Inside a $150M Silicon Valley Startup Tower

0:01 Founders' journey is really hard. You got to be able to get no again and again and again. >> My dream is that we are able to stop working in life so that people can live more creative lives. >> Silicon Valley is one of the hottest places in the world to break into as a founder. Everyone tells you the network is everything, but if you don't already live here, getting close to it could be almost impossible. And the rooms where things actually happen are closed to outsiders, but that's starting to change.

0:30 >> I was in a co-working space on the Mission Street. He walked into the co-working space with his suitcase. He told him, "I'm going to buy a building." I learned that he bought the building. >> Everyone here is a founder. Everyone is an innovator, a researcher. They're trying to make it work. >> Especially in the world of AI, if you really want to help with decision-making, you need to have a very deep understanding of your workflows of the individual companies.

0:50 >> I'm solving the problem with AI models not knowing who they're talking to, but I'm also giving robots the ability to know who's talking by the sound. >> Today, I'm going behind the scenes with Frontier Tower, a 16-story building in the middle of San Francisco that's been turned into a vertical village for founders. Every floor is dedicated to a different industry from AI to robotics to biotech to longevity. The startups working inside have collectively raised over $150 million. A place like this is where I would have wanted to go when I first came to SF trying to find my feet in this space.

1:25 You might just meet that one person that's going to give you the opportunity that's going to change your life. And that will happen here every day. There are talented founders building all over the world who never get near this city because they can't afford to try. So, the real question I want to understand is whether a place like this actually gives them a way in. Okay, today's going to be pretty cool. I'm catching up with a good friend of mine, Xenophon, who is the CEO at Frontier Tower, and he's going to be giving us an exclusive look inside this 16-story vertical village here in San Francisco that houses founders building in all sorts of different industries. It's a really cool office space for founders to work out of, especially ones who are in a bit earlier stage. They also have hotel. So, these three founders bought this building in San Francisco and turned it into this village for founders to work and hang out of. I think they're giving out cheap rates to founders who want to live in SF. For those who don't understand the landscape here with rent and getting a bed here, most people crash on couches including me a lot of the time because it's ridiculously expensive and kind of uneconomical to stay here and hang out here. This is going to be an episode for the early stage founders out there who want to see others killing it in San Francisco.

2:39 >> >> Yeah, you're good, man. >> How are you? >> Welcome to the tower officially. >> Hell, yeah. What's the plan? Who are we going to see? >> You're going to see Peter from Blue Alpha who does AI. He used to be ex-Tesla data scientist and now he's doing AI for marketing. And then we're going to talk to Alan Helmak and he's going to show us a couple of the things that he's been building. After that, we're going to go down to the second floor and talk to Lessia Hendrix who does space robotics specifically. We're going to talk to Kasim and Kasim just raised 11 millions to build a telephone AI receptionist. And then last but not least, there is a couple of other people that we're going to be checking out, Ryan and Live Coding Nights on the 10th floor.

3:21 >> So, this Frontier Tower actually belongs >> Frontier Tower is managed entirely by Berlin Haus which is the global company that's the manager of all the properties that we're going to be having. Berlin Haus is founded by Jakob Drasga, Christian Nagel, and Christian Peters. Christian is the real estate guy. CHP is the CTO. Jakob is the CEO and visionary founder of the project. They are very good at finding properties which are well priced in a good location and creating a community engagement around it that allows for these buildings to provide value to their members and to get more revenues increasing, right? So, basically, they're able to fill these buildings up quickly because of how they've been able to like build community and innovation together.

4:06 >> Oh, my second computer's here. >> Got it. >> What's up, man? I'm Will. >> Nice meeting you. >> Is this bringing back a bit of flashbacks for you at the early stage or >> I mean, yeah, it's not that long ago. >> >> Yeah, I wanted you guys to meet and interview him because I think his product is really cool and he's really cool, too. So, someone that's made it and grown out of the space.

4:27 >> we're going to go to the old digs. Okay. >> This used to be us. This used to be us and this used to be us as well. These are our friends that used to be there. >> I love it, man. And when did you guys move? Where are you now? >> We're on Market and Fourth. >> Oh, not far. >> Yeah, yeah. We have our own space, three meeting rooms. >> Yeah. >> Our own like Yeah, it's good. I mean, this was great for like to get to get started.

4:48 >> Oscar, when you guys you guys Tesla, you started this. >> Mhm. >> Why here? Why Fontain Tower? >> First, we were a couple blocks down, but it was just me and my co-founder in another co-working space. And then we raised capital. I was like, "Okay, we got we got to expand fast, you know, and we're going to hire some people." What we really liked about the tower tower, I met like the Christian and stuff and I liked the community aspect of it and we didn't want to have like our own meeting alone, but we wanted to actually like community and be able to >> What's up, man?

5:18 >> We're talking We're talking about you. >> We're talking about him. Like, why we chose the the tower in the first place. You know, I think community was a big one, other startups, central, price also played a role, you know, of like just like cost-effective little two-star business. I think we made a lot of great connections here up until this day. You know, are still like valued friends. And then I think it just came a point in time where we were seven and I think two cubes for seven is great, but now we're like 12. And for 12 people you just need like your own space and you need like your own meeting rooms. Like we have three meeting rooms now and they're like full most of the time. So, I think we just like outgrew the place, yeah.

5:58 >> Do you think you will outgrow your outgrow your office? >> Yeah. >> Yeah? >> Yeah. >> Well, we can offer you a whole floor. >> >> Good to meet you, man. Good to meet you. >> Now, you all know by now that part of my whole world outside of getting to film these amazing videos for you guys is taking calls and meetings. And summary notes for meetings are always really good on the day, but when I need to go and review something or follow up a month later, every detail that was said in the call counts. This is where our episode partner Grainer has been genuinely useful for me. It's the AI notepad that runs in the background of your calls and the recipe that I've been using all the time is super simple, but very effective. It's called make notes longer. And it does exactly what it says. It rewrites a traditional summary with extra detail and nuance that normal meeting notes may not include. And as you guys know, when you going off meeting notes from two months ago when you forgotten the actual conversation, every detail counts. I use it every day, so it's an easy one to recommend. There is a link down below in the description to get your first month of Grainer free.

7:01 Thank you so much to the legends at Grainer for making this video possible. Yeah, run me through it. Give me a bit of background context. How did you get into this? >> I've been building robots since 1983 when I built my first robot. And I got into it using kits. >> Good, he booted. Okay, he's getting past his power trouble. >> No, I just I just was paying attention to him because he's been having power issues. You see he had a crash. Okay, not to subtract >> I know.

7:27 >> I'm just saying, but he had a crash. So, now I have printed him a new set of feet made out of carbon fiber. >> Oh, wow. >> These are extremely strong. You see that's just PETG, but this is like steel. See, I just barely even marked it. >> Holy. >> You understand? >> What's that? >> He's a fighter. >> printed. >> Yes, yes, with the with my new printer. The the new one here, yes. This is carbon fiber. See how light it is?

7:51 >> very light. >> And it's like steel and I just smacked the snot out of it. That should have broken just about any piece of plastic. >> What do these do and and why did you build these? >> Okay, now these have all different purposes and functions and are the result of nothing that they started out to be, which is pretty much normal in this world, right? >> Sure. Yeah, yeah. >> Okay, this is a La Q, which is an extremely low-end robot that we put together for some hackathons for the college kids and the high school kids.

8:22 And it's a low-end Raspberry Pi robot that you can make and run simple models in YOLO and little things. On it has two cameras. So, I decided to upgrade it and add audio and hook in an Nvidia GPU and give it a brain, right? Give it real life. And so now it's a guard dog with many modes, which I can show you on the screen in a second. >> This is like a >> I'm talking about you now, bro.

8:46 >> real life Iron Man stuff. >> Yeah. >> Really is. >> Yeah. >> I'm Chloe, a social robot woman, and I'm running 100% locally right here on my own hardware. >> That's right. What is your hardware? If she doesn't know, she won't lie. >> Wow. >> AI likes to confabulate. Chloe won't. She'll either be quiet or she'll change the subject, which is totally cool. Then I know she doesn't know and I don't embarrass her. >> Yeah.

9:09 >> And I find it and I say, "Okay, search for it, right?" You know what I mean? >> And then they don't hallucinate. >> I'm all about keeping things real, so you can always trust my word. >> Chloe controls the same robot as outside, right? >> Yes, yes. >> I've seen so many robotics startups and companies cuz there's like a there's like different levels. There's like, you know, the tinkerer and the innovator.

9:40 And then it goes all the way up to like multi-billion dollar funded stuff. >> Production and industrial side stuff. Yeah, I think I think for where we are right now, it's in San Francisco. Everyone here is a founder. Everyone is an innovator, a researcher. They're trying to make it work. most of the things break all the time. The demos don't work as they should. But that's where you can find really innovative solutions for problems that they can then can scale into billions of dollars worth of value.

10:10 >> And And that's the thing about early stage, right? It's like you've got to take a risk. You got to take a bet on something that might not work right now. >> I was watching your videos. I was thinking >> Oh, thank you so much, man. That's awesome. Yeah, love to meet you. Love to meet you, too, man. >> You got fans, man. Of course. They're going to be here. The tower is 16 floors. We have the lounge, the co-working space. And you have the 14th floor, which was the human flourishing floor, but now it's going to become the general community floor, where multiple communities are going to be merging there. You have the Ethereum blockchain floor on the 12th. There's no 13th floor cuz it's bad luck.

10:47 >> >> Okay. >> You have longevity on the 11th, although I think that's going to be merging with human flourishing on the 14th floor to make this community floor. And we make that more longevity clinic and offices type. we have the robotics half floor on the 10th and the applied AI immersive commons on the other side. Then you have a whole floor for AI co-working on the ninth. Then the eighth floor, we have biotech and neurotech, where we have an actual biotech lab, which you should definitely check out.

11:15 And then maker space, which we are resetting up after changing leadership there. And we have the music and art and culture floor right underneath it on the sixth. The fifth is under construction for a full-on fitness center wellness center. The fourth used to be the robotics floor, but we're going to make it more offices for like larger tenants. Third and second is offices and event space. We're on the second floor and you're now here doing a hackathon, which I think you find quite interesting. So >> We're walking into a random hackathon.

11:44 We love this. >> And as as I said before, pizza always. >> Always pizza. Do you want some? >> Yeah, sure. >> You can have a slice. >> I used to be a lot skinnier when before I got >> We all did. We all did. >> My name is Leslie and I'm building Autonomous and we previously known as Space Robotics and we build robots for construction.

12:17 That's our primarily focusing on foundation work, so rebar tying, concrete traveling, concrete grinding, concrete polishing, all of the boring stuff. >> Boring is very attractive, though. >> Yeah. >> For revenue, of course. >> First and first, how many women are in hardware? You're one of the few I know that really kicks ass in hardware. How did you get there? What would you advise women who want to get into space to be? >> I'd say it's really hard. male or female like founders journey is really hard. You got to be able to get no again and again and again and I think like probably one of the toughest days I've had was when I had four investor calls scheduled back to back and the first three were a no on the spot and you kind of need to gather all your energy and come into number four like it's your first meeting of the day and you just had the first cup of coffee.

13:12 Let's go. Right? And I ended up getting a check from that investor. So it's it's really all about I think getting a no and still try to turn it into a yes or try again, try again, try again. I don't think it's like gender specific, but I think women need more courage to try and fail. And failing is okay, obviously, cuz I had to fail plenty to be here. >> Yeah. And tell me tell me about this pivot because obviously you guys were in space before and now we've gone to construction. So yeah, tell me all about >> I think I'm a very like practical person from a business perspective. So I think like not two three steps ahead, I think 10 steps ahead. If you have a dual use angle, you have a risk of the team having split priorities.

14:02 Or you need to grow the team and hire more. Hiring more is higher burn rate. so that's one risk. Another risk is that NASA has moved their deadlines so many times, right? That you cannot rely on that. And for investors, you need to always show progress and milestones. And if your milestones are all connected to NASA and US space journey and their milestones move, but maybe you're running out of runway and you need to raise next round and you were going to, you know, send a robot for the first moon walk or something, right? And it just didn't happen for things that are for reasons outside of your control.

14:47 what do you do then, right? So if we think about like pre-seed, I would say that if investor likes you as a founder, it's a go. Seed, it's the team. Has this founder been able to put together a good group of people? >> All right, I've finally stepped away. We have not had a chance to debrief what we're seeing here. There I I guess I was under the impression that there was mostly early stage founders here, but there's actually founders at all different stages, which is really interesting. It's one of those like breeding grounds for networking and meeting new people. And it was so cool to meet someone who watches the channel from literally the other side of the world. And places like this are such a good beginning for someone who's completely outside of SF who has no understanding of like how this kind of works here. And it's kind of like you can get a little taste of SF just from this building alone. And the amount of people you'll meet, different founders building so many crazy different things, it'll give you such an extreme level of access to all of what Silicon Valley has to offer. All right, we're heading up.

15:55 >> Yeah, it's on the rooftop. Woo! We made it. >> We made it, man. >> Yeah. >> So, this is our rooftop, which for me it doesn't look good, but for you cuz you're taller, you can see a lot better than me. Now, San Francisco, downtown and stuff. >> So cool. >> How do I Barrio's up there? You guys invest in crypto? >> >> Make sure that nothing happens. >> Yo, Jay. >> Jay.

16:25 >> Is that the restaurant you were at? >> Jay. >> Yo. >> Love to meet you. >> It is a spacious office, huh? First of all, let's let's like what's what is the product? >> Yeah, it's the data. >> Yeah, yeah. >> So, we are launching the world's first AI native carrier. Imagine like Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, but AI come already built in. So, if you want your business to never miss a call, reply every text, capture reservation, booking, payment, the number that we are selling capable of doing all included to your phone bill. So, you don't need to buy AI or voice tools from somewhere else.

16:59 This will include it to your carrier itself. >> First of all, how does this actually become native into a phone number for you guys to roll out and sell? Like how does it even work? >> That's a great question. So, imagine you have a phone number, be it on your phone or on a landline, and instead Instead making it a traditional number where you transfer to, you know, a different number that rings, a different phone, we have our intelligent routing infrastructure that can actually route to an AI assistant. And you can make it so that an AI answers first, or you ring the staff first, and let's say the AI, after it's like, you know, done its best to help out, it's exhausted all of its options, and then it can also transfer to the staff. And same thing, if let's say you prefer to just have the staff answer first, it times out, no one picks up the phone, then the AI comes in and you know, does its job, that sort of thing. And yeah, that is our in our, you know, our routing infrastructure, you know, the fun stuff that we made.

18:01 >> All the all the all the technical stuff. What is that? >> >> It is sharp. >> >> So, this is the Applied AI Lab. It's called the Immersive Commons, and our our job here is to bridge the gap between the digital and the physical. So, I'm currently focusing and bringing people into focus on five different things. the first one is just agency, and then we do immersion. So, how do we get people just to be more connected. Embodiment is the other focus. So, we want to give robots the ability to understand what it's like to have gravity. I mean, that's all a physical AI is. Then is simulation. So, this is really tough because it requires a lot of compute.

18:54 So, how do we make things better? Well, we can simulate it better, and then we can actually do it in real life. The final thing is synthesis. So, being able to create like new materials and new kind of like ideas, whether it's physical or non-physical, it's all synthesis. What is this? Okay, so these are agentic paintings. they are personalities that are more or less fully autonomous. Basically, they have their own memory, they make their own decisions. They also pick what they want to do next, and if they don't have a video to showcase it, they can just create it.

19:29 >> god, you know what this is? >> Harry Potter. >> It's Harry Potter. It's freaking Harry Potter. It's Hogwarts. >> That's the idea, and we're still like in its very nascent stage. We keep giving them more agency every week. But this whole showcase is basically a demo of what happens when you have when your agents have good memory. >> All right, so now we've kind of seen all the floors of the tower, and we're going to check out a completely different building that these guys also own. We're going to superhero hotel. It's like a few blocks up the road. We're going to scooter.

20:00 I can't hold the camera while I scooter, so we're going to have to teleport. We're going to see you guys there. All right, we teleported. We'll see you. >> Teleported. So, welcome to superhero hotel, which is right behind us. >> Hello, everyone. >> Hello. >> What's up, guys? >> Good work. >> This is a good place to hang out with your buddies. >> We didn't change anything around, so there are clearly it's a bit outdated when it comes to style, but there's some beautiful rooms.

20:26 And do you want to see a room? >> Yeah, let's go take a look. >> Want to see my room? >> You've got a room here? >> Yeah, I'm staying here. >> Okay. >> I'm 24/7 Frontier Tower superhero, man. >> This is wild. Okay, yeah, let's check it out. What is there servicing? Is there like How does it work? >> you jump in, you check in, then what? After you finish up, of course. >> We are focused on founders and communities of of really good developers, right? Like and and builders. Because we believe that these people can in the future own this. And how would that work? We would buy a hundred of those properties across the world. They would create a a portfolio of all of them, where the revenue of each property buys a share of that portfolio. So, gradually the profits of each property is going to be used to buy out the property tree and make it so that it's a lot more self-owned, which is the long-term objective of a doubt five structure.

21:22 That's not fully formed yet because of the compliance reasons. So, that's basically the long-term plan, basically the vision, how it marries the network society with the real estate side, why San Francisco, why these buildings, and why we'll keep on buying properties, massive ones in San Francisco. We're just getting started. >> I stepped away from Zenefits downstairs. We've seen the rooms, we've seen the halls, we've seen the state of the hotel. It's priced this way for a reason, but when you look at how hard it is to actually get a bed to sleep on in San Francisco, this is such an attractive offer for founders who are first starting. The cool part about San Francisco, though, is that if you want to go raise capital here, and you have a product that's gaining revenue, or depending on what industry you're in, is attractive to VCs, 28 days is a long time, and you can come here, make friends, meet investors, meet other founders, get help, get connections through here. 28 days is more than enough time to go and do that.

22:21 >> Is there anything that you would leave us with? >> You must understand that everyone in this city is crazy, and especially in San Francisco in the best way possible. People work very hard, people take risks, people leave their own countries. >> Project >> power like San Francisco. A lot of type of people, a lot of type of background, all type of energy, all type of beliefs and ideas. It's really multicultural, really diverse place. >> And with the way the AI shaping the world, people should take a few years of their time to try to learn something as entrepreneurship and to build something entrepreneurial.

22:55 >> The world is is changing. We are in the craziest time we've ever been. >> When people come here and they want to be part of the lab, I ask them one question. I was like, "Okay, what do you do?" And if there's something that makes someone feel like, "Oh, that seems like a little far away." or that seems too good to be true, I'm like, "You're in." >> >> We're just getting started, I believe. We're going to have a lot more to do.

23:17 People are welcome to join, welcome to come and visit. And if you're a founder, come and find your tribe and friends and community here. >>