I Built $200M Nuclear Energy Startup at 19 | JC.B, Fuse

Intro

00:00Fuse. We're on a mission to accelerate the world's transition to fusion energy. One of the only fusion companies that's actually making revenue. Started a company almost 6 years ago now. I was 19 at the time. Yeah. Never went to college. I never even submitted an application.

00:14Why do I need to convince an admission officer to like let me sit in a classroom for 4 years to then get a piece of paper that says I can potentially do something versus just do something and prove you can do it. life is too short and there's like 7 billion or more people on earth.

00:28So you just always ask yourself like why am I doing something that actually matters or like how can I contribute and I felt that there's a a real way to contribute to work on something that could be um civilization altering starting company was the fastest way to make progress I thought I'm Jes I'm the founder and CEO of fuse we're the only fusion company that has delivered experimental results of a new technology ology that was no one has built it before and published the results in nature.

01:02We've raised over $50 million of capital. We work with the US military and US government. March 13, we we've proven the machine at scale and now we have contracts to commercialize [Music]

Stop Wasting Time In School

01:20it. My father's a nuclear physicist, so growing up was just very curious about how the world works. You know, I've always liked to work on hard things and explore research topics. And then I very quickly learned that maybe spending time in academic environment was not the fastest way to make progress on technology.

01:37So that's why I decided to start you know my own company. I had started a nonprofit in education. The TS as a teenager things it was really hard to you know build things. It's you can't even get a credit card as under 18 which is you know pretty funny.

01:50you know, you cannot open a Shopify online store if you're under 18, which is kind of ridiculous considering all the other things you can do. So, I started a nonprofit to essentially liberate teenagers to dare and and to create. And we were funded by Google.org, the Canadian government, and and others.

02:06And we built that into pretty uh successful program. And we had some teenagers that now are off to doing great things. What I've done to date is a good example for others to realize that it's possible. If you really want to build something and you truly have the grit and tenacity, you can.

02:23A lot of people, you know, being young is has a competitive edge because you're naive and you've got a lot of stamina and energy. Definitely those early wins give you an early taste at freedom. You know, choosing to start as early as possible maximizes, you know, your chance at getting it right.

02:40And even if you fail, you make you burn yourself a little bit, as long as you don't die or don't go to jail, I think everything else can be tolerated and

Build Your Own Playbook In-House

02:54repaired. You know, I felt that there's a a real way to contribute to work on something civilization altering like a civilization scale and and history. every technology progress or civilizational development has been tied to like how much kilowatt hour is available per capita.

03:09So when you think about the industrial revolution and how that enabled the whole human prosperity and and technological advancements and you can tie that to coal afterwards and chemical era and I believe that fusion would unlock the next level of human prosperity you know the rise of the social middle class the rise of AI of quantum technologies like all of those critical technologies they need energy and without energy we can't have AI like how would you power all the data centers do you want it at the cost of people not being able to turn their lights on at the house.

03:42I don't think so. And so we will need significantly more energy and fusion is not the only ways to actually make that. So Titan is the world's highest power and highest energy impedance match Mars generator of its kind. What that matters to think about it as a giant battery that releases all of its energy really fast like in a billionth of a second.

04:01It's a very important question to ask. Is this a scientific nonprofit or is there a business here? cuz a lot of time people solve are building companies and I I wonder if that's better to be like a scientific research that's like nonprofit funded or grandfunded versus is this a business or a real company.

04:18Then the second is like really to question the fundamentals and what we've done for Titan was built in-house like over 80% of the Titan subsystems and components were built in-house at Fuse and so we took on the project knowing that we have the capacity to solve a lot of the problems and we vertically integrated which meant that as problems were arising we were able to solve them inhouse.

04:39building companies like you you always are updating the operating system is like an app you know and you you have to constantly debug and upgrade the operating system and you need different version for every 6 months or so. So you know very intentionally taking time to be introspective and to think about you know what has changed now.

04:55This is not the same company that it was before. Obviously the core fundamentals are the same but you know the way it operates is is different and bringing the right resources you know around you. You know there's people who are really good at the early stage and then you need a different type of skill set and and culture for growth stage and bringing in different people at the right time and having the introspection to think of what needs to be changed, what bugs need to be fixed and how to upgrade the operating system for the next phase is very

Young Founder Should Seek These People

05:30important. Certainly the company has come close to running out of capital at few moments in time. you know we we had some you know technology that at some point you know did not go as we had planned or we had run out of capital and we had to make really hard decisions but you know these are the moment that really define who we are you know just building this connective tissue as a team and this resilience the one thing that has been really awesome is like I'm young myself but we've built a team with you know some really experienced people from different aspects uh of the

05:58government I had the fortune to work with some really smart people with some of the best people I've met fortunate enough that they're now part of one team and we're multiple vectors pointing in one direction and just if you're humble and you bring people that really can compleiment you that's a strength not a weakness.

06:13It's really important to be audacious and daring but also humble and it's your challenge to figure out how to overcome that will save you a lot of peace and help attract some great people where you recognize your weaknesses and vulnerabilities and build around them.

06:28that team is that mindset like most people actually want to be in environments where you know they're all contributing and learning from each other that's at least a healthy environment. We also really care about you know people who are just focused on getting done and you know getting the job done whatever it is versus know just talking.

06:45So we we have a really default for people who take agency who are autonomous and just want to get done who are really curious and third just give a you know like the people on our team really care. They stay up till 4:00 a.m. when we have a mission.

06:59They work on the weekends. They just go out of their own way to to do the job and like pick up the trash if needs be. You know, give a and care and just want to get done and just focus on that. I think you can get a lot done. It's It's actually really funny when people think that entrepreneurs are very big risk takers.

07:17I think like great entrepreneurs are really good like risk hedgers. Like the day you start the company, you've taken the most amount of risk and then your job all along is to retire risk and like choose very selectively which risk to derisk first and how to sequentially do that.

07:31for founders to think about risk mitigation as well as know equipping yourself with the right tool and most importantly with the right people.