Earlier this week, Greg Hamblin hosted one of our partners, Jordan Flake on his new podcast, On The Docket.
We had a great time! The whole episode will be a treat.
..In this episode, Greg asked Jordan to explain some of the events surrounding the Hyperloop lawsuit:
Greg Hamblin: The hyperloop. This is a big deal here in Nevada. But it's now much less likely to come to pass because of the co-founders doing what? It was just in the news. I don't know if you saw. Well, you want to take a shot at it?
Brandon Trout: I'm actually not sure. I'll let you go.
Jordan Flake: All right. Brannon has said a few times this morning, he said, "Hey, I actually read this one. I finally get to say, 'Hey, I actually read this one."
Greg Hamblin: Did you? Oh, good.
Jordan Flake: What happened was that, obviously, something like this, there's an insane amount of money's thrown at it right off the bat, because there's so much research and development. It's just going to require a ton of money.
Greg Hamblin: And this is one of those Elon Musk related projects.
Jordan Flake: It is. Yeah, yup, exactly. Elon Musk is basically very extended with this and some of his other projects, like Space X or whatever. It's like, "Hey, we need these rockets. We're not sure why, but we need them. It's going to be great." Hyperloop could be very very useful, but you have a situation where they figure that each mile of hyperloop is going to be estimated $10 million.
Greg Hamblin: Holy cow.
Brandon Trout: Wow.
Greg Hamblin: It's not going to be cheap to make this. The upfront kind of investment of cash is just huge. Then the potential for this to just change our society is huge too. I mean, it's a huge upfront investment, but it's also a really big power play on the back end because whoever basically controls the next mode of transportation, especially transportation ... I hope everyone knows what a hyperloop, the theory behind it is, that you create essentially vacuums-
Greg Hamblin: It's a big tube, right?
Jordan Flake: And magnets to reduce friction and have people go extremely quickly. Anyway, the point is, so much money thrown around that the co-founders of the company that is kind of trying to develop it really started fighting with each other.
Brandon Trout: Right.
Greg Hamblin: Particularly, one side of the company was accused of paying off wives and lovers in huge amounts of money.
Greg Hamblin: Right. $40,000 a month for PR work paid to fiancée.
Jordan Flake: Yeah, $40,000 a month, which really in the grand scheme of how much money is going into this wouldn't seem like a lot, but it's just very nepotism-
Brandon Trout: That's still a lot.
Greg Hamblin: And abusive. The other co-founder makes this complaint and says, "Hey, this doesn't fly and I'm going to raise all these issues and I'm going to file a lawsuit." He comes into work and what should he find on his desk? Bonus question for the host.
Brandon Trout: Is it oil?
Jordan Flake: Oh, probably. That would have been good. A noose!
Jordan Flake: Somebody had, not just somebody, but one of the other people involved, had been caught on video taking a noose and setting it on-
Greg Hamblin: Putting it on his desk, like a threat.
Jordan Flake: Of his new archenemy. So anyway.
Greg Hamblin: This is the world of startups.
Jordan Flake: Yeah, it is. And that's the thing, it's kind of surprising. It's not like all the other startups in the world were clean. I mean, Facebook, Microsoft. All these startups that had these - Apple - that had this potential to change the world had an animosity and greed and intrigue.
Greg Hamblin: I'm sure.
