Augustus Doricko: Rain Maker exiting stealth mode with weather modification progress across western US and Middle East

we're in there yeah fantastic thanks Gary yeah have a great day Gary we'll talk to you soon let's bring in Augustus how you doing Augustus what's new I'm blessed dude um I'm back in gundo for a spell rather than fantastic the the near East or the mountains of the Rockies um so uh it's it's been a Vibe it's been sunny and warm which has been different for rain makers the last four months that's great yeah wherever you guys go it gets cold it starts snowing raining it's a it's a tough life yeah I mean this looks kind of like I haven't watched thef Prison interview but you kind of have a prison Vibe going on behind you but uh I like it maybe we get some drywall behind you on the next one yeah but we were talking about you earlier because uh uh Luke Metro's in Arena magazine talking about how everyone wants to reindustrialize America but nobody wants to work in a factory and I feel like you've made working in a factory cool uh can you break down your current uh Factory stack where are you sleeping uh can we get you on an eight sleep soon dude it's so funny you say that we um we decided like a month ago um okay we're big enough now we're hiring like serious scientists we're bringing government people through no more bunk beds in the factory um so the room that I'm in now used to have four bunk beds in it the room over there used to have two bunk beds in it um a lot of the dropouts and Engineers were living here we had a tradition for a bit where if you moved from across the country you either had to live in your car in the parking lot or in one of the bunk beds um so that well it lasted the peanut gallery on x is going to start saying oh it's time to short rain maker they don't sleep in the office anymore they're too legit they're too legit they have too many government officials coming in to try to get their bit you know to try to work with them but at the very least we're staying in gundo like some other unnamed gundo companies that a little bit of drama sco drama we don't I I always thought that gundo was like the place that you could eventually graduate out of because once you need 100,000 square feet like it's just not it's just it is a small City so you know I I I'm rooting for the for the the the gundo incubations that go on to do greater things and eventually need to expand and eventually rename whole cities in Texas uh you know that's that's what I hope for you but can you give me the quick uh like the latest pitch on how you're describing rain maker I know it's evolved a little bit uh what's the what's the core product that you're selling right now yeah so rain maker is making Earth habitable by making it precipitate more and more rain and more snow in Aid environments so Farms that don't have enough water ecosystems that need to be restored and cities in Aid regions that need water um we're making that happen with Advanced remote sensing so radar liar satellite data we're using open source stuff and some own uh some things of our own that we're going to tease a little bit later in the month um our own radar uh to find the right clouds to seed and then fly our own severe weather resistant and anti-icing capable drones into those clouds um spraying a mineral called Silver iodide that freezes the liquid in the cloud into big enough snowflakes so that they uh fall and stay as snow or if it's warm beneath the cloud melt back into rain how many drones have you crashed uh between you me and uh not the Federal Aviation Administration um no we've crashed we've crashed dozens of drones um we uh we have one corporate value at rain maker um and it's that we like the taste of blood in our mouth um and that's sort of an extension of like uh you know the Elon thing about chewing glass it's kind of just a bummer right and like building a deep tech company is especially hard but if you Pavlov yourself into loving interfacing with reality in such a way that you get like good feedback you learn how you failed you learn what to do better next time um you end up with a bunch of people kind of like uh Rocky you know that like just fight harder and do better the the more they get punched in the face and so um we've crashed a lot of drones on Snowy wet cold mountain tops and uh everyone's better for it what's the balance like now for you in the field doing the engineering work building the actual product selling and then government stuff you're in a suit you're testifying you're you know there's you're shaking your head when someone's you know espousing a conspiracy theory about you uh we've seen the viral Clips how do you balance those two things yeah I'm uh I'm going back to Tennessee uh this year because they're actually trying to elevate the punishment for weather modification a criminal offense um and in addition to that I'm going to go to Florida's legal now but if you want to make it rain we're putting you in ja I mean I I I I think you'd be just as productive in prison like you're already kind of in prison you just be more locked in uh it'd be a minor setback if they lock you up I'm sure I'm sure the rest of your Bros would like break you out in some heroic scheme or you can or you can make calls like a like a dawn from the prison right exactly exactly uh yeah I guess going off of that big question for me weather modification is so charged you're in this beautiful situation where you piss off both you piss off people in the center sometimes you piss off people on the left people on the right you know people on the on the right might say you know that's you know it's just wrong to be changing the weather or have some concerns there people on the left or just you know maybe anti-science sometimes uh how how has it been trying to thread the needle obviously you're not trying to make everybody happy but you need to get people generally bought into what you're doing to make things happen dude water is a nonpartisan issue whether you want ecosystems restored or you want more water for your farm or you want Urban Development in your city we want to bring you water we can bring water more cost effectively than even desalination um and then when it comes to like the real Fringe edges uh because everybody in the middle is bought into that mission of abundance right for whatever their uh particular issue is um you know I personally believe that like genesis 126 it's the first commission that God gives man at the beginning of time is to Steward the Earth the Seas and the skies rain maker is trying to embody that value set and be good stewards of the world as we take dominion over the skies um and so that plays to some extent with the more tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists on the right and when it comes to the left some people think that like you know anytime you modify anything on the planet humans always make it worse um and that's just like not true um but even if you believe it to be the case like we've we've messed up the planet so badly already might as well take deliberate action to try to repair it um and so people on the farle are generally more game with that yeah that makes sense uh has uh what are some of the most ambitious projects and and places uh obviously we went out to uh what was that place out in the desert we went to Sultan sea the sultan sea uh that was a really cool case study uh are there other kind of like uh like long-term projects that you think uh are kind of on the bucket list that you want to make amazing one day yeah the Great Salt Lake is in a deficit of about 500,000 AC feet of water per year um the be river is the primary tributary into the Great Salt Lake and it has mountains with lots of Juicy clouds from Utah to Wyoming to Idaho all that flow into it um I think that restoring the Great Salt Lake is like an American priority and a must and even more interestingly than that something in the distant future for rain maker is um the Winter Olympics in 2034 we're going to be held in Salt Lake and China in 2008 had this whole Big Show and dance where they made it rain before the parades so it didn't on the Olympic Games we want to show a force a decade from now to make more fresh PO for all the Olympic Games in nice uh speaking of tryina the first I think the first time I ever met you you mentioned you came in just like completely uh just aggressively telling me that China was reforesting the GOI desert by planting a bunch of trees that's obviously not your business but like is anyone working on that that feels important if you're really thinking about like terraforming certain parts of America uh and like reclaiming and just improving different biomes like how does that play in is that just a different startup do we need another company to build that is that something that you would eventually expand into how does that all play into this uh like whole plan yeah rain maker longterm is the terraforming company right we want to take any ecosystem and make it both symbiotically flourishing for human kind and uh the environment um there's no companies that I know of doing reforestation although there's a bunch of University Labs that are spraying uh seeds from drones really cool weird clever thing where when the seed hits water um it unravels and sort of acts as like a little natural drill to drill the seed into the ground that's pretty cool but I haven't seen it commercialized yet and um someday I do want rain maker in the business of all sorts of different terraforming stuff like planting trees literally boiling the ocean by the way if you boil enough of the ocean then you create more clouds um so we it here first is boiling the ocean boiling the ocean eventually we'll talk to you in 20 years when you're still grinding at this being like yeah I I I'm I'm still trying to boil the ocean yeah uh one I just have to say you know I I feel like I've seen pretty much the entire Augustus Arc obviously met you at right after you're graduating uh in New York you were fixated on this problem from our very first conversation uh I I always uh you know and it's been amazing to watch and and and be a small uh investor um you have found the um you've you've shown the the perfect ability to balance attention and progress right so many people would have said Augustus is so good at getting attention that it's almost bearish right because Founders can get on this sort of negative feedback or sort of positive that uh feedback loop that becomes negative where they so so good at posting and they're so good at the internet that they just get sort of fixated on that and then that becomes their sort of uh dimension of progress uh how have you balanced sort of yapping and building um and uh you know I want to give you credit for not being at a lot of the popular events over the last year right there was you know multiple of the events that we went to were places that I know you got an invite and I know you turned down um how what does the next you know two three years look like uh for you in terms of balancing yapping uh knowing that you need to be making you know massive forward progress on the business as well to give credit where credit is due it was in no small part uh Cogan's shot that was called where he said like listen you guys are going to get out over your skis and seem like even more of a bunch of goofballs than you actually in fact are um and so we we deliberately decided um about in the middle of last year just to kind of go like media Blackout um and I've talked to a bunch of my employees that have said like yeah I worked at other companies where the founder was a really big yapper and yes you need to be an evangelist but then like the founder doesn't know some like fundamental Crux of the tech problem and the company blows up because of that um and so I uh you know we were talking about like our publication strategy and some Media stuff and we gave it to our PR people and they were like hey can you dumb it down and make this less Technical and the funny part about that was like our science team already told us like you guys are gonna make us seem like idiots um and so we have we've done extraordinary things particularly in the last five months and I'm so proud to work with people that I do and um you know not to be like a coming soon guy but um in uh the end of this month in April we're going to start to unveil the products and the progress that we've made um across the entire Western United States and then um I've alluded to online the Middle East a little bit we've done some stuff there nice progress the the Fox Business pod was taken from a Mountaintop in the Middle East and I didn't share that lot that's amazing uh when I read your last investor update I genuinely was shocked because I people don't have any uh I I don't think the average person has any sense of how much you guys uh how much progress you guys um you know have made in in the last year and a half it's it's really incredible yeah narrative violation not for not for Augustus not for Augustus but yeah I mean for the for the peanut gallery yeah the peanut gallery but we're that's why the show exists to what uh I want to get I want to get into some of the bigger sort of more important questions uh What uh what are you benching these days oh dude I imagine I imagine it's G to be like the last time I lifted like you bring an intensity to weightlifting that is inspirational I don't even know if we've I don't have you ever gotten a proper lift with a gus like he's going in there seen he's bringing the same intensity that he brings to building to every single set but it's hard when you're traveling it's always hard to get in the gym when you're traveling so break it down how's it going dude so yeah like I said this is a medium I'm like 37 pounds lighter than when I started rain maker um that's mostly muscle um so I I don't think my one rep Maxes are what they used to be but we still have the smelling salts on the rack downstairs so I was telling John John woke up Monday like deathly ill and I and I was saying we need to get smelling salts just here on the set so that if we need to really you know we need to podcast with same intensity that Augustus builds you know hard tech exactly of course I would I would rip Lucy smelling we we actually got some in the office uh back in like 2016 2017 when we were building the company and it's a it's a wild ride if you haven't done the smelling salts it's intense um what uh what area of the broader hard tech industry are you most excited about obviously uh you're 100% locked in but uh yeah I'd be curious like what is the space that uh you know when when you're sort of looking left or right what what's most exciting uh I know that on a long enough time Horizon uh I'm sure you plan to enter many of those spaces but uh in the near term what are you excited about uh Vision fion fion fion you might not be very surprised but um my dear friend Isaiah Taylor is uh absolutely kicking ass when it comes to nuclear and I think blowing the lid off a lot of people's expectations about how long it takes takes to build a reactor to get power positive um I also think like a really important point you know when you you brought up before how you do publicity how you do media um The Valor atomics W zero unveiling was an incredible event and the Aesthetics were off the charts and like a lot of people said oh look at the facade like that's so over the top but also if hardtech isn't cool I think something that people don't understand about the gundo is like it's been a very deliberately engineered aesthetic effort to make hardtech sick because if it's not then everybody's going to end up in finance again the Next Generation the lower class of Zoomers they're going to end up doing software engineering so making things incredible and cool I think is really important and then having the technical chops to back it up and unveil a spectacular theral thermal prototype like that is is really sweet and um I'm excited to go hang out with the tailor in the Philippines to see War I come on yeah it's the the future should look like the future and bringing those Aesthetics to Bear can can have a benefit uh as long as you're also delivering the real thing and it's not vaporware right uh is there a new class of gundo startups that are coming in because you built this universe this Cinematic Universe that was kind of around you and whenever there'd be a profile Isaiah would be there a couple other guys would be there the neros crew the Pico grid crew a couple other folks dra right uh but is there is there a new edition that we need an update on gundo or is there just like a whole separate crew that you're not even overseeing as The Godfather of the gundo dude yeah so the gundo book club is a lot of these dudes rather than being like I don't know 23 through 27 they're like 19 through 23 totally different cohort um a lot of cool companies Teddy cohort from finally made it to the gundo from Georgia really cool Aries is sick um Chris what's his last name otoman um yeah yeah he is building subc Vehicles there's a whole new click and uh we're almost out of touch with as you know part of what made gundo possible and like the initial do Vibe real possible was we were all running like preed companies so we had a lot of time on our hands and kind of just like do around and so we didn't even get to know these guys as well um but they're a super tight click like the original founding group of gundo bros that's cool uh what are you thinking about uh supply chain uh there's been a lot of debate over you know Chinese drone Motors and how hard it is I mean I've talked to andral guys who are like yeah like there's all sorts of pieces that are just hard to get I was hearing uh I think you were at that talk where uh someone was highlighting that there's only like one tin smelting factory in America now and like it's just like there's all these weird things where like you just can't get americanmade tin or you can't get American M so I'm sure you're thinking about that but uh also you know early stage it's not super critical immediately to be completely clean supply chain but what what what are you seeing as the supply chain develops and uh are are there any other gundo companies that you've been able to like kind of build on top of I know at one point you were saying that like oh yeah you just walked across the street there was a drone company that was helping you build the drones could you talk about the supply chain a little bit yeah absolutely I mean it is definitely still tough rain maker has the luxury of not being a defense company so the government requirements that we have are definitely different um I'm still a nationalist and a patriot though so in any circumstance where we can buy American or from an American colony like Taiwan I'm Pro um when it comes to like immediate supply chain and I think everybody has or has already or is having a part made by rang view um from Cameron Schiller's company um and so like having an investment casting Foundry right there is pretty sweet um how you get someone to innovate and like winding Motors um not totally sure but like boards I think actually we are going to see if not just because of soft Banks hundred billion dollars that they maybe do or don't have uh we will see a lot more of in the United States soon yeah that's cool there's one there's one American drone company that does small motors I think they're up in Seattle and I think they I think they might have got they might have been family-owned they got bought by private equity and then they shipped off to China and so my dream is like someone goes in and does the PE and brings it back because like they clearly had some talent and some kind of core core competency here but uh I'm sure a lots of people are working on it uh Jordy you got another question should we let guess this go no big questions I know you got to get back to work uh what are you hiring for right now now uh how can we help you find them who's the most critical next tier thanks um before even I answer that question uh I briefly lived in South Lake Texas um which is where quins is from um so yes actually the the QB of UT Austin uh I was mistaken for multiple times I saw that reply oh yeah yeah that's right and so um I that was pretty funny but who am I hiring for go to make.

com careers um what we're interested in most now are uh radar scientists so if you've either worked at the low level on board Tes and qualification or meteorological weather radar um so that's more of like a university grad student position that never thought they'd be able to get into industry because nobody's ever cared about the weather in the private sector um those are the people that we want most uh after that though I would say airol chemists so if you've worked at Jewel um if you've worked at large industrial facilities that are making a lot of smoke um that's of interest and then um government Affairs if you're a a seasoned yapper from the hill um then we'd love to talk to you fantastic amazing well thanks so much for joining Augustus you're always welcome on the show whenever ABS man we need one of those uh quarter Zips there they look fantastic send them over to the studio wear them special episodes whenever it's raining we'll wear them yeah that's good