How do you get companies, products and rockets off the ground? Teedy Deigh spends time with us trying to find out.
This month in Vulture Culture, the corner of Vibes and Ventures where we try to plaster a more human face on the shallow greed and Kool-Aid drinking we’re often accused of, we talk to innovator, thought-leader and burn-rate-maxxer Teedy Deigh. We like to profile and interview the people trying to make you – and themselves – money, whatever the cost.
| Vulture Culture | So, Teedy, let’s dive straight into the cliches. What is that gets you, a thrusting entrepreneur, out of bed in the morning? |
| Teedy Deigh | Most thrust comes from coffee. On the advice of my doctor I have decaf, but it’s important to put one’s own spin on any advice, to make it your own, so I mix that with regular coffee – if we’re happy calling two double espresso shots ‘regular’. |
| Morning, however, is a relative term, and often not one I approach from bed. | |
| VC | Sounds like you have some kind of 3am exercise or meditation regime. Is it something you could share with our audience? Something that helps offset guilt, or papers over sociopathy, or just sounds a little bit try-hard? |
| TD | What I mean is that I typically burn copious amounts of midnight oil, as well as at least one candle from both ends. If I see dawn, it’s only a glimpse receding in the rearview mirror of an ever-growing carbon footprint. |
| VC | That’s the kind of sleep-is-for-wimps attitude investors like to hear. |
| TD | Well, it’s either that, or I’m fast asleep until noon is little more than yet another a missed milestone in the day’s schedule. |
| VC | Sounds like you thrive on chaos. |
| TD | I don’t over-plan. |
| VC | Do you find that fosters success? |
| TD | Well, a certain amount of disorder and procrastination can save me from backing the wrong horse. Remember the hype about cryptocurrencies displacing actual currencies rather than becoming speculative assets? And all that web3 FOMO? |
| VC | Yes, many of our subscribers went all in on that. |
| TD | Not me. With so many other things going on, when I finally got round to it there was nothing to get round to. |
| But sometimes, dodging the bullet is more a matter of consideration rather than one of luck. Remember all the fuss around the metaverse? | |
| VC | My goodness, yes, I still have many property holdings there. Are you saying you saw it coming? |
| TD | I’m saying that trying to build on an SF trope from the 1980s while pretending that the 1990s and three decades of the Web hadn’t happened might not be a solid business plan. |
| VC | Insider knowledge. Useful. |
| TD | In common with many other technologist founders, I’m a big fan of speculative fiction. But unlike many of them, I actually read the books and watch the films and – here’s the real value add – try to understand what they’re about. |
| So, for example, I get that cyberpunk is a dystopian critique of technocorporatism, that the societal decimation and decay it portrays is not something we should be striving to create, that a low-life/high-tech aesthetic is only cool when you’re looking at it not when you’re living it. | |
| This sense and sensibility – coupled with erratic hyperfocus – has helped me steer clear of many mistakes in waiting. | |
| Many, but sadly not all. | |
| VC | Which brings us to the question of failure, and how any entrepreneur must inevitably deal with it. |
| TD | Is this the bit where I say how important it is to celebrate failure? It is, isn’t it? |
| VC | And, if you don’t mind me saying, you have much to celebrate! |
| TD | I’m a serial entrepreneur. Sometimes parallel. |
| VC | Could you spotlight a couple of examples so our audience can pass those off as their own anecdotes, while being surprised when similar circumstances arise again? |
| TD | One thing I’ve learned – or will at least, for the purposes of this discussion, say I’ve learned – is not to be too literal about some terms and metaphors. |
| Did I make it big in cloud computing? No... no, I did not. We were all told having the right cloud strategy was important. Hiring a bunch of meteorologists, however, turned out not to be that strategy. That one was on me. But at least it wasn’t my start-up. | |
| As for serverless, yeah, I might have taken that a little too literally. On the plus side, although it was my company, its existence was mercifully short. When that would-be angel investor pointed out the terminology snafu, it was quite the meeting stopper. And company stopper. From start-up to shut-down in less than a month. Quite the record! The complete absence of servers meant our capital expenditure had been quite low, so not much to write-off. | |
| And for all my SFF savvy, it’s not always obvious that some fictional technology is not something we should be pursuing. | |
| VC | Ah yes, this would be the Torment Nexus incident. |
| TD | Indeed. It was not at all clear that we should not create the Torment Nexus. Many companies, mine included, tried to establish – or at least bubble – a market for it. There was neither clue nor caution in the original Don’t Create the Torment Nexus novel that we shouldn’t be doing this. |
| VC | None at all. Caught a lot of us by surprise, that one. |
| Are there any products you’ve decided to shutter early rather than have the market crash them or investors pull the plug first? | |
| TD | I recently abandoned a side project to create a platform – social media, AI chatbot, both, I hadn’t decided – that doubles as a deepfake porn site. The market is already too crowded. Demagnetised moral compasses are surprisingly common in this space. |
| VC | And, something that will be of particular interest to our audience, is there anything you’re looking to get funding for at the moment? |
| TD | A couple of things, as it happens. The one I’m furthest along with is the Moredoor security system. It’s like a security system in that, to all intents and purposes, you shall not pass – hence the company name, Balrog – but all of its users will have been deceived as we have intentionally installed multiple backdoors for government – or highest bidder – use. Apart from that, it’s completely secure. |
| It relies heavily on the principle of trust – trust in Balrog, specifically – and we are ramping up marketing to build trust in that trust, hence we’re looking for more rounds of funding. We’ve had some client interest from a number of government bodies, including minipax and miniluv, so this looks like a solid investment. | |
| Another more speculative project involves space. Initially, we want to provide access to low Earth orbit before moving on to our long-term goal of asteroid mining and, in the best traditions of the free market, dominating the global metals market to the point of monopoly. Ideally, we would do so without crashing the economy by flooding the market with a surplus – taking the rare out of rare earth metals! – but it’s early days yet. | |
| VC | You mentioned low Earth orbit. How are you starting out? |
| TD | We’re applying the principles of vibe coding to rocketry. The LGTM launch vehicle is going to be our flagship product. That said, we’re having some trouble getting it off the ground. |
| VC | Is that why you need the funding? |
| TD | That too. But literally, we’re having trouble getting it off the ground. We 3D print it from vibed blueprints. Those plans and the resulting rocket look pretty plausible. You know, it’s got nozzles, tanks, pipes, wiring... all the rockety-looking bits. But when you turn it on, nothing happens. Not even with a performative countdown incantation. Not even when you turn it off then on again. |
| VC | Rockety-looking bits? What is your background in astronautical engineering? |
| TD | Non-existent. But that’s not going to stop me. I’m not held back by embedded preconceptions and traditional workflows. That’s what it takes to be an entrepreneur. If someone says something can’t – or shouldn’t – be done, ignore them. It’s not like this is rocket science. |
| VC | Umm... |
| TD | Me and the other founders at the Elysium Foundation are inspired by the utopian ideals and cool space habitat from the film Elysium. |
| VC | Doesn’t that film paint a bleak picture of the 22nd century? Global poverty, suppressed employment rights, inaccessible healthcare and so on? |
| TD | Only on Earth. We’re not interested in that part of it. |
| VC | As a foundation, are you aiming to be a nonprofit? Something charitable? |
| TD | Oh, don’t be misled by the name. We only added ‘Foundation’ to the name because we like Asimov. We really identify with the Empire. |
| VC | Aren’t they the bad guys? |
| TD | Tomayto, tomarto. In one sense, aren’t we all? But just ‘cos we’re the bad guys doesn’t mean we’re bad guys, right? |
| VC | Right. |
| That’s the kind of positive, feelgood note we like to end on. Hopefully, by exploring Teedy’s own story we’ve managed to pin a more human tale on the money-making ass of tech. |
When it comes to innovation, Teedy Deigh considers herself second to none. Possibly closer. When it comes to hype, she has seen more cycles than the Tour de France, and has helped to pivot (not always intentionally) many start-ups. When it comes to geeky interests, fan culture and all round nerdery, she has found many hills to die on, but has so far enjoyed the good fortune not to have this tested. All in all, she believes these qualities put her ahead of the usual, run of the hamster mill tech bros.
