Advanced Spade Company's Daniel Kimminau on burying power lines with tech from SpaceX, Boring Co., and Anduril

Speaker 1: the show,

Speaker 2: the founder and CEO.

Speaker 1: What's going on? What do got in your hand there?

Speaker 2: Going subterranean, I think. What's going on?

Speaker 1: Look at that microphone. Woah. Look at that. Lucy. Lucy.

Speaker 2: There we go. Jordy, you got that.

Speaker 1: Check. Check. I got it. Check. Check.

Speaker 2: I got the same flavor, but in a different form factor. But thanks...

Speaker 1: Alright. So what's what's going on in here?

Speaker 2: What's going on?

Speaker 1: What's going on here?

Speaker 5: This is our media debut. We we're like famously under the radar and so we wanted to show off all the cool stuff. We get to play with a bunch of fun things.

Speaker 2: Awesome.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Amazing. Well well, yeah. So so introduce yourself and the company.

Speaker 2: And give us background. Have you worked at anywhere relevant to the current mission?

Speaker 5: Oh, yeah. I've probably only worked at relevant relevant places.

Speaker 2: Name them off.

Speaker 5: So, yeah. I mean, way way way back when, I was a student and did the the Hyperloop competition when it was just like designed for college students. And our team did really well. They got me in the door at SpaceX. And I think I was like the only person that worked at SpaceX, and I was like, didn't care about rockets. Just wanted to build transportation. And, yeah, then from there, we like built built the Hyperloop track and like ran that competition, and like right before we were we were kind of like showing it off, you know, was like, oh, we're gonna do it. We gotta be serious. Let's go like dig a hole in the parking lot. And that's kinda where Boring Company started, and so then I got to got to help start that and like do that for quite a while, and it, there's some, like, wildly fascinating technical problems when you start looking at underground construction. And so, kind of, like, occupied my whole brain for a while, then we went... Was in was in Austin building building for a couple of Elon companies doing just like a lot more site development. And there's like crazy construction coordination of... In like underground utilities. Like, it it is wild how difficult it is to know what's there and not hit it. And so... Yeah.

Speaker 1: Had a couple accidents along the way, you know?

Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1: To say the least.

Speaker 5: There's couple water lines in Austin that like I know where every inch of that line is personally. So... Like, but these these kinda like... It's... It was so wild working at at SpaceX and seeing like, do we know where, like, satellites are to millimeter grade? And then underground construction, it, looks upside down because of these, like, technical problems and and and just, an integration of data. And so this... I ruined a lot of parties. I just kept thinking and talking about this constantly. And then, yeah, I got to I got to spend like two years at Androl, which was was awesome. And it like finally met kind of some smart people. They tipped me in the right direction. And then, yeah, I was really fixated on like, okay, there's a couple of technical things you can go build. They're hard to build, but you go build those, and then this would make you really good at building underground. And if you're gonna build underground, the really, really useful thing to do is go build underground utilities. Mhmm. And so that is, you know, 2024, we started Advanced Spade Company. I mean, I was running around telling everyone, like, do power lines care, put them underground, and everyone's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, we're in my garage, and then like LA started burning down around us, and then all of a sudden, everyone was calling. We had like big wigs coming to just my garage, and seeing like, what can we possibly do to get power lines underground. And yeah, we've been going... Yeah, we've going for two years now and having a ball digging holes, burying utilities in those holes. It's great business.

Speaker 1: So glad you're doing this. Yeah. Like, where where I live, I live in Malibu and like there's... All the power lines should be underground. I think the power is getting shut off for at least some parts of the city this this week just because there's like... There's high winds and and the utility knows they need to do it, but it just seems like it's really hard and expensive and so everyone just keeps kicking the can down the road. And and so yeah, it seems like super super important work. How do you how do you even go about like what what is what is what is revenue even look like in this business? Like, are you... Like, who who's actually getting the the... These are like massive infrastructure projects. I imagine you guys are like part of that or are you guys like the are you guys like the the primary partner that's like bidding on on these like kind of opportunities?

Speaker 5: Yeah. It's a... I mean, it's a very hard thing to figure out early on, but we we've kind of early days of mastering it, but we're getting quite good at this sort of like, find the... Essentially, like, the cheapest, shittiest work that nobody wants and that nobody is good at, and start there, and then you go start doing it, and then you have like a room full of engineers building way better tools, like integrating the data, just like make that work supercharged. And then as your reputation gets good, you'll start getting on bigger and bigger projects, and getting bigger and bigger scope, and you just keep sort of clawing the next thing forward. So we started in private utility locating. We were really good at making maps, and so then these general contractors who are typically the ones that like hold the contract Yeah. From the utility, they would say like, hey, like, we keep hitting stuff, the drillers are struggling, you guys make a really good map, can you come drill for us? We're like, yes. That, you know, secret plan the whole time. And then we go start drilling and, like, we already come in with a bit of an edge because we have, like, really good datasets, really good maps. And then we just, like, keep going for, Right? Like apply the better tech there. You go build it better there. And you start on like really small shots. You're kind of like a sub, and you get called in last second, and it's it's very like... It is ground game, and it is reputation based. And you just, like, keep building those and the tech lets us, like, speed run the normal, like, construction growth curve.

Speaker 1: So you're basically just expanding the scope of what you're doing and then eventually people are gonna realize, like, hey, this GC is actually just a very thin wrapper around the advanced paid company and then you guys eventually will will bid for the for then... For the project yourself?

Speaker 5: Yeah. And that's... There's like a... I mean, yeah. There's there's a bit of a mix. Like, there are days where being a a subcontractor is really nice, because it's just like a lot less that we have to deal with, but then you also wind up like you have no control over your own destiny. Yeah. And so the way we see it is kind of like our service team, I mean, feels very big for us, but like is is quite small. And we sort of just keep moving up in terms of technical difficulty. And then as we move up, we wanna sort of, like, leave the lower end market to where it's, like... We don't want to be a monopoly of all things utility construction. That's, like a really tough game to be in. So what we do is we take the tools that we've developed to get really good in that market, and then we turn around and sell them to the like mom and pop shops. So private locating is one where like we're kind of phasing out of it, you know, like we can do like these really high quality maps on like really, like customers who care a lot about the data. So a lot of the like field work for just like marking and pre construction stuff, it's it's just like we aren't the best person to go do it, but now we can sell them a locator that we're like, hey, we spent years perfecting this and making it so that like, we can move crazy fast. It does all the things that you want. And that's... There's this theory in in construction of kind of like golden shovels. Everyone wants to sell you, say like, hey, guy, like, contractor who lives on 3% margin, pay me a ton of money, buy this golden shovel, and like, I I promise you that it's gonna make you a bunch of money in the end. And that's... It's like a brutal business, like, most people fail when they when they try to do that. Whereas if we say like, hey, we've eaten your lunch. We've taken every contract you've had for the last year, and now we don't wanna do it anymore. Here's the tool that, like, let us go beat you. Mhmm. Now it's an easy sell. Like, everyone everyone wants that tool.

Speaker 1: Interesting. Fascinating.

Speaker 2: How important is reliability? Like, how much how much opportunity is there in, like, innovation, robotics, the really sexy advanced stuff, entirely new equipment versus, like, just taking a design that works and simplifying it, removing complexity, and just getting a way different economic equation like a reusable rocket at SpaceX, for example?

Speaker 5: It's there there are a bunch of cool things that are like, no one's ever done this and it's gonna count on like material advancements in in tech. We... I can't wait to come tell you about those in like The five reality is right now, it is that like tech... You can kinda look anywhere in the industry and everyone like hates each other. Everyone thinks that the other part is like under serving them.

Speaker 3: Sure.

Speaker 5: There is a stack of like tech that can solve pretty much any of the problems, but you're paying like 18 different people. So one one customer was like, oh, you guys are really just like a a slick integrator of all these things. I'm like, yeah, that's a way to say it. I mean, we also have like, we have zero SaaS cost. We don't pay like

Speaker 2: Oh, sure.

Speaker 5: For added layers. Like, we can go make those things. So like some challenges are mostly just integrate... I mean like, construction workers love having details sent to their phone. It's like Sure. The easiest way to make them happy Yep. And it's like not hard to do. Yep. Making a new locator is like quite hard to do. It's like... So Makes sense. There's there's a mix. Some days, it feels like if you just take good notes and then go ahead and look at those notes, you're like notch above. Yeah. You're really well. Last

Speaker 2: question for me. Can you walk us through what's behind you? It feels like I'm looking at maybe three different vehicles, but what's your product? What's modified? What's the purpose of all this?

Speaker 5: Everything here is like our config of something that you buy. So we've got a directional drill. Mhmm. So this is like a super common drill that you'll see. Like, you guys will see it on the street. They're all over LA, every... Everywhere. And these are these are kind of like the big... This is the this is the thing where, you know, like these tools really proved their value, basically. Everyone wants underground. Grid investment has like, in the last ten years, it's tripled. Mhmm. Reliability is worse by every single metric. And

Speaker 2: every...

Speaker 5: Like, the problem problem is overhead. You you keep putting stuff overhead, it keeps failing. Everyone wants to go underground. There's no, like, secret there. It just costs too much. And really when fiber started rolling out super aggressively, then directional drills, you had this problem where you're like crossing a rural road, how do you do it? And it's like, what do you... You can't dig a trench and like stop a two lane country road. Sure. So directional drills became like ubiquitous. They were everywhere because you can just pop a shot under the road. Cool. Then they proved their worth, this whole idea of being trenchless and being like less intrusive, less invasive in rural places. Now, the fiber companies are trying to do it in cities, and it's like, I mean, look at the news. Right? Like Mhmm. New York Airport just got shut down because of people, like, operating, and there's fiber in the ground, you, like, hit it, and it's, like, the tool set and the tech set is just not there to be able to, like, be trenchless or safely work in cities. And so that's kind of where we started. And, yeah, like, data center boom has pushed things forward, but it's it's reduced the barrier to cost a lot. Then we just have big trucks.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 5: We've got a mud truck, so like drilling is a very fluids game. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah. It makes sense.

Speaker 1: Very cool. I love the I love the the... Your design. Like, it's so cool. Like, it feels like it could just be, like, an everyday, like, construction, general contracting Yeah. Logo. It has that feeling, but it's very cool. How big the team today?

Speaker 5: We're like 50, 55, something like that.

Speaker 2: Hiring more, I assume?

Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah. Always.

Speaker 1: To say the least.

Speaker 2: A lot of digging to do.

Speaker 5: Well... Yeah. I'm on a I'm on a public awareness... I mean, we're based in Long Beach, so we're surrounded by space companies.

Speaker 2: Nice. And I

Speaker 5: am on a public awareness campaign of like, space doesn't matter. No one, don't look up. Know, don't dig holes.

Speaker 2: Space doesn't matter. I was taking it from somebody who worked at SpaceX. That's great.

Speaker 1: Look down.

Speaker 2: Thank you for coming on the show.

Speaker 1: Great to meet you, Daniel. Fascinating company. Journey. Come back on soon. Yeah. And please please land some contracts in my backyard Yeah. ASAP.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I'd love it.

Speaker 5: Coming to your streets, baby.

Speaker 1: Fantastic. Can't wait.

Speaker 2: Talk to you soon. Great talk

Speaker 1: to you, dude.

Speaker 2: Let me tell you about Cisco. Critical infrastructure for the AI era unlock seamless real time experiences and new value with Cisco. We got to pull up this video of Assetto Corsa with mods running DLSS five which is NVIDIA's AI upresing. And I was looking at this with Jordy yesterday. We're like, oh, we should pull this up on the show. This is really cool. I can't believe they took a video game and they added some mods to make it look more realistic and they added some AI uprising and it looks like a YouTube video. It looks real. And we were like, ah, but it might just be a video. So maybe this is someone trying to trick us into thinking it's fake AI because this is happening. There's a lot of video games that are rebranding as like, oh, we vibe coded this game. And in fact they've been working on it for a couple of years. It's not actually vibe coded. And I was like, ah, this might be fake in that it's real video. But it turns out it's not fake. This is a video game, I believe. I've done a bunch of research and tried to debunk the idea that this was Assetto Corsa. I believe it is Assetto Corsa but I cannot tell it from real video. Like it's fully passed the Turing test at this point. This is like maybe the first video that I've been able to watch the full thing and firmly say like we are cooked in the in terms of video. Like this is... This passes the touring test. We were both confused by it. I don't know if you have any other takeaways. The the interesting thing is that you...

Speaker 1: My takeaway is I gotta shave more seconds off my lap time at You

Speaker 2: gotta shave some time off your off your time. But do you want this? Because there was some debate over I don't want my video games to look real. I want them to look like a game. Part of what makes this look real is that there's some camera shake and your... The camera position is behind the driver's head. As someone who spends a lot of time in a racing simulator, would you want this filter on? Would you want this feature? Is this appealing or is this just a cool viral novelty?

Speaker 1: I don't really care that much about graphics.

Speaker 2: Okay.

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Speaker 1: Says, please stop cutting off the intro count down music on your livestream final cuts. I enjoy the intro song. Please move in.

Speaker 2: Really? That's interesting.

Speaker 1: It's just so long.

Speaker 2: But people know to skip to five minutes maybe? I don't know. That's that's something I never considered. We thought we were doing such a favor, saving you from having to tap tap tap tap tap or scroll forward. We thought we were going the extra mile. Takes us a little bit of time. Saves you.

Speaker 1: I think it's a little treat for showing up live. Oh. Music's a little treat

Speaker 2: Oh, okay. Yeah.

Speaker 1: For being If with us

Speaker 2: you want to enjoy the intro music.

Speaker 1: The real ones.

Speaker 2: Show up live.

Speaker 1: Show up live.

Speaker 2: Okay. Otherwise, 2PM It's live exclusive.

Speaker 1: It's a live exclusive. So...

Speaker 2: Sorry to you in the chat.

Speaker 1: Sorry, We're

Speaker 2: not we're not giving you what you want. We're not listening to the customers. The customers don't know what they want. They'd ask for a faster horse. Well, there is a lot of a lot of fake news on the Internet. There's this idea of single flight life insurance from Jetstar. I was able to debunk this. It's a really ridiculous concept. $8 in 3,000,000 if your flight crashes for a single flight. Of course. Jetstar does actually sell insurance, but not this way. Very funny post though, but be careful out there because I'm sure a lot of people saw this and thought, hey, maybe that's real. I like this take on jet lag. Jet lag is kind of holy to me. I'm tired because I flew. I flew too fast too far. My body misses a different sun. I haven't been getting jet lagged lately. I've been doing pretty well. I don't know. It's just that I've just been doing East Coast for a I couple of days in and

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Speaker 2: Get ready. Yeah. Do you think is actually gonna buy the the banana ball team? You think Disney or TKO and I've never watched The the

Speaker 1: second of it.

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Speaker 2: Training data for hallucinated AI video. They already do it in real life. Get it in the dataset. Let me tell you about Codex. Codex is a powerful workspace for getting work done with AI agents whether you're writing code, analyzing data, creating content or automating business workflows. Codex helps you move project forward from start to finish. The other story that is worth sharing is that Reese Witherspoon is buying her company back. Hello Sunshine. It was valued at $900,000,000 in 2021, but potentially, she's gonna get it back for just 94% of what that headline valuation was. I you think were saying that's around $7,000,000 or something for this production company. So Candle Media bet on Witherspoon's celebrity brand and book club but it fell short as growth in direct to consumer subscriptions lagged. But always fun rooting for a founder getting back in the full ownership seat. So a lot of silver lining there, although I'm sure there was some money that was wagered and lost. Who knows? Who knows where it goes next? But very exciting to see her maybe back at the helm and getting another bite of the apple. I am personally I'm personally rooting for it. Also, do you think this is a recession indicator? The fact that startup launches are starting to do paid partnerships with all the hottest anonymous accounts? Robert Sterling, Wall Street Bets, Greg, and...

Speaker 1: Yeah. This is just the biggest anti signal. Like if you do this, I just assume that I shouldn't... That no one should care about your company. So just don't do it.

Speaker 2: Don't do it, folks.

Speaker 1: Be interesting. Yeah. Do something Original. That is original that will break through.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I think there's enough people that will just... Your brand will just be like, yo, you're the Astroturf brand. You're the brand that had to buy, you know, quote tweets. But there is I I believe that there's a industrial complex around this now. Like there is

Speaker 1: a Yeah. There's multiple companies that do this.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And so it's probably something that's pretty turnkey.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Sheel was saying like if you pay for x premium it should just block the paid partnership.

Speaker 2: That would be interesting. Yeah. Maybe maybe that would be something to do. It is it is cool that the disclosure came because for there there was a while there on x where there was a lot of stuff that was paid and was not disclosed. And this feels like a a step forward in terms of transparency. Makes the platform better, honestly.

Speaker 1: I'm Yeah.

Speaker 2: I'm I'm enjoying it. And I don't see that many of these paid partnerships. And sometimes they're funny. Anyway Well thank you for tuning into TBPN. Leave us five stars on

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