of the technology is like very same and similar to like what we had years ago. The unmanned, you know, underwater drones are like, you know, pretty much like the same as well there. Like the kind of key core technology stack supporting like the key pillars of the ocean, whether it be transport, fisheries, defense, energy, you know, biodiversity, all these areas. It's just like, it's the same old like stagnant incumbents, large scale incumbents offering solutions that, you know, are rolling on like ancient software. And there's just like very little innovation going on there. It's like, you know, you ask someone like, what is like a sexy ocean start up? And it's like, they're kind of scratching their heads for a bit. You know, whereas you ask them about space, it's like SpaceX straight away. It's like, you know, it's straight away. It's like you ask them about aerospace. It's like, oh, boom. So yeah, this is like the kind of like the core of the thesis.