First Principles | How Do Military Drones Fly Without GPS? | Ian Laffey, Theseus @1stPrinciplesFM | Uploaded September 2024 | Updated October 2024, 4 minutes ago.
The Theseus founders met at the El Segundo hackathon, got into Y Combinator two weeks later, and flew their first GPS-denied drone navigation prototype two weeks after that. Today, just 7 months later, they've completed long-distance tests on base with American special forces.
I got to sit down with Ian Laffey, Theseus CTO, to ask a bunch of technical questions about how the product works. (And he only had to tell me "sorry, that's a secret" one time.)
I hope you enjoy the convo!
Timestamps
00:00 — What is Theseus?
00:37 — What role does GPS play in modern conflict?
04:27 — What are the state of the art drones, and where did Theseus start?
07:35 — How did the company get started so quickly?
16:32 — How does GPS-denied drone navigation work?
21:56 — How can you defeat countermeasures & make the product resilient? ("If I say anything, my co-founders will kill me.")
24:11 — Why visual spectrum and not other sensors?
30:20 — Why is hardware so hard?
32:32 — How can you iterate quickly when building hardware?
38:21 — What's it like to build a hardware company as part of Y Combinator?
41:11 — What will Theseus demo before demo day?
42:27 — How do you move fast as a defense company?
47:30 — How well does the current prototype perform?
51:39 — What's next?
The Theseus founders met at the El Segundo hackathon, got into Y Combinator two weeks later, and flew their first GPS-denied drone navigation prototype two weeks after that. Today, just 7 months later, they've completed long-distance tests on base with American special forces.
I got to sit down with Ian Laffey, Theseus CTO, to ask a bunch of technical questions about how the product works. (And he only had to tell me "sorry, that's a secret" one time.)
I hope you enjoy the convo!
Timestamps
00:00 — What is Theseus?
00:37 — What role does GPS play in modern conflict?
04:27 — What are the state of the art drones, and where did Theseus start?
07:35 — How did the company get started so quickly?
16:32 — How does GPS-denied drone navigation work?
21:56 — How can you defeat countermeasures & make the product resilient? ("If I say anything, my co-founders will kill me.")
24:11 — Why visual spectrum and not other sensors?
30:20 — Why is hardware so hard?
32:32 — How can you iterate quickly when building hardware?
38:21 — What's it like to build a hardware company as part of Y Combinator?
41:11 — What will Theseus demo before demo day?
42:27 — How do you move fast as a defense company?
47:30 — How well does the current prototype perform?
51:39 — What's next?
