Will O'Brien

Ocean is the new space: a $3T frontier hiding in plain sight

Will O'Brien argues the ocean economy is already $3 trillion in annual spend, covers 70% of the planet, and feeds 3 billion people, yet its core tech runs on ancient software with stagnant incumbents while space gets all the startup attention.

“It's not like the future space economy is going to be massive. The ocean economy is massive. It's $3 trillion in annual spend in different ways. It covers 70% of the planet. 3 billion people rely on it as their primary source of food. Food, a billion as their primary source of income.”

Seagrass beats rainforest 35x at carbon removal — and it's vanishing

Seagrass is ~10x more abundant than coral reefs, removes carbon 35x better than rainforest, holds 20% of the ocean's carbon and supports a quarter of the world's critical fish stocks — yet it's dying off at ~7% per year.

“It is 35 times better than rainforest at removing carbon. It supports about, it holds about 20% of the carbon in the ocean, supports about a quarter of the world's most critically important fish stocks, and it's called seagrass. It's basically just grass in the ocean. And this plant is dying off at an insane rate all around the world, about 7% loss per annum.”

Ocean robotics startup: $1M revenue, 5 people, year one

Ulysses did $1 million in revenue in its first year with a 5-person team in San Francisco, building custom robotic payloads to collect, plant and measure seagrass seeds.

“So in our first year, we did $1 million in revenue We're just kind of like first-year, 5-person team based here in San Francisco.”

Compliance-driven seagrass restoration as a robotics business

Ulysses gets paid to plant seagrass because governments now legally require anyone who damages it to fund restoration. The wedge is regulatory compliance: contracts in Western Australia, Florida and Virginia for either compliance-driven or voluntary restoration.

“Another reason is lots of governments now around the world have implemented laws that restrict your ability to damage this plant, or if you damage it, you have to pay someone to plant it. They're paying us to plant it. It's compliance-driven restoration.”

Steal thisFind a niche where regulation forces buyers to pay for a service, then build the lowest-cost way to deliver it.

The whole internet rides on ~600 active subsea cables

Will says only about 600 active undersea cables carry the world's internet traffic — very little redundancy — making their defense by cheap unmanned drones a bigger opportunity than laying backup lines.

“There's, there's like not actually that many, right? Like, as in, like, there, there's like an insane amount of data that goes over them, but there's only about like 600 active.”

Sentry drones that sit on subsea cables, 10x cheaper than rivals

Will pitches persistent, Anduril-style sentry drones permanently stationed over undersea cables to watch both surface and subsurface activity. The unlock is cost: a surface vehicle with a docking system that drops an underwater vehicle, built ~10x cheaper so it can scale across the vast ocean.

“They need to be persistently out at sea, like sentry style, in the same way that Anduril started with these border systems to see what was coming in and over the land border. We need the exact same type of systems out at sea, permanently just sitting there on top of them. They need to be cheap so that you can deploy them massively at scale.”

Steal thisMake the unit cheap enough to blanket a huge area; scale beats sophistication when the surface to cover is enormous.

Software's low-hanging fruit is eaten — hardware is the next frontier

Will argues the easy software wins are gone (you can vibe-code a Calendly competitor overnight, so where's the moat?), and points out 7 of the 10 most valuable companies have a heavy hardware component. The next frontier is fundamentally hardware.

“You look at the top 10 most valuable companies in the world right now, it's like 7 out of 10 of them have a hardware, like an extreme hardware component, right? The biggest companies being built today are hardware companies. And also in a world where you can just like vibe code overnight, like a CRM or a Salesforce or not Salesforce, but like a Calendly competitor. It's like, okay, well, is there really a moat in like these sorts of things anymore?”

Ocean treasure hunting with revenue-share deals with governments

Will describes hundreds of shipwrecks holding more than a billion dollars each (Spanish gold bullion), where source governments still hold claim — but there's historical precedent for profit-sharing deals: return the artifacts, sell some, keep a cut.

“So there is actually like, you know, hundreds of wrecks out there in the ocean today that potentially have like more than a billion dollars on them, right? Like gold bullions that like the Spanish were bringing back from their conquests, and then, you know, they got hit by a storm or these sorts of things, right? And there's like probably thousands that have like millions of dollars of funds in them, right?”

Steal thisStrike a profit-share with the rights-holder (here, a government) so you take upside without owning the underlying asset.

Marine geoengineering: dump iron, grow algae, draw down carbon

Will pitches marine geoengineering as a likely billion-dollar space, citing the 'give me a tanker of iron filings and I'll give you an ice age' idea: adding iron to iron-poor ocean stimulates algae that draws down carbon and boosts fish stocks. One rogue experiment off Vancouver produced a record salmon take but got the founder raided by authorities.

“you can actually alter the weather of the Earth by dunking iron into the ocean. Right, so basically, many parts of the ocean are low in iron. They need more iron. And if you add iron to these parts of the ocean, you stimulate algae growing at the surface. Algae then draws down carbon, and then the fish eat it, and then the fish die and they fall to the bottom of the sea.”

Steal thisGet the governance and science right first; in a public commons like the ocean, regulation is the real moat and the real risk.

Find a local monopoly to build in first

Will's rule: any brilliant company finds a local monopoly to start in — a space with no other tech players, a great time to enter, and a market big enough to bring in cash (the 'lifeblood'). Seagrass was that beachhead for Ulysses before expanding to bigger ocean opportunities.

“And I think any brilliant company finds a local monopoly to build in first, somewhere where there's nobody else doing stuff with technology, where it's a great time and nobody's ever heard of what you're even doing initially. And it's a pretty big market. You can bring cash into your business is like a lifeblood.”

Steal thisStart where you can be the only one, get cash flowing, then use it as a launchpad into bigger adjacent markets.

Conspiracy theorists make great founders

Will argues the traits of a conspiracy theorist — believing something everyone says is wrong, seeing patterns others miss, going down rabbit holes, contrarian spirit — are the same traits as a great founder, since the default is just doing what everyone else does.

“a lot of the traits of like conspiracy theorists are like those of like a great founder. I think someone that believes in something that everyone else tells them is not real or that they shouldn't believe in, or people that are able to see patterns that others can't see and they just go down these rabbit holes. And I think just this contrarian spirit, I think is very, very good.”

Prune to 5 desires like a rose bush

After a summer with Nepali monks who taught that desire causes suffering, Will couldn't accept zero desire — so on the Everest Base Camp hike he landed on minimum desires: family, friends, health, wealth, craft. Like a rose bush, cut back everything else so energy flows to what matters; if something that bothers you isn't on the list, let it go.

“The rose bushes, if you like leave them go unkempt, they basically just grow like briars and they grow thorns and the flowers don't really grow. You have to like cut them back to let the energy go back to like the rose.”

Steal thisWrite down your 5 core desires; when something upsets you, check if it's on the list — if not, let it go.